By Christopher Monckton of Brenchley
The campaign by certain rent-seeking scientific societies to push a single, narrow view of the climate question continued in Scotland today with a meeting coyly entitled Climate Change: Science and Society at the Royal Society of Edinburgh, Scotland’s once-famous, once-scientific society.
Your correspondent, following a tip-off from “rms”, a WUWT commenter, tootled round from Queen Street and sat through this gag-reflex-tweaking propaganda event.
This was the first meeting at any scientific society at which not only did I hear a member of the audience demand less science but the rest of the audience actually applauded.
We’ll come to that. But I’m not surprised. An eminent Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh suggested to its then president almost ten years ago that I should be asked to address the Society on the climate question so that the Fellows could hear both sides. He was told, in no uncertain terms, that any opinion but that one would be welcome.
Professor David Sugden, FRSE, who chaired today’s event, opened with the usual pietism about climate change being “one of the biggest problems facing humankind”. He was disappointed that climate change had not been mentioned in the recent UK election (actually it had, in UKIP’s manifesto, which promised near-complete desubsidization of the climate nonsense, and UKIP gained more votes than any other party).
Professor Sugden, a smooth, murmuring perpetrator of effortless pietisms akin to the waffling bureaucrat Wither in C.S. Lewis’ That Hideous Strength, also said the forthcoming world-government conference in Paris was the world’s “last-chance saloon”. Pass the sick-bucket, Alice! (as my Australian brother is prone to put it).
Professor Gabriele Hegerl, FRSE, an IPCC activist from the [University of Edinburgh], presented a summary of the two-year-old Fifth ASSessment Report. The report was “science based on publications,” she burbled, as her PowerPoint presentation showed a picture of an IPCC scientist very obviously asleep during one of the “working” sessions.
We were not told, of course, that of 11,944 climate-science “publications” in the 21 years 1991-2011 only 41, or 0.3%, had even gone so far as to say most of the global warming since 1950 was manmade. In the IPCC’s ASSessment Report, this 0.3% “science based on publications” became “95% confidence”. Bozhe moi.
Professor Hegerl hoped that this year’s el Nino would be a big one, “beating the world record by how much?” We were not told this would be just in time for Paris, before the countervailing la Nina kicks in.
Next, some cherry-picking. Springtime snow cover in the Northern Hemisphere was declining (we were not told that annual northern-hemisphere snow cover shows no change throughout the satellite era).
Professor Hegerl mentioned Antarctic as well as Arctic sea-ice extent, but said the former had increased only “slightly”. We were not told that the increase in Antarctic sea ice now largely compensates for the loss of Arctic sea ice, and for several months it has been showing its greatest seasonal extent in the satellite era.
We were told that upper ocean temperature had “increased linearly”. We were not told its warming rate is equivalent to 0.23 degrees per [century]. What with the sky not falling and the sea not really rising, whatever shall we do?
We were told that it was “66% likely” that 20th-century warming had made current temperatures the warmest in at least 1400 years. We were not told that that modelling estimate is at variance with just about every peer-reviewed proxy record. Our good friends at CO2science.org have a collection of around 500 papers based on measurements showing that the medieval warm period was real, was global and was at least as warm as the present almost everywhere, and in some places warmer by up to 3 degrees.
We were told the ocean was “acidifying”. We were not told by how much. Not surprising, really, because no global measurement has ever been taken. All we have are a few transects and one or two local records. We were not told that the ocean was actually acid 55 million years ago, and yet the calcite corals that evolved 550 million years ago and the aragonites that first achieved algal symbiosis 175 million years ago somehow survived, and here we all are.
Professor Hegerl said observed temperatures had exceeded predictions in the 1990s. She heard me growling at this and reiterated it. However, the warming from January 1990 to December 1999, even on the average of the three much-adjusted and exaggerated surface temperature datasets, was 0.22 degrees, compared with the IPCC’s prediction of 0.28 degrees per decade over the medium term in its 1990 First ASSessment Report.
However, Professor Hegerl admitted that the Pause had not been predicted.
We were told that more water in the atmosphere because of global warming would lead to more rainfall. We were not told that not all records show this; nor were we told that the linear trend on the Met Office rainfall record, the longest in the world, shows an increase in rainfall of just 2 inches a year compared with almost a quarter of a millennium ago.
Professor Hegerl expressed considerable interest in what she said was a new finding of the IPCC: that there was a linear relationship between cumulative CO2 emissions and global temperature change. We were not told that in the last 18 years 5 months that “linear relationship” had broken down, with CO2 emissions and concentration continuing to rise at rates not seen in more than 800,000 years, and yet global temperatures showing no change at all over the period.
Besides, the CO2 forcing function is not linear but logarithmic. A possible mistake somewhere, one felt.
I asked Professor Hegerl about the now embarrassingly large discrepancy between the IPCC’s medium-term interval of temperature predictions made in 1990 and the observed outturn in the subsequent quarter of a century, which was only half the IPCC’s central estimate. The IPCC had accordingly halved its predicted interval of medium-term warming from [0.2, 0.4] degrees per decade in 1990 to [0.1, 0.2] degrees per decade in 2013. Outturn since 1979, on all measures, had been closer to 0.1 than 0.2 degrees per decade.
The satellite datasets had shown no warming for 18 years 4 months (UAH) or 18 years 5 months (RSS), and the ocean, perhaps the best indicator of the underlying warming rate, had been warming at a rate equivalent to less than a quarter of a degree per [century] across the entire 11-year run of bathythermograph data.
The Professor winced. There is no doubt about it: the pause is getting to them. She began her answer by saying that the IPCC had made no medium-term predictions in 1990: only predictions to 2100. I quickly interjected that it had predicted 1 degree of warming to 2025 and 1.8 degrees to 2030, against an outturn to date of not much more than a third of a degree in a quarter of a century.
Professor Sugden interrupted to tell me to let Professor Hegerl answer the question, but by then I’d made my point. Professor Hegerl, flustered at having been caught out on the content of the IPCC reports, speculated on some of the possible causes of what she called the “anomalously low warming” over the past decade or two. We were not told that anomalously high warming predictions might be a large part of the problem.
She mentioned relatively active volcanism. We were not told that since Pinatubo there has been no eruption of global significance. Less implausibly, she referred to the slowdown in solar activity: yet the IPCC has attributed so little forcing to solar changes that that pretext, too, fell short.
Next, she said that Professor Richard Lindzen’s negative feedback had not been observed and that, therefore, the very least we could expect from a doubling of CO2 concentration was 1.5 degrees’ warming. “The present slowdown in warming does not affect the prediction at all.” No, it doesn’t, and that, precisely is the problem: full steam ahead and damn the factedoes. We weren’t told, for instance, that Professor Lindzen’s negative feedback was actually derived from observation.
She concluded that the present el Nino would put warming back on track. We were not told that (alas, after the Paris pifflefest) the subsequent la Nina may well put the pause back on track.
A member of the audience, in that hectoring, bossy whine that is the hallmark of the climate campaigner everywhere, interjected that we shouldn’t be discussing “trivial quibbles about science” at all. All this talk of tenths of a degree was irrelevant.
The audience of “scientists” applauded rapturously. Actually, Miss, those tenths of a degree are relevant, because the warming to date is indeed only in tenths of a degree, and considerably fewer tenths than had been predicted.
While the next speaker was getting his act together, I had a look at the attendance register to find out why the audience had so ecstatically applauded the climate campaigner who had suggested that a scientific society should not concern itself with science.
As I had suspected, about three-quarters of the 70 people present were there either because they were on the taxpayer’s dime as academics, bureaucrats or students or because they were climate campaigners.
Even the members of what was once a distinguished scientific society no longer seemed to care about science. They seemed to care about money. As long as panicky governments were handing the stuff out by the barrow-load, they would pay not the slightest attention to the abyss now set between prediction and outturn.
Next, Professor Stuart Haszeldine, OBE, FRSE, said we were emitting “carbon” into the atmosphere “and there isn’t enough space”. Actually, we’re emitting carbon dioxide and there’s plenty of space, but people who live in towns seldom see the stars, so they don’t know how big space is.
However, he made an excellent and well balanced case for CO2 capture and storage: it was geologically safe, he said, but there was an energy penalty of 25%, though he hoped that might one day fall to 10% or even to 2-3% (dream on). He also hoped that the gas-fired plant at Peterhead on the north-east neuk of Buchan would shortly become the first gas-powered generation set in the world to be converted to CO2 capture and storage. We were not told that fracking is scarcely less safe than CO2 capture and storage.
He said that once the CO2 had been extracted chemically from the flue-gases and then sent through a compressor, it could be pumped out to sea using an existing pipeline and could be sequestered in the now-disused Goldeneye gas field under the North Sea. A similar retrofit at the Grangemouth refinery could send CO2 through another existing pipeline and out to the North Sea.
Next, Professor Mark Rounsevell, a specialist in modeling atmospheric chemistry at Edinburgh University, asked “So what? Should we adapt or mitigate?” He was willing to concede that the case for CO2 harming agricultural yields had not been made. Though crop yields were no longer increasing as much as they had done in previous decades, they had not dropped despite a very large reduction in the use of nitrogen fertilizers.
Dr Andy Kerr, an adviser to the Scottish executive, said that modeling of regional impacts for the UK had produced contradictory results. Earlier results had said it would be a bit wetter, later results had said the opposite. New scenarios were working on the basis of a warming of 4-5 degrees this century. We were not told that this would represent up to 20 times the underlying ocean warming rate of the past 11 years.
His sensible take-home message was that one should not start by worrying about climate change. Instead, one should be resilient to whatever might happen.
That was a cue for my question: the Cockenzie coal-fired plant (above) had been needlessly closed; the same was now to happen at Longannet; Scotland’s two nuclear plants were also due to be taken out of service; no replacement base-load power would be built; d*mnfool windmills were intermittent, costly and environmentally destructive, and were failing far sooner than their design lifetimes; and how was the Scottish executive going to keep the lights on?
That turned out to be the right question. Dr Kerr said the lights could well go out this winter because EU regulation was closing coal-fired plants all over England too, so that the entire UK grid would become acutely vulnerable. He was a fan of windmills but recognized that they were expensive and did not work when the wind was not blowing (we were not told that that is most of the time).
After the mandatory break for bad coffee and good shortbread with the Scottish saltire carefully baked into the crust in a politically correct fashion, Professor Ottmar Edenhofer of the Potsdam Institute (them again) said that CO2 emissions growth was accelerating, and admitted that the 2-degree global-warming limit had nothing to support it either in physics or in economics: it was political.
Professor Edenhofer said energy intensity per unit of GDP was improving, but was more than offset by population and GDP growth. Coal was undergoing a renaissance, notwithstanding attempts in Europe and North America to shut it down, and the renaissance was not attributable solely to China and India. We were not told it’s nearly all attributable to China alone, nor that Mr Obama has unilaterally exempted China from any obligations to the world government he hopes to establish in Paris this December.
The “precautionary principle” required us to decarbonize quickly. We were not told that the “precautionary principle” is neither precautionary nor a principle: it is an expedient deployed to divert attention from the economic reality – which even the IPCC admits in its 2013 report – that mitigation today is costlier than adaptation even to absurdly over-predicted warming the day after tomorrow.
In Professor Edenhofer’s view, the fastest road to decarbonisation was the introduction of a CO2 tax or of emissions trading. We were not told that both are in force in Europe and have been a failure.
He said, “Climate policy has a current cost, but may benefit future generations: the question of intergenerational justice is important.” He estimated that, on business as usual, there would be a warming of 4 degrees this century. I asked him whether it was realistic for him to expect a 17-fold increase in the underlying ocean warming rate compared with what had been measured over the past 11 years.
I added that [in the city that gave the world the first member of his profession – Adam Smith (below), the first economist, a free-marketeer and, along with Benjamin Franklin, a founding member of the Royal Society of Edinburgh] it was depressing to be told that the answer to what increasingly appeared to be a non-problem was a gargantuan regime of totalitarian interference in the working of the free market in energy supply.
Taxing or pricing CO2, I said, was a poll tax on the poor.
Dr Edenhofer angrily replied that he accepted “the science” [but not the science that shows very nearly all the models to have exaggerated the warming trend].
He considered there was nothing totalitarian about government setting market prices (I kid you not). Prices, he said, must reflect society’s most important scarcities. But that is what the free market does, all by itself.
His objective, he said in an unctuous tone, was “caring for the atmosphere and rescuing the free-market economy”.
The audience of totalitarians, their wobbly bottoms planted on the Consolidated Fund just as firmly as steatopygy allowed, loved this confirmation of their opinion that global warming is what Lord Stern described in his now-discredited report on climate economics as “a market failure”. Dr Edenhofer’s comment got the biggest applause of the day.
Finally, Angus Gillespie of Shell said the oil corporation was investing billions in CO2 capture and storage. Shell, he said, accepted that climate change was underway and that fossil fuels were playing a role [can I have another grant now I’ve said that?].
Shell wanted a price on CO2, because it was changing from being an oil and gas corporation to being a gas and oil corporation. Gas had half of coal’s emissions per TWh of energy generated, so a CO2 price would make coal uncompetitive and increase Shell’s market share.
Shell was investing in CO2 capture and storage because it had concluded that 7 billion tons of CO2 would have to be sequestered every year to keep within the 2-degree global-warming limit. The cost of the technology was currently $125 per tonne captured, of which $100 was the cost of the capture itself. Costly though the technology was, Shell reckoned that any other method would be 40% costlier still. They estimated that the deadweight cost or energy penalty in driving the capture, compression, transport, injection and storage was 10-20% (the industry reckons more like 25-40% at present).
I asked Mr Gillespie whether, in view of the now embarrassingly large and ever-growing disconnect between the exaggerated predictions of the “settled-science” models and the inconvenient, real-world measurements, Shell had any strategy for disentangling itself from the CO2-as-demon matrix.
The question caught him by surprise. He said that although Shell maintained its portfolio of energy-producing reserves and other assets as flexibly as possible, the corporation had no strategy for handling the situation if real-world temperatures continued to demonstrate that the models were wrong.
A climate campaigner at the back of the room – another whining, bossy voice, male this time – asked for Mr Gillespie’s reaction to the campaign to persuade people to sell their investments in fossil-fuel corporations.
Mr Gillespie responded, bluntly, that divestment made no difference to the share price. Shareholders took a relatively short-term view of the value of Shell’s assets – typically ten or eleven years – so the divestment campaign would have no impact at all.
Then, in a final dig at the skeptics, he said, “Some of the debate has become a distraction.”
So let me make a prediction (that’s what They do). As global temperatures resume their rise, but do so at a rate very far below prediction, the debate will continue, whether the Royal Society of Edinburgh or Royal Dutch Shell like it or not.
As the hall emptied, Dr Edenhofer passed by. I said I hoped he’d find his way back to the free market in time. He said the Potsdam institute was committed to the free market. “Communists, the lot of you,” I said, with a warm smile to reassure him that I was not intending an insult.
Professor Haszledine came past at that moment and said, “And what’s wrong with Communism?” Sadly, he meant it. The only thing we learn from history …
On the way out, I asked Professor Sugden whether there had ever been a climate-skeptical speaker at a Royal Society event. He said there had been several interjections by skeptics over the years. I pressed him, asking whether the Society had ever invited a skeptic to speak from the podium. “No,” he said.
That says it all. Can’t have scientific quibbles about tenths of a degree, can we? Not when our fat subsidies might be cut off once governments work out they’ve been had.
Though some of the speakers made sensible points, neither speakers nor audience seemed aware of most of the central scientific facts in the climate debate. They knew the Party Line, but that was all. One or two had heard of the pause, but none had realized how wide the discrepancy between models’ predictions and real-world outturn had become.
And where they knew the facts, they presented only one side of the picture. This was a propaganda event, pure and simple. It had nothing to do with science except the name of the once-illustrious society in whose premises the meeting was held.
After the meeting Professor Hegerl told me it was simply not true that the rate of warming since 1990 was half of what the IPCC had then predicted. The current temperature outturn, she said, was consistent with the models’ predictions.
She knew, of course, that there was no penalty in making such an entirely incorrect and insupportable assertion: for the mainstream media can now be relied upon not to ask any of the right questions. The good news, though, is that they did not bother to attend. It is slowly dawning on them that this particular horse is dead.
I came away saddened. It is not just the terrible destruction of the Scottish landscape wrought by the 600-ft windmills that can be seen from two-thirds of it. It is not just the extinction of the ospreys and golden eagles and pipistrelles and countless other species of birds and bats smashed out of the sky by the grim, new triffids of totalitarianism.
As one of Scotland’s most successful civil engineers and I agreed over ersatz coffee and politically-correct biscuits, it is the loss of the use of reason herself by the only known species that possesses it that is the heaviest loss.
How will science recover, if the very bastions of science, however elegant their premises, are infested with intellectual pygmies who no longer care to hunt for the objective truth that is – or, rather, was – the end and object as much of science as it is of religion?
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In continental Europe, communism and socialism have merged to become one and the same.
The only difference between communism and socialism has always been patience.
Dear Lord Monckton,
Are you holding writing courses, i need help.
Lord Monckton holds them frequently. Every time he posts here and on other sites.
I’m certainly not weak on vocabulary and almost never have trouble reading and understanding every word most authors use, (barring in-depth technical articles).
When a Lord Monckton article is encountered, I open both dictionary and translator windows, so that I can use Christopher’s words to expand mine; e.g. steatology above was new to me.
I am appreciative Lord Monckton!
This is a “misunderstanding” that I have seen often, so often that I think it is a voluntary misunderstanding. IPCC’s claim is that it is likely unprecedented SINCE year 1400, and not in 1400 years. There are about 800 years added for free thanks to this voluntary misunderstanding often played by alarmists.
This article probably illustrates why the likes of the BBC will not broadcast much in the way of AGW counter argument. I am being very, very nice there.
Christopher..I now know of 2 ordinary folk (like me) and 2 Tory MPS waiting for the response of the BBC to
Andrew Selous (MP) letter about the BBC on your lawn and their solid and not so well known bias. Perhaps there are more waiting? I am expecting the standard and lengthy Foxtrot Oscar!
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/05/18/the-unspeakable-bbc-parks-its-tanks-on-my-lawn
An excellent article.
I like the last sentence:
“Perhaps, once the existing corrupt organization has been purged and the red-blooded Marxists replaced with blue-blooded capitalists, we can have Top Gear back.”
Ex-expat Colin is correct that the BBC’s response to just about every complaint is to recommend the complainant should visit a taxidermist or go forth and multiply, but not in so many words. However, the father and mother of all complaints is being assembled by several of us, and the BBC will be given no opportunity to weasel out, because otherwise its prejudice on the climate question will be subjected to judicial review.
The current temperature in the southern hemisphere.
http://pamola.um.maine.edu/fcst_frames/GFS-025deg/DailySummary/GFS-025deg_NH-SAT5_T2.png
Can be seen the Western Antarctic for warmer.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/dc/Antarctica_Without_Ice_Sheet.png
Oh dear, here is a 30 second debunking of the nonsense with which Lord Monckton apparently made a nuisance of himself at the Royal Society of Edinburgh. I’m ignoring His Lordship’s hearsay description of the meeting, and the scientists’ reaction to his rudeness; on past experience these probably belong in the realm of the fantastical. Here’s the Moncktonian ‘science’.
Monckton: We were not told, of course, that of 11,944 climate-science “publications” in the 21 years 1991-2011 only 41, or 0.3%, had even gone so far as to say most of the global warming since 1950 was manmade.
M is only counting papers which explicitly, in the abstract, endorsed the consensus. Absurd, you could probably get a similar proportion of Biology papers ‘endorsing’ the Theory of Evolution. Cook et al’s survey of papers as rated by the authors themselves found a percentage in the high nineties agreeing with the proposition. The consensus is strong because the science is strong, not vice versa.
Monckton: Next, some cherry-picking. Springtime snow cover in the Northern Hemisphere was declining (we were not told that annual northern-hemisphere snow cover shows no change throughout the satellite era).
Well it’s the Springtime extent that is important, climatically. Nonetheless, M is wrong again. He appears to have got his graphs (which, characteristically, he mislabels. presumably he means NSIDC) from a Earth Observatory page; the accompanying text is
The 28 year trend in snow extent derived from visible and passive microwave satellite data indicates an annual decrease of approximately 1 to 3 percent per decade with greater deceases of approximately 3 to 5 percent during spring and summer.
Monckton Professor Hegerl mentioned Antarctic as well as Arctic sea-ice extent, but said the former had increased only “slightly”. We were not told that the increase in Antarctic sea ice now largely compensates for the loss of Arctic sea ice, […]
We were probably not told this because it would be a lie.
https://tamino.wordpress.com/2012/03/27/how-fake-skeptics-fool-themselves-part-infinity-sea-ice-version/
Monckton We were told the ocean was “acidifying”. We were not told by how much. Not surprising, really, because no global measurement has ever been taken. All we have are a few transects and one or two local records. We were not told that the ocean was actually acid 55 million years ago, and yet the calcite corals that evolved 550 million years ago and the aragonites that first achieved algal symbiosis 175 million years ago somehow survived, and here we all are.
The ocean is in fact acidifying faster than at any time in the last 300m years. See ‘Climate change and the oceans – What does the future hold?’, Marine Pollution Bulletin Volume 74, Issue 2, 30 September 2013, Pages 495–505
And the rugose and tabulate corals that were around in the Cambrian and Ordovician periods are long since extinct. Not the best example, then.
Monckton Professor Hegerl said observed temperatures had exceeded predictions in the 1990s. She heard me growling at this and reiterated it. However, the warming from January 1990 to December 1999, even on the average of the three much-adjusted and exaggerated surface temperature datasets, was 0.22 degrees, compared with the IPCC’s prediction of 0.28 degrees per decade over the medium term in its 1990 First ASSessment Report.
This is a misrepresentation that Monckton repeats over and over again. Briefly, the IPCC report projected 4 different forcing scenarios, A-D and calculated the temperature rise it expected for each. In fact forcings proceeded somewhere between scenarios B and C, and the global temperature followed the associated projection remarkably well. Monckton ignores all the scenarios other than ‘A’, the most extreme, which did not come to pass. Scientific fraud, pure and simple.
M We were not told that in the last 18 years 5 months that “linear relationship” had broken down, with CO2 emissions and concentration continuing to rise at rates not seen in more than 800,000 years, and yet global temperatures showing no change at all over the period
Cherry Pick.Tropospheric temperatures as estimated by satellite based microwave sounders may show no trend, however global surface temperature, as measured by ground stations, have just recorded the warmest 12 month period in the record and the warmest start to a year on record.
Clearly, anyone turning to His Lordship for reliable information is making a category error, but then what do you expect from a fantasist who believes he owns the historic and shared Queen Street Gardens?
(Cross-posted at Sou’s place, for the record)
Phil Clarke, wise up.
Doesn’t come close to addressing my point. Try again.
Phil Clarke,
You’re about as deluded as anyone I’ve ever read on this site. Your “point” is that you still believe Cook’s ‘consensus’ propaganda. You are still trying to defend his completely indefensible “97%” nonsense! Here’s your problem:
http://dailysanctuary.com/uploads/__WP_dailysanctuary-com_2015_03_rare026.jpg
Phil, you have ZERO credibility, just like anyone else who still tries to defend Cook’s propaganda. I have no respect for anyone who tries to feed me a bunch of horse manure like you’re dumping here.
This site is for thinking people, so run along back to hotwhopper; they’re about your speed.
Phil Clarke says:
Doesn’t come close to addressing my point. Try again.
You keep trying to make the ‘point’ that Cook’s “97%” propaganda is reality.
It isn’t, and you look increasingly foolish trying to defend it.
Phil, you don’t have a point. You just repeated the data from an already discredited paper.
Earth to Phil Clarke – it’s May, 2015 not March, 2012. Wanna run Grant “Statistician to the Retards” Foster’s numbers again without the Rip Van Winkle adjustment ?
Or you could just click on the global sea ice link in the sidebar here.
It really is sad the way people are willing to repeat lies over and over again.
😀 Ain’t dat da troof!
“good shortbread with the Scottish saltire carefully baked into the crust in a politically correct fashion”
OK, silly question. How is the Cross of St. Andrew politically correct? I would think such a Christian symbol would be offensive to atheists and other living things. A thistle would be more PC if not more prickly.
In the good old days, the Union Flag would have been baked into the crust. But, under the new regime of the National Socialist Workers’ Party of Scotland, the Union Flag is seldom seen north of Carter Bar these days: National Socialist thugs tend to tear them down and smash the windows of those who fly them,
Likewise, UKIP and Conservative election posters are torn down or defaced, and during the “independence” referendum several houses of those who openly supported the Union were defaced or damaged. The air of menace is palpable. We are making plans – with a heavy heart – to leave Scotland at some time in the next year or two, and we are by no means the first to do so.
Sad, but probably a wise plan. The hand-writing is on the wall for the end of freedom and beginning of tyranny in Scotland.
Maybe if Scotland leaves the UK, then the Orkney and Shetland Islands, plus Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale in the Lowlands, will vote to secede from Scotland.
‘X’ marks the spot and is wonderful when constructed with proper shortbread.
Offensive it is not!
Politically correct fools who prefer thistle are welcome to all they can harvest, the prickly parts are included at no charge.
In response to Mr Clarke’s characteristically nasty posting, some facts:
First, I was not “rude”. On the contrary, the head of one of the major political caucuses on Edinburgh Council wrote to me afterwards to congratulate me on my “measured and reasonable” questioning of the speakers.
Next, as an affidavit that will shortly be laid before the criminal courts in Reading makes clear, even the “self-rated” papers in Cook et al.’s fr*udulent and comprehensively debunked attempt to prove a 97% “consensus” did not show 97% support, or anything like it, for the “consensus” proposition as defined in Cook’s drivel: that, in the words of Cook’s co-author from Reading “University”, “recent warming is mostly manmade”.
Next, there is no reason to suppose that the springtime extent of Northern-Hemisphere snow cover is any more important, climatically, than any the extent during any other part of the snow-cover season. The graph from NSIDC (apologies for the “S” dropping out from “NSIDC”) that I reproduced in the head posting shows a very small downtrend in annual snow-cover extent: but so very small a downtrend (even Mr Clarke only puts it at 1-5% per decade) is well within natural variability, so we cannot tell that global warming has had any significant effect on it. Mr Clarke should learn a sense of proportion.
Next, Mr Clarke cites not a scientific paper (he does not seem too familiar with the literature) but a tendentious and increasingly desperate blog whose author, notorious for his mistakes, tries to maintain that the global extent of sea ice exhibits a serious decline. One need only look at the record of global sea-ice extent to see how very small – particularly as a fraction of seasonal variability – the decline in global sea ice has been. As with northern-hemisphere snow cover, so with sea-ice extent, one may imagine that global warming has had some small influence, but we have no reason to suppose that the very small movements in either of these datasets exceed natural variability by a statistically-significant margin. Again, more proportion and less pusillanimous partisanship, please.
Next, Mr Clarke wails that the rugose and tabulate corals became extinct at the end of the Permian era, inferentially during the “Great Dying”, a mass extinction some 250 million years ago caused by prolonged warming of the Earth owing to the aggregation of the continents in a single land-mass, a warming exacerbated by a major volcanic eruption in Siberia that emitted basaltic lava that covered an area seven times the size of France. Though Mr Clarke somehow fails to say so, they were replaced by the hardier scleractinian corals that are today’s principal reef-formers. And, whether Mr Clarke likes it or not, my statement that the calcite and aragonite corals (and the scleractinia) survived the acidification of the oceans 55 million years ago is correct. At the time of the Permian mass extinction, CO2 concentration was approximately five times today’s, and the oceans, unlike the oceans 55 million years ago, are today pronouncedly alkaline, and – under anything like modern conditions – must remain so. There is indeed a small group of activists in the literature who try with increasing desperation to maintain that the oceans are “acidifying”: however, like it or not they remain pronouncedly alkaline, at a mean pH that is probably around 8.0 (no one knows for sure, because – as I correctly stated – no global campaign of measurement has ever been undertaken). For reference, acid-base neutrality is at a pH of 7.0, and rainwater is pronouncedly acid at 5.4. Studies off the coast of South America, where – as in many coastal areas, and particularly at or close to estuaries – pH varies considerably depending upon runoff via rivers from the land, show that calcifying organisms, contrary to the assertions of the “acidification” campaigners, are well able to withstand considerable variations in pH.
Next, Mr Clarke moans that one should not hold the IPCC to its business-as-usual predictions from 1990 because business as usual did not come to pass. However, the IPCC specifically graphed four scenarios, A-D, with A being business as usual, for CO2 emissions, expressed in Gigatonnes of carbon. However, as Le Quere et al. (2014) demonstrated, CO2 emissions are currently running somewhat above the IPCC’s Scenario A prediction from 1990. The business-as-usual prediction was, therefore, the appropriate one, but the rate of warming even in the 1990s was well below the IPCC’s 1990 scenario A prediction, and the rate of warming from 1990 to the present is approximately half of the IPCC’s then-predicted rate on its business-as-usual scenario. As the head posting demonstrates, even the IPCC has accepted that its original predictions were running hot, for expert reviewers including me advised it to do so. It has, therefore, substituted its own “expert assessment” for the models’ output in the medium term, and the result, as stated correctly in the head posting, is that the IPCC has all but halved both the upper and the lower bounds of its then-predicted warming rate for the medium term. It has not, however, made any adjustments to its long-term predictions, as it should have done.
Finally, Mr Clarke prefers to use the much-tampered-with terrestrial temperature datasets because (in no small part thanks to the tampering) show some warming over the past 18 years 5 months. However, the rate of warming over that period, taken as the mean of the three longest-established terrestrial datasets, is equivalent to only three-quarters of a degree per century – again, well within natural variability and less than half the warming rate shown on the terrestrial datasets since 1979, notwithstanding ever-increasing rates both of CO2 emission and of CO2 concentration. The terrestrial records therefore confirm the lower-troposphere record, in that there is no satisfactory linear relation between cumulative CO2 emissions and global warming: nor would we expect one, because the CO2 forcing function is not linear but logarithmic.
Accordingly, Mr Clarke – as usual – is flat-out wrong on all points.
[snip off topic -mod]
More great work, and great writing, by the man who single-handedly is giving the standing of the Scottish aristocracy a great boost! The Royal Societies of Edinburgh and London have both failed society by failing to stand up for rigorous science and penetrating analysis against the plague of glib science and political opportunism that we have had to endure for decades under various banners including cagw, climate change, climate disruption, and the even more insidious, banal, and destructive ‘sustainable development’.
It would be a fine thing if new scientific societies were to emerge in those cities, and elsewhere. Societies dedicated to critical review of theories and careful weighing of evidence, and always with disdain for those who sell their souls, and brains, to ‘authority’ rather than dare think for themselves.
The Heartland Institute in the USA, and the Global Warming Policy Foundation in the UK, are perhaps the most prominent examples of bodies which have arisen to work on climate matters in large part because of the failure of our existing scientific societies to do what ought to have been seen as their duty to the rest of us.
IMO Lord Monckton’s title is in the English aristocracy.
His distant ancestors lived in Yorkshire, so might have Scottish connections, but his family has been settled in Kent since the 16th century.
OK, thanks for that. He has lived in Scotland for quite a while himself, but I suppose I should have been more careful in my comment and have written ‘aristocracy in Scotland’.
Actually, I believe it is indeed a fact that LMs title is derived from his Aristocratic ancestry, but not from membership in the House of Lords, which is on record stating he isn’t, nor ever was, a member.
And what is warrenlb, aside from nothing?
John,
It’s a small point. England and Scotland have separate peerages for inherited titles. I don’t know about “life” titles. Those might possibly be from the UK.
Warrenlb,
Lord Monckton’s title is derived from his being the grandson of the first Viscount, who was not himself an aristocrat, but was elevated to the peerage by Prime Minister Anthony Eden, for services rendered the United Kingdom.
While he is thus indubitably a lord and member of the English peerage, that nowadays doesn’t guarantee a seat in the House of Lords.
Your understanding of every topic upon which you choose to comment appears non-existent.
sturgishooper is correct, as usual.
Lord Monckton is a hereditary peer. But warrenlb doesn’t understand how that works. As usual, warrenlb has only his ad hominem attacks, but he never has any credible science. If it were not for his ad hominem and his appeal to authority fallacies, warrenlb’s comments would look like this: [” … “].
As sturgishooper says to warrenlb: “understanding of every topic upon which you choose to comment appears non-existent.”
Anyone can comment here. But they do not have to know what they’re talking about. Thus: warrenlb; site pest.
[Ah, it’s the sockpuppet “David Socrates” again.
Get lost. ~mod.]
Actually LM claims he is a member of the H of L. But the H of L denies it, in writing, publically, and asks L of M to cease and desist in such claims. yet he doesn’t.
In response to 18-plus year Halt to warming, Clark pulls a classic two-fer; a lie ensconced in a red herring:
Typical Alarmist tactics.
Science by legal affadavit? Really? Regardless of the outcome of such a novel procedure, the assertion that the consensus rests on the tiny percentage of abstracts in the literature explicitly endorsing it is balderdash. Even Richard Tol, perhaps the most outspoken critic of Cook et al tells us that
There is no doubt in my mind that the literature on climate change overwhelmingly supports the hypothesis that climate change is caused by humans. I have very little reason to doubt that the consensus is indeed correct
I am grateful to his Lordship for conceding that I was correct in pointing out that his assertion that ‘
annual northern-hemisphere snow cover shows no change throughout the satellite era’ is indeed untrue. As for the literature …
Analysis of Northern Hemisphere spring terrestrial snow cover extent (SCE) from the NOAA snow chart Climate Data Record (CDR) for the April to June period (when snow cover is mainly located over the Arctic) has revealed statistically significant reductions in May and June SCE. Successive records for the lowest June SCE have been set each year for Eurasia since 2008, and in 3 of the past 5 years for North America. The rate of loss of June snow cover extent between 1979 and 2011 (−17.8% decade−1) is greater than the loss of September sea ice extent (−10.6% decade−1) over the same period. Analysis of Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5) model output shows the marked reductions in June SCE observed since 2005 fall below the zone of model consensus defined by +/−1 standard deviation from the multi-model ensemble mean.
Derksen & Brown 2012 http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2012GL053387/full
A 17% /decade decline during Spring. A lesser trend during other seasons. It seems to me that anyone not concerned by this is the one lacking a sense of proportion.
Again I am grateful to his Lordship for confirming that his original assertion that ‘calcite corals that evolved 550 million years ago’ survived is untrue. Again, if one is merely setting the bar at more recently evolved corals merely not becoming extinct rather than the massively problematic effects detailed in the paper I cited, then I would opine that it is not I who lacks a sense of proportion. Surely we can aim higher? For a description of the less-than-extinction-but-still-serious effects of acidification on the marine environment, see the paper I cited, or indeed any other authority on the topic.
His Lordship dismisses Tamino’s conclusions on global sea ice extent, even though the statistician’s data is well-sourced. Perhaps he would like to give his own figures for the trends in Antarctic and Arctic sea ice extent to back up his assertion that the modest increase in the former compensates for the steep decline in the latter?
His Lordship defends his sole use of IPCC 1990 Scenario A (dismissing all others) on the grounds that the report ‘graphed emissions’ (yes they did, in an Annex, as an ‘example’) and CO2 emissions are now above Scenario A, according to Le Quere . This is unscientific and disingenuous. Firstly emissions in a single year are irrelevant to the warming effect. What matters is cumulative concentrations, and IPCC Scenario A has CO2 concentrations well north of 400ppm by now. Indeed his Lordship’s own recent paper showed actual CO2 forcing trailing the Scenario A forecast by about a decade. Secondly CO2 is the major, but not the only forcing, Figure 7 in the report put CO2 at 55% of the total Greenhouse effect. Other forcings, notably methane, have also not tracked the increases projected under Scenario A, meaning, as I correctly noted, that real-world forcings most closely followed the trajectories of IPCC Scenarios B and C, and hence these are the ones that should be used to assess how the projections performed, rather well is the answer.
His Lordship points out that ‘ the rate of warming over that period (the last 18 years), taken as the mean of the three longest-established terrestrial datasets, is equivalent to only three-quarters of a degree per century – again, well within natural variability.’
I haven’t checked those figures, but while we’re considering relatively short periods, the 18 year period ending in 2006 in both the RSS satellite data and HADCRUT4 series had a linear slope well in excess of two degrees per century. Was this within natural variability? If one 18 year period is significant, why not the other?
Phil Clarke, like many on the totalitarian hard Left, lacks a quantitative sense. I agree with Richard Tol that, since we are returning to the atmosphere a minuscule fraction of the CO2 that was formerly present, and since the greenhouse effect is thereby enhanced, all other things being equal some warming will result. However, that is not the consensus as defined in Cook’s silly paper: there, the introduction defines the consensus proposition in the same way as the IPCC does: the notion that most of the global warming since 1950 is manmade. Tol does not say that, and nor do I, and nor do 99.7% of the papers looked at by Cook et al. Yet Cook, and Richardson, and the University of Reading, and the Institute of Physics, all of whom knew perfectly well that their claim that 97% supported the notion that recent warming is mostly manmade was false, made that claim nonetheless, and profited thereby at the expense of taxpayers. That – in the United Kingdom, at any rate – is a serious, imprisonable criminal offense.
In order for the authorities to act, it is of course necessary to provide sworn evidence as to exactly how Cook et al. dishonestly tampered with their results so as to conceal the fact that they had marked only 64 of 11,944 papers as stating that recent warming was mostly manmade. The affidavit does not address a scientific question: it addresses a question of criminal misrepresentation of an allegedly scientific result. Queensland police have also been looking at the shenanigans surrounding the Cook paper, and Cook’s unwise attempt to double down on his falsehood with his current edX course will not help his defense.
It is a shame that, as with Gore, so with Cook, it will be necessary to go to court – and this time the criminal court – to ensure that climate science is kept honest.
Phil Clarke, again demonstrating how quantitatively challenged he is, is whining that June snow cover has declined by a sixth since 1979. He may not understand these things, but the fact remains that there has been no statistically significant change in annual snow cover throughout the satellite era. Naturally, since there has been some warming since 1979, there will be less snow on the ground in the Northern-Hemisphere summer than if there had been no warming, but so what? A few Augusts ago, at an elevation of little more than 2000 feet, snow on our ground in Rannoch was still there from the previous winter when the first snow of the following winter fell. Climate varies naturally as well as anthropogenically, and the statistically-insignificant change in annual snow-cover extent cannot safely be attributed to Man.
Then, Phil Clarke moans that methane concentration has not risen as fast as predicted. Exactly. That is one of the many exaggerated predictions that went towards the IPCC’s prediction that there would be twice as much global warming on the business-as-usual case as there has been. The IPCC got it wrong, and – unlike Mr Clarke, who has no quantitative sense, it has accepted that it got it wrong; it has said so; it has explicitly abandoned the models that got it wrong; it has substituted for them its own “expert assessment”; it has accordingly all but halved both the lower and the upper bound of its medium-term interval of temperature projections; and, even then, outturn is scraping along the bottom of its current, sharply-downward-revised projection interval. Given that the IPCC has done this, Phil Clarke – if he disagrees with it – should not waste his time disagreeing with me. He should contact the IPCC and tell it the hard Left know better than mere scientists what is going on with the climate. The IPCC will pay no attention.
It is now undeniable that just about every model has prodigiously over-predicted the rate of global warming. Whether the models did so because they vastly overestimated methane concentration or somewhat underestimated CO2 emission growth or humungously overestimated the supposed net-amplifying influence of temperature feedbacks is neither here nor there. The IPCC and just about all the models have failed. They have nearly all failed in the same direction – enormous exaggeration. That suggests either that intercomparison has inserted the same errors into all the models or that a political influence is at work, generating a desired result rather than an honest prediction. Not for me to say either way: but the exaggerations can no longer be denied, ignored or airily explained away. The planet is not warming at anything like the predicted rate – and, as best I can work it out, it is not now going to do so.
Richard Tol:
Regardless of Tol’s opinions, his analysis shows that those who use Cook et al as proof of a 97% consensus are either willfully ignorant or dishonest.
I have little reason to doubt that the only way to reduce anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions to zero would be to eliminate production of concrete, asphalt, steel, aluminum, and a plethora of other materials from which modern civilization is built, and to cease industrial-scale farming and food distribution without which much of the current population would die of starvation.
Phil Clarke says:
I haven’t checked those figures…
They are correct. There has been no global warming for more than 18 years according to both satellites, and corroborated by radiosonde balloon data.
Clarke feels the need to write a long cherry-picked explanation trying to rationalize the fact that he has been flat wrong in his predictions of runaway global warming and climate catastrophe.
Clarke is just tap-dancing around what Planet Earth and others are telling everyone: global warming STOPPED many years ago; Clarke and his ilk were completely wrong. And of course, Clark will never admit that the rise in CO2 has been entirely beneficial, with no global harm from CO2 ever identified.
When the facts change, skeptics will change their minds if it’s warranted. But not climate alarmists like Clarke. He simply cannot change his mind, even after almost twenty years of being wrong.
I don’t expect an answer to this question from Mr. Clarke, because the alarmist clique never answers it:
What would it take to convince you that your original premise of ‘dangerous man-made global warming’ is wrong?
Would a full twenty years of no global warming convince you?
Would it convince you if Arctic ice rebounded above its 30-year average?
Would it convince you if a new Ice Age was triggered, beginning with falling global temperatures?
What would convince Clarke he is wrong? Anything? Or could nothing ever convince him?
The “carbon” scare has colonized Clarke’s mind, and he cannot think clearly. His posts are nothing but cherry-picked examples of his confirmation bias. Anyone like Clarke who still actually believes John Cook’s “97%” nonsense is beyond hope. Global warming is not science to Phil Clarke, it is his true
bluegreen religion.If glaciers were grinding through Chicago, Phil and people like him would be declaring that global warming is just hiding somewhere and any day now will come roaring back to roast us all.
It’s worse than that.
They’d claim that the advancing ice sheets were conclusive proof of man-made climate change and that they were perfectly consistent with predictions and models. But, even so, it’s much worse than expected.
where (in the world as you know it), is the single biggest source of CO2? I do not mean country, single owned industrial complex? and btw, I think they do a good job;)))
Clarke then tries the tactic of claiming that the current 18-year Halt in warming is cherry-picked. Another lie.
When it’s all you got, make the most of it.
Mr Phil Clarke says:
“Even Richard Tol, perhaps the most outspoken critic of Cook et al. tells us that:
‘There is no doubt in my mind that the literature on climate change overwhelmingly supports the hypothesis that climate change is caused by humans. I have very little reason to doubt that the consensus is indeed correct ‘ ”
Perhaps you did not read my comment earlier to Climate Pete Mr Clarke. I shall repeat it again its a fundamental science principle:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/05/27/the-royal-anti-science-society-of-edinburgh/#comment-1946859
There was a very high consensus once that the earth was at the center of the solar system. Consensus is not a scientific proof and neither is a ‘peer-reviewed’ paper or are papers the last word on a subject that has many uncertainties. A scientific theory or hypothesis can only be disproved. There is currently a great deal of data available that does not agree that CO2 is the main driver of global warming.
See also:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/05/27/the-royal-anti-science-society-of-edinburgh/#comment-1946882
Once again I am grateful to Lord Monckton for his response; it must get tiring constantly shifting those goalposts. I see that now the IPCC 1990 report’s failing was not one of climate modelling but rather that the authors failed to predict that the Montreal Protocols, the collapse of the Soviet Union and other global economic and political influences would blow the real-world global forcings trajectory away from their (BAU) Scenario A and nearer their Scenarios B&C.
Of course the IPCC makes no firm forecasts of how methane emissions and/or other any other GHG concentrations will evolve when issuing projections of temperature and other climate parameters, how could they? Rather they construct scenarios (or what they more recently term Representative Concentration Pathways – RCP) covering a range of economic and legislative assumptions and then use the associated forcings as input to a GCM. In the 1990 report, Scenario A assumed, inter alia, continued carbon-intensive energy production and only partial implementation of the Montreal Protocol, while Scenario B had a move to more natural gas in the mix and full implementation of the MP.
Regardless of the geopolitics, a glance at Figure 2.4 in the report is sufficient to make it clear that the current value for actual real-world forcings lies within the range projected for Scenarios B&C and well below that of Scenario A. Constantly to present only Scenario A, to ‘disappear’ the other Scenarios, to pretend that this means the IPCC models overestimated temperatures when the opposite is the case, and to growl at those who demur, is, I submit, rude
Mr Clarke says I have shifted the goalposts. I have not done so. The IPCC’s scenario A in 1990 showed that by now there should be CO2 emissions of around 10 GtC/yr: the outturn two years ago was 10.7 GtC. The IPCC now considers that CO2 accounts for some five-sixths of all greenhouse-gas forcings, compared with three-quarters in 1990.
And it matters not whether the models were in error in predicting rates of growth in methane concentration (which they were), or whether they were in error in predicting rates of growth in global temperature (which they were), or whether they were in error in according to chlorofluorocarbons a forcing far greater than they should have done (which they did). The fact is that in every instance the choices the modelers made tended to exaggerate the true position, contributing to the models’ now embarrassing over-prediction of the warming rate. Mr Clarke has done his best to cite the neo-Communist Potsdam Institute in support of his contention that the models would have got things right, really, if only they had understood how ENSO and volcanoes and solar irradiance work. But these are just further failures on the modelers’ part.
And RCPs are an artefact of the Fifth ASSessment report, not of the first four.
Finally, the debate is chiefly about CO2. The IPCC has always accepted that that would provide the bulk of the warming. The IPCC’s Scenario A, like it or not, is the scenario that comes closest to the actual change in CO2 emission. It is, therefore, the appropriate scenario. The values for forcings are far more slippery than measures of CO2 emission or concentration, and I have never placed much reliance on them. One has only to look at the shenanigans surrounding the aerosols. In 1990 the IPCC (correctly) estimated that anthropogenic aerosols had very little influence on global temperature. Thereafter, realizing that without a suitable fudge factor to bring down the total anthropogenic forcing it would not be able to argue for high climate sensitivity, it tried to maintain that anthropogenic aerosol forcings are strongly net-negative. There were many other fudges and kludges to do with both the direct forcings and the consequential forcings, or feedbacks, supposedly engendered by the forcings.
So in my analyses I stick to the data. There are enough uncertainties even there, but I see no logical reason to base my choice of IPCC scenarios on its numerous and constantly-fluctuating and mutually-incompatible estimates of forcings. They are made up to provide the desired high climate sensitivity, and transparently so.
And I did not growl at anyone for choosing particular values for forcings. The word was scarcely mentioned all day. I growled at someone for having suggested that the temperature outturn has proven consistent with the models’ predictions, when it has not. The models are wrong, and will continue to be wrong while they are endlessly tweaked and bashed to produce a desired high-sensitivity outcome that is, however, now embarrassing by its notorious absence. The world is not warming at anything like the predicted rate. Get over it.
Well done Christopher.
Good to hear that you are willing to go and confront them with the inconvenient aspects of their truths.
I’m not entering into a debate about the validity or otherwise of climate science but I will say this article misrepresents events at this meeting and simply highlights Christopher Monckton’s own arrogance and personal prejudices, the most glaring being:
– he talks about “I hear a member of the audience demand less science but the rest of the audience actually applauded.”, she did not advocate less science she questioned the quibbling about model results when (obviously in her opinion) the case has been made and we now have a moral obligation to act for the sake of future generations, she did not receive rapturous applause but a small number of people did support her statement with some applause
– Dr Edenhofer did not reply angrily, he frowned slightly and answered the question clearly and concisely. “Prices, he said, must reflect society’s most important scarcities. But that is what the free market does, all by itself.” the energy free-market is not doing it all by itself, it is not costing in the externalities of environmental impacts hence the IMF report on trillions of “subsidies”, not just CO2, we have large amounts of other pollutants directly from fossil fuel combustion, unequivocally causing damage to human health and ecosystems.
I also object to the implication that I have a fat arse, it’s actually quite compact and shapely although as I’m not funded to do climate research maybe I’m exempt from the accusation of steatopygia. 😉
BossChakatheHat
You say potato, I say po-tah-toh…
Sorry. but “quibbling” on this issue is the proper practice of science. The models are just plain wrong by the standards of the scientific method and therefore should no be used to formulate public policy. IMO Monckton’s characterization of such an attitude is correct.
Not having been there, I can’t assess his characterization of the volume of applause.
However IMO the fact that skeptical speakers are apparently personae non gratae at the RSE speaks volumes.
Like it or not, the lady who received some of the loudest applause of the day said she thought there had been too much quibbling about the science, and about tenths of a degree. That was what she actually said. But the world is only warming by tenths of a degree – and not by very many of them, particularly in the past two or three decades.
My questions, in any event, had been less about model results than about real-world data, for the chief difference between the skeptics and the true-believers is that the skeptics found their case on the data and the true-believers found it on the predictions of models that have repeatedly turned out to have exaggerated.
Dr Edenhofer was indeed angry at my politely-expressed statement that his proposal was for a totalitarian regime of price-setting, for that is exactly what he was advocating. And the words “But that is what the free market does, all by itself” were mine in the head posting, not his. And, since there has been no statistically-significant global warming since IPeCaC’s first ASSessment report in 1990, there are no negative externalities to which etatiste voodoo economics could be applied. The IMF’s language of “subsidies” is, therefore, the traditional Communist/totalitarian position, which is a very long way from reality or from sound economics, and will hit the poorest hardest.
And if BossChakaTheHat is paid by the State, then he, she or it is likely to exhibit a natural propensity to go along with the State’s party line on the climate question without actually checking any of the material facts. A few weeks reading WattsUpWithThat will raise serious questions about the state of climate science and about the New Superstition in any reasonably open mind.
http://coursesa.matrix.msu.edu/~hst306/documents/indust.html
Military-Industrial Complex Speech, Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1961
Akin to, and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our industrial-military posture, has been the technological revolution during recent decades.
In this revolution, research has become central; it also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government.
Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers.
The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present
and is gravely to be regarded.
Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientifictechnological elite.
It is the task of statesmanship to mold, to balance, and to integrate these and other forces, new and old, within the principles of our democratic system — ever aiming toward the supreme goals of our free society.
Why is it that the POVs expressed on this forum on AGW and the greenhouse effect have zero effect on:
1) Science Education in Universities
2) Science Education in Secondary schools
3) The Positions of The World’s Science Academies, all of which conclude AGW
4) The Positions of the World’s Scientific Professional Societies, all of which confirm the same
5) Peer Reviewed science journal papers, in which we see no authors appearing on this forum.
6) World Leaders
Could it be that WUWT residents march to a different drummer than do the worlds of Education, Science, Policy, and Government?
Not only do they march to a different drummer than those the worlds of [government supported] Education, [government funded] Science, [government] Policy, and Government, they are PAID by a different Comptroller.
“Follow the money.”
Hmm… it sounds like a massive conspiracy behind Education, Science, Policy, Religion, and world leaders. It’s pretty scary out there.
Pretty scary? Perhaps.
Pretty thievery? Most certainly.
Follow the money…. all the way from the taxpayers.
Warrenlb says the truth (which he calls the “points of view” expressed here) have no effect on science education, science academies and professional societies, peer-reviewed journals and world leaders.
Whether he likes it or not, several of us here have published in the reviewed literature, and have briefed world leaders, many more of whom are sympathetic to the truth than the media will admit.
As to science education in schools and universities, if it continues to present only one side of a question that should be studied in the round (as Confucius would put it), it will gradually lose the support of young people, who – in opinion polls, at any rate – are expressing more than a little cynicism at the messianic proselytizing to which several institutions of “learning” are subjecting them.
It is by now quite clear that the only method of demonstrating to the true-believers in the New Superstition that the central dogmas of their faith are false is to wait and see. Already, the IPCC has been compelled to halve both the upper and lower bounds of its medium-term predictions of global warming, because the world is simply not warming at the predicted rate.
Our own best estimate, published in January 2015 at scibull.com, the Science Bulletin of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, is that there will be a small warming of about 0.9 K this century (of which, so far, none at all has occurred).
At root, the skeptical case is based on observation, measurement, and data, while the true-believers’ case is based almost exclusively on predictions which, to the extent that they have already become testable with the passing of time, have proven in just about every instance to have been considerable exaggerations.
Whether warrenlb likes it or not, science is not done by prediction: that is for astrologers and phrenologists. It is done by observation, measurement, and the application of pre-existing theory to the resulting data, and not by peering into billion-dollar electronic crystal balls.
And, since warrenlb is in essence complaining that the skeptics are not part of an imagined (and actually imaginary) scientific “consensus”, he should know that science is not done by mere headcount; that such headcounts as have been done do not show the unanimity he falsely claims; and that, as far as the economics of climate mitigation is concerned, the reviewed literature and the IPCC’s documents conclude that mitigation is costlier than adaptation, even if the rate of warming were to accelerate from near zero to the exaggerated values predicted by the useless models.
warrenlb says:
Could it be that WUWT residents march to a different drummer…
warrenlb, WUWT is the mainstream when it comes to this subject. You are the outlier. No alarmist blog comes close to the traffic of WUWT. That’s because all points of view — even yours — are posted for all readers to consider. Readers can then make up their own minds about what is science, and what is political spin.
It’s interesting that the overwhelming majority of WUWT readers have read all the evidence and facts presented by both sides, and have come down solidly on the side of those skeptical of the ‘dangerous man-made global warming’ scare.
There are only a small handful of people on your side of the fence, warrenlb. That should tell you something.
@dbstealey.
What ya’ been smoking Stealey: “There are only a small handful of people on your side of the fence”,
Yes, only the ones on my list…!
That would be the carefully cherry-picked list of your ‘authorities’?
No, that would be the list from my earlier post you’re replying to:
1) Science Education in Universities
2) Science Education in Secondary schools
3) The Positions of The World’s Science Academies, all of which conclude AGW
4) The Positions of the World’s Scientific Professional Societies, all of which confirm the same
5) Peer Reviewed science journal papers, in which we see no authors appearing on this forum.
6) World Leaders
warrenlb
All of whom are paid by Big Government for the benefit of 1.3 trillion a year in new taxes for Big Government and 31 trillion in carbon futures money for Big Finance and even Bigger Government.
@RAECook PE1978
1)Science Education in Universities
2) Science Education in Secondary schools
3) The Positions of The World’s Science Academies, all of which conclude AGW
4) The Positions of the World’s Scientific Professional Societies, all of which confirm the same
5) Peer Reviewed science journal papers, in which we see no authors appearing on this forum.
6) World Leaders
“All of whom are paid by Big Government for the benefit of 1.3 trillion a year in new taxes for Big Government and 31 trillion in carbon futures money for Big Finance and even Bigger Government.”
So now you say ALL Education, ALL Institutions of Science, ALL peer reviewed Journals, and ALL World Leaders are either in a conspiracy or corrupt. And only you and the rest of WUWT know the TRUTH (except no one is listening)
I thought that was the worldview of WUWT residents and you have now confirmed it.
So now you say ALL Education, ALL Institutions of Science, ALL peer reviewed Journals, and ALL World Leaders are either in a conspiracy or corrupt.
No, not all. More like 97%.
warrenlb confirms my comment: his cherry-picked #1 – #6 examples are only a very small part of the total, maybe 3%. The other 97% reject the “dangerous man-made global warming” scare.
I have yet to see a warrrenlb comment where he doesn’t use his discredited ‘appeal to authority’ logical fallacy. But since tha’t all he’s got, that’s what he keeps using.
The IPCC’s supposition on catastrophic man-made global warming has always been and will always be flawed. The problem is the issue is now just too big to fail. When data manipulation is necessary to prop up a failed cause, when political leaders like Obama hijack the agenda, it is a sign of the times that the alarmists are determined to go all the way until they do get their way. Too much has been invested in the issue to allow it to fail, even though it is based on bad interpretations of science, and political propaganda.
With Paris fast approaching, the world can expect a blitz of publicity on the urgency for an agreement to be signed in Paris in order to save the world from a tipping point and all the rest of the propaganda to frighten people. Obama, of course, expects success in Paris to be his legacy.
So, with all that in mind, it is so important that sceptic spokesmen are supported to give a balanced picture … people like Lord Moncton and Marc Morano, and realists like the climatologists who regularly point out real world observational data and science that indicates no evidence of a coming climate catastrophe.
It seems that they are ALL at it !
The University of Leeds shows its’ colours and … they get paid for it.
They got paid by HM Government (using our money) using the system previously approved by the unelected prime minister and MPs who are now no longer MPs of “New Labour”.
The “pasted”, single item below is JUST ONE of thousands of “amounts” in a PAYMENTS list which is longer than the M62 (a busy highway in Great Britain).
Department of Energy and Climate Change
2013-08-22 00:00:00
Capital Grants to Companies UK
Energy Innovation Programme Delivery
C Capture Ltd
DECC/SM/1030/1608 50463.37
https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/244592/Transparency_data_-_August2013_PUS_.xlsx
… and here is what they say on their “company” website, blatantly and with colour photographs of nine smiling faces ! …
… C-Capture Ltd is a spin-out company from the Chemistry Department at the University of Leeds.
Utilising their extensive knowledge of CO2 (carbon dioxide) based chemistry and engineering, they have adopted a bottom-up approach to designing solvent systems for the removal of CO2 from gas streams.
CO2 is considered to be a ‘greenhouse gas’ and its release into the atmosphere is one of the leading contributors to global warming.
Copyright © C-Capture Ltd / All rights reserved
The Company is Registered in England and Wales (Registration number 06912622)
Leeds Innovation Centre, 103 Clarendon Road, Leeds, UK, LS2 9DF
END OF PASTE
By the way, St. Andrews University is also on the list of payments and there are others.
The amount of money paid out runs into many millions of pounds and that’s only the “available” list which shows forty-two (42) months’ spread-sheet payments from May 2010 to September 2013 inclusive (and yes, there ARE four months’ spread-sheets missing from the HM Gov’t website: I wonder why).
The “single” payment item above shows that one amount of £50,463.37 was paid to “C-Capture Limited” (a so-called spin-out company from the Chemistry Department at the University of Leeds) should be enough to make everyone ANGRY. If you take the trouble to look you will see more and more and more.
It’s bad enough that we have a national debt which COULD be settled if EVERY person in our islands coughed up £78,000-. It’s bad enough that the government prints money and tries to baffle the public by calling it quantative easing ! What the hell is that and whoever heard of such a thing ?
Mervyn
“The Issue”, as you call it, is NOT, repeat … NOT too big to fail.
If we all thought like that we should all be speaking German by now.
Your paragraphs are splendid
The entire basis of the CON trick is carbon-dioxide.
The so-called University of Leeds and all the “global warming” hangers-on and all government parasites are milking the system while they can. We cannot allow these people to get away with it any longer !