Hint: He did his homework, then took himself to the other side of the debate.
Guest essay by David Siegel
My name is David Siegel. I’m not a climate expert; I’m a writer. Early in 2015, I became interested in climate science and decided to spend the better part of this year trying to learn what I could. It didn’t take long before it was clear that there isn’t likely going to be any catastrophic warming this century. What was clear is that skeptics are losing this battle, and I want to tell you why.
For thirty years, James Hansen and Al Gore have been building their PR machine along with David Fenton, the wizard of nonprofit PR. They understand that the messenger is more important than the message. People don’t easily change their minds. People get their opinions from “experts” and brand names like NASA, MIT, Harvard, TIME, The Daily Show, etc. Fenton knows the game is about credibility and repetition, not science. As long as we are trying to convince people with the facts, we will lose.
So I did my homework and wrote a 9,000-word essay aimed at liberals who have a voice, who have access to media, and who might take 30 minutes to educate themselves.
I submitted my piece to every liberal publication, from the LA Times to the Atlantic Monthly to National Geographic to Huffington Post and many more. They all turned it down. Now I’m launching it myself and hope you will read it and help spread the word.
I ask you to help get the word out through social media, links, and the press, to the liberal audience I’m going after. Links really help. If you can help reach Bill Gates, Jeff Skoll, Jon Stewart, George Clooney, and other influential liberals, I hope to help them understand that the science is not settled. I think this is the best way to tip the scales back to reasonable, impactful environmentalism. If you can help move it on Reddit, Voat, Quora, NewsVine, etc., I would appreciate that.
I’m going to ask people to leave comments here, rather than on my page, because I can’t manage the comment spam there. I will, however, read the comments here and will respond if I can.
My work is aimed at your liberal friends; please send them to read it.
Excerpt:
What is your position on the climate-change debate? What would it take to change your mind?
If the answer is It would take a ton of evidence to change my mind, because my understanding is that the science is settled, and we need to get going on this important issue, that’s what I thought, too. This is my story.
More than thirty years ago, I became vegan because I believed it was healthier (it’s not), and I’ve stayed vegan because I believe it’s better for the environment (it is). I haven’t owned a car in ten years. I love animals; I’ll gladly fly halfway around the world to take photos of them in their natural habitats. I’m a Democrat: I think governments play a key role in preserving our environment for the future in the most cost-effective way possible.Over the years, I built a set of assumptions: that Al Gore was right about global warming, that he was the David going up against the industrial Goliath. In 1993, I even wrote a book about it.
Recently, a friend challenged those assumptions. At first, I was annoyed, because I thought the science really was settled. As I started to look at the data and read about climate science, I was surprised, then shocked. As I learned more, I changed my mind. I now think there probably is no climate crisis and that the focus on CO2 takes funding and attention from critical environmental problems. I’ll start by making ten short statements that should challenge your assumptions and then back them up with an essay.
1 Weather is not climate. There are no studies showing a conclusive link between global warming and increased frequency or intensity of storms, droughts, floods, cold or heat waves.
2 Natural variation in weather and climate is tremendous. Most of what people call “global warming” is natural.
3 There is tremendous uncertainty as to how the climate really works. Climate models are not yet skillful; predictions are unresolved.
4 New research shows that fluctuations in energy from the sun correlate very strongly with changes in earth’s temperature, at both long and short time scales.
5 CO2 has very little to do with it. All the decarbonization we can do isn’t going to change the climate much.
6 There is no such thing as “carbon pollution.” Carbon dioxide is coming out of your nose right now; it is not a poisonous gas. CO2 concentrations in previous eras have been many times higher than they are today.
7 Sea level will probably continue to rise, naturally and slowly. Researchers have found no link between CO2 and sea level.
8 The Arctic experiences natural variation as well, with some years warmer earlier than others. Polar bear numbers are up, not down. They have more to do with hunting permits than CO2*.
9 No one has shown any damage to reef or marine systems. Additional man-made CO2 will not likely harm oceans, reef systems, or marine life. Fish are mostly threatened by people who eat them.
10 The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and others are pursuing a political agenda and a PR campaign, not scientific inquiry. There’s a tremendous amount of trickery going on under the surface*.
Could this possibly be right? Is it heresy, or critical thinking — or both? If I’ve upset or confused you, let me guide you through my journey
You’ll find it at: www.climatecurious.com.
David Siegel – you have written a good account of your conversion journey. You did a self intervention and rescued yourself from the cult of true AGW believers.. Unfortunately your “testimony” as a former true believer will not carry much weight or simply convince other liberals. Look at Freeman Dyson who is an eminent physicist, a true Nobel Prize winner, and one of the smartest scientists alive. He is a registered Democrat, a self proclaimed liberal and an Obama supporter but he is an AGW skeptic. He has given several interviews that did not make it into the MSM. His “testimony” and skeptical declaration have made barely a ripple in the liberal world. See articles here on WUWT.
There is no silver bullet argument that will convert true believers in mass so we have to do this in the trenches – one on one. Present your best one or two points in short clear sentences. The aim is to introduce some level of doubt in their strong beliefs – a small crack – a foot in the door. This is a tough fight that we must win as the world is wasting much time, effort and money on this false scare which is to the detriment of true humanitarian efforts.
Some short summary articles that I have used with varying success.
https://climateequilibrium.wordpress.com/2014/09/03/climate-change-for-dummies/
https://climateequilibrium.wordpress.com/2015/05/31/climate-sensitivity-to-carbon-dioxide-concentrations/
https://climateequilibrium.wordpress.com/2014/10/09/death-of-the-positive-feedback-theory/
Feel free to use any of these but they are overview summaries which cannot be scientifically rigorous or complete.
climateequilibrium October 17, 2015 at 12:32 pm
Look at Freeman Dyson who is an eminent physicist, a true Nobel Prize winner, and one of the smartest scientists alive.
Freeman Dyson is not a Nobel Laureate.
You are correct. My mistake – he has a dozen other awards but no Nobel prize!
Not a nobel laureate, but that committee has been shown to be political as well. Any honor is tinged by what it takes to receive it (telling people what they want to hear).
No, but he should be 😉
4TimesAYear,
Yes, that’s what Prof Reichard Feynman said, too. Dr. Feynman pointed out that the Nobel prize is limited to three named scientists. Feynman said that Dyson should have won, too. But at the time Dyson was the youngest, and probably for that reason he didn’t make the cut.
Feynman acknowledged Freeman Dyson’s contribution to his Nobel Prize:
Dyson “…did synthesize and reduce to practice the Feynman/Schwinger/Tomonaga solutions to the renormalization problems of quantum electrodynamics…”
(Finally, I note that Phil. isn’t a Nobel laureate either… ☺)
The science is far from settled. Below is a quote from a study done by the University of Copenhagen.
Link below also..
“For the last 10,000 years, summer sea ice in the Arctic Ocean has been far from constant. For several thousand years, there was much less sea ice in The Arctic Ocean — probably less than half of current amounts, according to a new study. ”
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/08/110804141706.htm
Reblogged this on "Mothers Against Wind Turbines™" Phoenix Rising… and commented:
Education is the only cure for “government-induced climaphobia”…
For those in control (federal government) IPCC, NASA, NOAA… bureaucrats all, the end justifies the means or so they have convinced themselves. they know they are spinning a well constructed yarn about CAGW but to their way of thinking is is okay if they can move the majority of great unwashed in a direction that benefits their end game which includes population control, suppression of third world industrialization and forced conservation of natural resources through government influenced energy price inflation.
The sad thing is the easiest to dupe are those student sheeple attending college. We use to teach critical thinking along with real math and science, skills for good jobs but now we brainwash and indoctrinate and then send them forth to propagate with degrees in Climatology which is the sci-ency equivalent of social science degrees in Urban Studies, Women’s Studies, Film Studies, [Fill in you favorite] Studies…here. It is a great gig for the universities who receive billions in grant money along with tuition fees that have outpaced energy costs by 4000% over the past 20 years. “Give us half a million dollars and we will hand you a worthless degree and send you forth with some great party memories and a firm, unshakable belief in CAGW”
I think they just want our minds occupied so we don’t notice the extent of their incompetence. The more fuzzy and amorphous the better.
. The climate change that we are experiencing is typical of the Holocene for the past 10,000 years. Climate change is caused by the sun and the oceans and Man does not have the power to change it. We are currently warming up from the Little Ice Age much as we warmed up from the Dark Ages Cooling Period more than a thousand years ago. CO2 has been increasing since the start of the industrial revolution and Man’s burning of fossil fuels is the proximate cause. Direct measurements of CO2 do not go back very far so most of our information regarding CO2 in the atmosphere comes indirectly form what are called proxies, like ice core data and layers of rocks. These proxies are rather poor in terms of their time resolution so we do not really know how fast CO2 has risen or fallen in the past. We do know that CO2 has been more then ten times what it is today and during that time there has been both warm periods and ice ages.
There is no real evidence that CO2 has any effect on climate. There is no such evidence in the paleoclimate record. There is evidence that warmer temperatures cause more CO2 to enter the atmosphere but there is no evidence that this additional CO2 causes any more warming. If additional greenhouse gases caused additional warming then the primary culprit would have to be H2O which depends upon the warming of just the surfaces of bodies of water and not their volume but such is not part of the AGW conjecture.
The AGW theory is that adding CO2 to the atmosphere causes an increase in its radiant thermal insulation properties causing restrictions in heat flow which in turn cause warming at the Earth’s surface and the lower atmosphere. In itself the effect is small because we are talking about small changes in the CO2 content of the atmosphere and CO2 comprises only about .04% of dry atmosphere if it were only dry but that is not the case. Actually H2O which averages around 2% is the primary greenhouse gas. The AGW conjecture is that the warming causes more H2O to enter the atmosphere which further increases the radiant thermal insulation properties of the atmosphere and by so doing so amplifies the effect of CO2 on climate. At first this sounds very plausible. This is where the AGW conjecture ends but that is not all what must happen if CO2 actually causes any warming at all.
Besides being a greenhouse gas, H2O is also a primary coolant in the Earth’s atmosphere transferring heat energy from the Earth;s surface. which is mostly H2O, to where clouds form via the heat of vaporization. More heat energy is moved by H2O via phase change then by both convection and LWIR absorption band radiation combined. More H2O means that more heat energy gets moved which provides a negative feedback to any CO2 based warming that might occur. Then there is the issue of clouds. More H2O means more clouds. Clouds not only reflect incoming solar radiation but they radiate to space much more efficiently then the clear atmosphere they replace. Clouds provide another negative feedback. Then there is the issue of the upper atmosphere which cools rather than warms. The cooling reduces the amount of H2O up there which decreases any greenhouse gas effects that CO2 might have up there. In total H2O provides negative feedback’s which must be the case because negative feedback systems are inherently stable as has been the Earth’s climate for at least the past 500 million years, enough for life to evolve. We are here. The wet lapse rate being smaller then the dry lapse rate is further evidence of H2O’s cooling effects.
A real greenhouse does not stay warm because of the heat trapping effects of greenhouse gases. A real greenhouse stays warm because the glass reduces cooling by convection. This is a convective greenhouse effect. So too on Earth..The surface of the Earth is 33 degrees C warmer than it would be without an atmosphere because gravity limits cooling by convection. This convective greenhouse effect is observed on all planets in the solar system with thick atmospheres and it has nothing to do with the LWIR absorption properties of greenhouse gases. the convective greenhouse effect is calculated from first principals and it accounts for all 33 degrees C. There is no room for an additional radiant greenhouse effect. Our sister planet Venus with an atmosphere that is more than 90 times more massive then Earth’s and which is more than 96% CO2 shows no evidence of an additional radiant greenhouse effect. The high temperatures on the surface of Venus can all be explained by the planet’s proximity to the sun and its very dense atmosphere. The radiant greenhouse effect of the AGW conjecture has never been observed. If CO2 did affect climate then one would expect that the increase in CO2 over the past 30 years would have caused an increase in the natural lapse rate in the troposphere but that has not happened. Considering how the natural lapse rate has changed as a function of an increase in CO2, the climate sensitivity of CO2 must equal 0.0.
The AGW conjecture talks about CO2 absorbing IR photons and then re radiating them out in all directions. According to this, then CO2 does not retain any of the IR heat energy it absorbs so it cannot be heat trapping. What the AGW conjecture fails to mention is that typically between the time of absorption and radiation that the same CO2 molecule, in the lower troposphere, undergoes roughly a billion physical interactions with other molecules, sharing heat related energy with each interaction. Heat transfer by conduction and convection dominates over heat transfer by LWIR absorption band radiation in the troposphere which further renders CO2’s radiant greenhouse effect as a piece of fiction. Above the troposphere more CO2 enhances the efficiency of LWIR absorption band radiation to space so more CO2 must have a cooling effect.
This is all a matter of science.
I think I’d quibble with your statement that “The surface of the Earth is 33 degrees C warmer than it would be without an atmosphere” I am never certain what is meant by the surface of the Earth. It seems to me that if you try to account for the cold of the ocean abyss, that 33 number has to go down. Taking atmospheric temperature at sea level seems somewhat arbitrary. Yes, the place where sunlight impinges the solid and liquid surface is the logical place to measure a surface temperature, but the existence of the huge amounts of cold in the waters of the ocean has to be accounted for if you are thinking about what is the “surface temperature” of the Earth. Remember that the heat in a volume of air is tiny compared to an equal volume of water, and that the entire mass of the atmosphere is represented by water to a depth of just 33 feet.
I will agree with you that the 33 degrees C number is quite debatable. But it is the AGW conjecture that claims that it is greenhouse gases in the Earth’s atmosphere that causes the Earth’s surface to be 33 degrees C warmer than it would otherwise be because of the radiant greenhouse effect caused by the LWIR absorption properties of greenhouse gases. However there is another body of theory that says that the Earth’s surface is 33 degrees C warmer then it would otherwise be because of the convective greenhouse effect which has been derived from first principals and does not depend on the LWIR absorption properties of greenhouse gases. It is the convective greenhouse effect that causes the lapse rate in the troposphere. We are talking about the average temperature of the atmosphere at an altitude where the atmospheric pressure equals one bar.
The article is redirected to a govt site
If you want to go to the science of the thing one should concede the science of CO2 as a greenhouse gas. It also needs to be pointed out that the warming trend of the twentieth century was a beneficial thing. If the nation’s breadbasket experienced the kind of freeze that was experienced in the nineteenth century on the night of June 4, 1859, devastation would be just as great as global warming scenarios.
Mr Siegel, I have just read your entire essay and I was very impressed with its clarity and easy-to-understand format. I am not a scientist (I’m a graphic designer), but I come to WUWT? most days to shoot the breeze and see if there’s any new Pro-CAGW propaganda nonsense being misreported on that I might need to be aware of. Most days, of course, there usually is.
As a British citizen living under the dead hand of the UK’s resolutely illberal left-progressive agenda I’m afraid that truth and honesty have long since been effectively banned from the BBC (a supposedly ‘unbiased’ state broadcaster everyone in the UK is forced by law to pay for or risk criminal sanctions) when it comes to the issues of ‘man-made climate change’.
Dissenters to the dominant narratives on ‘climate’ espoused by the IPPC (and broadcast in conspicuously uncritical terms) are to be ignored, silenced, shut down: the BBC, with a legal requirement to ‘impartiality’ under its Charter mandate has now – as matter of public record – admitted that it will, as a result of the infamous ’28Gate ‘scandal on this issue, thus forth employ a new concept: what it calls ‘due impartiality. How very slippery. ‘Due impartiality’ is a sly, cowardly way of saying ‘we are going to ban the findings of science that does not agree with our IPPC/UN/EU-endorsed and bought-and-paid-for science.’
Illiberal (un)progressivism at work, folks, sucking the public teat dry for all its worth – as long as the fear remains a more power tool than the shaky, uncertain, flawed, inaccurate, demonstrably wrong ‘science’ used so relentlessly to flog its snakeoil.
SPOT ON !
I think David Siegel is wrong when says “What was clear [from his ‘better part of this year’ studies] is that skeptics are losing this battle…”
His premise is that skeptics are losing the ‘battle’ because he believes the vast majority of everyone supportive of something called the “liberal**” cultural aren’t skeptics of the hypothesis of there being significant AGW which harms.
What is clear? It is clear that the voting democratic public, who do not really think in terms of being a skeptic or a non-skeptic, are insufficiently convinced of the openness and trustworthiness of the hypothesis advocates in the liberal culture. The voting democratic public largely seems to have vastly more trust in the openness of voluntary human enterprises (businesses) that produce for them transport and fuel and warmth and shelter and food and wealth. Because I think that is clear, I think it’s reasonably clear that the ‘battle***’ is being won to defeat the hypothesis of there being significant AGW which harms. It was/is a trust seeking ‘battle’ by general public citizens who are democratic, republican, independent and other. The skeptic ‘battle’, in any given situation, may or may not augment that trust seeking ‘battle’ by general public citizens of all parties.
David Siegel and I disagree about winning-won-win.
** ‘liberal’ is his terminology so for consistency I continued using it. I wouldn’t use such terminology in a strictly intellectual dialog because it, by itself without a valid array of conceptual identifications as to what is ‘liberal’, just makes a meaningless intellectual mish mash.
*** ‘battle’ is a military kind of term and I do not use it nor other military kinds of terms in strictly intellectual climate related dialog because it is just adds distracting emotional baggage. But Siegel initiated using it right at the beginning of his post, so I used it for consistency purposes.
John
Great stuff and thanks for the research and links. The Michael Crighton (sp?) video was worth the whole thing. Things are complex. Moreso than any of us think. I read a book a while back called “in praise of doubt” which points out that much of what we believe to be true is just wrong. Too much money is being asked from us to be spent on foolish, political, projects. The experts are not experts. We can do much of this on our own. Our ancestors were exceedingly clever and said things like “waste not, want not”. Simple phrase but it has a whole lot of meaning.
I own a radiation protection business and was recently emailed by someone worried about EMF. I told them that as a scientist, I cannot say that EMF is definitely not “harmful”, but I also cannot describe a way that it could be harmful, and neither can anyone else. He was confused because so many governments had written regulations about it. I told him that writing regulations gives the appearance of doing something which is good enough for most people. Regulation written, policies changed. But then I pointed out that the distance a cell tower must be away from a house in the regulation is completely arbitrary because no harm has been demonstrated by the dose of EMF regardless of how far they were away. There is no demonstrable basis for harm. So the distance specified has no relation to demonstrated harm. But it does have the appearance of doing something.
The resources expended in making all these changes could have been used for something more positive.
“I became vegan because I believed it was healthier (it’s not), and I’ve stayed vegan because I believe it’s better for the environment”
That doesn’t make sense. Seems to me that you’re doing yourself and the environment a disservice if it’s not as healthy to be vegan. (And I am aware of being a vegan can be deadly – a lot of people are coming to realize that)
It makes perfect sense if your brain is wired or has been re-wired to believe that the individual should sacrifice for the benefit of the multitude. In this case the individual is sacrificing his health for Gaia. The Apocalyptic Global Warming movement seems to people who need to sacrifice, and they always seem to see their slightest hang-nail as out weight every one else’s bleeding neck.
I don’t believe we’re losing – if it looks like we are, it’s because we’re having it shoved down our collective throats by a tyrannical administration.
Thank you Mr Siegel. It takes courage to challenge fashionable wisdom. Its proponents are descendants of onetime believers in phrenology. I used to teach “climate change” but was always troubled by the endless gloom and ad homs. 10 years ago I too did some research and it completely and immediately changed my mind. Lost a few friends along the way, in particular one who is desperately trying to exploit carbon trading. I believe that the world’s economic situation, which a close friend in the higher echelons of the banking world sees going belly up in a heartbeat, will plant a stake through the heart of this monster at midnight on some God forsaken crossroad.
Mr. Siegel, what you did takes a tremendous amount of courage as you will never be forgiven by the left. When you stopped drinking the kool-aid you have become a non-person in their eyes. You will probably need to travel in different circles now and you will be black-balled by the traditional media. They will never even listen to your logical and cogent arguments because it’s never been about the science. It’s about control, the left’s no-growth agenda, and the tremendous amount of money available to those who worship at the global warming altar. I disagree about your conclusion that we skeptics are losing the argument. Average Americans who have much more common sense than the elites will never support policies and programs that damage the economy to deal with global warming. You commented that you are a vegan not because it’s the most healthy diet but because it’s best for the environment. I agree with you that a vegan diet is not necessarily healthy; however, I have come to believe that a whole food, plant based diet with no-added oils and limited processed foods is our best chance to live a long, healthy life and avoid the most common maladies of Western society, ie. heart disease, strokes, cancer, autoimmune diseases. Some who promote this lifestyle include Dr. Colin Campbell, Dr. John McDougall, Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn, and Dr. Dean Ornish.
Finally—Rational responses! Now I can watch the National Geographic shows on TV in peace. Saw an old one the other night about the formation of the Great Lakes and the strange “ridges” in certain places. Our planet is very old and constantly changing as are all lifeforms thereon. Keep studying, students!
Thank you and well done.
Anthony, thank you for this article and your perspicuity. I believe a similar campaign has been mounted (along with ossified and politicize bureaucracy in the NRC) to impede R&D of Generation IV Nuclear Power technologies in the US, especially the Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor (LFTR). I urge you to look into it. I remain unconvinced on the _scale_ of human induced climate change; nevertheless, I believe we need to get all the way off fossil fueled energy ASAP (we will, eventually), for three reasons: 1. Energy access equity and cost. 2. Preservation of fossil hydrocarbons for engineered materials. 3. Reduction in pollution (including the large scale wastes due to manufacture and decommissioning of all other energy sources, but especially solar and wind). Climate change, if scientifically sustained, would be a distant fourth.
YOUR cap lock KEY appears to be MALFUNCTIONING
David Siegel,
You are a class act. Thanks for commenting.
Don’t be concerned with the few comments that attack you. That’s to be expected, and it happens to just about every article author. People can speak their minds here.
And that’s why this site has become so very popular. It’s up to readers to decide which comments are closest to scientific veracity, and which are just promoting a political/religious narrative. And as we see, most readers here are skeptics of the ‘dangerous man-made global warming’ (MMGW) scare.
I also agree with you that ‘decarbonization’ is losing public traction. The reason is clear: there has been no global warming for almost twenty years now. Therefore, the conjecture that CO2 (“carbon”) is the cause of global warming looks to be increasingly silly. Planet Earth herself is busy falsifying that belief.
We see it in the mainstream media: a few years ago, many reader comments under alarmist articles were still concerned about AGW. But no more! Now, most comments ridicule the MMGW false alarm.
Finally, it takes real courage to go against the grain in the .edu factories and in the media. But someone has to do it. If you stand your ground, others will follow. People admire conviction. They admire guts even more, and what you did took real intestinal fortitude.
[PS: Like most skeptics, I try to keep an open mind. If global warming begins to seriously ramp up again, I will pay close attention. If a valid connection is made between human CO2 emissions and warming, I’m ready to change my mind. But so far, it’s been just the opposite. Despite the steady rise in CO2, global warming has remained in stasis for many years. In any other field of science, that would send the CO2=AGW conjecture back to the drawing board, because it was obvioulsy flat wrong. Only in ‘climate science’ would they double down, and continue to blame every possible event on AGW. No wonder the public is increasingly skeptical.]
I’ll START to worry when the climate STOPS changing.
Reblogged this on Via Veritas Vita (The Way, The Truth, The Life) and commented:
Consensus on manmade global warming? Are you kidding?
The “consensus” is in favor of something else: staging and maintaining a media blackout to conceal the dissenters, to pretend they don’t exist, to pretend “the science is settled.”
Reality is engineered consensus. But when that doesn’t work, “experts” just assert there is a consensus when there isn’t.
“What the hell, let’s just say that ‘everybody agrees’ manmade warming is destroying Earth and we have ten minutes to solve it, and let’s get our friends in the press to shut out the naysayers. You know, media blackout.”
Science is supposed to be about evidence and proof, not consensus. But that idea is now laughed out of court. Science is about PR and who sits on the important thrones.
Useful predictions? We don’t need no stinkin’ useful predictions. We just need dupes, and we got plenty of them.”
Here are a few excerpts from the boggling Climate Depot report:
“We’re not scientifically there yet. Despite what you may have heard in the media, there is nothing like a consensus of scientific opinion that this is a problem. Because there is natural variability in the weather, you cannot statistically know for another 150 years.”
— UN IPCC’s Tom Tripp, a member of the UN IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] since 2004 and listed as one of the lead authors and serves as the Director of Technical Services & Development for U.S. Magnesium.
“Please remain calm: The Earth will heal itself — Climate is beyond our power to control…Earth doesn’t care about governments or their legislation. You can’t find much actual global warming in present-day weather observations. Climate change is a matter of geologic time, something that the earth routinely does on its own without asking anyone’s permission or explaining itself.”
— Nobel Prize-Winning Stanford University Physicist Dr. Robert B. Laughlin, who won the Nobel Prize for physics in 1998, and was formerly a research scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
“The dysfunctional nature of the climate sciences is nothing short of a scandal. Science is too important for our society to be misused in the way it has been done within the Climate Science Community.” The global warming establishment “has actively suppressed research results presented by researchers that do not comply with the dogma of the [UN] IPCC.”
— Swedish Climatologist Dr. Hans Jelbring of the Paleogeophysics & Geodynamics Unit at Stockholm University.
“The whole idea of anthropogenic global warming is completely unfounded. There appears to have been money gained by Michael Mann, Al Gore and UN IPCC’s Rajendra Pachauri as a consequence of this deception, so it’s fraud.”
— South African astrophysicist Hilton Ratcliffe, a member of the Astronomical Society of Southern Africa (ASSA) and the Astronomical Society of the Pacific and a Fellow of the British Institute of Physics.
“In December 8 2009, 166 scientists from around the world wrote an Open Letter to the UN Secretary-General rebuking the UN and declaring that ‘the science is NOT settled.'”
“On May 1, 2009, the American Physical Society (APS) Council decided to review its current climate statement via a high-level subcommittee of respected senior scientists. The decision was prompted after a group of over 80 prominent physicists petitioned the APS [to] revise its global warming position and more than 250 scientists urged a change in the group’s climate statement in 2010. The physicists wrote to APS governing board: ‘Measured or reconstructed temperature records indicate that 20th – 21st century changes are neither exceptional nor persistent, and the historical and geological records show many periods warmer than today.'”
As an adjunct to your open letter, I would like to present the idea that an increase in CO2 is actually going to be vitally important if we are to feed a growing population. I heard a commentator complain about the population increase and complain that we cannot expect another green revolution. I immediately realized that the increase in CO2 will act to increase this century’s food production, just as the new agricultural ideas of the Green Revolution increased the 20th century’s food production capability.
@David Siegel
“I’ve stayed vegan because I believe it’s better for the environment (it is)”
I clicked on and reviewed the factoid page linked to “(it is)”, and see nothing there that would prove your claim that veganism is better for the environment.
Wolves frequently kill more than they can eat, should they be re-educated into omnivores? Would that serve the “environment”?.
Hunters and fishermen may also over-harvest, but they are more easily re-educated. Would you have mankind stop consuming animal tissue and convert every available patch of water and land to the cultivation of edible plant material? What sort of environment would that produce?
A very real fact is that vast portions of the world’s surface are not capable of supporting any sort of agriculture or aquaculture. The best, and most environmentally sound, food productivity in these areas come from harvesting animals.
And, BTW, although I claim neither expertise or even strenuous lay study of the subject, my reading of credible reports over the years from both official government statistics and those who hunt and guide in polar bear regions of North America persuades me that the population of this species is not endangered by the regulated hunting that they’re subjected to, and that it is more likely that they have benefited from such management.
However, I congratulate your coming to your senses, if only somewhat, and rather belatedly.
Great article with great links.
“In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.” –George Orwell