Guest Opinion: Dr. Tim Ball
Denialism is defined as “the practice of creating the illusion of debate when there is none.” In climate the problem is those who label others deniers are the real deniers. They don’t even acknowledge there is a debate to deny.
Even the Pope denied the deniers by excluding them from his climate conclave while he ordered priests to forgive those who had abortions. Apparently there are limits to Papal forgiveness. Sadly he doesn’t know enough to know who the real deniers are, which tends to dent infallibility. There is a long list including the President of the US and his cabinet, most world leaders, a majority of the world’s politicians, all environmental groups and their followers, and most with a left political leaning. Sadly, most have no understanding of the science, but typically they have very definitive positions; it is emotional and politically fuelled ignorance.
Recently Lord Monckton provided details of the continuing period of 18 years and 8 months with no global warming (Figure 1). Ross McKitrick puts the hiatus at 19 years at the surface and 16-26 years in the lower troposphere. Regardless, it contradicts the basic assumption of the anthropogenic global warming (AGW) hypothesis because CO2 levels continued to rise. Proponents only acknowledged these events by calling it climate change instead of global warming.
They then came up with 52 and counting excuses for the facts not fitting the hypothesis. These are similar attempts to explain away or deny conflicting evidence. AGW proponents even set up web sites to obfuscate, deflect and deny, The first was Realclimate set up at the Climatic Research Unit (CRU). As Gavin Schmidt explained in a December 2004 email,
Colleagues, No doubt some of you share our frustration with the current state of media reporting on the climate change issue. Far too often we see agenda-driven “commentary” on the Internet and in the opinion columns of newspapers crowding out careful analysis. Many of us work hard on educating the public and journalists through lectures, interviews and letters to the editor, but this is often a thankless task. In order to be a little bit more pro-active, a group of us (see below) have recently got together to build a new ‘climate blog’ website: RealClimate.org which will be launched over the next few days:
Scepticalscience is another web page designed to contradict or deny evidence that shows the AGW hypothesis is wrong. Joanne Nova and Lubos Motl completed two incisive decimations of the validity of John Cook and his web page. A woman who spoke with Gavin Schmidt after a presentation at the University of Victoria wrote to me on July 26, 2015, with questions. She noted that,
“He (Schmidt) also directed me to the website www.scepticalscience.com to do my own research.”
This recommendation is not surprising because John Cook credits Schmidt for coming up with the idea for the web page.
An anonymous adage says,
“When you point your finger at someone, three fingers are pointing back at you.”
Finger pointing rarely includes facts, especially in the climate debate. The first finger was pointed at global warming skeptics who tried to practice real science by questioning the AGW hypothesis. The slur was averted when the facts no longer fit the AGW story global warming story. Now it became Anthropogenic Global Climate Change (AGCC) and the second finger pointed at climate change deniers. This charge was rejected because enough people knew that climate change was natural. Besides, the opposite is true; opponents to AGCC are telling the public about the extent and speed of natural climate change.
As Paris nears, it’s evident no agreement is possible so rhetoric, and alarmism abound. Finger pointing has a new form, being a denier is now a disease, like leprosy. George Monbiot identified denial as a disease.
“There is no point in denying it: we’re losing. Climate change denial is spreading like a contagious disease. It exists in a sphere that cannot be reached by evidence or reasoned argument; any attempt to draw attention to scientific findings is greeted with furious invective. This sphere is expanding with astonishing speed.”
Pope Francis limited his welcome to his recent climate conclave by not inviting disease carriers. Hardly an action Jesus would approve. In doing so, Francis created two groups. Those who knowingly deny the failure of the hypothesis and those who don’t know or want to know the hypothesis failed. Either way they are the real deniers.
Monbiot ignored all the facts I provided when he pointed the finger at me. Ignoring facts makes it easy to claim the deniers are at fault. The facts are the reason the sphere is expanding. Here are just a few, but sufficient to expose the deniers.
· As Monckton demonstrates, the global average temperature has not risen for 19 years.
· Over the same period CO2 levels continued to rise.
· Every IPCC temperature projection was wrong.
· Temperature increases before CO2 in every single record for any period. The only place in the world where CO2 increase precedes a temperature increase is in the IPCC computer models.
· CO2 is only 4 percent of the total greenhouse gasses and the human portion is only 3.4 percent of that total.
· Predictions of more severe weather are proving incorrect.
· The continued failure of medium forecasts, such as the most recent debacle in the UK, further the already high public skepticism about weather forecasts.
The Ulitmate Sign Of Denial
The worst level of denying is least seen by the public. It is the adjustment of data and records to ensure the deception continues. We knew about the adjustment of the New Zealand record by NIWA (Figure 2) and the claims against the Australian Bureau of Meteorology (ABM) by Jennifer Marohasy and others (Figure 3).
Figure 2
As Chris Booker points out, few exposed the extent of the manipulation, especially in the US, better than Stephen Goddard through his web site Real Science. In an article titled “Hansen – The Climate Chiropractor” Goddard asks, “Need your climate adjusted? – call Dr. James Hansen at GISS.” Figure 4 illustrates what Goddard describes as
“…Hansen’s remarkable changes to the pre-1975 temperature data. He simply removed that pesky warm period from 1890 to 1940.”
The most recent and egregious adjustments to data are those of Thomas Karl at the United States Historical Climate Network (USHCN) of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Karl has a long history of adjusting records as Steve McIntyre identified in 2007. In an open letter to Karl, Bob Tisdale questioned the method and the objective of the most recent adjustments. The phrase “cherry-picking” is all too familiar to those following the history of the real deniers. However, Judith Curry found it appropriate to describe what Karl did.
This new paper is especially interesting in context of the Karl et al paper, that ‘disappears’ the hiatus. I suspect that the main take home message for the public (those paying attention, anyways) is that the data is really uncertain and there is plenty of opportunity for scientists to ‘cherry pick’ methods to get desired results.
Apparently in a determination to say 2014 and 2015 are the warmest years on record and prove the hiatus Lord Monckton identifies didn’t exist he created a more than questionable method. These issues are crucial to supporting and continuation of the denial as a prelude to the Paris Climate Conference (COP 21). It is as important a deception to persuade politicians as the leaked emails were an exposure to stop COP 15 in Copenhagen.
The good news for Karl is he now has support for what he did from Michael Mann.
“Tom Karl and colleagues have done solid work here, but they’ve mostly just confirmed what we already knew,” said Michael Mann, a climate scientist and director of the Earth System Science Center at Pennsylvania State University. “There is no true ‘pause’ or ‘hiatus’ in warming.”
Mann’s credibility with scientists is clearly delineated in Mark Steyn’s latest book.
Who Has The Political Prejudice To Deny?
Logic says it’s those who want to stifle debate, to silence individuals and groups, who are the real deniers. President Obama in his State of the Union political speech said,
“So unfortunately, inside of Washington we’ve still got some climate deniers who shout loud, but they’re wasting everybody’s time on a settled debate,” “Climate change is a fact.”
Yes, Mr. President it is a fact but in stating it you cherry-pick the more accurate and complete statement that “Climate change is a fact, but anthropogenic climate change is not.” It appears the President is the denier in chief. Further proof of who the real deniers are is found in the anonymous observation that,
If an honest man is wrong, after demonstrating that he is wrong, he either stops being wrong, or he stops being honest.
In the case of the real climate deniers, they ignore the demonstrable facts and compound their denial by changing the record.
Tim, you have missed the biggest and most ironic denial of them all – I mean here the classic psychotherapist’s clinical diagnosis of ‘being in denial’. This is a venerable diagnosis used for example when someone loses a loved one tragically and doesn’t want to face up to it. They will dream of seeing them, say, at a party, or someone in the dream tells you, oh, he just left, or he’s in the next room and you go and either find there isn’t a next room or you just missed them, etc. This is your own mind trying to resolve this issue: hey, he’s gone, my dear. It is common that such a sufferer believes they saw them on the street or in a passing bus when a person with generally similar coloring or features goes by.
The ‘climate blues’ example became a big story and was reported on all over the internet.
http://grist.org/climate-energy/climate-depression-is-for-real-just-ask-a-scientist/?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=daily&utm_source=newsletter&utm_term=Daily%2520Oct%252028
Camille Parmasan is one of a growing number of 100% committed CAGW proponents who are suffering the newly minted ‘Pre-traumatic Stress Syndrome’ that is pushing them into deep depression. She’s had her Edith Spot butterfly extirpation in a part of Nevada thoroughly debunked by other ecologists and on top of this, the 18 year hiatus in warming looms large, whittling down climate sensitivity drastically. Can it be that a half or more of your career has gone for naught?
Unremarkably, their self diagnosis is that they are depressed because their work has determined an unmistakable signal that the world is heading for disaster and they can’t get people to see this. No mention of the 18 yr old elephant in the room – classic denial. Indeed, almost every media outlet can ‘see’ it. Virtually every University, government agency, scientific organization around the world can ‘see’ it, the journals are full of it. The UN and all the NGOs, Green folks, etc can see it….. Parmasan adds:
“In the U.S., [climate change] isn’t well-supported by the funding system, and when I give public talks in the U.S., I have to devote the first half of the talk to [the topic] that climate change is really happening,” says Parmesan, now a professor at Plymouth University in England.
Talk about denial! The US Government is spending 18Billion a year, one for each year that there has been no global warming to support clisci research at home and abroad. They are shutting down the coal industry, blocking pipelines, intimidating scientists who don’t toe the line and in addition to the research fund are also funding hundreds of billions of alternative energy projects, although she should be worried about what these might do the Edith Spot butterfly and its fellow creatures of the habitat.
The biggest denial of all is among psychologists and psychotherapists! They buy into the self diagnosis and even giving it an oxymoronic name: Pre-traumatic Stress Syndrome. How you can have the stress ahead of the trauma shows you where 100% committed psychologists (who are part of the thoroughly corrupted social sciences we have learned are doing a lousy job of designing their research projects) are in the scheme. They, who presumably don’t have the stress of the noble climate scientist sufferer, also don’t see the 18yr old elephant named ‘hiatus’ filling up the clinic and that’s their job!!! A doctor in denial trying to treat a patient in denial doesn’t augur well for the patient.
We live in interesting times, indeed. Something is going to give and real soon.
Mr. Pearce,
The Federal Government alone is spending upwards of $29 Billion per year.
As if $18 billion would not be bad enough.
This report details over two thirds of this amount.
And this is just the feds. Plenty more being spent elsewhere.
Many of the separate agencies, for example the EPA, have a large amount of spending which must be considered as a climate change outlay.
Harvard Business Review. Oct.5, 2010
‘The Most Powerful Green NGO You’ve Never Heard Of’
This is the CDP/Carbon Disclosure Project, England
Founder Paul Dickinson.
http://www.hbr.org/2010/10/the-most-powerful-green-ngo.html
According to Wikipedia, U.S. CDP has 501(c)3 status through the Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors in New York.
Issues such as this are unknown or being ignored when it comes to who are involved in driving the climate change agenda.
Oops, forgot the link:
https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/omb/assets/legislative_reports/fcce-report-to-congress.pdf
There was a paper recently that showed that 60% of social science studies couldn’t be replicated.
“Proponents only acknowledged these events by calling it climate change instead of global warming.”
Please, please, please, please … Can we put this tired chestnut to bed once and for all? It’s been called “climate change” all along, friends.
A few examples:
1. 1956: Gilbert Plass’ seminal study “The Carbon Dioxide Theory of Climatic Change”
2. 1971: Barrett and Gast publish their important paper in Science entitled “Climate Change”
3. 1977: The journal “Climatic Change” begins publishing
4. 1988. The IPCC is established — and “CC” means, well…?
Fair arguments are fair arguments, but B.S. is B.S., as any reasonable person should conclude.
Do you seriously propose that in the ’80s and ’90s the “threat” was not of “global warming”?
But let’s stipulate “climate change” might have been mentioned then. When came “extreme weather” and “global weirding” when the world stopped warming?
And what makes alleged man-made “climate change” supposedly so catastrophic, if not global warming due to CO2?
Sorry, but your special pleading and hand waving are to no avail.
You are, quite simply, wrong.
Review the scientific literature, not media reports, and you’ll come to the inarguable understanding that “climate change” (IPCC? C’mon…) has been the standard term among the scientific community since the 70s, at minimum.
Let’s attempt to infuse a bit of honesty into this debate, okay?
There is a debate, really? I thought “climate scientists” claim the “science” is settled. Haven’t seen any of that yet!
Well, um, interestingly….
http://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-B55T8N6sMc0/VaCW08ZfmEI/AAAAAAAAAoY/2W5qihFCc_o/s800-Ic42/AGW_Ngram.png
Seriously myslewski, you either deluded or pathetically ignorant, or just another misdirecting miscreant of a troll.
I offer my apologies if it is either of the first two.
But not my sympathy.
Sounds like classic denial.
Gloria,
myslewski did not propose what you are asking.
he said ” It’s been called “climate change” all along, friends.”
he’s right about that.
The fact that the media, joe public and activist scientists found ‘global warming’ more emotive for a long time doesn’t mean that our fellow commenter, myslewski, is a troll, in denial of the truth or dishonest.
Mebbe,
It was called global warming because that is what it is about. Before any of the other alleged effects without any physical explanation, such as extreme weather or global weirding, the alleged danger was from global warming due to man-made CO2, which was supposed to cause bad things like melting ice and rising sea levels.
While some one might have said “climate change” in the 1970s, that would have been concern over global cooling. The fact is that the CO2 scare was originally sold over alleged global warming.
The “Father of Global Warming” reraised the specter of man-made global warming in 1975:
http://www.nj.com/business/index.ssf/2010/08/bergen_county_scientist_who_co.html
I say reraised because man-made CO2-induced global warming was first suggested in the first half of the 20th century, then shown false by the severe cooling of 1945-77. Of course in those days, man-made warming was thought to be beneficial.
Gloria is right, and you are in denial of truth.
Notwithstanding the names of a few studies that the public never heard of, and of a few journals that the public never reads, the operative term of the green media propaganda, directed at the public (at people like me, who follow the news but don’t claim to be climatologists), was “catastrophic anthropogenic global warming” until warming ended in the second half of the 1990s, when this main operative term was hastily transformed into “climate change” by the green media, Al Gore, and the rest of their nefarious ilk.
Even if peddlers of the environmental obscurantism sometimes called the vehicle of their alarmism an “anthropogenic climate change” before the end of warming trend (if any at all really existed outside their models and adjustments), the overwhelmingly prevailing scarecrow in their terminology was “CAGW” before the second half of the 1990s, and became “climate change” after that. Such is the truth as it appeared before the eyes of millions of peoples, and your attempts to deny it are pathetic and self-destructive.
Perhaps you should try some honesty. Widely and commonly known as CAGW to the vast majority of people they are manipulating, lying to and stealing from – since the 90s. THEN they changed it to ‘climate change’. Just after their damning emails were exposed and no “alarming” warming was actually happening, nor has it or will it from CAGW.
myslewski September 6, 2015 at 7:22 pm
“4. 1988. The IPCC is established — and “CC” means, well…?”
“CC” means “climate change”, but the IPCC really means “CO2-Climate Change” and makes no effort to correct this usage. Such diversionary word games are often characteristic of Propaganda Ops in contrast to the practice of real science, which shows that CO2-Climate Change has been scientifically falsified by virtue of its record of 100% Prediction Failure; but which the “scientific community” pushing CO2-Climate Change also refuses to acknowledge while continuing to engage in its Propaganda Op.
CO2 is only 4 percent of the total greenhouse gasses and the human portion is only 3.4 percent of that total.
I think you mean to say that the human portion is only 3.4 percent of that 4 percent, not of “that total.”
Which is completely wrong anyway
You must know the percentages in order to claim those figures are wrong. So why not state them.
Maybe you do not know the percentages and just like the cheap thrill of saying “Wrong!” provides.
Or maybe you are in denial.
CO2 concentrations have gone from about 280ppm to just over 400ppm. Unless natural sources are responsible for 97% of that increase, then the human percentage has to be higher than 3.4%.
If humans are responsible for the bulk of that increase, than the human percentage is closer to 34% than 3.4%.
Well, maybe not.
3.4 percent of the total would make human sources 85% of the ambient CO2, if the ambient is in fact 4 percent of the total. Way too high.
3.4 percent of ambient 4 percent is inconsistent with the recent large rise in the total ambient, as MarkW points out below. Way too low.
Anybody got a source for these numbers?
Sorry Mark, didn’t catch your last comment. Basically agree
It seems to me that the next big global lie being attempted is a reversal back to global warming, and that 2 degrees C from pre-industrial times is catastrophic. I doubt that this one is going to have legs given that we’ve already had around 1 degree and, along with greening of the planet, it’s all been highly beneficial.
There are still people stupid enough to believe that the next 1 degree C (which will most likely be anthropogenic-irrelevant anyway) will plunge us from beneficial to catastrophic – Emma Thompson, for example.
Yes, even with large swaths of the planet in perpetually ice and snow cover, making them a literal frozen hell of a wasteland.
Even with an even larger amount of the Earth’s surface cold enough in winter to rapidly kill anyone who is unfortunate enough to be caught outside and unprotected, and slowly kill anyone who has some protection but insufficient shelter from the elements, and a large supply of stored foodstuffs.
Even with the bulk of the human race preferentially living in or near the tropics, and large numbers of those who do not reside there flocking to the warmest places they can find, just to be where it is warmer.
Even with thousands of people regularly travelling to the very hottest locations on the planet…the driest deserts, the most unforgiving terrain, to engage in various activities, from hiking and sightseeing, to actual contests of extreme physical exertion, in which they run for days and nights straight through, and their only protection from the elements a supply of water and perhaps a hat brim.(One might assume the wispy running shorts and bikini tops they wear are more for modestly and to avoid running afoul of decency laws than for protection.)
The idea we are on a hot planet, and living on some sort of precipice of destructive warming, is so far beyond ludicrous, one wonders if there is any limits to the lies that will be swallowed by the gullible masses.
Rereading this this morning, I realize that I meant to say “beyond the next 1 degree C”. It would be remiss of me not to to describe accurately the climate liars’ new big lie.
Readers at this site need to know that even according to conservative Catholic theology, the pope has no expertise, authority, or infallibility on climate, science, weather, or economics. Sure he has some status as a world figure, as does Obama or big Al, but can be just as ignorant.
Excellent article.
Dr. S. Jeevananda Reddy
You stated “There is a long list including the President of the US and his cabinet, most world leaders, a majority of the world’s politicians, all environmental groups and their followers, and most with a left political leaning. Sadly, most have no understanding of the science, but typically they have very definitive positions; it is emotional and politically fuelled ignorance.” Funny that you forgot to mention that hundreds of scientific societies around the world have issued statements that concur with the IPCC view on anthropogenic global warming. Obviously, they DO have an understanding of the science. The few that don’t are tied to the oil industry. Look it up.
Nonsense.
@Leonard Lane: “Nonsense” is hardly a well-support argument, hmm?
It’s inarguable that the vast majority of qualified scientific associations are individuals who understand and can provide well-supported logic to prove AGW, and it’s also inarguable that the Heartland Institute and other anti-AGW apologists (Willie Soon, Bjørn Lomborg, et al.) are supported by fossil-fuel industry interests. Can you prove otherwise?
As an attendee at AGU and other conferences, it appalls me that denialists continue to unsupportably trash honest, concerned, careful, honest scientists and analysts with silly ad hominem attacks based on assertions of “greed”, “careerism”, and “grant seeking”. Not true. Simply not true. Wanna provide some proof? Though not…
C’mon, folks, grow a pair. Anthropomorphically generated climate change, heating the earth’s surface and the troposphere, acidifying the ocean, transferring heat into the deep ocean, and decreasing the arctic albedo is no longer arguable — it’s a fact.
It’s a problem. It needs you — all of us — to face facts and come up with solutions. Or you can simply be cowards, hide behind ludicrous “lib’ruls wanna steal our freedoms ‘n guns” arguments, or latch onto crazy ‘n’ unprovable solar variability theories.
Folks, we’ve got a problem. We’re smart Americans. We’re inventive. We’re innovative. We can fix it.
As long as we get our heads out of our denialist asses.
myslewski commented:”…..C’mon, folks, grow a pair……..As long as we get our heads out of our denialist asses….”
Oh my, a shaming followed by name calling. Troll of the first order.
As one of those really inventive Americas (aerospace engineer) I have a zero cost solution. Do nothing.
Why? Well “missing heat” is proof positive the models are wrong. Until the models match reality doing nothing is the best thing we can do.
I love it when the trolls come out of hiding in order to prove the point that the author has just made.
myslewski, the author isn’t here to thank you, so I will do so on his behalf.
myslewski,
It is a Holiday morning here, and a drizzly rain in falling in SW Florida.
I am gonna go do some shopping, then come home and respond to your assertions.
Considering that everything you have said amounts to the literary equivalents of the arguments “Uh uh”, and “I know you are, but what am I?”, you best come up with some better material.
If you are an actual scientist, your defense of the climate liars is pathetically weak.
You mean “anthropogenically”.
There is no evidence that humans are causing any of the phenomena that you mention, or that warming is occurring at all.
Statements by scientific societies aren’t made based upon a vote of their memberships. They’re released by executive directors who often are not themselves scientists. Of course professional organizations will support anything that brings in money, as “climate change” study grants do.
Well, just a little up-thread, I defended myslewski on the cc/gw thing; oops!
Turns out he is somewhat of an anthropomorphocologicalated twit with, by his own admission, his head up his denialist ass.
Nonsense it is.
“Myslewski”, you are spewing tired, jaded lies that have been debunked so many times it would be totally spurious to repeat the factual arguments. There isn’t a glimpse of fact in your ideologically charged propaganda.
That “anthropomorphically generated”is a bit of a giveaway, wouldn’t you say?
Too funny. The oil industry were instrumental in the funding of the UEA CRU. Look that up!
Like most trolls, myslewski isn’t here to provide facts. He’s here to cause trouble and to support his cause.
And I am the attack dog, here to tear him a new one…as soon as I get back from shopping.
Tallulah is hungry.
No, Luke, there is nothing obvious except that those are simply boilerplate Warmist statements based not on science, but on politics. It is “science by committee”, meaning it isn’t science at all. The actual science is of no real concern to them, and if they bothered to peek under the hood of CAGW “science” they would be shocked at how truly bad it is.
Boilerplate? Here are some of the statements from various Societies. They don’t look like boilerplate to me. Having served on the board of a scientific society I can assure you that the committees that issue these statements do consider the actual science and take this very seriously.
American Physical Society.
(Adopted by Council on November 18, 2007)
Emissions of greenhouse gases from human activities are changing the atmosphere in ways that affect the Earth’s climate. Greenhouse gases include carbon dioxide as well as methane, nitrous oxide and other gases. They are emitted from fossil fuel combustion and a range of industrial and agricultural processes.
The evidence is incontrovertible: Global warming is occurring.
If no mitigating actions are taken, significant disruptions in the Earth’s physical and ecological systems, social systems, security and human health are likely to occur. We must reduce emissions of greenhouse gases beginning now.
Because the complexity of the climate makes accurate prediction difficult, the APS urges an enhanced effort to understand the effects of human activity on the Earth’s climate, and to provide the technological options for meeting the climate challenge in the near and longer terms. The APS also urges governments, universities, national laboratories and its membership to support policies and actions that will reduce the emission of greenhouse gases.
American Association for the Advancement of Science
The scientific evidence is clear: global climate change caused by human activities is occurring now, and it is a growing threat to society. Accumulating data from across the globe reveal a wide array of effects: rapidly melting glaciers, destabilization of major ice sheets, increases in extreme weather, rising sea level, shifts
in species ranges, and more. The pace of change and the evidence of harm have increased markedly over the last five years. The time to control greenhouse gas emissions is now.
American Geophysical Union
Human‐Induced Climate Change Requires Urgent Action Humanity is the major influence on the global climate change observed over the past 50 years. Rapid societal responses can significantly lessen negative outcomes. Human activities are changing Earth’s climate. At the global level, atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide and other heat‐trapping greenhouse gases have increased sharply since the Industrial Revolution. Fossil fuel burning dominates this increase.Human‐caused increases in greenhouse gases are responsible for most of the observed global average surface warming of roughly 0.8°C (1.5°F) over the past 140 years. Because natural processes cannot quickly remove some of these gases (notably carbon dioxide) from the atmosphere, our past, present, and future emissions will influence the climate system for millennia.
Extensive, independent observations confirm the reality of global warming. These observations show large‐scale increases in air and sea temperatures, sea level, and atmospheric water vapor; they document decreases in the extent of mountain glaciers, snow cover, permafrost, and Arctic sea ice. These changes are broadly consistent with long‐ understood physics and predictions of how the climate system is expected to respond to human‐caused increases in greenhouse gases. The changes are inconsistent with explanations of climate change that rely on known natural influences.
Pure boilerplate, Luke. Sure, they change the wording here and there. And of course they take it seriously. They seriously don’t want to get kicked off the CAGW gravy train. That would be a disaster.
Oh, boy, a cut and paste argument deluxe.
How amusing, Luke.
As is your adviso to “Look it up”.
You see, “looking it up” is what people do who have no facts at their command.
Many here could write an actual book on this topic right off the top of their heads.
Most scientific societies are run by politicians, not by scientists. You forget to mention that by the thousands, scientists have been resigning from these “scientific” societies in protest to the actions of the politicians who run them.
As to your crack about oil companies, that just proves that you are another troll uninterested in actually debating reality.
He seems unaware that oil companies are among the biggest gainers in this whole fiasco of a CAGW meme.
They profit hugely from the warmista jackassery.
And the entity with the really deep pockets is the US Federal Government. Led by the climate liar in chief, they spend some $29 billion of our hard earned tax dollars annually, much of it to prove a supposedly settled subject.
Here is a guy who has not updated his talking points on the subject in about 10 years or so.
I have always wondered at the severe cognitive dissonance that must be caused by simultaneously believing that the money spent by oil companies is a toxic sludge on the soul of those who would lie for money, but the gajillions of dollars spent by the corrupt cronies working on and for the federal government is some sort of soothing salve for the soul, with no tendency to corrupt those who ride the lard encrusted gravy train of grants and studies and fat jobs as irresponsible bureaucrats and their lickspittle lackies.
Here is a vivid example of the ridiculous and obvious lies being foisted:
https://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2015/09/07/visualizing-extreme-climate-fraud-at-noaa/#more-128691
Minor maths error. CO2 is 0.004% of atmosphere not 4%.
400 ppm by volume or by mole, = 0.04%.
Anyway thanks to my friend Tim Ball for his tireless efforts, I get so exasperated with people like Karl and Mann, I’m glad somebody has the patience to write a coherent response to what they continue to promulgate because I have lost mine
I could never take the word “denier” seriously as I used to work in a textile factor where denier was a measure of yarn thickness. (Said den-ier – I suppose it could be french).
Denial is Denali spelt sideways.
Government-financed “science” is like a jukebox in a cheap bar: whose who pay determine sounds that it will produce. Only a few scientists, such as Dr. Ball, risk their career and financial well-being by refusing to sing along with the crowd. They are real heroes of our time, while conformist choir boys, repeating profitable mantras after green clergy (such as repulsive “Myslewski” above) are destined to oblivion.
We see the same kind of science when it comes to cannabinoids. Up until the discovery of endocannabinoids by an Israeli group led by Raphael Mechoulam all we got were abominations like the Heath monkey study. He asphyxiated a few monkeys with cannabis smoke and ascribed the deaths to cannabis.
The government gets the science it pays for.
Ah yes Niwa. That will be the Niwa that were taken to court by the New Zealand Climate Coalition. Back in August 2010, the Coalition commenced legal action against Niwa, asking the High Court to invalidate its official temperature record, to prevent it using the temperature record when advising NZ Government and to require the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research to produce a “full and accurate” temperature record. It must be the same New Zealand Climate Coalition that the High Court declined all claims and ruled that the Coalition pay NIWA’s costs. And the very same NZCC that liquidated its trust funds so they didn’t have to pay the $80,000 in costs it owed the NZ tax payers (and Niwa). What honourable fellows they were.
Ah yes, good old NIWA which uses something like 3 thermometers to determine a national average for New Zealand. That NIWA? Yeah, did some contract work for NIWA, good is not a word I’d use to describe their practices and data. Shonky at best!
Shonky?
My new word for the week!
Shonky; dishonest, unreliable, or illegal, especially in a devious way.
Govt court backs govt agency, and from this you conclude that the govt position must be correct.
Mark… using your flawed logic you could never take a Govt agency to court.
But….What an irony we have here. We had a group accusing Niwa of fraud, who themselves committed a fraud on the NZ taxpayer. And now we have Tim Ball (who I am assuming knew this was thrown out of court) still implying Niwa acted improperly. What a circle of creative honesty we have and the only non fraudulent group here are Niwa…. the ones accused in the first place. Haha, a funny old world isn’t it?
The court ruled, I thought , that there was NO official temperature record.
Do I have that wrong?
In the words of the judge…”The plaintiff does not succeed on any of its challenges to the three decisions of NIWA in issue. The application for judicial review is dismissed and judgment entered for the defendant.”
Slam dunk…. and yet we still see the misinformation above paraded as truth.
So no, the judge said nothing of the sort. Niwa’s data stands as an accepted accurate record of NZ’s past and present climate.
Having done work for MoJ, DoC and NIWA I am not surprised a court judge ruled in favour of a Govn’t agency. Lets not talk about a senior judge at MoJ and “misusing” e-mail systems to send e-mail to someone at Telecom NZ. Tut tut tut!
52+ explanations = no explanation.
Exactly.
CO2 is the defendant in climate wars. In that sense a prosecutor may explore 52 possible explanations of a crime but would never gain any credibility, never mind a conviction by presenting 52 possible explanations to a jury.
And that is the elephant in the room with climate science, claims of certainty and draconian calls to action are undermined by their endless stream of possible explanations. Scientists want to explore possibilities, fine, good, that is what they are supposed to do, but do not make extravagant claims based on fiddling with their navels.
How is it possible that that the entire scientific basis of the IPCC is incorrect? The explanation is the climate wars, climategate manipulation of data/analysis, and climategate blocking of data/analysis in research papers that disproves CAGW.
This link is very interesting worth a re-read.
As the authors noted, their paper where they provide data that shows that there were natural 342 warming events in the Antarctic peninsula ice core data (in the last 240,000 years) was originally accepted for publishing, by the journal Nature. Their paper noted the current warming period is not unusual based on what has happened in the past (i.e. there are cycles of warming and cooling in the paleo record, that is a fact not a theory). As they note in their paper, the past warmings were not caused by changes in atmospheric CO2. The scientific implication is that the data indicates there is a significant forcing function that cause the earth to cyclically naturally warm and cool.
Mysteriously the senior editor that they were working with, to published their paper, was fired for not blocking a paper that disproves CAGW. After firing the senior editor who’s sin was daring to continue to attempt to support ‘normal’ science, their paper was rejected.
https://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/davis-and-taylor-wuwt-submission.pdf
http://www.pik-potsdam.de/~stefan/Publications/Journals/rahmstorf_grl_2003.pdf
“The enemies are silly. They think we are the enemies, but we are not, THEY are” (Pierre Desproges, french humorist)
Everybody wants to be the good guy, the realist bringing to light obscurantist folk (deniers included). If you are SURE you are, well, you just are a believer of some sort. not a scientist, not a skeptik.
When I smell crap, I am sure that there is some crap in the vicinity.
When I attempt to discuss this simple concept, the response is I am denying science. Instead of saying “and you’re an idiot”, I end the discussion. An argument from ignorance is hard to refute especially when the ignorance is embraced.
The pope didn’t order priests to give forgiveness to those who have had abortions, he stated that forgiveness is available to those who are repentant, which has been the churches position regarding sin for the last 2000 years or so.
Only those who know nothing about the Catholic church believe that the Pope is supposed to be infallible in every public utterance.
The biggest denial of all, the denial which forms the cornerstone of climate science, is the denial that chaotic-nonlinear dynamics lie at the heart of climate. Climateers pay lip-service to chaos-nonlinearity and try to relegate it to small scale noise. But the signature of chaos-nonlinearity in the fractal log-log character of climate oscillations of all amplitudes and all timescales is so overwhelming and obvious, that its denial is one of the most, if not the most, egregious frauds in human history.
Anyone using the word “forcing” immediately identifies him/herself as being a participant in this denial-ignorance of chaos-nonlinearity. Put simply, change and oscillation are the norm for the chaotic-nonlinear climate system of heat dissipation. When any climate fluctuation is observed, such as late 20th century warming, the null hypothesis is that this is no different to the exactly similar such fluctuations that have always characterised the climate record – at all time and amplitude scales in a precisely fractal manner. In the Holocene there have been about 20 such natural chaotic upswings – and similar downswings.
Use of the word “forcing” in regard to climate (an intellectual albatross hanging around the neck of anyone who says it declaring their willful ignorance of natural chaotic dynamics) implies that the climate system is passive, and that it can only warm and cool at the surface in response to outside brute forcing. It rests on willful ignorance for example of the amount of heat in the world’s oceans and the fact that the oceans are not a passive puddle, but are are actively mixed by chaotic-nonlinear dynamics such that the vast ocean heat is also chaotically unstable, able by small changes to vertical heat exchange to continually change climate at the earth’s surface and atmosphere. Without help from hairless apes or their campfires.
The world’s first computer simulation of climate, by Ed Lorenz in 1961, remains to this day the only such simulation with any scientific value and content whatsoever, and that solitary status looks set to remain unchallenged for the forseeable future. Any climate simulation not build primarily on chaotic nonlinear oscillation, as Lorenz’s was, is worth less than the sweat and grease of the programmers fingertips deposited on their taxpayer-funded computer keyboards.
Climate analysis and simulation built on any foundation other than dissipative chaotic nonlinear oscillation is exactly analogous to astronomy with epicycles based on an earth centered universe, or chemistry denying Mendeleev’s periodic table, or astrophysics denying Einstein’s relativity, or biology denying the evolutionary theory of Darwin/Wallace, or any such example you can imagine. No amount of effort will add one cent of value. Trying to make climate change only through human atmospheric emissions is like trying to make lead turn to gold through cookery procedures and incantations; in other words, alchemy.
The denial of nonlinear chaotic dynamics leads to blindness to the fact that climate change is the null hypothesis of climate; that the terms “climate” and “climate change” are identical in meaning, and in fact that the term “climate change” itself is a tautology based on profound ignorance. This denial, at the heart of current “climate science”, linked to the anticapitalist misanthropic “global warming” scam and power-grab, is the monstrous mother of all denials and will be remembered and studied as such by students and historians of science for centuries and millenia to come.
Well, I used the word a few times, but I plead innocence. I will refrain fro using it in the future.
Menicholas
Perhaps I went a little far – “forcing” does play a role in oscillating systems. Some are unforced – the oscillations are spontaneous and internal, depending on harmonics and resonance. Others however are indeed periodically forced from outside. Such periodic forcing can be strong – where the system oscillates with similar frequency to the forcing frequency – for instance high and low tides at the sea shore. There is also weak periodic forcing, where the frequency induced in the oscillating system is complex-chaotic and can have little apparent relation to the forcing frequency. Annual, lunar, solar and other astrophysical forcings may well operate on the earth’s oscillatory climate system – and on longer timescales Milankovich orbital cycles. I strongly suspect the forcing is of the weak variety, which is why a clear astrophysical signature is so elusive.
I can tell you that the first 600 times I heard the warmistas use the word, I hated the sound of it.
Slightly changing the composition of the atmosphere can be described in any number of ways, but to start out by referring to such an alteration as a forcing, seems to presuppose some dramatic effect will result.
+1 phlogiston September 7, 2015 at 6:32 am
Too much words methink, and some useless (even though justified) rant ( “worth less than the sweat and grease” … tsss), but nonetheless things to say again and again and again until understood
I am afraid that no amount scientific evidence, arguments or observable data will change the mind of the alarmists prior to the Paris conference . There is too much free money at stake for too many people . The climate will cool once this El Nino and warm blob dissipate next year or so and decades of cooler weather will follow. as it has done for thousands of years
Funny how it is with that free money, eh?
“The only place in the world where CO2 increase precedes a temperature increase is in the IPCC computer models.”
I do not believe that models count as being part of the world. The computers themselves, yes. The models exist only in the rarefied world of imagination and theory.
Those models have become the basis of a fantasy climate that the real deniers believe in as if they were an actual part of the real world. As with all such advocates they have revised history to try and make it support their claims and are even doing so with current data. Any means justifies their end. They believe their fantasy is the real world!
” CO2 is only 4 percent of the total greenhouse gasses and the human portion is only 3.4 percent of that total.”
I’m not understanding the math here. If CO2 has gone from under 300ppm to over 400ppm, how can the human caused portion only be 3.4%? Are you saying natural sources account for the bulk of the increase? If so, can you document that claim?
“CO2 is only 4 percent of the total greenhouse gasses ”
At it’s core, this is a dishonest argument. It’s not the amount of anything, it’s the effect.
Only a few grams of arsenic can kill a 200 lb person.
MarkW-
Farcical statements are laughable when viewed in the proper light.
I know it wasn’t your intent, but thanks, I welcome merriment anytime.
Mark,
The very small amount of CO2 in the atmosphere cannot possibly heat the rest of the atmosphere, the land, or the ocean. The heat transfer capacity of CO2 is vanishingly small. The amount of mass of it, the molar fraction in the atmosphere, is so small relative to everything else, that its ability to act as a warming agent is insignificant, even if it’s phantom heat retaining properties are real. The photons that circulate though all molecules come from the sun first, meaning that the only significant source of heat variation is strictly from solar variation, modified only by atmospheric pressure.
The warmists’ big mistake is attributing the extra energy that caused “global warming” to CO2, instead of where that energy came from in the first place, the sun.
The sun’s variation caused “global warming” of less than 1C , nothing catastrophic, to be sure.
The additional energy that drove those increasing temperatures, especially 1980-2004, came from the modern maximum in solar activity.
I define the modern maximum in solar activity here:
The sun had 65% higher sunspot activity for the 70 years between 1935-2004, than the previous 70 years between 1865-1934. The earlier 70 year period averaged 65.8 annually, whereas the latter 70 year period averaged 108.5 per year. Data used for this came from the v2 SSNs from the WDC-SIDC. The v1 SSN disparity was 89% between the 70 year periods.
TSI tracks with sunspot activity, meaning TSI was correspondingly higher for those 70 years compared to the previous 70 years. That higher TSI delivered the heat (photons) into the system that caused “global warming”.
The sun does not have a static output, and it’s real variation is more than the 0.1% muted value that the IPCC uses. Furthermore there is a level of solar activity that is insufficient to warm the planet, and when that happens, that’s when the globe cools. That is the scenario we are entering into now, as the next one or two solar cycles are expected to be lower than this low cycle, the lowest in 100 years.
The tired old failed arguments of the warmists are total crap. I sincerely hope that you Mark are not one of the fools who continues to believe their scary fairy tales based on useless “CO2 science”.
Getting awful tired of people comparing a very toxic and reactive substance (arsenic) with a benign, non-toxic, plant food which benefits man and critter. Pick a comparable substance or stop. GK
Micrograms of certain dyes can make a large volume of clear water so blue you cannot see through it.
Not taking a position on this without further thought, but there are examples which are directly comparable.
Menicholas – Of course there are better examples of trace elements that can alter large volumes. All I ask is comparisons be reasonable in toxicty and reactivity. You surely understand that citing extreme poisons is… well… alarming and misleading. GK
MarkW September 7, 2015 at 6:57 am
“At it’s core, this is a dishonest argument. It’s not the amount of anything, it’s the effect.
Only a few grams of arsenic can kill a 200 lb person.”
And it takes over exposure to 30,000 ppm of CO2 over time to be as harmful. So let’s put that little arsenic comparison to rest. People function quite well indoors with CO2 around the 1000 ppm mark.
How about 10,600 ppm inside a nuclear submarine?
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/10/17/claim-co2-makes-you-stupid-as-a-submariner-that-question/
No one suggested that CO is toxic in the amounts present in the atmosphere.
The point was whether tiny amounts of substances can have dramatic and/or outsized affects, seemingly out of proportion to the concentration of the substance.
Mark was making an analogy based on that proposition, not implying that CO2 was a poison like arsenic, in the amounts in question.
In the lake management business, one low cost and nontoxic way to reduce or kill invasive and/or noxious aquatic weeds is to dye the water.
The dye used comes in one quart containers, and one of those quarts full will dye a pond dark blue for months, so dark that the plants at the bottom of the water die from lack of light.
One 32 fluid oz container of Blue Lagoon SS will tint 4 acre feet of water dark blue.
Four acre feet is nearly 1.4 million gallons of water, so this sort of dye will block light in a concentration of one part in 5.5 million.
Comparable enough for ya, Karst?
http://www.aquaticbiologists.com/lake–pond-dye/blue-lagoon
By the way, that 5.5 million to one is a volume comparison. The dye as sold is not in pure form, plus it is a large molecule compared to water, so the molar ratio is far lower than the stated 5.5 million to one.
This piece is just the kind of thing that does not belong here…it is a purely political screed fired off as another shot in the Climate Wars — which themselves are an entire waste of time and effort. while not as bad as Dr. Ball’s infamous “they’re all Nazi’s” essay, it should have no place here.
Those who wish to get the science right and communicate correct science to the public must shun this type of nonsense — it is just the same worthless name-calling that SkS and hotwhopper sling.
Kip,
Each to their own and all that, but I found your apologia of ocean acidification orthodoxy “an entire waste of time and effort”, as you say but I would not say that it “doesn’t belong here”.
Tim Ball’s piece is pretty anodyne and your willingness to impugn him with reference to his “”infamous “they’re all Nazi’s” essay””” does you no credit.
Since you brought it up, let me ask you to look a little deeper into the very famous/infamous Big Lie and figure out who said what about whom. Then you can reverse-engineer your “they’re all Nazi’s” paraphrase and come up with who went all Godwinian first.
Willie Soon calls WUWT a ‘luke-warmer site’ and that may be so, but it’s a very tolerant one with a catholic (in the literary sense) demeanour. That means that diversity of opinion is rife.
BTW, that phrase “Climate Wars” sounds familiar! Wasn’t it the title of a book recently?
Reply to mebbe ==> Can’t tell if you’re agreeing with me or not. (BTW, Tim Ball impugned himself — slimed himself — when he wrote and posted his infamous Nazi essay….this is just a milder version.)
The Climate Wars are what is wrong with the field of climate science — and it is wrong on both sides.
There are plenty of political sites where this kind of thing is welcome — I suggest you read the WUWT Policy page — this site is about taking the higher ground and engaging in civil discourse about an highly charged, politically sensitive subject. Alas, it does not always achieve this high standard — I am speaking of the essays here — the comment section is always almost entirely out of control and filled with adolescent nonsense.
For example, implying that the Catholic Pope is unchristian is well below the standard of discourse here. On the up-side, at least Dr. Balls essay was clearly marked as a Guest Opinion.
All this is, of course, a matter of opinion, and we both have stated our own.
So… Steven Goddard’s paranoid rantings are now considered okay here? And remarks like:
Aren’t just laughed at for being hugely misleading? And this site, which has repeatedly complained about calling people deniers, has no problem labeling people deniers now?
What is going on?
Brandon, as you know, I can’t control what commenters say. You are using an incorrect application of a broad brush to imply “Steven Goddard’s paranoid rantings are now considered okay here” As you may know, Goddard (Tony Heller) became unwelcome here due to his inability to come to terms with an incorrect statement he made about CO2 freezing out of the air in Antractica. That’s why he no longer guest authors here. Don’t make assumptions about the entire blog based on what commentators say.
[Added note from Anthony: This comment has erroneous context about commenters, when it should have been about the article. My mistake. Please see this clarifying remark: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/09/06/an-update-on-the-real-deniers/#comment-2022804 ]
Oh boo-hoo-hoo, cry me a river. You know, if you pull out a weapon, you can’t really act all surprised and hurt if it gets used against you instead.
Lulz. So our host responded to my comment to say:
Er, I apparently forgot to close that blockquote tag after the quote. Obviously, the second paragraph inside the quote is my writing, not our host’s.
Brandon, I’d planned to clarify that in an edit, But got distracted with phone calls before I could edit it to be correct for the context. People make mistakes, just like you did with the blockquote. But I’ll take the criticism of my comment as is. One of the down sides to running WordPress is that it presents comments (to the operator) without the full context, and you have to switch back to other pages to see the full context and indeed my context about Goddard was erroneous.
The issue of adjustments is worth discussing, because they are sometimes of a dubious value, particularly since homogenization tends to take a vast mix of poor quality stations and good quality stations. Unfortunately, the far greater number of poor quality stations tends to bias the results in one direction.
[Added: And I agree, Goodard often has an over the top approach that isn’t as effective as it could be if presented differently]
Alright. So um… cool. Good to know I can be told I’m wrong at any time even when I’m not, only to have the comment saying I’m wrong taken down so people won’t see it and/or edited to correct the mistake thanks to moderation powers giving people abilities no other commenter has. That seems entirely… horrible.
But whatever. I’m just happy to know it’s now apparently settled that calling people “deniers” is okay…? I’m still completely baffled on that, but at least we can stop having discussions over how wrong it is to use the word now? That’d be nice.
Well it was only up for about 2 minutes, I took it offline briefly to correct it and got distracted with other stuff, unfortunate, but life is messy like that sometimes. That’s an error on my part. Next time I’ll simply leave it and add a clarification in brackets. That would prevent such confusion and your rush to judgment to condemn me over at your blog. BTW, you have my email, you could have simply asked.
Shollenberger,
Sometimes you’re right on the money and sometimes, you’re just an a$$, like right now.
And just in case Brandon comments again, and considers my lack of immediate response some sort of nefarious intent, I’m going to be offline for about two hours while I fix a problem with a car.
Anthony Watts says:
Uh… the last time I e-mailed you, you said you weren’t going to talk to me. It’s difficult to see that as an invitation to e-mail you again.
As for rushing to condemn you, you posted a comment which said I was wrong then removed the comment. If Skeptical Science had done that, you’d condemn them, regardless of their reason. I’m just treating you the same. Besides which, look at what you just said. You openly acknowledge you’re using moderation powers to give yourself advantages over the people you’re talking to. That’s wrong. I would condemn it regardless. Everybody else has to make a new comment if they want to add something. You should have to too.
Alan Robertson:
So this site calling people a name it’s complained about being called for a decade is what, okay? Secretly removing comments is not a bad thing? Promoting Goddard’s paranoid rantings is alright?
The reality is if Skeptical Science or Real Climate had written a post calling people on the “skeptic” side what Tim Ball called people and secretly removed a comment like this, this site would probably run a post about it. The only reason I’m “just an a$$” is because you guys don’t like people on your “side” being criticized.
Brandon Shollenberger says:
Um, no. Sorry, that weak argument just doesn’t hold water. A sampling of recent emails I have received from you were received on:
8/5/2015, 7/25/15, 7/24/15, 7/23/15, 7/22/15, 7/21/15, 7/16/15, 7/14/15, 7/13/15, 7/12/15, 7/8/15
Per your Twitter feed, perhaps you’ll label this a “dumb” comment too?
As I’ve previously said, Brandon and I don’t see eye to eye on much of anything. In his Twitter feed from this holiday weekend, there’s this amazingly candid but disastrous nugget:
Perhaps Brandon can’t understand Dr. Ball’s definitional use of the term in his essay, in a “turnabout is fair play” sense, complete with references, which wasn’t done with any pejorative intent (i.e. “stupid deniers”, “oil-funded climate deniers”, “Koch shill deniers” and dozens of other pejorative uses that we have to suffer daily) because Brandon was blogging today while impaired? It would explain a lot of what we’ve seen today. Since Brandon refuses to accept my explanation for the comment issue, and inserts his own reasoning to bolster his own arguments, there’s not much else I can say except I think his reasoning is off. If this were a systemic problem here, such as what occurred over at Skeptical Science where they edited many many comments in a time extended post facto sanctioned process involving the moderation team, and not just one attempted (but not completed) mistake fix within the hour by the blog owner, he’d have a point. But this was a one-off issue that was complicated by life events today, as I explained.
However, the best thing one can do is learn from mistakes, and to that end I will be updating my blog policy page soon so that there’s a clear guideline for my own comments.
Dr. Ball certainly could have softened the essay and use of the word a bit, but it is a far cry from the kind of horrid insults that I and many climate skeptics have had to endure on a daily basis.
I think Brandon has done some good work in the past, but lately, I and some others I correspond with have noted he’s gotten somewhat pedantic and erratic, even going so far as publishing an essay on DeSmog Blog, where they’ve used such pejorative “denier” labels for years. For example: http://www.desmogblog.com/2015/01/13/calls-media-accurately-label-climate-deniers-growing-louder
Given Brandon’s own double standard on the blogging usage of “denier”, perhaps it simply time to stop paying any further attention to him on the issue.
Brandon is of course free to be as upset as he wishes about all of this, and I’m sure he’ll write some entertaining arguments about how he’s in the right, but I have to wonder about his ability to reason properly when I see tweets like the above. It’s one thing to have a medical issue like that, but to advertise it to the world and to say he’s going to start drinking on top of medication suggests he’s not thinking through clearly.
Anthony Watts:
As best I can tell, those e-mails are all group e-mails where you and I were both included, and I responded to the group. Not once did I direct a single remark in any of them at your directly. In fact, I’m not sure I had even noticed your name was on the list of names included in the group.
Um, yes? It is pretty dumb to pretend you being included in group messages is somehow comparable to me sending you an e-mail one on one.
Well each one of them is from you, and if you state that there was no invitation to communicate with me, why then did you send them? Why include me whether it’s a group or not? Sorry, still doesn’t hold water. You could have asked, by email, but didn’t.
Basically, Brandon was having too much fun playing what he erroneously perceived to be a “gotcha” game today to ask before writing his diatribe minutes later.
Anthony Watts:
Real classy to try to portray comments I made about drinking alcohol nearly 24 hours ago as somehow devaluing what I say now Anthony. As for the idea this was merely a “definitional use of the term,” that’s complete nonsense. That’s exactly the same excuse people have used to justify calling you a denier for years. They’ve always said things like, “We’re just calling them deniers because they deny things.” And every time, you’ve called BS on them. So guess what, I’m calling BS on you. Sort of like how you say:
I didn’t refuse to accept your explanation. Anyone who reads what I said will see I have accepted your explanation. They’ll just see I’ve said your explanation indicates a problem with how you use your moderation powers in discussions. In the same way, when you say:
I don’t hold a double standard. I haven’t insisted people not use the word “denier.” You’re just making that up to portray me in a negative light. All I’ve done is say if someone wants to complain about people using the word “denier,” they shouldn’t use the word “denier” themselves. If you want to use insults, that’s fine. Just don’t complain when others do the same.
But by all means Anthony, feel free to say things like:
Just because I have the audacity to challenge you and the other people here when you guys do things like call people deniers after spending a decade insisting calling people deniers is wrong. By all means, try to paint me as incapable of rational thought while promoting the paranoid rants of Steven Goddard and posts which try to say CO2 has no meaningful effect on the planet’s temperature.
Clearly, I’m the one with a problem. That problem is just I’m consistent with my standards and willing to challenge people on any “side.” You on the other hand are just doing a great job of showing how the tribe reacts to anyone who dares challenge it.
Well Brandon I think you’ve demonstrated poor thought process, and you’ve used lots of perjorative language in the process. As I said we don’t see eye-to-eye, and if you don’t want people questioning your thought process, you shouldn’t post things like what you did on Twitter. Heat, kitchen, and all that. Whether you think the question is classy or not, your behavior seems erratic to me, especially when you went and made a rant on your blog within a few minutes without ever so much as asking me.
What I see from you is mostly a reaction of a tribe of one. Brandon doesn’t like to be challenged on anything, and it shows.
I didn’t “promote” anything about Goddard, that’s all in your mind. If I did a post on him or his work, you’d have a point.
Anthony Watts:
The last one-on-one communication we had had you tell me you wouldn’t talk to me. The fact you and I sent e-mails to a group of people each other happened to be in, never once directing any remarks to one another doesn’t change that fact.
But sure, I could have asked you by e-mail why you did this. Why would I though? Look at your comments here. Look at how pathetic and personal you’re making this exchange. You’ve done this every time I’ve disagreed with you about anything. Why would I ever expect a useful response from you via e-mail?
Am I supposed to subject myself to your abuse and misrepresentations in private before discussing your public comments publicly? I don’t think so, especially not when a constant criticism of climate scientists has always been that they expressed their concerns in private but not in public. Public comments get discussed publicly. That’s all there is to it.
Yes that was months ago, and we went through the same process. I offer an explanation, sending you emails privately for a disagreement, then you write about them publicly claiming they are “dumb” or “stupid”. I might not want to engage further when I’m treated like that (who would?) but if there was a genuine issue, like today, I’d certainly read the email, as the ones I cite above show.
Anthony Watts:
I said I was going to drink alcohol despite being on medication which says it shouldn’t be taken with alcohol. Big deal. Plenty of people do the same. Maybe I overshare on Twitter, but so what? It in no way justifies you trying to pretend, the next day, that this somehow explains anything about my behavior. As for your claim:
This post promotes Goddard’s paranoid accusations. You defend the post as being fine. That means you defend the promotion of Goddard’s paranoid accusations. Nobody should. Anybody who wants to have the slightest shred of credibility should run away from Goddard.
And wow. I see you just edited a comment of yours after submitting it again. How in the world do you expect people to have serious discussions with you if they can read your comment, type a response, hit Submit only to find out your comment has changed? Can you really not see the problem in using moderation powers to give yourself advantages over the other people participating in discussions?
I accidentally left two words off the end of sentence the last comment I intended to type. I put them on seconds later. I don’t see a problem with that. Over at Lucia’s, you can edit comments for up to ten minutes afterwards to correct such mistakes, and I don’t see you complaining about that. Here at WUWT about two years ago, we had the same feature for about a month while I went through a trial of their hi-end plan. I don’t recall you complaining about that feature.
Comment editing features that allow you to fix stupid mistakes on self hosted wordpress platforms is fairly common, just like what we see at Lucia’s.
It has been the most requested feature here at WUWT for a long time. http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/07/20/here-is-your-chance-to-ask-for-comment-editing/
To that end, I’m going to look into it again. Then there won’t be any issues with complaints about anyone not being able to fix silly mistakes in comments before some pedant goes ballistic about it.
Have you not ever fixed a mistake in one of your own comments or blog posts within seconds of typing it? I’d be amazed if you haven’t used your own “moderation” powers. For incidents that fix missing words, misspelling or punctuation, I don’t see that as an issue, especially when such short term editing is a common feature on other WordPress blogs, Disqus, and Facebook.
And to add, going back hours, days, or months later and making wholesale changes to comments (like Skeptical Science did) is an entirely different argument.
Anthony Watts:
Actually, what happened is I e-mailed you to try to resolve a disagreement in a cordial manner. You responded to me with a single e-mail which said you wouldn’t talk to me because I had called you names and labeled you “insane,” things I had never actually done. There was no explanation of anything. But please, keep telling people untrue things about the e-mail. It’s not like I posted it for everyone to see how absurd your accusations were back then.
Oh wait, I did. And the reason I did is because you made wildly untrue accusations about me, and I wanted a record of the fact you did so. Because you keep doing it. Every time we disagree. Every single time we get in a disagreement, you start making things up about me to paint me in a negative light, things which anyone who put even the slightest effort into reading my comments would know aren’t true.
And I think that’s something worth documenting. I don’t mind the abuse. You’re bad it so you’re not going to hurt my feelings, but you are going to create a toxic environment where genuine disagreement isn’t tolerated. You’ve already made a lot of progress in doing so by doing things like accusing climate scientists of (everything short of?) criminal activity in much the same manner.
But sure, paint yourself as the victim. Pretend I’ve said things about you I’ve never said before. Pretend I’m ranting and raving in some blind rage fueled by alcohol and prescription pills. The reality is I treat you the exact same way I’d treat anybody else, and I’d have said the same things three years ago when you still liked what I had to say, but… don’t let that get in the way of your reactions.
Brandon, I think you’d get a lot farther with people if you didn’t label their opinions as “dumb” which anyone can read upthread. That’s a fact.
You’ve routinely taken things I’ve said, and put your own interpretation on it without bothering to hear my side of the story. When I disagree with it, you get defensive. When I comment about it you label my comments as you did above as “dumb”.
We don’t see eye-to-eye on anything, we don’t communicate well with each other, and we both don’t think much of each other’s viewpoints. To that end, I’m not going to continue what is obviously a waste of our time.
And IIRC you did label my comments to you from that episode as “insane”. Again, that sort of language is unhelpful if you want to communicate with another person without building walls.
Anthony Watts:
How disingenuous can you be? Of course I have no problem with an Edit feature being used if it is available to all users like it is at Lucia’s or like it apparently was here for a little while. If it’s available to everybody, then everybody knows it’s there and knows comments might get edited after they’re submitted. There’s no sudden shock of comments being edited because one guy happens to have powers nobody else gets to have.
I fix HTML tags in my comments and other users’ comments at my site, and I sometimes edit out words for purposes of filters (for obscenities and the like). Aside from that, I don’t edit comments. I don’t care if someone, including myself, makes a mistake while writing. The purpose of moderation is not to fix mistakes. It’s not for proofreading, and I’m certainly not going to give myself an advantage over people I’m having discussions with.
If people are going to have a discussion, they should all be on equal footing. One person should not have the advantage of being able to proofread comments after the fact, especially not if it is going to be done without any indication being given. And one person certainly shouldn’t be allowed to go back to previous comments and append additional thoughts to them as the discussion progresses. It’s completely unfair, and making unmarked changes to comments nobody could be aware of is deceptive.
Well I’m glad to see that you admit to editing comments to fix mistakes and troublemakers with bad language at your blog. I see your fixation on this here as disingenuous. Sure If I was going back later and doing wholesale changes, I’d agree, fixing a mistake of two missing words within seconds, not so much.
This whole argument today boils down to you basically saying I’m disingenuous because I made a mistake and then fixed it in a way you think is wrong. Admittedly, it all could have gone better from the first comment today, but there’s no nefarious intent here. What I’ve said is that I’ll come up with a policy to deal with it, so that there won’t be any questions, and/or better yet, find a way to get the comment editing feature back. Since you are self hosted now, at least I think you are, perhaps you should install that plugin to allow editing of comments for your own readers. That way, nobody can accuse you of having more “power” to edit out nasty words or fix mistakes than they do.
Anthony Watts, you can say my language is unhelpful, but the reality is what’s really unhelpful is people saying things like:
Nobody disputes that I labeled something you said insane (because it was insane). My sentence clearly said you claimed “I had called you names and labeled you ‘insane.'” There is a significant difference between labeling something you said and labeling you as a person. The reason I criticized your e-mail is it made the ludicrous accusation:
When I had never labeled you anything as I generally go out of my way to avoid making remarks about people as individuals. You may find labeling remarks “insane” unhelpful, but the reality is it is far more unhelpful to constantly mischaracterize what people say.
Also unhelpful is to, you know, constantly make personal remarks about people like you do with me…
When you label the person’s language as “insane” it implies (to me) that you are labeling the individual, because a sane person wouldn’t be saying insane things. If you don’t want that to happen, don’t use the words. Like I’ve said we don’t see eye-to-eye on much, your mindset says you aren’t calling me “insane” my mindset says you are. Who’s right? Dunno, but I do know that you and I don’t communicate well, hence the friction.
I’m out for the night. I hope you feel better soon.
Anthony Watts:
Um, no. I never called you disingenuous for that reason. I called you disingenuous for pretending situations where an edit feature is available to everybody is comparable to you using moderation powers to edit comments after the fact. If you’re going to make things up about me, please at least do it in a less obvious way.
I feel I should point out I accepted this quite some time back, even though you’ve claimed I refuse to accept your explanation. For the record though, I don’t think there is any nefarious intent in your decision to edit comments. I don’t think there was any nefarious intent in Skeptical Science’s either. I just think what was done in each case was wrong, despite the lack of nefarious intent.
Huh? Nobody would say anything like that because it’s obvious I would have more moderation power at my site than the average user. Nobody would be bothered by that either. Moderating is a natural part of running blogs.
Why are you bringing up normal moderation duties in relation to editing comments for proofreading purposes? The two are very different. All this does is create a false dilemma for no purpose. You could have cut out this entire point and your comment would have been far better. As it stands, it looks like you’re just trying to find a cheap point to score.
And that’s a real shame because if not for that, this would have been a comment that made progress toward resolving things.
I like the way it is on Facebook, where edits can be made, but if anyone mouses over the edit notification, they can click it and see what the original was.
But that is just me.
Brandon, you said that you were only criticizing the original post, and not the commenters, but your first remark suggested that everyone should have laughed a particular commenter out of town:
· “CO2 is only 4 percent of the total greenhouse gasses and the human portion is only 3.4 percent of that total.”
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/09/06/an-update-on-the-real-deniers/#comment-2022750
Finally, say what you want about Tony Heller, call him mean names, suggest he is mentally ill, but complain about a word which is in widespread usage and seems to become a more popular way to refer to “skeptics” by the day, being used in exactly the “turnabout is fair play” context that our host asserted.
Mr. Heller did the world a huge favor, IMO, and has every reason to be angry, and to show it in his writings.
One does not need to share this style of writing to defend it. He does not, IMO, deserve the criticism you make. No one is perfect, and people have a limit to how much they can take.
Those of us in the skeptical community have taken a lot, for a long time.
The day you become Mr. Perfect is the day you have standing to say the things you have said here.
IMO.
Anthony Watts:
What?! This is about as stupid a thing as you could possibly say. And no, that’s not me calling you stupid. People say wrong things all the time. I make mistakes all the time. I catch myself at least a couple times a day saying something stupid because I misread something or had a brain fart.
I’m sure most readers here would agree they make “stupid mistakes” from time to time. That doesn’t mean they’re stupid. And yeah, people might say “insane” things from time to time. That doesn’t mean they’re insane.
I am. Words have meanings. If I want to call you insane, I will. If I want to call you stupid, I will. If I just want to say you’ve said something stupid, then I’ll say that. I can characterize the behavior you exhibit in a single instance without drawing conclusions about you as a person.
There are bound to be communication problems if you refuse to do simple things like recognize the fact we can discuss a person’s behavior in a single instance without labeling the person as a whole. The problems are going to arise from the fact you’re refusing to look at what people say and mean, choosing to instead decide they say and mean things that exist only in your imagination.
Which I guess might explain why you so consistently misrepresent what I say?
OK, my turn to say I was wrong. I missed the 4% -3.4 % comment in the original article. I was under the impression that this was first asserted by a commenter.
My mistake.
Average global H2O concentration is around 30,000 ppm or higher. Other GHG levels are negligible, so CO2, at 400 ppm, is about 1.3% of total greenhouse gases.
Brandon you claim that the quote is misleading. How so? It is factual. If you think it is not factual, then the ball is in your court to prove it. Have a nice day!
Bob Weber, something can be both factual and misleading at the same time. Everybody knows you can things which are technically true yet are misleading.
I have no reason to discuss whether Tim Ball’s statement is factual. The simple reality is the percent concentration of something being small in no way indicates it will have a small effect. Ball’s statement implies human greenhouse gas emissions will have a negligible effect due to being small in terms of total percent concentration, but that is a false implication. Therefore, his statement is misleading.
I see that you ‘believe’
“The simple reality is the percent concentration of something being small in no way indicates it will have a small effect. Ball’s statement implies human greenhouse gas emissions will have a negligible effect due to being small in terms of total percent concentration, but that is a false implication. Therefore, his statement is misleading.”
Perhaps you could have “‘I think’ his statement is misleading”.
The simple reality Brandon is that no large effect from CO2 has been proven. Only someone who ‘believes’ as you apparently do, that CO2 can do what the warmists say it does, would then claim Ball’s statement created a false implication.
Many people like you take the position that the warmists are right and argue from that position, as you are doing, without ever considering counter evidence.
If you want to be persuasive wrt me, you must explain how SSTs dropped during the 1960s and 70s while CO2 went up. You must explain how a small molar fraction of the atmosphere did that, and also how it supposedly then caused temps to go up post-1980. You must explain how the energy got there (here) and from where it originated.
You probably know that energy can neither be created nor destroyed; it can only relocate. From where did the energy come from – relocate from – that caused global warming?
If you are going to tell me that CO2 either creates energy or acts as a super-absorbent heat diaper that sponges heat out of the atmosphere, then you will need to tell me where that energy came from in the first place.
Please see my comment above regarding CO2: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/09/06/an-update-on-the-real-deniers/#comment-2022717
Dr. Ball’s comment was correct. I will paraphrase his post:
The accusers of the deniers are themselves the deniers.
Bob Weber:
Here’s the thing though, I don’t think I could possibly be persuasive with you. You shamelessly say:
So let me quote a post from this very site years back:
That was from years back though, so let me quote something more recent, from our host himself:
This site has criticized and complained about the use of the word “denier” for years. It has repeatedly said anyone using the word shouldn’t be taken seriously, as they’re refusing to engage in real discussions. By that standard, I have no reason to try to convince you of anything. You and anyone else who thinks it is fine to label people “deniers” are people who shouldn’t be taken seriously, and serious discussion with you is impossible.
Every person on this site should be complaining about how wrong it was for this post to label people deniers. For whatever reason, none are. Instead, the only people talking about it are defending it. I’m not going to try to figure that one out, but I’m also not going to waste my time trying to engage in useless discussions with people who think it’s okay to call people “deniers.”
I’ve had to listen to this site say people shouldn’t try to engage in discussions with people who call others “deniers” for nearly a decade. I think it’s only fair to listen.
I’m glad you got that off your chest Brandon. I’d rather not get into classifying and labeling either, and focus on the awesome power of solar activity. Hope tomorrow is a better day for you.
Bob Weber:
It’s not really relevant to anything, but because it’s funny you say that, I have to tell you today is actually a great day for me. I’m in an awesome mood. I got some wonderful news earlier today, and it’s made my day fabulous. You may not realize it from my comments, but I’ve been smiling and laughing almost constantly for the last few hours.
So thanks for the sentiment! I’m not sure it will be better than today, but I’m sure tomorrow will still be great. I hope it’s great for you too!
“You and anyone else who thinks it is fine to label people “deniers” are people who shouldn’t be taken seriously, and serious discussion with you is impossible.”
Perhaps you could direct us to your efforts to make alarmists stop using this word?
What had been a occasional usage has become a commonplace reference.
So things have changed.
But, if the word is so intolerable to you, surely you have been spending considerable time publicly condemning the warmists who use this term?
As far as I can tell, this term is in near universal usage by the entire pro-CAGW warmista community.
Your outrage at it’s usage here is somewhere between puzzling and laughable.
Menicholas, it might help answer your question if you look at the sentence immediately prior to the one you quoted. Here are the two together:
As you can see, the remark you quoted was given in the context of the standards advanced by this site and the people on it. I don’t have to agree with that standard to point out how it would apply to a situation. So when you ask:
You’re kind of missing the point. I don’t actually think a bit of name-calling/labeling is as serious as this site and its proprietor has made it out to be. I have discussed why the word is inappropriate a number of times, and I could find links if it really mattered, but the truth is I don’t think it’s as serious a problem as people here have made it out to be in the past.
Speaking of which, when you say things like:
I have no idea what you’re talking about when you refer to things like my “outrage.” I’ve never gotten worked up about people calling other people “deniers.” There’s never been any outrage on my end. All there is is me scoffing at the hypocrisy of people who last week would have complained about people saying “denier” this week calling people “deniers.”
myslewski wrote:
September 6, 2015 at 11:13 pm
“C’mon, folks, grow a pair. Anthropomorphically generated climate change, heating the earth’s surface and the troposphere, acidifying the ocean, transferring heat into the deep ocean, and decreasing the arctic albedo is no longer arguable — it’s a fact.”
The United Nation’s IPCC, the biggest promoter of human-caused global warming/climate change in the world, say that *no* weather event, or series of weather events can be attributed directly to human causes. Yet here you are doing just that.
Of course, you are not alone in making such claims. It seems every promoter of human-caused global warming/climate change attributes whatever is happening at the time to humans burning fossil fuels. It’s like a knee-jerk reaction.
Everyone but the UN’s IPCC. I guess they are not quite bold enough to make such claims, not to mention they don’t have any evidence of such, plus the atmospheric temperature trend should be discouraging making such claims right now.
There is no evidence humans have caused any weather event, much less the climate, to change. Please quit claiming there is. You are scaring people unnecessarily.
TA
Thanks, Dr. Tim Ball, for your clear words.