Guest Opinion: Dr. Tim Ball
Courts will not listen to or judge scientific disputes. The basic argument is that it is “your paper” against “their paper” and they are not qualified to judge. This was the issue when I participated in appeals to the US Supreme Court over actions of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). It is also the case in the three lawsuits filed against me. They are charges of defamation and not about the science. The lawsuits are effectively Strategic Lawsuits against Public Participation (SLAPP) or a legal form of ad hominem attack. The question is, if I am so wrong about the science, as they claim, then why the lawsuits? The answer is because they cannot say I am not qualified, although they tried, and my ability to explain the complexities of climate science in a way the public understands threatens them.
The same problems confront any discussion in a formal hearing about climate science. Politicians are no better equipped or qualified to determine a science confrontation than the Courts. Scientists who participated in the December 8, 2015, Subcommittee on Space, Science, and Competitiveness, Senate Hearings were exposed to such a dilemma. They found themselves in a forum where they were not qualified to provide the answers to questions and thus effectively lost the case. There is a solution to the challenge, but neither they nor those who organized the hearings understood it.
My presentation at the first Heartland Climate Conference in New York explained the challenges faced by the scientists identified pejoratively as Deniers in the Senate Hearings. Many listened but the few that understood were people involved in communicating science to the public. They knew the pitfalls and the techniques necessary. I underscored my point by saying that Al Gore’s movie deserved an Oscar because it was a brilliant piece of propaganda produced in the fantasyland of Hollywood. They knew how to dramatize the science to catch and hold people’s attention. Chief Justice Burton of the UK Court ruled it was propaganda in the week before Gore received his Nobel Prize, but did not order that it not be shown in the schools, even though it had nine scientific errors. Instead, he ordered that students be apprized of the problems and then shown another documentary for balance. Unfortunately, this assumes that students and teachers can determine who is right and who is wrong.
My message in New York was if the Skeptics are to counteract Hollywood they must understand and apply the same basic techniques. They must abandon the idea that getting access to Washington and participating in public hearings before Congress will achieve the goal of educating the public to the scientific truth. They must show how “Their paper” was deliberately falsified in terms the public can understand. The recent US Senate hearings failed because the “Deniers” explained the scientific problems with the science of “Their Paper.” The politicians and public didn’t understand the difference. Even if they entertained the idea that “Their Paper” was wrong they were confronted with the question of whether the errors were from incompetence or corruption, something the presenters of “Your Paper” were not able or willing to answer.
The title of the Senate Hearing “Data or Dogma? Promoting Open Inquiry in the Debate over the Magnitude of Human Impact on Earth’s Climate” guaranteed it would fail with most people. It failed despite the imbalance in presenters with four, Dr. John Christie, Dr. Judith Curry, Dr. Will Happer, and Mark Steyn arguing for Data, and Dr. David Titley tepidly arguing for Dogma. The imbalance is not surprising. I know it is difficult to get someone to debate the Dogma and that if they are willing to debate it means they know very little about the science. The failure was not the fault of the presenters rather it was the entire problem of arguing science in a political forum. It is similar to why courts won’t consider scientific disputes.
Dr. Curry signaled the defeat when she correctly demanded the right to defend her scientific integrity against the charge of being called a denier. I was surprised because I thought Dr. Curry learned the lesson about how nasty people are when you challenge the prevailing wisdom. Early in the ongoing saga about global warming, Dr. Curry leaned toward the AGW theory and IPCC science thus making her acceptable to her academic colleagues. Then, to her everlasting credit, Dr. Curry, tried to pursue proper scientific method by inviting Steve McIntyre to her University, Georgia Tech, to make a presentation on his analysis of the ‘hockey stick’. McIntyre commented about the reaction.
Readers of this blog should realize that Judy Curry has been (undeservedly) criticized within the climate science community for inviting me to Georgia Tech. Given that the relatively dry nature of my formal interests and presentation (linear algebra, statistics, tree rings etc.) and that I’ve been invited to present by a panel of the National Academy of Sciences, it seems strange that such a presentation to scientists should provoke controversy, but it did.
You cannot imagine how nasty people get until you experience it by challenging their prevailing wisdom. Dr. Curry learned as I did that the surprising and most emotionally disturbing attacks came from colleagues.
Skeptics were pleased with the performance of the presenters in Washington because they know about the science and the issues. What they forget is that the majority don’t know. Skeptics must first step out of their bias and view events objectively. Then they must understand the subjective perspective of those who don’t understand the science, which includes most of the public, the media, and the politicians.
I respect the science and integrity of those who appeared to explain the Data, however, it was difficult to watch them struggle with the political posturing. This observation is not a criticism because they are scientists and want to avoid politics as much as possible. It is as basic as the fact that by simply appearing for the Data side automatically placed them in the Republican camp. Their presence and arguments made them political. They also lacked understanding of the nature of the debate and how it exposed the Dogma side.
I regret to say the Dogma side won because the Data side failed to deal with the real questions implied in their argument. From the Dogma and citizens perspective science is science, so why are there disagreements? They see the Data presenters as representatives of a political perspective. They think this because they ask why would scientists at the IPCC present misleading data, or worse, manipulate the data? What is their motive? The Data presenter’s political motive is clear to them: they are directly or indirectly under the political or financial influence of the energy sector.
For most people the proof that the Data presenters were political was their failure to answer the questions posed by Senator Markey and others about the 97% consensus and the warmest year on record. In fact, they could not answer them because they require a political answer explaining why they falsified the data and their motive? What answer would you give?
Mark Steyn gave an erudite, humorous, blunt, assessment of the politics involved. The problem is he began by saying he is not a climate scientist. Unfortunately, this only served to underscore the view that his fellow Data panelists were also political. There was no political spokesperson for the Dogma side: Senator Markey knew it wasn’t necessary.
The problem for Data presenters is they are climate scientists, specialists each in one small area of the complex, generalist discipline of climatology. It would require dozens of such specialists to cover the subject and be prepared to answer all the questions and still they could not answer the political or motive questions.
How To Manage A Debate
For approximately three years the Roy Green radio program in Canada offered unlimited airtime for anyone who would debate the issue of Global warming with me. Nobody took the offer! Elizabeth May, leader of the Green Party in Canada, told Roy she wouldn’t debate, but would get someone to do it. A month later she told him that she couldn’t get anyone. This is why I was surprised when Ms. May agreed to a debate with me on the Ian Jessop radio program a few months ago. I won’t speculate on her motive.
I know I won the debate because Ms. May resorted to a personal attack at the end with a veiled threat of “another lawsuit.” It didn’t surprise me, although I was amazed and pleased about how many people picked up on it.
The problem with a global warming debate between two scientists is that the public would not understand; they wouldn’t even know who won. In a debate between a scientist and anyone else the scientist inevitably loses because it becomes about emotions, especially the exploitation of fear. Besides, there is always the fall back precautionary principle that we should act regardless of the evidence.
These conditions formed the basis of my thinking in preparing for my debate with Ms. May. I knew as a lawyer she would try to use detail, to find an “error” to justify rejecting the entire case. I also knew that Ms. May believed, as co-author of Global Warming For Dummies, that she knew the subject.
Ms. May did as I expected and discussed the scientific data and detail. I knew this would go over the head of most listeners as the Data specialist’s information did in Washington. I acted with discipline by not even correcting the many errors Ms. May made. There was no point in getting bogged down in data and detail that few understood. Besides, few would even know who was correct even after the explanation. It is the state of confusion and uncertainty about who to believe that is common for most people.
I did the opposite and provided general comments and examples speaking to the Dogma. The first thing was to undermine the credibility of the IPCC. Most people think that the IPCC study climate and climate change in its entirety. Once they learn that the definition given to them by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) directed them only to study human causes of change, they realize the limitations of their work. You then reinforce the point by explaining that you can’t possibly determine human causes unless you know and understand natural causes. You can reinforce thay point by saying that failed weather and climate forecasts prove we don’t understand the natural causes.
Next, you counter the myth that a majority of scientists (97%?) agree. It is too technical to present the arguments so well laid out in Lord Monckton’s analysis. It is easier and more effective to explain that very few scientists ever read the IPCC Reports. They accept, not unreasonably, the results of other scientists without question, just as the public do. The confession by Klaus-Eckhart Puls does not require data or scientific understanding. It expresses emotions people understand, including surprise, shock, and then anger that anyone can appreciate. The IPCC produced scientific documents that decimated all scientific rules, regulations and practices. You don’t need to know that when a scientist publically admits his failure in accepting, and passing on their corrupted science without question.
“Ten years ago I simply parroted what the IPCC told us. One day I started checking the facts and data—first I started with a sense of doubt but then I became outraged when I discovered that much of what the IPCC and the media were telling us was sheer nonsense and was not even supported by any scientific facts and measurements. To this day I still feel shame that as a scientist I made presentations of their science without first checking it.”
He wasn’t fooled; he just didn’t look.
I wrote much of my book The Deliberate Corruption of Climate Science years before it was published. I delayed publication because I knew from teaching Science to Arts students for 25 years, giving hundreds of public lectures, and participating in several documentaries that the public was not ready. In many ways, it was still released too early. I know many skeptics shy away from it because it dares to answer the question implied but avoided by the Senate Hearing; if the data is falsified who would do that and why? The question that automatically arises when you argue the Data or Skeptic side is MOTIVE. Not only did the Dogma win, but they also scored points by the inability of the Data specialists to answer questions that required providing the motive.
Elaine Dewar provided the motive after spending five days with Maurice Strong at the UN where he created the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), the UNFCCC and the IPCC.
Strong was using the U.N. as a platform to sell a global environment crisis and the Global Governance Agenda.
Even if the Data specialists or Mark Steyn spoke to this motive Senator Markey would argue, falsely but effectively, that it was necessary to save the planet and dismiss them as conspiracy theorists. We are still a long way from the point when explaining the motive to the public would resonate. It requires exposition of the crimes first, and that requires explaining the science in ways the public understand. One factor that prevents those that are able is seeing what happened to Dr. Curry, myself, or several others. Just ask Dr. Richard Lindzen. The price paid for even seeking the truth in climate science is financially and emotionally high, and few are willing to pay the price. Besides, the Dogmatists and the public believe energy companies’ reward them well for their efforts.
Very well written, thank you Tim!
Thanks again Tim, you make most Canadians proud !!!
I guess the message I’d hoped the hearings highlighted is that the science is not settled. Once that point has been made, then many doors are unlocked.
This is why I’ve been arguing that real scientist need to focus on the arguments 8th Graders would understand. Warmists can always come up with nonsense to confuse the uneducated. That is why this will be so difficult to defeat, science requires integrity. People trust these people are being honest. When you corrupt the peer review process it is like Caesar crossing the Rubicon. To address this there needs to be a department of scientific integrity and validity of conclusions. There needs to be a double blind approach to validating, verifying and replicating the science. No way in the world could the Hockeystick ever be independently replicated. Using a Nature Trick to Hide the decline is unique to the researcher attempting to reach a preconceived conclusion. So are comments like “we have to get rid of the medieval warming period.” http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/12/08/the-truth-about-we-have-to-get-rid-of-the-medieval-warm-period/
The Climategate Emails expose outright fraud, and yet nothing can be done. The models aren’t even close, and no one is held accountable. Something needs to be done. Eisenhower warned of this in his farewell address. Everyone needs to see this clip to be reminded of what is happening.
https://youtu.be/QowL2BiGK7o?t=1h2m7s
“.. a major turning point..” [because with] “the Republicans taking control of the house and gaining seats in the senate..”
In light of yesterday’s ignominious tuck-tail-and-run on the spending bill, which gave Obama and the democratic left a free pass on pretty much whatever they wanted, HOW SAD. In the eyes of their supporters, the Republicans’ image will be stained for a long time. For good reason.
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/12/ted-cruz-spending-gop-surrendering-to-obama-213448
What a mess. Voices of reason should consider fielding candidates as independents.
This is the reason for the lack of success of the ‘professional politicians’ in the current Republican presidential race. Unfortunately, no professional politician can be trusted; they have raised dissembling to an art form.
Sen Cruz held the hearing to debunk the climate liars. He is the only candidate calling BS on AGW. He should be vigorously supported.
Check out how many Republican senators and congressmen support renewable energy. Start with Iowa.
Good grief! What, another government department, which would inevitably be perverted by bureaucrats pursuing political agendas?
No, the CAGW edifice has to be toppled by scientists themselves, willing to defy the high priesthood, be denounced as heretics, and threatened with loss of position, livelihood, maybe even freedom and life. They have to stand up in public and challenge the major science organizations to recognize and expose the hoax, and they have to do so loudly enough that the media are forced to pay attention. Once that happens, the public will as well.
Fortunately the skeptical side has a goodly number of valiant spokesmen, including Dr. Ball, but there needs to be a critical mass, especially among the young, willing to defy their elders in the academies and societies. So long as the majority are kowtowed by the powerful into towing the orthodox line, there is no chance that the Dogma will be overturned—as it must be, before great harm is done to science and to mankind.
/Mr Lynn
LE
You could be right LE.
A march in DC or thru NYC.
I’m totally down with body painting and the like.
I’m sure your well aware that one of the key groundswell moments for green groups was back in Brazil 1992. Nearly 20K NGO organized activists went to “Earth Summit”. Politicians paid attention to this … esp European politicians who were actively courting green groups as political strategy.
WUWT, JoNova and the like are basically NGOs that exist primarily in the e-world. If they could attract attention to themselves in a meaningful way, they will also attract the attentions of a political power group.
Essentially, you are using the tactics of your opponent … worked for them.
Could work for awakening silent majority support for skeptics.
Unfortunately, culturally scientists/engineers are not prone to running around half naked in protest.
@ L.E.Joiner: I believe you are correct. Until enough scientists who see that the “Warmers” are supporting an agenda rather than the true science and form their own consensus that the AGW groups are wrong, this scam will proceed forever. It is not enough for citizens like me to oppose the climate warming crowd but it takes a “million person” march to bring this to the attention of the public. I would hope and pray that someone can organize such a demonstration at the door of the White House. That action should gain some public approval if done in a responsible manner. I would be willing to attend and add to the group. I believe it needs the leadership of a person like Dr. Bell and Ms Curry and others to give the march more credence.
@ walter mattson: Unlike the ‘activists’ like Hansen and the Trotskyite rent-a-mobs that have adopted ‘climate justice’ as their cause-de-jour, I don’t think you’ll find many real scientists willing to march in favor of empiricism and rationality. That’s the problem: by using ‘climate’ to further a globalist political agenda, the Climatists can enlist every misguided fanatic and ne’er-do-well on the planet to support their cause. Rational people have jobs and families and the sense to shy away from mass movements.
But at some point in the halls of the academy there has to be a rebellion against the stultifying oppression of Climate Dogma. It is hard for me to believe that entire generations of graduate students and post-docs can be brow-beaten forever into marching into the trenches of True Belief in an utterly failed and falsified hypothesis.
But it will take courage on the part of younger scientists to challenge the Climate Elders, risking those very jobs and families. It needs to happen with enough fanfare to encourage them all. A “million-man” march is unlikely, but hundred-man meetings at every Climate-U is possible. Perhaps ordinary citizens like us can aid by creating a Foundation that will help support independent ‘skeptical’ research and even livelihoods of young scientists willing to defy the establishment, as I suggested here:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/10/26/climate-rationalization-beliefs-and-denialism/#comment-2056577
/Mr Lynn
I’m no expert and less knowledgeable than most who post here, but it seems to me that the courts can and should rule on the issue when there is a preponderance of evidence challenging false science when that false science is used as a basis for regulations, especially regulations that tax the people. Then the court can rule that defendant Agency cannot use said science as a basis for their regulations, especially the EPA’s regulations outside their scope of authority and have to do with global issues, and that all regulations requiring taxes, must be denied. ???
Marlene, courts often have juries rule on ‘science’, for example expert witnesses in medical malpractice, or the infamous junk science silicone breast implants. But here, the Clean Air Act delegated the science determination to the US EPA . All courts can rule on is whether the EPA followed the CCA prescibed process for making its scientific determinations. The most recent SCOTUS determination that the new EPA mercury rules were illegal was because the EPA did not follow the process; it embedded the outcome at the beginning. Thus did CO2 become carbon pollution via the sue and settle strategy of Mass. v. EPA.
As a rule, appellate courts in the US only rule on matters of law, not fact. Facts are determined at the trial level, or stipulated. So Dr. Ball is correct on appellate review of science ‘facts’ under common law systems as in the US, Canada, UK, and Australia (although each country has wrinkles and exceptions).
Yes the EPA was sent back to the lower court to reargue it case. Recently the lower court allowed the EPA an extension where as the EPA promised it would be ready to present its case by April 16th. Just so happens the April 16th date is the deadline for coal plants that requested an extionsion to meet the Hg regulations. So even though the SCOTUS found that the EPA did not follow the rules set out in the Clean Air Act they did not issue a stay in the case against the EPA. All operating Coal Fired Steam Electric plants will still be forced to abide by the Hg limits enforced by the over reaching EPA. Perhaps the EPA’s Hg rule better known as MATS Regulations will be overturned in the lower court only after EPA made the U.S. Coal fleet spend 100’s of millions of dollars on unneeded activated carbon injection equipment.
Further, all lawsuits against the plaintiffs from a science case that’s already been heard, whether ruled upon or not, should be dismissed as their credentials were deemed acceptable at trial and their science has already been challenged in court and is in the record; and dismissed as a challenging, again, a settled issue, settled one way or another or dismissed for lack of standing, or any other reason. ???
OOPS – I am referring to the case being settled or dismissed, not the science. If the EPA coulld be prevented from using science as a basis for their regulations that require taxes from the people, than I think, many regulations would bite the dust, because the underlying reasons for most EPA regulations these days is for the revenue generated by the taxes, and as we know, most of such regulations do come from false science, or “secret” science. ???
Ecojustice Canada has filed a climate change complaint with the Competition Bureau which could lead to criminal charges over climate change billboards in Canada.
Friends of Science and the Heartland Institute are two of the three parties named in this complaint.
If one legal tactic doesn’t apply, then find another legal tactic.
Ecojustice has also been involved in legal actions against Exxon Mobil Canada.
If you can stand watching something that will annoy you, try watching this movie and check for nuggets of where ecofringers are coming from … http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1869716/ … The East
The ONLY court that matters going forward is the court of public opinion. All efforts should be directed at producing a series of Radio / TV spots for national airing, along the lines of the 4 inconvenient Truths post here, awhile back. Warmists and Dems are locked into their agenda, they will go to their graves with their lies.
I would have thought that the science matters above all first. You need incontrovertible science to form the backbone of any publicity you then decide.
Richard
You miss the simple power of the opponent.
Your opponent pounds the table that the UNCERTAINTY of the unknown concerning CAGW requires action ?
They masterfully manipulated risk management to get what they wanted.
This is a baited riddle for most scientists because scientists LOVE to go down a rabbit hole of detail irrespective of its perspective weight in the decision making. Far too often they are tricked by their own desire to “figure it out” into an increasingly meaningless debate over minutia.
Your opponent gets an intellectual woodie when you do that.
A different take.
After 5 IPCCs, the warmunists have become adept at reducing sketchy data to dogma, and the dogma to soundbites folks like Markey memorize and spew. That, after all, is what the SPM’s do. Soundbites are political, not scientific. What has to be done is reduce the good climate science to political sound bites, then fire back early and often.
Stuff like polar bears do NOT depend on summer ice. 70 percent of their annual total feeding is seals on spring ice during the pupping season, and they are thriving.
Arctic ice not gone, rather recovering.
SLR not accelerating in either well sited tide gauge or satellite altimetry estimates.
Models diverging from surface temp estimates, and surface temp estimates diverging from satellite temp estimates because because of urban heat contamination.
No observable increase in weather extremes like tropical storms, tornados, heatwaves,…
Planet is measurably greening thanks to increased CO2 beneficial impact on C3 plant photosynthesis and transpiration.
Sure there is a 97 percent consensus that AGW gets a lot of scientific attention because of all the money. And that CO2 is a GHG. And that it has warmed since the LIA. But not that CO2 caused all the warming, because before 1975 it could not have. The world cooled slightly from 1950 to 1975. It warmed from 1920-1950, but there was not enough CO2 to make a difference.
Did you know, Senator, that one third of the total CO2 increase has come since 2000, a period in which two satellite and four weather balloon records show the world has not warmed at all?
Please stop bringing skeptical science knives to political gunfights. Not a complicated problem.
This post and the ristvan comment immediately above pretty much mirrors my comments from the following post about a week ago
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/12/12/america-we-have-a-problem/
My words from Dec 12, 2015 at 6:03pm
and my follow-up at Dec 12, 2015 at 10:19pm which ends with almost the same words as the ristvan comment above
Great minds think alike? or, more likely, I just got lucky?
Dunno about great, but minds thinking alike for sure. Help craft the sound bites.
As my grandma used to say: Great minds think alike, and fools seldom differ,
What are SPM’s?
IPCC Summaries for Policy Makers, a maybe 20 page political condensation of maybe a 1000 page IPCC WG. Google is your friend here. AR4 and AR5 are instructive. Read the WG1s, and rhen the SPMs. A painful exercise, but very instructive. All politically adjusted. Five times, now. You know, highly confident and all that other false stuff.
ristvan said:
ristvan, …… 100% right you are.
The “nice n’ polite” guys and gals voicing their knowledge of science will always finish “dead last” in a political debate wherein the “subject matter” in question is primarily the nurtured Religious beliefs of their opponent(s) and a large percentage of the populace
To be the “winner” of such a debate one has to “embarrass the hell out of their opponent” ….. right there in front of God and everyone …. via comments and critiques that the observing audience can relate to and comprehend …. and their opponent can not deny, discredit or “weazelword” any idiotic excuses to justify their silly rhetoric.
Rebuttal comments such as …… “So you believe humans evolved from a monkey” ….. always gets the audience’s attention.
Well, it would have helped if the series of false claims by Democrats (notably Markey)
were not met with polite silence but rather were promptly shown to be nonsense.
Except for a few belated objections, they were not challenged until Cruz’s summation.
By then, so much of the stage had been monopolized, the perception to an unfamiliar audience
was dominated by exaggeration.
In terms of impact on the public and those making decisions, none of this probably
matters much – because MSM kept Cruz’s hearing hermetically sealed and Cruz’s
fellow Republicans didn’t even bother to show up. Reinforced by their latest failure,
agreement to a massive spending package that gave Obama the keys to the bank,
it’s another nail in the coffin of a species that is now on the endangered list.
Surely the absolute minimum the courts could declare would be that the science ISN’T settled? Surely this is the ONLY response the courts should declare?
Not in the US. Especially not with respect to CCA. See comment to Marlene, above.
The core problem is the CCA definition of a pollutant as something that pollutes. Without defining what that circular definition means. Sulfur dioxide, NOx, and particulates are obvious because they generally are not in an unpolluted atmosphere. CO2 is the opposite, so completely legally arbitrary. It is always present since essential for lifegiving photosynthesis. Something Congress never thought about when legislating CCA to stop smog and acid rain. There are simple legislative solutions provided veto proof. Vote wisely.
I presume you mean CAA (Clean Air Act). Delegating the determination of science to
the US EPA is like delegating the judgment on Evolution v Creationism to the Vatican.
As recently exposed, the adjudicator has been hopelessly corrupted by the green lobby.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-epas-secret-staff-1450483019
The CAA needs to be reshaped – to achieve the equivalent of a separation of church and state.
Cruz has the right idea. Unfortunately, he belongs to a party that hasn’t the resolve of a bed of kelp.
Ian says: I presume you mean CAA (Clean Air Act). Delegating the determination of science to
the US EPA is like delegating the judgment on Evolution v Creationism to the Vatican.
If you are a Creationist, then the analogy would be a good one. But if you mean by this that you think the Catholics are anti-evolution, this would not be a good analogy because the official position of the Church is that evolution is a fact. As I understand it, the Catholic Church holds that there is no conflict between religion and the theory of evolution.
I do agree that the EPA is overreaching its statutory authority. I would also agree that the EPA is not properly balancing economic costs and benefits of the regulations it promulgates, so much so that the Agency has become more dangerous than beneficial to the people it was created to serve.
I would go further, the Federal Government is usurping the role of the states in environmental management to such an extent that the US is on its way to becoming a unitary state in relation to air, and water management.
Why is the US Corps of Engineers still doing work that civilians could do better? There may have been some justification in the past but is it not absurd that the US Corps of Engineers is still operational in the US which is not been a theater of war for over 150 years?
Why has the Federal Government maintained ownership of vast expanses of land after territories became states? Does it make any sense at all for the Federal Government to own so much land?
I watched the Senate Debate and found it very interesting. I have just watched again the Channel 4 film The Great Global Warming Swindle made in 2007 (I think). It sets out the basic science that even a 3-year old would understand – it should be compulsory viewing for all children. In the film it makes very clear the motive Margaret Thatcher had to support the IPCC because of UK problems with energy in the 1970s. I find it so wrong that scientists cannot win a debate by telling the truth but that it has to be wrapped up in some propaganda to help the public change their mind – I don’t know what the answer is.
Thanks Dr. Ball. It’s a sad, but apparently true commentary on the condition of intelligent thought by Americans that we apparently as a whole do not have the ability to think critically, not just in issues of science, but in matters of politics, managing our own finances, etc., etc… We are distracted sheep being led, in step, to slaughter, with conventional wisdom and the media playing the marching music. I’m not a scientist, but I learned in high school that science demands adherence to rules, i.e. the scientific method. But when even I started checking out all this AGW/CAGW talk in 2007, it took me only 2 weeks on the web to not only believe but to know that there was no adherence to scientific principles in the AGW “science” – principles I learned in high school, for crying out load. Whatever happened to the burden of proof being on those presenting a new hypothesis? When one credible scientist can demonstrate incorrect, with data, what ninety nine other scientists claim, that is a huge problem for the ninety nine, not the one. The sad thing is that even with an abundance of credible non-AGW climate scientists, many are still compelled to march to the slaughter. A greater concern to me is that this whole AGW facade is merely one of others kinds of insidious facades (“marches” to socialism?) – all very carefully planned.
Dr. Tim, You don’t mention the MSM and their role in this. They are the truly scientifically illiterate in this debate and they have no ethics. The columnists have to make money for their employers and a never ending story of fear is the easiest way to do this. It is far too hard for those lazy people to properly investigate, by seeking out well qualified scientists at both ends of the spectrum and “cross examining” them until they understand just how hard climate science really is. Blogs are leaving the MSM behind although I think prominent media outlets will soon see the newsworthiness of presenting the true picture, inconvenient facts and all.
More and more I am condemning journalists, for unless they check the accuracy of their stories they are only repeating what they are told by the warmists. I liked Rule #3 of Gibbs on a recent NCIS program: “Always check things for yourself.”
Ian M
You must understand that with the media, “if it bleeds, it leads” is paramount. Bad news sells, good news doesn’t. Until exposing the fraud that is the warmist agenda garners more audience attention than “extreme weather”, they are blind, deaf and dumb.
katherine,
“You must understand that with the media, “if it bleeds, it leads” is paramount. Bad news sells, good news doesn’t.”
With such mantras.truisms pounded into our heads (by the mass media), it is quite possible for those who own and therefore control what the mass media presents, to have it serve up just about anything those owners want us to see, and much of the public will simply assume it was served up according to those mantras/truisms.
It’s a perfect “cover” for distorting and outright lying, as long as some sort of “this could be bloody bad news for someone someday” spin is included. Catastrophic global warming is a perfect example, since if it happened it would, by definition, be bloody bad news for millions. There need be no actual global warming even taking place, and still the “story” can be cast as a major threat being covered by a mass media that is simply “doing its job”.
I advise one not believe the mass media is really bound by any such mantras-truisms at all. I advise one realize its just a propaganda system, pretending to be serving up what the public wants to hear.
The two most important things on the side of critics of CAGW , one is the climate, not much is happening, and two, time. Whether CAGW realizes it or not they’ve locked themselves in a race with time. They’ve made catastrophic predictions by certain dates. This has lent urgency to their side that something has to be done. That urgency becomes less urgent as time goes by. The cost of destroying your economy becomes considerable more than dealing with the issues at hand. I think that was the overriding idea in Paris. There may be another climate conference in 5 years, but I doubt there will be one in 10.
The 1970’s were not a fun time for those watching food reserves. It wasn’t that cold. Today with so many more people that would be a serious issue.
CAGW had better hope they are right. If it gets colder in the coming decade they will be held accountable. They’ve stood in the way of every serious debate. Doesn’t it strike anybody as odd that no planning has been done for global warming? You would think that civil defense would be setting up plans and alerting the public on how to move with higher sea levels. You would think they would be doing all kinds of things. They’re not. The only solution, which is a non solution, is to stop co2 production. That’s not going to happen.
In short, the government doesn’t believe it either.
In short, the government doesn’t believe it either.
Glad I’m not the only one who noticed this>
ignore angle bracket…finger on shift key
“CAGW had better hope they are right. If it gets colder in the coming decade they will be held accountable.”
Unfortunately no one will be held accountable. Like cockroaches they will all scurry away and hide until the next great cause for fear, regulation and control can be found.
If it gets colder in the next few years (and there are many forecasts that it will) watch the warmists do a practiced seamless volte face and Carbon Dioxide will be causing the cold. They have been there before.
I’d have less respect for their disciplined approach if they didn’t.
I totally disagree, its a lot worse; they will be there heroes that saved the world!
Their entire agenda (although I do not like absolutes) is based on reduced consumption caused by less population. From their point of view, you cannot have it both ways.
It is a one way street towards a lower population and a reduced lifestyle.
How soon that reduction occurs and what it will entail is up to these evil monsters.
That is why you won’t see any “planning for global warming”, they are planning along completely different lines.
It looks like circumstances will bring on the Warmist utopia soon enough. Western nations will be poor and these elites will be thrown out.
Billy,
“Western nations will be poor and these elites will be thrown out.”
By whom? As poverty increases, the ability of those in power to enforce their will increases, it seems inevitable to me.. People in the employ of those “rulers” become less willing to risk their now desperately needed employment, and more willing to go along to get along, naturally.
That’s why we are being “herded” down the path we are on, I believe. More and more dependence on Government, less ans less real alternative. There really are some people with great wealth and influence, so self centered and ruthless, who got together and decided to put the kibosh on free and prosperous society, so they could live out their lives as virtual gods, I am convinced.
And that’s why “conspiracy” among the hyper-wealthy/powerful is treated as an absolute impossibility, which one must ostensibly be crazy to even suspect. Are there now and have there always been crime syndicates, cartels, Mafias, etc, that have amassed great wealth? Sure, but that’s different . . in a pig’s ass ; )
JK
Whether they did it via a society of ________ or just plain ole hyperstratification, they DO do it.
Really, the only evidence you need to see is the hyperstratified societies in London and NYC.
I don’t blame them for that tendency. We humans seem to stratify on many other levels. It’s just what we do.
They just take it to a whole nother level.
knutesea,
I’m not talking about “stratification”, I’m talking about organized crime essentially, taken to another level.
“It’s just what we do.”
So is organized crime.
apparently there is room in society for organized crime.
I hear that Italy is having a resurgence as the “migration” is overwhelming the sanctioned police force.
I’m not interested in word games, knutesea, I’m talking about organized crime that intends to destroy current “Western” civilization, because that’s where top-down rule by a few “elites” has been thwarted, to some extent.
If you feel there’s “room” in society for that sort of organized crime . . well, I beg to differ ; )
JK
We seem to get to the same place each time this subject comes up.
I never mean to play word games with you. Sorry if I create that mess.
I’d rather have an orderly sense of safety, live within a reasonable social contract and have time to ponder my navel. Unfortunately, I am increasingly faced with ensuring my own safety, shrinking the circle of the social contract and less time to ponder my navel.
I assume that when others in the world are faced with similar choices they do what they need to do. I have no illusions about how vigilante forces degrade into organized crime. I don’t like it and don’t wish that environment on anyone, but I am aware that it becomes the lesser of evils.
Clear ?
Not quite clear, Knute . . what is the greater evil you evoke?
Those “elite” criminals are monsters to me . . mass murderers, and worse . .
When the society you live in is no longer safe and the societal structures can’t provide that safety, people are often left with a choice of vigilante protection that often degrades into organized crime. I can understand how people choose the vigilante protection vs being unsafe. I think it’s a slippery slope type risk.
I know from reading your posts that you are ready to call elitists the equivalent of mass murderers. I understand how one can come to that conclusion. With great resource and power comes great responsibility. When they abuse it, many more suffer.
knutesea,
“I know from reading your posts that you are ready to call elitists the equivalent of mass murderers.”
No sir, you can’t know such a thing from my posts, for I’m not speaking of a general class of people called ‘elitists’ . . I’m suggesting it is actual organized crime we are being over-run by . . actual ruthless mobster types, who have people killed and so on, routinely, Not “the rich”, not “the elitists”, not “the left”, etc, but just SOME of the elite, rich, military, financiers, media moguls …. who are in a sort of super Mafia.
They just want all the power, period. (As I see the matter).
Yep this is why AGW could eventually be a “perfect storm” that the warmists will be caught in – or the ultimate exploding cigar. Also, nobody knows when the tipping point will come, just that it will. The challenge will be to leverage it when it happens. This should be one faux pas that they can’t shuffle their way past.
So should they/we not have had this hearing? The senator who set up this hearing understands both the science, and the dogma.
You have to keep picking away at “dogma” wherever it rears its ugly head.
That senator, Ted Cruz, has an actual shot at the US presidency. So I guess this meeting was preaching to the choir, but it may have caused some doubts in some people’s minds – those who are open minded.
As president, Cruz could choose some real scientists to head some of our most powerful energy related agencies such as the EPA, for starters.
We have to (must) start somewhere, and since you believe this meeting was a wash, what would you suggest in its place? I was waiting to see a better solution at the end of your article (maybe I missed it). Do you have a better solution than meetings like this? At least both sides showed up, even though it was lopsided.
I would have liked to have seen Dr. Patrick Moore at that meeting, (and Anthony W. for that matter)…
The hearing did accomplish one thing for sure and that is I am changing my Grand Old Party (GOP) primary vote from Rubio to Cruz.
Unfortunately this is a race about the female voting block. Hillary had a big chunk approaching 70%. That’s shrunk to sub 50. If anyone wants to be beat Hillary they will have to capture the female vote. Does Cruz appeal to the female vote ?
I changed my vote to Cruz and joined his organization several weeks ago after I saw that video of him at a hearing with that no-nothing CEO (who’s name escapes me at the moment).
For the first time in my life I am a single issue voter.
@ knutesea
That female voting block approaching 70% ….. for Hillary, …doesn’t surprise me any ….. simply because of the scientific fact that the human female is born with an “inherited survival instinct” that pretty much dictates that she makes an “emotional decision” rather than a ”logical decision” in times of trouble, fear, self-preservation or danger to her offspring (child/children)
Yup, ole Hillary has the gender card much like Obama had the black card. If the GOP fails to select a candidate that attracts the females, ain’t no way they get elected.
Now don’t let the touting of Hillary’s poll #’s get your common sense reasoning all confused and bewildered.
Iffen 1,000 registered Democrat females were asked (polled) which of the three (3) Democrat POTUS candidates they would vote for in the Primary Elections, …… a cold 6-pack of beer says that its no surprise that 70% of those females would choose Hillary.
But the Primaries don’t mean diddly poop, …… it’s the General Election that determines “who” the Electoral College seats as (votes to be) POTUS.
Good points, J.P.
I think Tim Ball is using the wrong yardstick. One such hearing is never going to sway the majority of the audience outright. However, giving a stage to scientists like John Christy – I thought his testimony was very clear, calm, and effective – will make some people realize that there is indeed another side to the debate.
“Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one.”
All we can do is to give a hand to those who are ready to recover their senses, to start thinking for themselves. The senate hearing did contribute to that.
Add to that the excoriating description Mark Steyn gave regarding his abuse from litigous Michael Mann and the political implications of this Climate Change Meme become very obvious to even unscientific women.
I wonder if Dr. Ball was expecting the momentum of this movement to be eliminated in a single hearing?
RockyRoad,
It is inconceivable to me that Mr Ball thought a single hearing could slay the CAGW beast . . but he may be underestimating the damage to it that such a hearing can do . . It must, I feel, be born in mind that once someone sees this emperor has no clothes so to speak, they don’t forget and drift back into believing he’s wearing a tailored suit (or lab coat ; )
It’s pretty much a one-way street, with more and more people moving toward skepticism (and even outright disbelief), and very little traffic in the opposite direction. And, it’s the most able to grasp the scientific aspects and political/societal implications, who can then spread the “denial” among their friends and associates. Highly “emotional” or simplistic sorts of approaches are not the only way to make progress in this “war” therefor, . I feel.
“As president, Cruz could choose some real scientists to head some of our most powerful energy related agencies such as the EPA, for starters.”
The problem is that the EPA and other such agencies are now populated with “Environmentalists”, who have never learned any real science, so any new leader would just be beating his head against a rock wall composed of idiots from Green Peace. What a pity.
Philip
The GOP has the reins and thus can parade a weekly testimony show if they wanted too.
Skeptics are at a disadvantage because they are outshouted by the larger media. The GOP could help by increasing the exposure to more than just an occasional panel.
I don’t know why they don’t do that … puzzles me.
I was pointed to the fact that the GOP has more personal wealth associated with oil and gas.
http://www.opensecrets.org/
http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2015/12/in-climate-debate-obama-faces-a-congress-heavily-invested-in-the-oil-and-gas-industry/
That could be the reason, but I’m just not sure.
They could also have their eyes on the presidential prize and realize that CAGW is not a pivotal issue … they don’t want to blow political capital fighting it.
no votes to be gained on that, but potentially many to be lost
wait until after the election
truth
we need a “Feynman o-ring moment”.
the natural world will eventually confirm or deny the models, how much of a downward trend in degrees C/year would it take given CO2 levels contnually rising at current rate to invalidate the current models?
People will have to get cold, hungry and pissed off before the spell is broken.
The models are already invalidated.
Any cooling at all would just make them even more thoroughly disproven.
There is a very good reason that the satellite data is studiously ignored by the warmistas, and why the surface data records are in a constant state of adjustment to cool the past and warm the present.
The reason is to prevent cooling from showing up.
None of the models can even be reconciled with the pause, let alone an actual decrease.
I wish my tomatoes would adjust their climatic requirements along with the homogenizations performed by the Warmistas. I quit growing tomatoes two years ago because I couldn’t get any to ripen–any further cooling will certainly not make things better, regardless of how much they fudge the temperature numbers.
build a greenhouse /sarc
RockyRoad,
I built a “green box” in which to start my tomatoes (and peppers) earlier . . and not have to pay five bucks a pop for plants someone else started earlier. I will be starting some about the first of the year, not because I can’t get them to ripen here (in California), but because I want them sooner for fresh consumption, and in greater abundance for processing into jars of delicious “salsa” to be consumed all year.
I built it with wheels, so freezing temps (which we can get here till about the end of March) are not a big problem.
On wheels !!!!
That is so smart.
I’ve also been seeing chicken coops on wheels being marketed as Christmas presents.
The story I heard was Feynman was essentially led to the O-rings by someone who had inside information that the O-rings were problematic. Basically complaining the O-rings in his classic car wouldn’t seal when it was cold.
John Casey (part of the investigative team) could verify/validate that story for you … retired now in Floriduh.
Also an active climate skeptic
It was Sally Ride.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/express/wp/2014/09/18/sally-ride-5-things-you-may-not-know-about-the-astronaut-based-on-a-new-biography-by-lynn-shear/
Indeed, I wonder who she gave it too ….
Ride told Kutyna, Kutyna told Feynman…
Kutyna used the carburator trick to give Feynman the clue in his garage. Everyone else was a government contractor or employee. Feynman had nothing to lose,
the combustion engine saves civilization once again
Here is the transcript (and the subsequent one) were NASA’s cover-up really began to break down. Pay particular attention to the questions of Feynman, Ride, Kutyna, and Wheelon.
http://history.nasa.gov/rogersrep/v5part6a.htm
Thanks Tom
a single voice at the right moment makes a difference
DR. FEYNMAN: Mr. Mulloy, when you use a math model, do you have any idea of how accurate it is?
MR. MULLOY: We did not just use the math model. What we did was build a math model that was correlated to test. There was a test fixture that was built to empirically determine the maximum erosion that could occur while filling the annulus between the putty and the primary O-ring and the annulus between the primary and the secondary O-ring.
Then Thiokol’s, Dr. Salita’s math model was shown to correlate very well with that, and I guess I can’t put a percentage accuracy on that. But the fact that the math model correlated pretty well with the test results gave us some confidence in that and the fact that the test demonstrated that there was a significant margin that was tolerable in terms of the amount of erosion, given the dimensional tolerance.
DR. FEYNMAN: I think that the math model determined how the constants were determined and a line was put through the previous data on a somewhat similar material. And the line that was put through deviated. It doesn’t always give the same answer. You took an average rather than the maximum, so that there were factors of 2 above and factors of 2 below on the original data. If you would have known that, you could have appreciated that what this thing predicted could easily be a factor of 2 below the right answer, because in fact it didn’t even fit with the data on which it was constructed.
You weren’t aware of that?
MR. MULLOY: No, sir. I was not aware of that.
Thank you, Dr. Ball.
“ … the Dogmatists and the public believe energy companies’ reward them well for their efforts …”
OK, prove it. Lay out graphics for all the money given, invested, granted … for the alarmists and the skeptics. Include it all. Even the bits from/to/through Heartland. Get that unbelievable imbalance firmly embedded in the public’s memory. Let it brew for a bit. Think of the time and careers and industries (NSF, NASA, NOAA, Sierra, Greenpeace, WWF …) that must be protected. Get this massive imbalance entered into evidence. It doesn’t require any scientific background. It is the peoples’ money.
I think the public will not be surprised to learn, yet again, that their government has failed them and has its interest at heart over theirs.
So, what could the government’s motive possibly be?? How are they funding that? I think that picture is clear and opens the door to other pictures – temps vs CO2 since 1750. Government controlling energy by vilifying CO2.
Thank you for trying to explain this. I’ve said this for years – we are losing the war. The young people have been indoctrinated into the religion, and, like a Catholic priest once said about the church – “Give them to me in the cradle, and I’ll have them to the grave.” Try explaining to a young person how there is no good science showing CO2 to be a problem and watch their eyes gloss over. Try going on a forum like Ars Technica to explain this. They will argue with you forever about temperatures, or ocean levels, or ocean acidity, or any number of subjects. Tell them that the science consists of curve-fitting computer models to poor quality proxy data, and they will kick you off the forum until the thread dies down. Tell them that what the computer modelers are doing is exactly what Richard Feynman described when he wrote “Cargo Cult Science”, and they will kick you off the forum. I used to go on there for one main reason – to see if some PhDs could pound me into the ground and prove to me that I was wrong. They never could, but they could get rid of my voice whenever I got too close to the truth.
I sense here that we will be vindicated, because we are right. But, that doesn’t mean anything as far as winning. As more and more young people get indoctrinated into the religion, it will get more and more impossible. As more and more companies are given access to streams of new tax money, it will get more and more impossible to change course. At Paris, the people there really got what they were after the most. They got funded another one hundred billion dollars to keep working on this for the coming year.
We’re losing.
We are not losing. Buck up. Even Hansen said COP21 failed. No enforceability. No transparency. No commitment to fund the $100b/year GCF. How about contributing to skeptic sound bite shaping, since this is more about politics than science, and has been ever since the IPCC charter.
I agree with Kermit. Even though I agree with your points, an “agreement”, however flawed, will be interpreted by the masses as confirming the issue.
I am very worried about the well-being of my children, and (hopefully, someday) grandchildren. Not because they will face a hostile climate, but because they will have to try to compete in an economy that has been willfully hobbled by its own insanity. For their sake alone, I will continue to try to open their eyes.
The young adults aged between 20 and 40 have witnessed a culture where lying is rewarded if you can get away with it and you can be “somebody” just for knowing “somebody”.
It has created an explosion of the ends justifies the means because they are surrounded by posers, liars and fakes who somehow make it up the ladder to rule the world.
Primarily they are increasingly thinking that they have to have the better hoax to outdo the person who is going to pull a fast one on them first. It’s why the world feels upside down.
But you are not winning.
At best you are nipping at the heels of the giant.
Your opponent is taking advantage of the path of least resistance.
Watts 2015 has the potential to be a turning point. It will cool the ardor of some believers, making them more doubtful. And the public sympathizes with the little guy who exposes a big phony’s baloney. It could become as well-known as the Pause–and as, or more, important. It undermines the case for catastrophe, and thus for action.
My favorite Feynman interview, where he explains that to answer a “why” question, you have to get to a point where your audience accepts on faith that something is true.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=MO0r930Sn_8
To answer a “why” question one must assume that there is a reason/intention. You don’t ask why the humans exist, unless you assume that there is a higher being who created us for a reason. Many confuse the “why” question with the “how” question. For example one should ask “How was the universe formed/”, not “Why was the universe formed”.
The mass media is serving items the public would like to hear or know. Even without global warming or global cooling, the most that makes the news are about disasters, murders, accidents, — or all the bad things. If the event reported has taken place, the reporter or the editor imagination to beat the competitors by making the story more attractive to the public by exaggerating the disaster or nasty event is limited by possible verification. However, if the events is still to come and especially if there are computer models and some sort of authority even if a charlatan authority, the reporters and the editors have practically unconstrained use of their imagination to play on the public need for scary stories. This is the big difference– the skeptics position is ” carbon dioxide is the wrong culprit” would only make one news item and that’s it. It will never be a news item again. It is boring, out of place on what the public wants, and what the public wants the politician responds. It is for this reason, “:the end of the world ” and all the fearsome predictions that goes with it is a favorite of charlatans and there are always masses who believes on it and no matter how silly or incorrect the MSM loves it. The skeptics is after the correctness. It may make one new item in the future when proven to be correct but that’s it. One potential news item in the future. Most likely the universal focus will be on another potential disasters. did anybody remember the predictions of millennium bug. how about the clear minds that have tried to tell the public it was not a problem–have there been any acknowledgement of their correctness? How about the scare of the coming of another ice age a few decades back with all the horror stories of famine, diseases, etc. and the skeptics then?
I dont like it but if some of the skeptics would like to win, then paint all the gloomy pictures–run computer models on the increase in electricity price, unemployment, financial crisis, crimes, death, etc. Forget about the impacts on third world countries.
The media serves up stories to drive an agenda.
Conflating this issue with the millennium bug is incorrect. The reason there were no major disasters behind the millennium bug is the millions (just a WAG) of programming hours invested to correct the problem. I personally spent 6 months working through a legacy system to prevent A/R and other system from losing it because of poorly coded dates.
You really had systems which still had century truncated dates by then ? COBOL ? My old Wall Street conference friend John Westergaard was one of the central gadflies touting the impending disaster . I argued with him the he was grossly exaggerating the number of systems at risk . Lots of systems have lots of different overflow dates . I think C timestamps overflow in another decade or 2 . I just keep timestamps as a float , eg : 20151223.093109 , which I think is a fairly standard practice now days . Overflow’s not an issue .
I don’t know what the answer is.
================
How about starting with one single issue? Ban all Private Jets worldwide. A global ban on private jet travel. A legally enforceable ban. Anyone breaking the ban would be shot down.
Why has this not been done? It is the leaders of the world, political and economic that travel via private jets. These are huge CO2 factories to the benefit of a few. They are spewing carbon pollution down on the rest of us with impunity. Huge CO2 cesspools in the sky, raining down on the rest of us.
If these folks, folks like Gore, Kerry, Clinton and Obama, truly believe that CO2 created Climate Change is the greatest threat, then set an example for the rest of the world. Stop flying around in private jets and travel by coach like the rest of us.
Or is this a case of do as we say and not as we do? Do we in point of fact have a bunch of world-class hypocrites in positions of power, that are more than willing to prescribe a horrible tasting medicine for the rest of us, but would never personally take it themselves?
Start with a single issue. Drive the nail home before moving to the next nail.
Their policies don’t seem to care about loss of others’ lives.
Maybe if it was their own lives and lifestyles at risk from their policies?
What about all commercial travel? Let’s ban that too, followed by motor sports. Why don’t they do that, if they really think CO2 is the biggest threat to the world? Obama should set the example by giving up Air Force One! And if they were really serious about following this whole thing through, they should start curbing plastics manufacture, which is a huge producer of CO2. Cut down the number of cellphones for instance. Wonder if the warmists would be happy then?
My mother – 92 years old – asks me about this and I say, “It’s politics – look at all the traffic, the airports are open, want to watch some NASCAR?”
Hear the wisdom in your gramdma’s wisdom Bubba.
I always test out ideas on my grandma first.
If she can get it the world will understand.
“Obama should set the example by giving up Air Force One!”
You mean B.O. would have to telecomute to Hawaii, and watch his vacation on his laptop or smart phone? Maybe, not a bad idea.
Are you sure? I thought they were travelling in solar-powered jets!!
The fuel consumption of the executive jet could well be better than the limousine that took the executive to the airport. There are more limousines why not start with them?
Modern aircraft are extremely fuel efficient. Modern single aisle aircraft have fuel consumptions well in excess of 100 miles per gallon per passenger. Aircraft are hugely safer than road travel and really the only option for some journeys. That is before you get to the what is the problem with CO2 anyway?
A Failure? Hardly! Anyone with eyes to see and ears to hear, would find the alarmist position as nothing but a series of half- truths and logical fallacies.
Excellent post. It is difficult to open closed minds but I believe we are making headway albeit slowly.
The fact that the ‘skeptics’ perspective was given a hearing in congress is encouraging. It is Fear and Greed the henchmen of Political persuasion that have been so adroitly used in this issue, but this old engineer believes there is more common sense than mindless morons out there! let’s hope.
Common sense lives and breaths.
It’s distracted and scared these days.
Remember (or look up) how long it took to turn the Dreyfus case around. And (within France) that was a real case of the (very, very) few against the many.
Elizabeth May huh….
remember that list I posted not to long ago? do any of you remember what it was at the top of that list? I believe it was Democracies and The Bar/Lawyers who were number 1.
I told you once and I’ll tell you again; all this garbage, all the spin, deception, media drivel and legal jargon has its origins in a Democratic system and within that system……. below or at the top……… there are lawyers!!!! Master manipulators.
Elizabeth May is a piece of garbage. She’s either incredibly naïve or directly connected to the spinning web of deception. She, like everybody else has a lot of nothing to say. That theatrical performance I commonly know as ”climate change” is about something else. Perhaps its about control or one of many steps to control by moulding the minds of those who are not part of the club. To me, its about land and without land….. man is a surf. So who was responsible for hiding the letters patent or the land patent grants from the general public and instead replaced it with a warranty deed? Guess what THE LAWYERS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Fyi: The role of a judge is to interpret the law, not make it or give it.
DON’T BE THEIRS TO CREATE.
Dost not the butcher’s trade keep thee busy enough, Dick?
Downright good link to the influence of the trail attorneys association. You’d be blown out of the water if you knew the full expanse of their efforts. CO2 is the biggest cottage industry opportunity in the history of trial attorneys. Just wait till attainment levels are published and class actions lawsuits start rolling in.
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/trial-lawyer-industry-tries-to-buy-a-democratic-majority/article/2555105
It is amazing how prophetic the Global Warming Documentary was. This clip highlights exactly your comment. The fraud is simply too obvious, problem is, the people perpetrating the fraud control the government and are the ones that could do something to stop it.
https://youtu.be/QowL2BiGK7o?t=1h4m36s
It is TOO obvious, isn’t it ….
Great link, thank you. Will share.
happy to have made a positive contribution … pushing the rock up the hill is always hard
Thanks for the article, more info…..more proof
Elizabeth May is directly connected.
Green Party Canada evolved from Greenpeace Canada.
It is tragic that what should have been an evaluation of the data by objective scientist degenerates into a partisan political diatribe. CO2 is not a pollutant but an essential ingredient in the Earth’s ecosystem.
The hearing would have been more effective if we had heard from a liberal Democrat who has properly concluded that the whole Anthropogenic global warming/climate change arguments are nothing but cherry-picked, anecdotal snippets. Any objective scientist analyzing the totality of the data must conclude that from Gore to Paris, the whole thing is a fraud…..a fraud is a fraud, is a fraud, is a fraud,…etc.
. Keep up the good work Tim, but let’s not let the perfect be the enemy of the good
Marty H..
I argue a lot on the local blogs and the believers almost always have just a few main points:
97% of scientists
Warmest year ever, or just look around (at melting snow, floods, droughts etc.
Oil company money.
These are where the debunking should concentrate.
So, craft counter soundbites. See my feeble efforts upthread. And get cracking.
Ask a group of scientists is the wall is white and 97% will fine some evidence of white pixelation.
jim December 19, 2015 at 3:13 pm
I argue a lot on the local blogs and the believers almost always have just a few main points:
Don’t know that John/Jane Public read “local blogs,” but they do read “Letters to the Editor.” Based on my local experience, your list and a handful of other points are indeed what keep coming up. A local assistant professor even claimed, “climate change models have withstood the rigors of tests and are credible.” One wonders which of the 100 or so he was referring to. Comments on WUWT and Climate Etc. provide a wealth of information for Letters to the Editor. Thanks to all.
They do not tolerate skeptical views on many Letters to the Editor boards.
Just try posting anything remotely skeptical on Scientific American to see what I mean.
Menicholas December 19, 2015 at 7:50 pm
They do not tolerate skeptical views on many Letters to the Editor boards.
The LA Times is the poster child for banning skeptical view. My bet is that there are other local papers in the La area that don’t have such policies. Many papers also limit each individual to 1 letter per month; so make your 1 letter per month count. I am fortunate that my local paper has no such policies and I have close to 100% of my letters published. Another point is stick to the science and facts; it is tempting to retaliate to the inevitable name-calling. It doesn’t hurt to remind the reader that those who resort to name-calling are in effect conceding that they have no legitimate argument. I am still looking for a tee shirt that says “I am the ‘fool who thinks he is smart’.”
“97% of scientists”
Who’ve been 97% wrong.
(Needed: An impartial, NSF-funded survey of how alarmed various groups of scientists are. Presumably it’ll find a much lower figure than 97% are in the “it’s dangerous” category, as did the only serious survey, the George Mason U. study of 2007.)
The quickest way to make someone angry is to be right.
That makes me REALLY angry to hear you say that!
I hear you.
For most people the proof that the Data presenters were political was their failure to answer the questions posed by Senator Markey and others about the 97% consensus and the warmest year on record. In fact, they could not answer them because they require a political answer explaining why they falsified the data and their motive? What answer would you give?
Not sure I can agree. I would say that they could not answer them because they were never asked. Senator Markey directed his questions to his own lapdog witness; the rules of the game were that witnesses could only respond to questions directed to them. Dr. Curry was able to speak because she had been personally attacked, and Mark Steyn was able to because…well, because he was Mark Steyn. Republican members of the committee should have thrown these issues to Dr. Happer and Dr. Christie for comment.
I have little doubt they could have given effective answers, both scientific and political. So long as they didn’t speculate on some senator’s canine ancestry.
Tim, you are quite correct the “Data” side was suborned into what was merely a political debate. I have watched the full debate, even here in Oz, and I listened to your debate on Canadian Radio. As a geoscientist I was appalled at the ignorance of the “Dogma” side of the debate. C.P. Snow recognised the problem years so many years ago in “The Two Cultures”. The gap between them is now even wider and what is worse, some on the science side have debased their principles in order to get along with the non-science side.
The lawyers and financiers with all the power in the western world just do not understand the scientific principles on which climate skeptics base their analyses.
I fail to see a solution to this schism in thought processes until Nature and the inexorable evolution of the Solar System provides one for us.
“I fail to see a solution to this schism in thought processes until Nature and the inexorable evolution of the Solar System provides one for us.”
So, we are to wait for Karma to run over the dogma?
Ever since Climategate, I have presented it as a case study in ethics to my software engineering class. (The use of fudge factors in artificially raising and lowering temperature trends to show “global warming.”)
Something happened between this year’s crop of students and all previous years which gives me hope. This year, not one single student claimed to be aware of Climategate, hockey stick, CO2 is a poisonous gas, the artic ice is disappearing, and oceans are rising, etc. The only term they had heard was “global warming,” but none had any opinion on it one way or another. In previous years, most students were familiar with those terms and were aware of the debate between skeptics and believers.
Maybe skeptics should track trends in public knowledge concerning this issue to ascertain how to effectively engage the general public in this debate.
The 20 to 30 age bracket has moved beyond CAGW as a debate and wants to engage in how to support alternative energy. See recent Pew Research results.
To Tim Ball:
You are either fooling yourself into trying to believe there is a difficult issue between appraising the public of the falseness of the AGW community, or just lying to protect your own culpable crimes. Your synopsis of what went in those climate hearings are truly slanted towards misrepresentation. Lets take some of your statements, statement 1:
“Even if they entertained the idea that “Their Paper” was wrong they were confronted with the question of whether the errors were from incompetence or corruption, something the presenters of “Your Paper” were not able or willing to answer.”
That statement shows either incompetence or corruption. If you’re not “able” to answer that means you don’t understand what you’re talking about, and that only means you shouldn’t even be their in the first place, furthermore, it means you are masquerading around as an expert in something you are not. As for “not willing to answer”, that is the classic answer that someone uses so as to protect their own culpability of crimes, in this case, scientific crimes, namely, FRAUD.
There are simple solutions here, where you sir, try to make every one believe that are instead complicated. Lies are easy to prove and disprove in science. We have what is called the Scientific Method, if it doesn’t stand to the test of the SM, then it is plain dogma, it shouldn’t be taken seriously. Especially when taxpayers money is concerned. For dogma winning tax dollars, is not research, it is FRAUD. The problem, sir, is that the Scientific Community has become corrupted with and over population of charlatans and scallywags. I noticed over the years as a referee, that the quality of scientific and engineering papers has noise dived. And the standards of said, referees has become deplorable. And lets not forget the collusion, where people pass each others papers, this has been going on for years. I remember one case where ONE Ph.D candidate used ONE set of results to get no less than NINE different papers from different journals. Did anyone care? No. In fact, it was applauded. I can go on and on, but would that do, nothing. For people like you, sir, only will seek to lie, hide, or find excuses.
The problem is that the scientific community has become corrupted. And that the peer review system, is irreparably broken. This malaise started largely in the 80’s, and has been progressively getting worse ever since.
Then you use the notion that things are too technical;
“…counter the myth that a majority of scientists (97%?) agree. It is too technical to present the arguments so well laid out in Lord Monckton’s analysis.”
What a load of rubbish. Try going through some of the greatest financial frauds that have occurred in our time, Enron, Worldcom, Tyco and Lehnman Brothers. In fact, the last one there, the forensic accountants are still punching the numbers to this day trying to get to the bottom of the financial abyss of reasons how that one worked exactly. You really think that a bunch of 2nd rate scientific morons, who started of with an idea of asking 10,000 scientists and then through stupid and bias reasons like, they were the only ones that actually published papers in global warming that fitted their distorted beliefs, thus whittling down the sample size to some 75 people that so very well selected to give a 97% support for their religion is too difficult to understand? What a load of rubbish. So your basically saying, if it is too difficult for the public, we should not introduce the rule of law? Mr. Ball, you sound more and more like someone who has something to hide himself. Are you a crook too? There is so much criminality already in science, where professors winning grants use tax payer money to buy personal toys and go on needless holidays, while research students suffer. I and many people reading this posting could name you very long lists of people who corrupt science through personal gain, but never do you see them go to prison.
Mr. Ball, you are looking, and I strongly believe, purposely, in the wrong direct. Science is corrupt, and until, THE NON SCIENTIFIC community demands to start putting the Scientific Community under the watchful eye of the fraud squads, we will have many more AGWs. When people like you who state, “[t]he price paid for even seeking the truth in climate science is financially and emotionally high, and few are willing to pay the price,” it only means, that you too are prepared to lie, cheat, and even steal to protect the thieves and corrupt individuals of science. What chance does the public have when even those like you so arrogantly place yourself in the position to claim that it is too difficult and hard to clean up science, while at the same time, benefit enormously. Dare I say, which backs are you scratching, and who are still scratching yours?
Mr. Ball, YOU ARE AN ARROGANT SNOB. You have no honour, and to write what you did in that letter of hypocrisy, above, is just an act of supreme confidence of a man who thinks he can say that, yes there are wrong doings going one, but you poor stupid people in the public will find it too difficult to understand why it is wrongful and even criminal, so don’t bother too much, we MORE intelligent scientific snobs will help you understand by making more dumb down films.
The problem here ladies and gentlemen, is that white-collar criminals protect each other. Judges, professors, politicians, and so on, rarely go to prison. Why? Because, try getting a crook, to say he is a crook, and then if by miracle you could, try getting that same crook, to punish themselves? And when that crook is a rotten cop, dirty judge, dishonest scientist, or slimy politician, who do you get to clean that up, when judges need cops, and scientists are professional witnesses and get paid really well for that, or when politicians pay all these other guys. Why is it that the criminality rate is so much lower in the white collar class than in the blue collar classes? Yes I know, the intellectual snobs will tell you that because the white collars have less need to commit crimes. Ok you geniuses, then answer this, why is it then that the recidivism rate between white collar and blue collar crimes is the same! Yeah, more white-collar snobbery, until we start treating white-collar crime with the same intent we do with blue-collar crime, scientists are going to keep on with their thieving ways. What do you say to that Dr. Timothy Ball, ex Professor.
For the record, I was born, no-collar (I come from peasantry), slogged my way through blue-collar, and eventually got educated to be a white-collar physicist. I have nothing against the white-collar class other than that they are doing a terrible job of managing this world and taking advantage of the blue-collars and lesser classes. My family and my people of which I derive myself from, have greatly suffered by the arrogant intellectual snobs of this world. We knew them by many names from where we come from, Communists, Fascists, the Gestapo, Americans, and British, call them what you like, my family and people have suffered greatly, and here I hear the same talk, the talk that things are too difficult, too complicated. This is the same talk that used just before, those who thought better than us peasants, decided to shoot or hang us, torture us, steal everything we had including our land and told us leave with nothing. This is what happens when you let the intellectual snobs of the world rule. And all I hear on this blog every single day….is just snobbery. Everybody knows what is really wrong with Science. When are we going to have an honest conversation about it!
In short, the community at large CAN NOT expect the Scientific Community to police itself. And asking something from that same community to give advice on what is problem of their corrupt community, is like going to Naples (that is Naples, Italy) in the good old days, and asking a Neapolitan if the Mafia existed.
Mr. Ball, I find your letter HIGHLY OFFENSIVE. As Hannah Arendt once said about the German people and their relationship to the evil Gestapo, in political and moral matters, obedience and support are the same. But to people like Mr. Ball, they conveniently have a dividing line. As a grandson I was once told by my grandfather, who was tortured by the Gestapo for days all because he escaped Dachau concentration camp, one of the few ever to do so, he said, after I asked him what he thought of the Germans, he said, “I have nothing against the German people, I think they’re amazing, especially considering what they have accomplished since the war, the problem is Doriano, of all the lies we were told, and those who knew better didn’t stand up to tell the truth, those people I will hate for eternity….I hate the cowards.”
This is from a man, who a few months later, escaped again from Dachau! But this time, walking only during the nights, he marched from Dachau during the winter of ’44, a bitter one it was, stealing what he could, and hiding during the days, and doing this for nearly two months and some several hundred kilometres of hostile German and Austrian territory,and then finally reaching Istria, the land of my people. After the war, once again, the intellectual snobs, Americans, British, Communists (aka Tito) decided for us peasants, and the result was we lost everything, and forced to leave Istria and start from nothing in Italia. And you know what my grandfather said, “once again, the intellectuals fucked us!”
All I ask, and my grandfather would ask, when will the intellectuals apply the same rule of law as they do to the peasants! Yeah when…
Riposa in Pace, Nonno.
Doriano
Um, I, think you, are way, off base. Sir.
“You cannot imagine how nasty people get until you experience it by challenging the prevailing wisdom.”
Here, Dr. Ball rests his case.
Off base…way off base.
Anger appears to have consumed reason with this post. I am surprised that it survived moderation.
To avoid any confusion I am referring to Dorian’s (3.35) comment and not to Dr Ball’s original post.
@Dorian… you would make prime candidate for the UN IPCC ie: an endless diatribe of meaningless BS. IMO
Everyone has a purpose in life and since it is no longer acceptable to lop off the heads of opponents, we need new tools to deal with them .. no ?
Apparently this fellow knows very little about U.S. history and the family backgrounds of so many who made the country possible. Many did not come from peasant backgrounds but wanted a free people for which they were prepared to give their lives if needed.
Here is what the opposition posted on youtube about this hearing (3+ minutes long):
That is pathetic. NASA and NOAA have well documented and adjustments, and satellite data is confirmed by balloon measurements. Nothing confirms ground measurements. Pure Alynski Blame Others Of What You Are Guilty.
http://dailycaller.com/2015/06/04/noaa-fiddles-with-climate-data-to-erase-the-15-year-global-warming-hiatus/
http://media.al.com/news_huntsville_impact/photo/john-christy-climate-change-chart-0a201a1637955761.jpg
Another excellent graphic.
What would be an alarmists reply to this one ?
WUWT, would you ask Dr Christy and Spencer to write an article answering these claims about the errors and adjustments. Also Sen Cruz should have tied the no warming to the increase in CO2.
As mentioned on a previous thread, all Cruz had to do in retaliation was to say if the retired admiral preferred a graph over a longer time period, whether he could detect any pause on a 2000 year temperature record – based on credible proxies. Then produce such a graph and also ask him, as well as any pause, could he also see any trends remarkably similar to-day.
However Cruz, would have to be able to strongly defend the sources of the graph and respond to the expected counter attack by the admiral on its authenticity. To do this he would have to have a deep understanding of temperature proxies, tree rings, the Hockey Stick, Climategate, Medieval Warm period, Little Ice Age, IPCC initial reports, differences between Northern and Southern Hemisphere, satellite measurements etc.
Perhaps a lot to ask of a senator preparing to participate in the race to be the next president of the USA.
But there does seem to be quite a few excuses in the above piece. My thoughts on the hearing are that the Skeptic’s army went in a little unprepared and underestimated the Dogma Opposition and did not fully anticipate their attack. With the exception of Mark Steyn, there was also little passion in the presentation of the Skeptic’s points in convincing any objective jury of their case.
With a deeper knowledge of climate science I reckon Mark Steyn could have done it just as well on his own. And with some-one like Christopher Monckton alongside, he would have annihilated them.
“Climate Hustle” is the popular antidote to “An inconvenient truth”.
When, if ever, it is released it chould start to turn the tide. I’m told that is funny unlike Gore’s humorless dirge!
This documentary also had a humorous bent to the global warming issue.
https://youtu.be/QowL2BiGK7o
Markey also talked much louder than anyone else.
And had that foam-at-the-mouth thing going.
Last year Christy Clark won a majority government in BC. Two weeks before the election my wife attended a a meeting with other BC Liberals and asked Clark point blank to do away with BC’s “revenue neutral” carbon tax because it hurt rural people unfairly. She looked straight at my wife and said softly “We can’t do away with it because we need the revenue.”
Dogma and money go hand and hand.
Monroe
I assume you have no reason to lie on “your moment”.
Ms Clark caressed your wife with a moment of reality.
Dr Happer in the last minutes before Cruz summation of the hearing responded to and corrected Titley’s previous fairy tale-like explanation of how Titley believed a microwave sensing unit (MSU) operated (Titley attempted to show its not able to read temperature) to detect temperature at various elevations above ground. The MSU is the main temperature sensor device in the UAH satellite temperature record. Titley had more or less said there was much interpretation and software and uncertainty involved with the MSU’s detection of temperature from hundreds of miles away and added that the MSU satellite’s orbit was constantly eroding requiring more corrections (I am just recalling some of Titley’s comments from memory). Dr Happer skillfully countered Titley’s explanation of MSU by saying that the same infra-red technology is that used by reading your body temperature by your doctor by placing the IR unit on your forehead, in your ear or elsewhere and instantly getting a temperature reading remotely. Until Dr Happer correction of Titley’s MSU description, Titley appeared to carry the truth for the Democratic side, at least as truth is viewed by Sen. Merkey. Titley’s inaccurate description of the MSU then severely taints his other comments before the hearing as well as his other abilities as a PhD Meteorologist.
As Rothbard explained over and over, the State must have the support of the majority of the population or at least the resigned acceptance. The intellectuals have always supported the state and kept the populous believing in the state and its necessity — in return for money, prestige, and honors. (once it was almost all churchmen but now the “scientist” fulfills the task) When you fight the prevailing consensus you in effect fight against the established order. No small task. We see men and women marginalized for contrary views in climate “science”, but that is not the only place. Medical research is just as bad and other fields are also.
Since the entire edifice of man-made catastrophic global warming rests upon delusion and propaganda, it is impossible to win by mere logic and facts. I doubt even a mile of ice over New York City would phase the so-called climate “scientists”.
It’s going to take a revolt by the younger scientists to topple the “prevailing consensus.” See my comment above: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/12/19/the-recent-senate-climate-hearing-failed-because-it-continues-to-miss-the-point/comment-page-1/#comment-2102853 /Mr Lynn
LE
Thought provoking.
Young adults often respond to a perceived lie with an extreme backlash on the pendulum.
I think you are right, they will eventually be part of the backlash.
How are they going to do that when their funding and career depend on conformity?
Recall Dr Happer’s remark about needing a red team. Without such support, opposing views are silenced. Et voila: Consensus.
takes awhile, but at some point folks stop wearing izod shirts.
At some point we have to hope that integrity will start to trump conformity among young professional scientists. I suspect it’s happening now, but rather than confront the Powers-That-Be who control career opportunity, the rebellious just leave their fields and pursue other paths. To encourage confrontation, I have suggested a Foundation to help support rebels in Climatology and other fields, with grants, moral support, and even income. /Mr Lynn
FYI, I suggested the Foundation idea here:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/10/26/climate-rationalization-beliefs-and-denialism/#comment-2056577
It occasioned a little positive comment. /Mr L
Still a good idea LE.
FU money makes a man more likely to be truthful.
If a pharmaceutical company brings a product to market on fraudulently manipulated data they get charged with fraud. If people die from this fraud the directors should be charged with murder. The fraud here is at many levels and the corruption infiltrates all parts of society including the legal fraternity as evidenced by the white wash of climate gate. I think that once a high profile figure is jailed for these frauds I think the dominos can set in. There must be potential whistleblowers in bureaus or government and scientific agencies who can put together the smoking guns that will get the process going. Anthony’s recent article about the adjustments made to historic temperature data are clear indications of this systematic fraud is there and needs to lead to arrests.
I don’t blame warmists for getting their predictions wrong but I do feel cheated that they seem to be able to get away with manipulating the past.
You’re not wrong about the futility about arguing about the science. I think too many skeptics concede that CO2 causes global warming but not at the rates alarmists say. As a non scientific laymen I believe that if there is a causation between CO2 and global warming it is so diffused with other factors that there is correlation. We should never concede that CO 2 has any impact ( in a meaningful sense). If you concede that there is a relationship then it literally becomes an argument about degrees. Then in the publics eye it becomes a matter of opinion who to believe.
Highlighting the systematic fraud and bullying which is the hallmark of the AGW movement is the only way the public will listen. I know that in the end the person in jail on fraud charges is probably not going to be the one that the public will believe.
Simply put if the CAGW theorists are wrong with their leap of faith from the lab to a complex global climate system then time is on our side, particularly as we mark 2015 as the year a generation reached adulthood experiencing no measurable global warming in their lifetime. Problem number two for the shifting goalposts of these global warming cum climate change cum extreme weather soothsayers is as Walter Russell Mead pointed out, it’s all very well being noisy Green alarm clocks but then it boils down to the efficacy of their prescriptions and it’s here they’re found particularly wanting.
What’s their prescriptions at their perpetual gabfests? Whatever percentage of CO2 reductions by whenever we can manage it and essentially that means more of their windmills and solar panels as CO2 sequestration and alternative geothermal, tidal generation have insurmountable hurdles on any scale. Apart from pumping water uphill and storing calories mankind’s history of storing energy is somewhat pitiful and any rational look at chemical battery storage would conclude there’s no salvation there for their pet windmills and solar panels so where does that leave them having ruled out nuclear power generation?
It leaves them facing Lomborg’s inevitable conclusion that’s where it leaves them, although they’re hanging by their last flimsy thread of rational scientific credibility that technological advance/breakthrough will make us all see their ultimate Nirvana with wind and solar in particular. Not to worry because technological advance will make solar more efficient than it currently is at collecting a sixth or seventh of the sun’s energy at present. Que? All that some 100% theoretical maximum sun’s energy collectivity would achieve, is 6 or 7 times variability from the zero at night they have now and it wouldn’t matter if the panels were free to produce if they can’t store the energy. Well it’s like this noisy Green alarm clocks. I’m still starting my car with essentially the same lead acid battery Henry was plonking in the Model T and I don’t notice any solar car for sale like they drive from Darwin to my home town Adelaide in the Solar Challenge so you work it out.
Thanks Dr. Ball. I’m afraid we will never get off this merry-go-round until there is a distinct and significant cooling trend in the climate. No matter what science is presented there’s always another “study” to counter it. The only thing that may convince believer’s is an actual cooling climate. Until then, this battle will continue forever, no matter how compelling the science of the skeptical side is.
History points to paths of least resistance when it comes to group behavior.
Perhaps the path to victory for skeptics is :
1. The cooling will come
2. Until such time, SLOW THEM DOWN and be resolute concerning the preservation of the scientific method .. it will be need to be championed to survive the donkey turd trend of decision making
3. The unintended consequence of this battle is scientists/engineers learn how to communicate risk management better
4. You are small, they are large. Pick tactics that the small use to fight the large. Full frontal attacks don’t work against a larger opponent. Slowing down the opposition while they develop a sense of arrogance will create opportunities for attack.
5. Learn to use the requirements the authorities use to qualify science to your favor. Anthony’s most recent work is an example of how to maximize that tactic.
And above all, Dr Ball raises the seminal tactic that skeptics need to stick at the heart of the matter concerning CAGW. Counter sound bites with better sound bites. Possible example …
“Oh yeah, the warmest year EVER. I’m melting. That’s nonsense. The Romans conquered the world during a warmer period. Civilization peaked.”
“Well why do they claim it is the warmest”
“Because they want to scare and control you so that you’ll give them your freedom and money. Why would they tell you it is warmer now when the FACT is that it was warmer back during the time of Jesus” ?
“Are they lying when they tell us the temp ?”
“Some people are adept at bullying others and the bullies are creating a system that tells lies”
Just a few thoughts from hillbilly world.
I agree that the panel could have said more but that was not all their fault.
The whole event was obviously stage-managed. Most of the politicians just read out their pre-prepared speeches. The scientists were really just window dressing who had been flown in to add some credibility to the proceedings.
The other problem is that the scientists tend to not only play by the rules but also assume that “truth will persuade”. Steyn was less inclined to stick to the rules so he managed to score some points.
To pick up on Markey’s 97% problem would have taken some preparation by Cruz and the panel. He could have asked them whether the 97% was correct or not. I always challenge any 97% quotes. I start by asking which paper they believe. if they do not know I go through a list:
Doran and Zimmerman 2009 – based on 77 scientists;
Cook et al 2013 – 0.3% of papers said man mainly responsible – no scientists asked anything;
Anderegg et al 2010 – Challenge the lists, the scoring and the population comparison technique.
Oreskes et al 2004 – Peiser’s re-run of the data showed that only 13 out of 1117 actually endorsed the consensus.
Only the Doran and Zimmerman paper was a survey of scientists.
The real takeaway is if these papers are so easy to find holes in how many other climate papers also have holes because some have climate scientists’ names attached.
Markey’s reliance on the science institutions should have been undermined because the panel members were also members of said institutions. Also, how many polled their members? As Curry started to say, AMS had a poll that came out 52:48 – hardly 97%.
A different sound bite attack on 97%. Please refine, polish, and offer up to our ragtag global guerilla army of skeptics. We could surely use that sound bite ammunition.
The ragtag skeptics groups organically develops its “comebacks”. WUWT should consider an IM system of communication. It would force a more succinct back and forth of messaging. I see it in fits and starts thru the posting, but it losses the continuity of exchange. The word giants exist here. They just need to be unleashed.
I watched the Cruz senate hearing and I came away with exactly the same thoughts that graphicconception verbally illustrates. No one offers any rebuttal to the 97% consensus statements that were made. On that point alone the hearing was a failure.
Regards
Climate Heretic
“The real takeaway is if these papers are so easy to find holes in how many other climate papers also have holes because some have climate scientists’ names attached.”
Unfortunately, I have to disagree.
The real takeaway is that, even though your list shows that the 97% meme is patently and transparently false, it is still being repeated to this day and ad nauseum, by everyone from the President of the United States and knucklehead who lives across the street, to the legion of tireless blog trolls who haunt the interwebs.
Like many aspects of CAGW, it is literally a blatant lie that refuses to die.
A zombie fact.
Thank you although it’s depressing. Our voice today is not going to be heard on matters of science….that much is true. However reality is poking through the dark clouds and the impending failure of renewables to take over from fossil fuels will win in the end because what we do have is time. The longer their scare tactics fail to pan out the more people will distrust them. You may be able to declare CO2 a pollutant but you can’t dictate that wind and solar replace fossil fuels worldwide overnight, or in a decade, or even a century. We’re addicted to what fossil fuels provide and until that can be matched they’re spitting into the wind.
“the impending failure of renewables to take over from fossil fuels will win in the end because what we do have is time.”
I think so. In five years I project:
Temps will be flat (most likely) or insignificantly warmer or cooler (95% certainty).
Electrical costs will have doubled.
Cars will be flimsier and more dangerous, due to their new higher MPG requirements.
Our economy will be suffering.
Our example will not have inspired others to follow in our failed footprints.
Developing world coal plants will be kicking in and CO2 will continue rising.
The impracticality of large-scale use of renewables will become plainly evident in Europe.
Some poorer European countries will start reneging on their commitments.
The status of warmists will have changed from doughty underdogs to snotty overlords, which will win them less public sympathy.
There will be defections of some prominent warmists. The percentage of the consensus will shrink.
At best, the believers have a stake in environmental stability, which is why most support selective-child rites (and a subset support clinical cannibalism by Planned Parenthood et al) under the quasi-religious pro-choice doctrine, and redistributive change schemes at progressive levels of reduced liability (e.g. federal vs state, labor and capital debasement), including those justified by the prophecy of catastrophic anthropogenic global warming. They create an illusion of operating within a scientific frame of reference, and maintain a pretense of a moral or religious orientations, while exceeding, often wildly, the first, and selectively or deceptively upholding the last.
Christopher Booker is able to get his message through:
19 Dec: UK Telegraph: Christopher Booker: The Paris climate fiasco leaves UK alone in the dark
Finally, ultra-greens and climate sceptics agree on something; that the climate conference was a scam
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/12060003/The-Paris-climate-fiasco-leaves-UK-alone-in-the-dark.html
“What we’ve got here is failure to communicate……….Some men you just can’t reach. So you get what we had here last week”….
It can’t be talked out, it needs real action to coerce people to think again, brainwashing its deactivation takes time.
It’s difficult to defenestrate an unknown known and nebulous shape shifter.
It used to be ‘original sin’ but all thanks to the Ivy league and its devotion to all the precepts of the Frankfurt School and Soros, Billary its next incarnation [by incantation?]. Thus, with Christianity been buried long ago.
But they had to move on from the idea of original sin and onto something else, it had to be invented, a perfect political myth, a vehicle for strapping the taxpayers and oh glory and mother Gaia! – an existential threat to boot. In came, this ‘man made warming’ thing but now……..its gone in way too deep.
It needs expiation and a systematic purge, a Republican candidate who doesn’t drink at the font of cool aid – the only way to wind it in, is to totally defund it and stop indoctrination of school children: for a Republican to get himself elected president and it’s way past time for that.
Then, we could start the renaissance and the offensive in earnest: back to reality, back to pure science.
To me the real fight, is the fight against “experts”. Until this paradigm of trusting people with “better education” is reversed and people are empowered once more to think for themselves the subtle push to technocracy will continue, with climate science just the pointy end of a very large stick.
My formal education effectively ended at 16 and I work a simple job, but I never go into debates with the opening line of “I’m not a scientist”. I take the Richard Feynmann definition of the question: “science is the belief in the incompetence of experts”. By this definition I am one of the greatest practitioners of science on the planet!!
I go further when I debate any scientist on this issue by saying that my opponent is either blind, stupid or corrupt and that our debate is simply to determine which catagory they fall under!
It’s time to take off the gloves and stop being Mr nice guy. This is the REAL error of skeptics.
Excuse me for bursting a few bubbles, but if you call yourself an expert in something and don’t have the ability to explain the expertise to the common man, then perhaps you don’t know your stuff as well as you think you do.
Most people are smarter than they are given credit for being, and
Most smart people aren’t as smart as they think they are.
But some are.
“But some are”
Indeed, the nugget of impact. Forums like WUWT allow thousands of eyes to both contribute and read a variety of povs. They tend to flush out weak debate and promote a stronger line.
I know many expert welders, but have only met one master (RIP). He was able to teach a variety of personalities because he focused on understanding their frame of mind, rather than force feeding his expertise.
97%, hottest evah, CO2 forcing, species armageddon, solar, wind and puppies tails are all poor welds practiced over and over. The master is the person who listens, identifies and engages why they hold onto that poor weld before trying to explain how to perform excellence.
B I N G O !
When they ask me my education credentials, I tell them, ” I successfully graduated from Mrs. McGraw’s 8th grade, took personal typing along the way and am self taught in Excel. I may have more educations than that but it’s all I need to to refute most of what passes for climate science.”
Check out Brian Martin’s booklet (free online somewhere I think), Strip the Experts (1991). It’s a Rules for Radicals for our side.
http://www.bmartin.cc/pubs/91strip.html
From the link ….
“Every group criticises experts on the other side but is happy with its own experts. Perhaps it’s time to encourage people to think for themselves rather than always trusting someone else. ”
Captain Obvious, I agree … do you have a nice little you tube link for “debating an expert” ?
At some level the Court , to be an honest Court , cannot plead ignorance of basic physics .
BA, by constitutional charter, they sure can. They resolve matters of law, not matters of ‘fact’. Including physics facts.
To be fair, when science was less ripe with corruption, the courts had an easier time of applying daubert factors. The relatively recent downward spiral of scientific independence has throw many a court for a loop.
Who says ?
It seems to me that the majority of the public are uninterested in climate change. They consider it a minor issue at best. The left, however, controls the media and they will not let it die. The issue to them, or at least to many of them, isn’t whether there is any truth to climate change.caused by human activity. To them it is all about a vast transfer of wealth. It is totally about politics, not science. If God himself were to appear and say that humans had nothing to do with climate change they would claim that God was wrong.
If God did that, the Pope would send him to a safe space to think it over.
He would tell him “think of the children”.
Rationality or fear. The choice is yours.
Dr Ball
Thanks for linking to the full interview with Ms May. Top notch stuff and gives me great insight concerning successful tactics. It was also very interesting to see the style of diversion and immediate disintegration into irrelevant minutia when I read the comments to the interview.
I think your onto something good concerning tactics.
Again, thanks for your relentless work.
Seconded. And never underestimate the importance of being persistent. (Just ask Lenin.)
Politicizing, Pointing fingers and legalizing the science of climate change, global warming and GHG is an indication that bureaucrats, Wall street, Main Street and capitalist want to figure out a way to use the Non-fossil fuel economies to exploit the masses for tax revenue, dividends and capital gains. They want to maintain the same financial infrastructure that is in the gas and oil economy, in the clean energy non-fossil fuel economy, but, clean energy/non-fossil fuel economy is sustainable not exploitable.
Politicizing, Pointing fingers and legalizing the science of climate change, global warming and GHG is an indication that bureaucrats, Wall street, Main Street and capitalist want to figure out a way to use the Non-fossil fuel economies to exploit the masses for tax revenue, dividends and capital gains. They want to maintain the same financial infrastructure that is in the gas and oil economy, in the clean energy non-fossil fuel economy, but, clean energy/non-fossil fuel economy is sustainable not exploitable. The fact is, regardless of the condition of the climate, Global warming and Green House Gases, getting out of the gas and oil economy is good for everyone, it lowers taxes, cleans up noise pollution, decrease congestion, reduces stress, reduces tension, creates job, expands innovation and makes our world a better place to live in.
Derek Rolle commented: “….Politicizing….. The fact is, regardless of the condition of the climate, Global warming and Green House Gases, getting out of the gas and oil economy is good for everyone…. and makes our world a better place to live in….”
So it’s OK to lie because the end justifies the means? I hope you’re a non US citizen or felon and can’t vote.
I generally don’t reply, but this “creating jobs” thing needs a rebuttal. Jobs can be created for sure, by marshalling labour to do tasks, but the real question is does it increase the wealth of society? This question is necessary because it does not follow that more jobs equals more wealth. There were plenty of jobs in the middle ages, but very little wealth.
What creates wealth is productivity. That is, how much each job can produce in terms of its inputs. The reality is that at the present time, renewable energy has a higher price in net inputs that fossil fuel, and using it as an energy input produces higher net costs everywhere down the line. In simple terms, more resources (labour, land, capital and energy) are required to produce a given product under a renewable energy society than under a fossil fuel society – with the sole exception of hydro.
The end result of significant move to renewables is a decrease in real wages of society, assuming they retain their jobs in the first place. The consequences of this is reduced ability of society to provide for its members – healthcare, social security and all the other benefits of a modern fossil fuelled age.
So creating jobs don’t mean a thing, though recent experience shows that jobs are actually lost elsewhere. in other words, not only is wealth creation and real wages diminished, but there is a net job loss anyway.
The welfare of a population , on average , is
| tangibleProduct % count |.The fewer jobs required , the more time people have to go fishing .They are repeating the “broken window fallacy”. It’s easy to fall prey to, even if you are aware of it.
Yes, DB did a nice writeup about that …
The thing is the True Believers of all these social justice movements are not too far removed from the Weathermen philosophy of burn it down, burn it all down. They think western culture is the root of the world’s woes and quite frankly the current society doesn’t appreciate their superior values.
Start from there if you want to understand what your dealing with.
“getting out of the gas and oil economy is good for everyone, it lowers taxes, cleans up noise pollution, decrease congestion, reduces stress, reduces tension, creates job, expands innovation and makes our world a better place to live in.”
But the countries that have pioneered the plunge into renewables are hurting, mostly, as a result, and are looking at more hurt, especially the lead pioneer, Spain.
Roger
your missing the point roger.
getting off of fossil fuels will just make the world a happier/less stressful place.
Dr Ball. I think you are on the right track. We must have good explanations as to why would scientist want to deceive us. We need to concentrate on the scientist deception even though many others especially the MSM are involved because the scientist are at the root of the misinformation.
You correctly stated “Strong was using the U.N. as a platform to sell a global environment crisis and the Global Governance Agenda”. The trouble here is that very few people know what Global Governance is and if you explained it they wouldn’t believe you because they couldn’t imagine why anyone other than crazy mean people would want to do that. I will admit that explaining why good smart people want Global Governance is the real hard part. My suggestion is to request of your audience to research the history of those who have tried for themselves and research the reasons why well intentioned people want Global Governance.
This is the clip they should have played for Congress about the “Hide the Decline.” It not only would have made the point, it would have everyone laughing. https://youtu.be/QowL2BiGK7o?t=59m42s
knutesea: ‘Your opponent is taking advantage of the path of least resistance.’
Yes. And, as yesterdays vote on spending demonstrates, the gatekeepers of that path are asleep at the wheel.
Cruz’s talent and energy are being wasted.
It’s never been about climate;
it’s never been about science;
it’s always been about power, political power harnessing the science of climate to chain the opposition to further their power … they get you coming and going.
Heads you lose, tails they win …
1) why do you call it a “failure”, were you expecting some kind of epiphany ?
2) I’m really out of ammo after #1…….
I am not a scientist, I do follow politics quite closely. I regard science as being about application of common sense and am happy to make judgements even when I do not understand every detail of the rationality.
I think people are quite gullible, they do not really want to look at science in detail and they want simple answers. They read the temperature of arguments through their emotional response, and they come down on the side of the argument that they emotionally identify with. The Dogmatists (I like that phrase very much) have provided an emotional narrative that has been bolstered by denigration and dishonest control of language. They got a head start, developed a hate campaign and cultivated politicians and journalists, and at the same time they called themselves broad minded and free thinkers.
Scientists work with a very small part of their brains mostly identified with the rational executive area called the Pre-frontal cortex. They build their scaffold of facts and balance new facts on top of that scaffold, then they argue in their ivory towers in debates that are intense, remote and conducted to certain rules. These people try to avoid emotional language or being emotionally lead into decision-making. To my mind their world is a false reality, but it is a productive reality that creates scientific advancement that leads to technological discoveries and principles of engineering, medicine and prepares us to face down problems in a rational way.
Scientist wrongly believe they can separate emotion and science, emotion is at the base of brain processes and science and scientific discovery. I think this idea is anathema to some scientists, but not all. I think scientists can easily go through life without acknowledging that their work is emotionally led and still be good scientists.
How do we address the heinous nonsense put out by the core of the religion of CAGW? Firstly you have use scientists who are not afraid to acknowledge emotion, and are willing to confront the emotionally charged political world out side their ivory towers. These are quite rare people but quite common on this forum, I expect you are one of those.
Secondly you need people like Mark Styne who are willing to acknowledge that science is little more than the application of common sense, and not frightened to debate with scientists.
Thirdly you need arguments that have been sifted and rehearsed and rewritten into language that ordinary people understand.
Fourthly you need patience and cunning, a willingness to bite when your prey stumbles.
I am not sure you lost the presentation, but it may appear to have happened that way. Ideas are never changed in full sight, they are changed in secret processes of the mind that even we ourselves cannot see. Our ideas change in our dreams, they change after seeding and after long periods of apparently nothing going on. We do not wake up with changed minds, we simply find ourselves with new ways of looking at things and changed emotional responses. Changing our minds has very little to do with rationality but exposure to rationality (or common sense) often has a big part to play in the process.
My guess is that the presentation you speak of was part of that process of building new ways of looking at things and you had moderate success.
I save this and will refer to it often.
Thanks
I think I should have also added that one thing wins arguments more than any other – likability. People are attracted to and listen to likeable people, and are turned off and do not listen to people they do not like. The skeptics have been underdogs but still disliked because they were portrayed as small minded and oil funded thugs, but in recent years the tables have begun to tuen. In that presentation the Senator appeared to be the small minded bully but Styne was a bit too strident in his response, people probably warmed to Curry more.
It’s like fencing except it’s emotional repartee instead of with a foil.
The 3 primary styles I see are :
1. the bully (using authority to stifle reply)
2. the half truther (exaggerator)
3. the paralyzing perfectionist (it will never be safe enough)
Each style captures deep seated insecurities of the listener and suspends the intellect.
Naturally, people let people they like into their brains.
I think that is right, people let people they like into their brains.
I am a big fan of William James point that their are two ways of thinking, rational (he calls it objective) and plastic. The plastic way is much more natural to our physical brain set up and primary because it was the original method, rationality was an overlay. Plasticity is now all the rage in neuroscience, yet William James caught on to this idea shortly after Darwin discovered evolution. Evolution and brain set up are really the same side of the same coin, the plastic side, but it is counter intuitive to see the relationship.
It is interesting that Art is found in every culture, I think this is because Art is really rooted in the plastic method of looking at things, but Science is a much rarer occurrence. We learn to think scientifically like we learn to play the piano. We can do it well after we train and discipline ourselves, not everyone learns to do it.
Julian
I like these four references. They took me beyond the logical disciplines I was taught.
Dealing With People You Can’t Stand Brinkman
33 Strategies of Warfare Green
Macachiavellian Intelligence Maestrieri
The True Believer Hoffer
I appreciate the conversation.
I know none of those references. My journey has been through studying drawing and the grammar of sight. After I saw the William James quote on Wikipedia things began to fall into place, and it broke a log jam of thirty years. Drawing is a window into the brain with this conflict between objectivity and plasticity written right across it.
There was a period of about 70 years during the twentieth century when everything to do with consciousness studies came to an abrupt halt. These sorts of discussions (studying consciousness processes) we are having were taboo because of the Behaviourist had very strict “objective thinking” criteria in their “scientific” method. Behaviourists created a consensus not unlike CAGW consensus, they created a taboo that was not broken until the late 1980’s. After the taboo was broken the whole field of neuroscience became a multidisciplinary crowd sourced jamboree. Writing this reply has made me wonder is WUWT and similar forums have many parallels with the anti-behaviourists of the late 1980s. This is a very interesting new thought for me.
Deny you have a war on somebody’s primary asset while seeking their vote.
Undermine its value from behind the scenes once elected.
Come clean on the war when the end is near.
Buy the asset while telling others to sell it.
Offer the affected people 30B dollars and hope they will vote for you.
https://www.hillaryclinton.com/briefing/factsheets/2015/11/12/clinton-plan-to-revitalize-coal-communities/
Will it work ?
Cajones
Every speaker, including Cruz. should have started off with “i am part of the 97%” All it takes is agreeing there has been warming, and some of it is probably anthropogenic.
I thought Admiral Titley looked foolish when asked what percentage of the warming was caused by human activity. His answer was ‘a significant amount’. That’s no answer at all. It’s certainly not a scientific answer. Of course, he couldn’t give a number as it is totally unquantifiable.
To me, if one percent of the warming was anthropgenic I would call that a very significant amount. I expect he was trying to give the impression that it was much, much higher.
the 97% consensus and the warmest year on record. In fact, they could not answer them because they require a political answer explaining why they falsified the data and their motive? What answer would you give?
I’m one of those who believe skeptics lost that particular debate because Marky was able to sweep aside all the arguments with his statements about the 97% and the warmest year on record, statements which went basically (to the best of my knowledge) unopposed. The fact of the matter is that these cannot be easily responded to because they are the most nefarious of all lies, the half truth. Further, finding an answer that anyone in the public can understand is not such a simple task. This is science we’re talking about. If it was easy enough to put in words that an eighth grader could understand, it would be science. It would just be common knowledge.
When the 97% meme arises, there is no (in response to your question above) any single right answer. It depends who you are talking to, what their back ground is, the context of the discussion to that point, and what your goal is at that point in responding.
If the person is scientifically competent => Of course 97% agree. It is in regard to sensitivity and endangerment that there is disagreement, and on those points it is substantial. Even the IPCC admits that. Are you disagreeing with the IPCC?
If the person is frothing at the mouth green => Yes of course. Are you referring to the Oreskes et al study or the Cook et al study? (Know your stiuff about both of them before playing this card. The point is that most of them will know nothing about either which puts them back on their heels in a hurry and you explain the background of both to them, poking some gigantic holes along the way).
So there’s no one right answer. In fact, all the answers are wrong, some are just less wrong. A half lie can be shrunk into a few words, a full debunking takes pages and pages. The answer must evolve to meet the audience and situation.
But a thread where readers are encouraged to provide their best snappy answers to stupid statements would be both a worthwhile endeavor and a hoot to boot.
The obvious answer to the warmest year on record is that the record only goes back about 120 years and is spotty at best. I think there is also an issue with the size of the error bars which introduces further uncertainty.
+ 100
Mr Hoffer
Perhaps you make it too hard on yourself. The half truth is nothing more than an attempt to draw some degree of appreciation to your cause. It’s an exaggeration because someone/group wants to be noticed AND appreciated for being who they are.
At its core an NGO is a group that comes together to being attention and appreciation to their cause.
The more you ignore them, the louder and bigger the exaggerations will become. Find of the kernel of truth in the half truth. Acknowledge the validity of their existence. Help them calm down about the need to be recognized.
In olden days you could lop off the heads of those that were annoying or needy. For better or worse that is no longer allowed and new skills are required.
IF you are successful in addressing the half truth by introducing the other half that they leave out, they will then likely move over to that of perfectionism … that the degree of uncertainty in the argument is so VAST that all is lost and puppies and baby squirrels will perish in the chaos. You see this all the time when alarmists suck skeptics into nitpicking minutia in a desperate attempt to retain mayhem. It’s also an easy bait for skeptics because scientists in general think the answers lie in answering increasing levels of detail. The key for skeptics is to constantly couch the level of minutia in a perspective of DEGREE of importance. Obviously not all level of detail matters equally AND alarmists take advantage of skeptics who don’t discuss risk management well.
Hell, its basically how warmists won their decision in SCOTUS Mass v EPA.
They definitely have ‘the high ground’ in this battle.
For one very simple reason.
The media given a choice between a ‘scare’ headline and a ‘this is a subtle and not very threatening’ headline will always go for the former!
Isn’t the main point that we are looking at less than 1 degree C increase since 1880? The appearance of rising, flat, or cooling temperatures depends on which length of time you choose for your graph. But at the end of the day it has risen less than 1 degree.
Many of the early temperature readings have been adjusted and there is uncertainty as to their accuracy.
Measurement of temperature in terms of variation from an average rather than plotting the baseline temperature creates the illusion of significant increases and this has happened because of the newness of climate science and the lack of defined procedures.
Does a world average temperature have any real meaning at all?
This possible small increase in temperature has not resulted in any increase in natural disasters so why are we about to spend so much money on a misdirected effort to stop further warming?
“Does a world average temperature have any real meaning at all?”
And even if it does, is it not less significant if any warming is mainly at night, or in the Arctic?
And how, I wish someone would explain, is a tiny bit of warming (so tiny it would not even kick your air conditioner on if it occurred in your living room in summer) a bad thing on a planet which is by and large cold enough to kill an unprotected person over a large part of the surface all year ’round, and cold enough to do so over far more of the surface on a seasonal basis?
The planet is mostly way to cold! The warming is slight if it even exists at all!
How is that part of this BS not registering in the brain of Martin Z. Anybody?
Courts of law are qualified only to adjudge on points of law. They should disqualify themselves if asked to adjudge on anything else. If for instance they were asked to decide whether Mozarts Requiem was better or more right and convincing than Brahms Requiem they certainly would refuse to take the case. Why not, then, do they do likewise if asked to decide between two scientific theories??
But they will adjudicate on complaints of plagiarism:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_plagiarism
Mass v EPA was a brilliant expertise coup. They had nothing and yet convinced the court that the UNCERTAINTY was enough to require the agency to regulate CO2.
knutesea,
“Uncertainty”! And thus, the once largely unbiased U.S. legal system crumbles under the weight of partisan politics.
That loss of ethics accelerated with courts’ upholding of “hate crime” legislation. Something is either a crime or it isn’t; by making ‘hate crimes’ a special class to appease the race-baiters, thought crimes can easily be prosecuted now. They know what you’re thinking, see? That’s their claim, anyway.
My pessimism was stoked when Chief Justice John Roberts flip-flopped on Obamacare. All the pundits in the media were speculating about whether one or the other Justices would cave under the Administration’s pressure. But no one even considered that Roberts might support Obamacare. They all knew that he would find Obamacare unconstitutional because among other good reasons, it forces consumers to use their after-tax earnings to buy a particular product, even if they do not want it. That has never survived judicial review since the beginning of the Republic. And Roberts was appointed by G.W. Bush. End of story, right?
But Roberts caved! So either they gave him something he craved, or more likely, they found a big skeleton in his closet. Whatever the reason, he traded his ethics for something he thought was worth more than the good of the country.
The courts were the last citizens’ stand against a tyrannical gov’t (I won’t go into the Declaration of Independence here). So now the highest court in the land has been corrupted: CO2 is officially a “pollutant”. Now the door is wide open to ‘carbon’ taxes.
Does anyone here think the next presidential election is unimportant?
DB
All very true.
If you locked me in a box and let me out after 10 years and then told me that CO2 would be taxed, I’d probably wonder if I somehow was transposed to another dimension.
It is shocking that it was pulled off in such a blitzkrieg moment at the SCOTUS level.
At some point the real path to successful ending of this ruse is to revisit the SCOTUS decision.
The weakness is that too much UNCERTAINTY existed for SCOTUS to say no, you can’t regulate it.
Skeptics have a far better case these days and some organization of new NGOs should challenge that ruling.
You and I both know that Hillary will be a hard one to unseat from her throne. I’d rather have a plan B than put all my eggs in that basket.
Dr Ball.
It takes time for an orchestrated deception to collapse.
Mark Twain put it best; “A lie is halfway around the world before truth gets its boots on.”
This hysteria over plant food is self defeating, when the ordinary citizen is hit hard in the pocketbook by the corruption and stupidity CAGW produces, then the value of this senate committee will become clear.
Reason takes time.
If the past weather cycles repeat, the weather will provide the final cure to the deluded.
Freezing in the dark does wonders for irrational behaviour.
This emotional argument between alarmists and skeptics will not end until there is a prolonged, undeniable decrease in the earth’s atmospheric temperatures.
Any discussions between now and then with the devotees of the climate alarm religion is a waste of time in the same way that trying to convert any religious person to a new religion would be. Yes, one in a thousand might actually listen and convert but it was not worth the time. The only way to get people to believe in the scientific method and be skeptical is to get them young before they’ve picked their religion.
I am very tired of hearing all this bellyaching going on here.
I’ve spent two years pitching data and sound bites here at WUWT and other places reinforcing the message that THE SUN CAUSES WARMING, COOLING, AND EXTREME EVENTS, NOT CO2!, and instead of trying to understand what that all means, what I’ve regularly gotten in return is called names or ignored.
The second solar cycle #24 peak in Feb 2015 of high TSI kicked off the El Nino and brought barely ‘record’ high temperatures during the year. High temps this year were caused by eight straight years of increasing TSI. In order, as of last week, annual average TSI from http://lasp.colorado.edu/lisird/tss/sorce_tsi_24hr.csv
2015, 1361.4487
2014, 1361.3966
2013, 1361.3587
2012, 1361.2413
2011, 1361.0752
2003, 1361.0262
2004, 1360.9192
2010, 1360.8027
2005, 1360.7518
2006, 1360.6735
2007, 1360.5710
2009, 1360.5565
2008, 1360.5382
The last 90 days of TSI have also seen some substantial peaks driving fourth quarter temps higher:
http://lasp.colorado.edu/data/sorce/total_solar_irradiance_plots/images/tim_level3_tsi_24hour_3month_640x480.png
Solar heat has been building up since 2008, and is now set to drop off, and temps will follow, as they did during the last solar minimum years. When the skeptical community finally catches on to how the sun does this and starts communicating it together in all venues, including the Congress, we are going to be unstoppable.
I think you would be interested in this post on solar effects:
https://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2015/12/19/paul-k-mini-paradox-becomes-a-major-paradox/
My astronomer father showed the solar cycle clearly (thanks to the solar observatory at Kitt Peak) many, many years ago.
We are going into a ‘quiet sun’ era now and it is painfully obvious what this means.
If my comment to Bob Weber ever gets out of moderation because I linked to a post at that “tall fellow” and his site the “talk Sh@P” there is an interesting post on the sun and a paradox. (why is linking to that site a crime here?)
Hello everyone,
As your friendly neighbourhood environmental scientist (postdoc, trained as a chemical engineer), I think it is important to point out that in my *personal* experience every non-climate scientist I know (including plenty of theoretical physicists, material engineers, etc.) is completely convinced that AGW is a real problem. Now, I’m not saying that all these scientists are right. It’s perfectly possible that we are all wrong. This is the main reason why I keep visiting this blog, to keep myself updated on the evidence against AGW. But I feel the need to mention this becaus dr. Ball presents this as if the only real scientists are on the sceptic side and they are losing the debate because they can’t compete communication wise with the silver tongued politicians on the ‘warmista’ side, with ‘normal’ scientist kept hostage in between. But the truth is that I and many of my colleagues understand the arguments presented here on this blog perfectly fine and just don’t find them all that convincing. I think the way forward for the sceptics here should be not to try and walk the route of politics (mainly USA focussed and irrelevant to the rest of the world) but to focus on writing articles that could convince open minded scientists. And in order to do that you’d need to have an honest discussion on why your arguments haven’t been picked up on as much as you’d like. Hint: it’s not because of the UN, or personal foul play or ‘green religion’.
That being said, some of the more science and data focussed posts here are quite interesting so keep up the good work.
Cheers
Ben
Who are these open minded scientists that you refer to? The fact is, the open minded scientists have indeed been convinced by the sceptics arguments. There are a whole list of scientists that more or less agree with the sceptical position. Apart from those mentioned at the hearing, there are Lindzen, Choi, Soon, Akasofo, Pielke sr, Loehle, Balliunus, Carter, Singer, Tisdale, Spencer, Morner, Dyson and many more.
Your assertion sounds more like a cheeky attempt to exclude any scientist who are convinced by the sceptical arguments from the pool of scientists who you claim haven’t been convinced by the sceptical arguments.
Yes, that is my point exactly! There gotta be, rough guess, at least ten million scientist out there. So if it’s really as obvious that the AGW phenomenon is fake then you’d expect at the very least.. what, a hundred thousand vocal critics with serious scientific credentials, and at least a million that would be revving up their anonymous commenting engines on a blog like this. So the point I’m trying to make is, why are you guys so bad at convincing non-climate scientist like me? I don’t have a stake in climate science and up until now I’m mostly funded by private companies. And yet…
Dr. Ball is obviously frustrated. I’m just commenting that he could point his frustration into a line of enquiring that might be more fruitful.
Obviously comments like those below accusing polite and enquiring scientist like me of being a troll obviously does not help 😉
benbenben says:
…in my *personal* experience every non-climate scientist I know (including plenty of theoretical physicists, material engineers, etc.) is completely convinced that AGW is a real problem.
Really? Both of them are unconvinced?
And:
…sceptics here should… focus on writing articles that could convince open minded scientists.
Which leaves benben out of the picture. He is about as open-minded as a Jehovah’s Witness.
Our closed-minded pal benben is trotting out numbers now, purporting to support the “consensus” argument (he didn’t say that, but it’s obvious).
But benben and his ilk never want to discuss the 31,000+ scientists and engineers who co-signed their names to the OISM statement. Why not?
The reason why not is because neither benben nor any of his alarmist pals can come anywhere near that number, with the names of scientists and engineers who disagree with the OISM statement. And if OISM is correct, then there’s nothing to be alarmed about.
As the great Robert Heinlein wrote:
If you’ve got the truth you can demonstrate it. Talking doesn’t prove it.
benben is just talking. He has no measurements quantifying AGW. None at all; no one does. Unless benben can produce verifiable measurements showing the fraction of AGW out of all global warming, including natural warming from the LIA and other natural events and cycles, he is simply a true believer in something that is based on his eco-religious faith.
Heinlein also wrote:
Belief gets in the way of learning.
That is benben’s central problem: he has his belief, but he can’t back it up with measurements. Until he accepts that data is essential to his conjecture that ‘AGW is a real problem’, he will never learn. Measurements are data. Where are the measurements quantifying AGW?
benben sounds more like sousou.
Ben, you are just a Warmist troll. Though you may try to use your training (supposed) and politeness as cover, your tactics employing logical fallacies give you away. Specifically, you use the tried-and-true Warmist tactics of Argument from Authority and Argument from Consensus. Your “suggestions” about the way forward for Skeptics/Climate Realists are both trite and disingenuous.
Trite, perhaps, but disingenuous? I’m just curious about the lack of self reflection and capacity for constructive debate here. And I, especially in this post, the assertion that there is only a very small group of nefariouss people behind AGW, completely ignoring the huge majority of scientists worldwide that support policy like a global carbon tax. That is the interesting question no? Why can’t you guys win over all the material scientist in my department? They have absolutely no stake AGW related research. Why do you think that is?
benbenben says:
…the lack of self reflection and capacity for constructive debate here…
benben, that statement is a textbook example of psychological ‘projection’: imputing your own faults onto others.
You refuse to engage in constructive debate. Rather, you make assertions that cannot be verified:
the huge majority of scientists worldwide that support policy like a global carbon tax… all the material scientist in my department… they have absolutely no stake AGW related research… a hundred thousand vocal critics with serious scientific credentials… at least a million that would be revving up their anonymous commenting engines on a blog like this… I don’t have a stake in climate science… I’m mostly funded by private companies… every non-climate scientist I know (including plenty of theoretical physicists, material engineers, etc.) is completely convinced that AGW is a real problem… the truth is that I and many of my colleagues understand the arguments presented here and just don’t find them all that convincing… you’d need to have an honest discussion on why your arguments haven’t been picked up on as much as you’d like …&etc.
Every one of your assertions is completely unverifiable. They are merely your opinions, nothing more. They do not contain one verifiable fact. But they are your whole argument.
This is a science site, benben. Maybe you should be commenting on a religion blog, or a blog about politics. You are not convincing unless you can support your belief that there is dangerous man-made global warming happening. And that takes data: measurements and observations.
But you have no credible evidence. You have no data, no measurements, and no supporting observations that preclude other causes. The truth is, you’ve got nothing but your belief.
That isn’t good enough. You can’t support what you believe, so you fall back on your baseless, unverifiable assertions. Your comments are an example of why alarmist scientists refuse to debate any more. When they used to debate, they werre demolished by skeptics. So now they hide out, and argue by press releases, and use spokespeople like the scientific illiterate in the White House.
How about some verifiable data, benben? Give us measurements of what you’re claiming. Show us cause and effect. In other words, argue based on scientific and logical facts, instead of just asserrting what you believe.
When you argue by assertion, like you always do, you lose the argument. As Prof Feynman said, you’re just fooling yourself. You’re not fooling anyone here; you’ve got nothin’, and we see that.
Benben
DB is actually very disciplined and quite good at ferreting out nasty projection.
His command of CAGWs big failures to predict anything is pretty stout.
If you are like anyone else who takes him on, you’ll likely try to immerse him in some increasingly unimportant line of evidence and nitpick at it. It’s what most of the projectors do.
Normally he doesn’t take the bait unless he’s bored.
Good luck, I typically go get a snack and watch.
@ benben
You want facts/talking points ?
All ya gotta do is ask 🙂
Ah, but u.k.(us)
Does he (benben) actually want “facts” or does he want easy-to-spew (er, repeat) simple “talking points”?
Hello dbstealey,
It’s always nice to read a responce from you! I’ll respond to both your posts in one go, if you don’t mind. Firstly, Heinlein is awesome. I’m glad we have at least that in common 😉
So, what I am trying to say (and please read the comment of rw below, and my response), is not about data, but about my personal oberservations. Do I have verifiable data that my all my friends and colleagues with a PhD/higher degree support AGW policy? No, and frankly, it’s a fairly bizar request. Please note also that I’m not actually arguing that AGW is or is not fake, I’m interested in *why* there seems to be such a high support for it in the general scientific population (no data, purely my personal experience).
Then, this OISM study. Of course I take your data very seriously dbstealey so I googled it. I found this description:
—–
” When questioned in 1998, OISM’s Arthur Robinson admitted that only 2,100 signers of the Oregon Petition had identified themselves as physicists, geophysicists, climatologists, or meteorologists, “and of those the greatest number are physicists.” This grouping of fields concealed the fact that only a few dozen, at most, of the signatories were drawn from the core disciplines of climate science – such as meteorology, oceanography, and glaciology – and almost none were climate specialists. The names of the signers are available on the OISM’s website, but without listing any institutional affiliations or even city of residence, making it very difficult to determine their credentials or even whether they exist at all. When the Oregon Petition first circulated, in fact, environmental activists successfully added the names of several fictional characters and celebrities to the list, including John Grisham, Michael J. Fox, Drs. Frank Burns, B. J. Honeycutt, and Benjamin Pierce (from the TV show M*A*S*H), an individual by the name of “Dr. Red Wine,” and Geraldine Halliwell, formerly known as pop singer Ginger Spice of the Spice Girls. … Even in 2003, the list was loaded with misspellings, duplications, name and title fragments, and names of non-persons, such as company names.” (http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Oregon_Institute_of_Science_and_Medicine#Case_Study:_The_Oregon_Petition)
—–
Honestly, for a website built upon examining flaws in data, this is a very shaky survey to base your argument upon, dbstealey 🙂
@ Knutesea, yeah, I’m finding his responses quite interesting! Too bad he’s more interested in argueing what he thinks I’m saying instead of what I actually say.
Cheers,
Ben
benben, benben, benben,
You wrote:
‘my response is not about data, but about my personal oberservations.’
Well then, we might as well be debating astrology, Scientology, or phrenology. Let’s all just go to the nearest coffe shop or bar, and discuss why the government is so intent on passing ‘carbon taxes’ without any credible scientific evidence. Or better yet, let’s discuss Dancing With The Stars. Maybe that’s more your interest.
This is a SCIENCE site, benben. There are thousands of blogs on religion, politics, entertainment, and where’s the best Starbucks. You need to find one of those if you’re not going to discuss scientific facts and evidence.
Next, if you’re going to cite a dishonest propaganda blog like ‘sourcewatch’, you are certain to get misinformation. Because they are fabricating things, not OISM. Why would you automatically believe a propaganda blog over a science site?
None of the names listed by ‘sourcewatch’ can be found on the OISM site (with the exception of real people who might happen to have the same name). The names were vetted after submission, and sourcewatch dishonestly tells its readers that those names are counted. They’re not.
Every one of the 31,487 names individually listed by OISM have been vetted and are actual scientists and/or engineers with degrees in the hard sciences. If you have any information that makes you doubt that, please contact their site, and ask. But if you take the misinformation of ‘sourcewatch’ as honest reporting, then it’s no wonder you’re being led astray.
How many professionals would allow their names to be posted online, if they had not authorized it? And further: you keeep avoiding answering my questions, just like everyone else whom I’ve asked:
Can you post the names of only 10% of the OISM’s numbers, saying that the OISM co-signed statement is wrong?
No?
Well then, can you post the names of even ONE PERCENT of the OISM’s 31,487 names?
No?
Then let’s make it real easy: can you find the names of even ONE-TENTH OF ONE PERCENT of the OISM’s co-signers who disagree?
So: either find one of the names claimed by ‘sourcewatch’ on the OISM site, or admit that they’re posting misinformation. And if you can’t even find 0.1% of the number of OISM co-signers, then the “consensus” is OBVIOUSLY on the side of skeptics of the “dangerous AGW” scare.
No wonder you don’t want to discuss facts, benben. You don’t have any that are credible.
(Note: “Buster Brown” is the latest fake screen name for ‘David Socrates’, ‘Brian G Valentine’, ‘Joel D. Jackson’, ‘beckleybud’, ‘Edward Richardson’, ‘H Grouse’, and about twenty others. The same person is also an identity thief who has stolen legitimate commenters’ names. Therefore, all the time and effort he spent on posting 300 comments under the fake “BusterBrown” name is wasted, because I am deleting them wholesale. ~mod.)
Well… dbstealey, if you don’t want to talk about the soft side of science, then don’t. You’re free to just not respond to this. Also, I should really point out that the topic of this blog post by dr. Ball is about this soft side, so it is wholly appropriate that I want to talk about that in the comment section of this particular post, and it is wholly inappropriate that you are forcing your own views upon us by preventing any possible meaningful discussion on the exact topic that Dr. Ball was writing about. He didn’t present any scientific evidence that the senate hearings failed either, correct?
Secondly, multiple sources are pointing in the same direction. For example, Wikipedia is equally dismissive (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oregon_Petition). Besides, there is “data” available. From said wikipedia article:
In 2001, Scientific American took a random sample “of 30 of the 1,400 signatories claiming to hold a Ph.D. in a climate-related science. ” Of the 26 we were able to identify in various databases, 11 said they still agreed with the petition —- one was an active climate researcher, two others had relevant expertise, and eight signed based on an informal evaluation. Six said they would not sign the petition today, three did not remember any such petition, one had died, and five did not answer repeated messages. Crudely extrapolating, the petition supporters include a core of about 200 climate researchers – a respectable number, though rather a small fraction of the climatological community”
And still, my main point made at the beginning of this discussion stands, namely that 30.000 is nothing compared to the number it should have had, and I’m just curious to know why this is. Factual information gleaned from the web: the 31,487 names collected by the Global Warming Petition Project represent only one quarter of one percent (0.25%) of science and engineering degrees awarded since 1970 in the US.
so… very good dbstealey, you ask for data, I give you data, you will probably claim my data is fake, and that you are more scientific than I am. this does not at all change the fact that this entire blog post is not about science but about communication, and that my initial question still remains ignored. Please see the mini discussion with RW below for more!
Cheers,
benben
benben,
As u.k.(us) commented above:
@ benben You want facts/talking points? All ya gotta do is ask 🙂
But you want only talking points, don’t you, benben? Because you certainly shy away from discussing facts, evidence, or measurements.
Next, you say that I’m “forcing” my views on you. That goes a long way in explaining why you’re being led around by the alarmist cult, if someone can force you to think the way they want. Try thinking for yourself for a change.
Next, all your excuses regarding the OISM co-signers could be applied to any similar petition, ‘consensus’, or poll. Nothing matters except the named co-signers, and out of more than 31,000 co-signers, both you and the Scientific American alarmist publication were able to find a total of only nineteen (19) who might either not recall signing, or have other excuses. That leaves 31,468 co-signers — and you still cannot find 0.1% who disagree with the statement! Even with the incompetent help of Mr. Bluster, who says:
Dbstealey, did you know the OISM petition was shut down a few years ago?
Mr. Bluster clearly doesn’t know that the OISM “Petition” was a petition to the U.S. delegation to Kyoto to reject the Protocol. Obvioulsly, the OISM co-signers were successful. So their job was done, and no need to continue gathering co-signers (I tried to add my name a few years ago, but I was told the petition was closed to new names).
So Mr. Bluster was wrong because he didn’t understand the purpose of the Petition. Then he sets himself up here (and he makes it too easy, as usual):
Do you know that science is not done by petition?
That wasn’t for science, that was for politics; it merely used scientific evidence to make the case for rejecting a political action.
Ah, but “consensus”. The ‘consensus’ is, and always has been, entirely on the side of skeptics of the ‘dangerous AGW’ scare/hoax. Alarmists don’t like that fact. But they cannot produce even 0.1% of the OISM co-signers, who contrtadict what the Petition says. Really, the alarmist crowd should give up on their ‘consensus’ claim, since it’s so easy to refute.
(Note: “Buster Brown” is the latest fake screen name for ‘David Socrates’, ‘Brian G Valentine’, ‘Joel D. Jackson’, ‘beckleybud’, ‘Edward Richardson’, ‘H Grouse’, and about twenty others. The same person is also an identity thief who has stolen legitimate commenters’ names. Therefore, all the time and effort he spent on posting 300 comments under the fake “BusterBrown” name is wasted, because I am deleting them wholesale. ~mod.)
That’s what you get for thinking. This site is about anything Anthony Watts wants to publish.
Science comprises most of it. But the fact that you can comment shows that science isn’t 100% of the content.
(Note: “Buster Brown” is the latest fake screen name for ‘David Socrates’, ‘Brian G Valentine’, ‘Joel D. Jackson’, ‘beckleybud’, ‘Edward Richardson’, ‘H Grouse’, and about twenty others. The same person is also an identity thief who has stolen legitimate commenters’ names. Therefore, all the time and effort he spent on posting 300 comments under the fake “BusterBrown” name is wasted, because I am deleting them wholesale. ~mod.)
Busted Bluster,
I get much more satisfaction from debunking your nonsense here. It’s easy-peasy, I know. But better than watching TV.
But really, Bluster, you need to get a life. To you I’m just a pixel pattern, but one that displays your ignorance, incompetence, and desperation. I like having you bird-dog my comments because it shows you can’t get a leg up on me. But really, chihuahua, get a life. Quit trying to run with the big dogs here. You just haven’t got what it takes: knowledge of the subject.
So stop parroting the carp you read at SkS and other alarmist blogs; start exercising your unused noggin and debate with whatever intelligence you’ve got. When you let other do your thinking for you we can run circles around you.
Man, I’m not sure if you are serious or not. “the Scientific American alarmist publication were able to find a total of only nineteen (19) who might either not recall signing, or have other excuses.” <= this was out of a sample of thirty.
Of course you're free to dismiss this as propaganda, but I'm equally free to dismiss that strange petition as propaganda. And the fact that you interpret a samplesize of 30 as that they rang everybody on the list but could find only 19 people that changed their minds is…. well, I'm trying to have a serious conversation here. It would be nice if you could return the favour.
(Note: “Buster Brown” is the latest fake screen name for ‘David Socrates’, ‘Brian G Valentine’, ‘Joel D. Jackson’, ‘beckleybud’, ‘Edward Richardson’, ‘H Grouse’, and about twenty others. The same person is also an identity thief who has stolen legitimate commenters’ names. Therefore, all the time and effort he spent on posting 300 comments under the fake “BusterBrown” name is wasted, because I am deleting them wholesale. ~mod.)
“You are all politics an no science.”..
…says the guy who won’t answer questions, and who can’t produce a single measurement quantifying AGW, who bird-dogs my comments out of an inferiority complex, and who can’t find even 0.1% of scientists who dispute the conclusions of the OISM petition.
Mr. Bluster, you couldn’t tell the difference between science and Scientology, so you can give up trying to tell anything folks who understand science far better than you — which includes most readers of this science site.
(Note: “Buster Brown” is the latest fake screen name for ‘David Socrates’, ‘Brian G Valentine’, ‘Joel D. Jackson’, ‘beckleybud’, ‘Edward Richardson’, ‘H Grouse’, and about twenty others. The same person is also an identity thief who has stolen legitimate commenters’ names. Therefore, all the time and effort he spent on posting 300 comments under the fake “BusterBrown” name is wasted, because I am deleting them wholesale. ~mod.)
“so you can give up trying to tell anything folks who understand science far better than you ”
…
(Note: “Buster Brown” is the latest fake screen name for ‘David Socrates’, ‘Brian G Valentine’, ‘Joel D. Jackson’, ‘beckleybud’, ‘Edward Richardson’, ‘H Grouse’, and about twenty others. The same person is also an identity thief who has stolen legitimate commenters’ names. Therefore, all the time and effort he spent on posting 300 comments under the fake “BusterBrown” name is wasted, because I am deleting them wholesale. ~mod.)
Ben , did you in your entire training ever learn the basic equations for calculating the equilibrium temperature of a radiantly heated colored ball? Can you point to a textbook page or website where it is worked out ? Surely that must be early in any curriculum claiming to explain planetary temperature .
Further , can you point to any electromagnetic , ie : spectral , equations which get around the Divergence Theorem to “trap” energy , ie : heat — or experimental demonstrations of the effect ?
This latter I am confident you cannot do . Only asymmetric centripetal gravity balances the equations .
Tbh I don’t know how gravity is related to thermodynamics. But please enlighten me? Keep in mind that my thermodynamics classes were almost a decade ago!
Cheers
Ben
Then LEARN . I suggest you start with HockeySchtick’s analysis and references . Here’s a good one to start with : http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2014/05/maxwell-established-that-gravity.html . I think the derivations are so obvious , once you recognize that gravity is the next parameter which must be added to any model after spectrum as seen from the outside , that I’ll wait til I”m ready to implement them succinctly in 4th.CoSy before working thru Hockey’s derivations .
You didn’t answer my question of whether you have learned how to calculate the temperature of a radiantly heated colored ball . As a chem e interested in the topic you must have had a course in Heat Transfer . Interestingly , Incropera , et al , href=”http://smile.amazon.com/Introduction-Heat-Transfer-Frank-Incropera/dp/0471386499/ref=sr_1_5?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1450649336&sr=1-5&keywords=incropera” > Introduction To Heat Transfer which I generally find to be a thorough engineering text stops short of presenting the equations for radiant transfer for arbitrary spectra .
So , since you have access to full university resources , please point us to a rigorous treatment of necessary bit of any explanation of planetary temperature .
Almost a whole decade?
Oh, well then…after all that time, who can hold you to having to remember anything.
*rolls the eyes*
I can’t believe the responses I’m reading to Ben’s comments, which are an attempt to be helpful. You’re acting like a bunch of true-believers trying to stamp out any perceived heresy! (I.e. like a bunch of Tweedledees attacking a perceived Tweedledum.)
Maybe because you aren’t in contact with many scientists, you just can’t get your heads around what Ben is saying. Maybe you’ve never been to a scientific conference with 3-5,000 people all of whom treat AGW as axiomatic. Maybe you don’t know how many Ph.D. theses are being awarded every year for work related to AGW. (And can you guess how many of these people are going to embrace a skeptical view of AGW?)
Maybe this is part of the problem skeptics are having overcoming this AGW madness. (You’ve never realized what a small world you live in – no maybe about that.)
RW , you bring to mind one of my tweets : The hallmark of the Statist ( of any label ) is the nexus of arrogance and ignorance .
One of my roommates in grad school at Northwestern was a Chem E . He helped me with a lot of math when I jumped into C level Prob & Stat only having read Thomas , not taken the 2 years calc prerequisite .
I asked BenBen a basic question , which as an engineering problem boils down to how you calculate the equilibrium temperature of an orange sitting under a sun lamp . Any post doc Chem E with an interest in understanding planetary temperature surely should at least know where to go to get the equations and their explication .
If he were serious in understanding the temperature of the planet to 4 or 5 decimal places , he should at least agree that’s a damned interesting question because if you can’t quantitatively explain the temperature of a uniformly colored ball , how can you be taken seriously claiming to explain the temperature of a complexly colored sphere like the earth ?
Instead , BB seems to have just disappeared .
Hey rw,
Thanks for your comment! It’s very heartening to see that at least one person reacts to what I wrote, instead of trying to cajole me into debating some mathematical eqation 🙂 RW, you are exactly right. I go to these conferences and there are thousands upon thousands of scientists there. None of them are funded by the UN, the IPCC or whatever. They don’t do any work related to AGW. They are all perfectly capable of understanding the basic math behind the stuff being posted here on this site. Nobody is scared to have a spirited debate about politicaly sensitive topics (au contraire, it’s a favourite pasttime). Heck, most aren’t even American and couldn’t care less about whatever Obama does or does not want to do. And yet I see close to a 100% supporting AGW related policy. This is not me ‘arguing the consensus’, as I keep getting accused of here. It’s just an observation. It would seem to me that this group should be the focus of this blog (as opposed to what Dr. Ball argues above), and I wonder why people here in the comment section think they aren’t reaching those scientists. Because – let’s be honest – nobody is going to convince the general public with incredibly complicated thernomdynamics.
@ Bob Armstrong, I agree with you, it’s just that I’m not interested in debating thermodynamics. I understand most things posted on this site. You will also note that I never try to convince anyone here that they are wrong. And why would I? I’m just commenting here because there are things that puzzle me (not the maths), and I find it interesting to see what you guys have to say about that specific thing that puzzles me. Again, I ask these questions to satisfy my own curiousity, feel free to ignore me if you are only interested in debating your own debate!
(sorry, I’m ill at the moment, but it’s nice to know you noticed my absence, Bob 😉
Cheers,
Ben
If you are not interested in the maths then you are not interested in the physical reality — just happy to subjugate your rationality to the collective .
I love maths, I just have better things to do than to prove to a random person on the internet that I’m capable of doing partial differential equations. Besides, the post we are discussion by Dr. Ball has nothing to do with thermodynamics. I’m discussing the content of this particular blog post. You are not. I don’t understand the difficulty you are having with that…
rw,
You’re doing just what the alarmist crowd does: assuming that skeptics disagree with AGW.
FYI, this scientific skeptic has never said anything like that. I’ve always stated that I agree with AGW. It’s just that AGW is such a minuscule forcing that it doesn’t matter; it is a complete non-problem.
The debate is over degrees of evidence — and the evidence to support AGW is pretty sparse. There are no measurements of AGW. Almost all of the “evidence” is based on opinions supported by what amount to coincidental events: temperature rising coincidentally with CO2 rising — but when that evidence is scrutinized, it turns out that ∆CO2 is caused by ∆T, not vice-versa.
The “AGW madness” you refer to is simply a massive propaganda attack funded by billions of dollars, with the President of the U.S. as a very visible spokesman (notwithstanding the fact that he doesn’t know science from Scientology).
Finally, when you ask…
…can you guess how many of these people are going to embrace a skeptical view of AGW?
…you are exposing the central problem: carreers, pay raises, funding, promotions, grants, advancement, etc., are all dependent on either supporting the DAGW hoax, or at least not publicly contradicting it.
So can you blame people for not jeopardizing their career prospects? That explains why many scientists become vocal DAGW critics — but only after they’ve retired. And major KUDOS to the few who value scientific honesty and their own personal integrity enough to tell the truth when it could hurt them. I’m not so certain that I would be telling the truth in public like that, if it impacted my family. Would you?
Big money plus politics. How could that not end up in corruption?
haha, ok, so you are allowed to make an assertion like “That explains why most scientists become vocal DAGW critics — but only after they’ve retired.” without any data to back it up (and I suspect 31.000 signatures does not even come close to 1% of all retired scientists). But when I make a perfectly reasonable back-of-the-envelope calculation that there should be hundreds of thousands of scientists filling this blog, then you demand data. Double standards dbstealey, double standards 😉
benben, benben, benben,
So now you want to discuss facts?
Make up your mind, it’s one or the other.
hey DB, as you well know, I was interested in discussing the topic of this blog post, which wasn’t related to data to begin with. You’re the one that started the whole data temper tantrum. So its ironic that you then fail to pass your own bar, but I don’t particularly care either way. Anyway, at least we have established that you’re better at writing in a self-assured way than thinking things through consistently.
Have a nice christmas!
Benben
Will the real Oceanographer of the Navy please stand up,
I have just been reading the IPCC reports on paleoclimatology, and was surprised at how stupid this report was.
It was not an investigation into the science, where scientists get around a table to argue the points and possibly thrash out a ‘consensus’ position. It was not even a balanced view of the current science that took you through the problems from A – Z. It was cherry-picked reports that underscored their position, including some reports that came to wild ‘left of park’ conclusions. But they were included because they supported the party line. And I lost count of the number of times it said that ‘the reasons for this are still unknown’. So much for settled science.
If I as a non-scientist was left underwhealmed by the IPCC report, then of what use is it?
R
By the greatest irony one can imagine – skepticism – the greatest trait within science, has been turned into name-calling, and even attempted made into an illegal act, by some proponents of United Nations climate theory. More on the modern scientific method here
The second greatest irony is that, by its charter, United Nations was supposed to achieve “international co-operation in solving international problems of an economic, social, cultural, or humanitarian character.”
The following definition of culture will help to understand why a misconception of the scientific method must be regarded as a problem of a cultural character:
“A culture is a way of perceiving, thinking and acting – which has been learned, developed or discovered -while learning to deal with internal and external challenges – and which is being taught as an acceptable, or right way of perceiving, thinking and acting.”
By it´s climate theory United nations has created an international cultural problem by enforsing unscientific principles upon, and endorsing unscientific principles by, its so-called scientific body: IPCC.
United Nations Was Supposed To Solve International Problems Of A Cultural Character – Not To Become One!
Right. We should rely on common sense that ordinary people understands. We should also say that instead on going to a scientific debate.
1. Earth has warmed 0.8 C to the global average of 15 C since 1880, time period called little ice age. We live still today one of coldest times after the big ice age 12800 years ago.
2. Alleged warming another 0,7 C by 2100 will benefit the mankind, the most adaptable species on our planet. It will be similar than moving less than 100 km from North to South. Vast land areas in Siberia and Canada will be little more habitable. There will be less extreme weather like hurricanes. Sea levels rise some centimetres. Deserts like Sahara get more rain and vegetation increases due to increase on CO2.
3. There has been ups and downs during that path which do not follow the increase of CO2 in the atmosphere showing that CO2 is not the main driver of the weather.
4. Climate change is most of all a political issue where a threat is used to pressure the ordinary people to give up their money and freedom to people who want to rule through big and powerful governments. Businessmen like sure profits coming subsidised “renewables”. If CO2 were the problem, nuclear power and better coal technology would be the solution, not trillions of dollars moved to coffers of the elite.
I notice that hardly anyone on either side ever mentions what the global temperature was before the Little Ice Age. Seems to me that we may not even be back to the warmth of the pre-LIA era even yet.
Good pint and important. Too bad that Cruz wasn’t given a bit more of a head up on how to counter some of the claims from Markey and Titley. An obvious counter being to show what a graph of the last several thousand years looks like as opposed to just the last 140+ years. One picture being worth quite a few words, and that message being easily conveyed even to those with little knowledge of the bigger picture.
Here is one graph that shows we have not even recovered to pre-LIA temperatures just yet. I hope it can be seen here. I never know.
http://www.longrangeweather.com/images/gtemps.jpg
No, the Earth is not back to the temperatures before Little Ice Age:
See “Temperature fluctuations over the past 17,000 years” (Don J. Easterbrook), at http://www.oarval.org/Foster_20k.jpg
Mark S
Nice image. What are the sources ?
Would like to promote it, but need sources.
Knute,
I have seen things like this for a long time. But this one is copyrighted and the source is there in the bottom of the image.
You can see the owners and the work here: http://www.longrangeweather.com/
Thanks Mark
I’ve gotten burned by bad images and want one I can rely on.
Really appreciate your answering me.
As a salesman I would do it as simply as possible.
Prof Bob Carter does that and gives wonderful lectures because his slides explain things simply.
By showing historical temperatures and other Holocene’s with temperatures 5C warner than today it grabs attention. A graph showing the last 5m years where for 3m of them it was warmer than today should set the tone.
In no particular order there is the lack of warming of the Tropical Troposphere by the Aqua satellite….nothing found by weather balloons either.
Explain urban heat isle, sea rise and fall during Holocene’s and Glaciations and how the satellites are at odds with observed measurement’s on sea levels.
Sea currents, El Nino’s….no acidification.
Polar Bear mortality very often caused by thick Spring Sea Ice that deters seal pups entering the outside world thus causing starvation as Polar Bear cubs have no food.
Explain Younger Dryas and it’s implication for planning by politicians…the predicted cooling this century..
Finish with graphs showing historical levels of CO2…..the percentage increase (it may have been as much as 5,000ppm ) being more than enough to cancel out any claimed reduction in solar irradiance back then.
Explain the extinction rate of 150ppm…end of last Ice Age level being 180ppm….scary. Plants requiring CO2 of circa 1000ppm as a fertilizer and finally heat from CO2 being logarithmic and fossil fuel reserves being unlikely to allow more than one of two doublings….so we cannot overheat the planet.
Just simplify it.
+1
Almost a NIKE moment
Great article Dr. Ball and I think your analysis is spot on. I have been thinking for some time that what we need is a simple 2-3 page summary document complete with graphics (such as the CMIP vs satellite one above) addressing the claims versus reality in a ‘tabloid’ fashion and kept regularly uptodate. Simple up-to-date graphics with very short and punchy bullet points and use it as posters, flyers, advertisements, emails etc. The pure science will never win this.
Secondly, the MSM is THE problem here. However, journalists are an insecure and pushy lot who like to get one over their peers. Highlighting the bias and egregious failures in the media and the manifest problems with the ‘science’ of CAGW individual targetted journalists may be convinced to get ahead of the curve with a career enhancing expose of the fraud behind the political chicanery of climate change. The Woodward and Bernstein of Climategate v2!
Finally, I feel even in Ireland (which is very left wing with a monolithically convinced media on CC) the comments discussions in newspapers are starting to reflect the growing awareness in some sections of the public that the ‘science’ is BS.
+1
“The IPCC produced scientific documents that decimated all scientific rules, regulations and practices.”
I support that view: IPCC is governed by unscientific principles!
Dr. Ball, I agree that getting bogged down in the science is not a winning strategy against the dogmatists, I just thought I’d comment on the issue of Sweden and Denmark, which was brought up in the Q&A part of the debate.
Bearing in mind that electricity is only part of the total energy budget, it is still the most important part when comparing how different countries try to transition to non-fossil-based production. Thus, it’s important to realize that Sweden’s electricity production until ca 1950 was about 100 % hydro power. Most of the production increase since the 70’s came from nuclear (Sweden got its first commercial nuclear power plant in 1972), so that in 2010, hydro and nuclear together produced 84 % of Sweden’s electricity.
The push to increase the share of alternative energy sources in Sweden is not so much about replacing fossil fuels as it is about replacing nuclear power – combined with the long-established consensus that we don’t want to expand our hydro power any more.
A problem is that our wind power doesn’t contribute much, even though it has been expanded to the point that many who live close to the installations have started complaining. The assumption that the fluctuations in wind power production will start evening out as enough generators are put in production doesn’t seem to bear out, and while hydro power is the perfect buffer for wind, our hydro-based buffer capacity is already largely used up, partly because Denmark relies on Norway and Sweden for hydro-based buffer capacity.
(This written from a Danish perspective – there is, of course, corresponding export of electricity from Sweden and Norway to Denmark, and the balance partly depends on how well-filled the hydro reservoirs are, underlining the fact that Sweden doesn’t really have spare buffer capacity left for a major wind expansion, which is something that neighboring countries should also factor in.)
Solar is not really a contender at Sweden’s latitudes, especially in the north, where there is less than an hour of daylight this time of year (today in Kiruna, the sun rises at 11:29 am and sets at 11:57 am; where I live, at least we get ca 5 hours of daylight.)
In other words, Sweden is a bad example of how to transition to clean energy, since it’s been blessed with lots of hydro power potential from the start (Sweden, with less than 10 million people, ranks no 9 in the world in GWh hydro power production; Norway, with ca 5 million people, ranks no 6.) Many countries have very little hydro potential.
“Elaine Dewar provided the motive after spending five days with Maurice Strong at the UN where he created the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), the UNFCCC and the IPCC. Strong was using the U.N. as a platform to sell a global environment crisis and the Global Governance Agenda.”
In the following minutes of meeting it is evident that IPCC was heavily biased from the beginning: Report of the second session of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 28 June 1989
Extracts can be seen in my post here:
United Nations Had Dogmatic Influence On Ipcc From The Very Beginning!
::: putting on my 20 – 30s demographic pretend hat ::::
What’s so wrong with supporting the UN ?
My god, you are such a hater.
All people are equal.
No justice, no peace.
Really, get over your warmongering self and see the better future of cleaner energy.
I´m supporting United Nations as long as United Nations operate responsibly within their charter.
I´m not supporting United Nations in putting up a so-called scientific body (IPCC) on which it does not enforce sound scientific principles. An UNscientific body having an effective monopoly on advising the nations.
I´m not supporting United Nations in letting the secretary-general Ban Ki-Moon appoint powerful bureaucrats having a personal agenda to change our economic development model:
“This is the first time in the history of mankind that we are setting ourselves the task of intentionally, within a defined period of time, to change the economic development model that has been reigning for the, at least, 150 years, since the industrial revolution,”
– Christiana Figueres, who heads up the U.N.’s Framework Convention on Climate Change
I´m no supporting United Nations in doing that because it does not seem to be in accordance with my human rights: Article 21. (3) The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government; this will shall be expressed in periodic and genuine elections …
Are you all ok with the way United Nations has been operating?
Judging by the comment sections on all internet sites relating to gorebull warming stories it seems that the message is getting out there.
True dat. And their “explanation” is that we skeptics must be getting paid. That is the only way they can make their ever- increasing levels of cognitive dissonance bearable.
Galileo, in his trial in 1616, had the better science but discovered political power plus bad science results in house arrest. You’d think after 400 years, science folks would be more scientific when entering into a political debate. After all, there is such a thing as political science.
Lawyers have long understood the general rule (with some exceptions) that when expert testimony is an issue at trail, each side will present their expert which will contradict the others expert. Regardless, the jury (i.e., voters) usually just cancel the experts out and decide most cases on other factors. One exception is to absolutely destroy the veracity of the opponents expert. A more recent trial example most folks may recall is the OJ murder trial which presented the now gold standard of evidence – DNA – and still lost.
Understand. After 20 years of all sorts of deceit, lying, alarming, campaigning, et al, along with the most outrageous readjustments of facts in the history of science, you’ll still get the carbon tax, you’ll still see windmills built, you’ll still see the governments of the world use their science experts to justify their redistribution schemes and vote buying.
Face facts. You’re like Galileo (true scientists) and are loath to engage in political science.
Expect to lose.
House arrest will be the best outcome you can expect from your opponents.
What you need to do is find a political science person(s), help them plan a campaign where you merely play the supportive role. Call in proxy political science. Oh, and get to work on your hockey stick as well.
” Instead, he ordered that students be apprized of the problems and then shown another documentary for balance.”
To anyone who has seen it, would Climate Hustle be that film???
Socialism and Environmentalism aren’t revenue generating industries. They will always need to find new ways to generate revenues. Now that the Tobacco money is running out, they need new sources. They have basically killed their Tobacco host and are now ready to move on. They will go from killing one industry to another just for survival. We skeptics argue for the truth, they argue for survival. A person facing certain death will make up a lot of lies to survive. It is that simple. They will destroy America if we don’t figure out a way to stop them. BTW, we need to put the spending in terms of opportunity costs. Do you want trillions of dollars going to trial lawyers, or to the schools, hospitals, roads, bridges, etc?
One has to say that in the age of ‘ageism’, where ‘the workplace’ dispenses with you after the age of 50, there is a huge role for the retired O50s to put the climate skeptical case, free of a need for a salary, free of the need for future work, free of the need to pander to superiors and free of the need to do anything but uphold the principles of whichever society they were born into/currently live in and fight the fight with everything that they can put into it.
Great observation.
Perhaps a march on DC.
Tens of 1000s of post 50s folks.
Will there be nakedness for attention sake
::: couldnt resist .. high T day i suppose:::
“their failure to answer the questions posed by Senator Markey and others about the 97% consensus and the warmest year on record.”
The answer to that is:
“Senator, you are also at your tallest on record, but that does not mean that you keep growing!”
This is all very true.
The global warming debate always and immediately gets sidetracked by questions about “warming,” denying,” and “melting.”
The real issue is not whether mean temperatures rose modestly in the past century– since everyone already recognizes that they did. No, the debating point should be “WHY?” Ie. “Is it the CO2 hypothesis or solar variability that’s responsible for a net rise in temperatures?”
Anything else is a distraction, and doesn’t advance the discussion.
In order to upset the Elite Agenda I believe we must continue and I mean point out over and over again that the Diabetes Epidemic / Catastrophe and I mean major Catastrophe in the world was based, on a never proven science hypothesis / consensus ie Cholesterol Lie the US food pyramid High Carb Low Saturated Fat diet is killing the nation. Health Care Cost in the 2015 US Budget is One Trillion Dollars not counting the Medication / GOV program . The minute the bring up 97% we say yea look at what consensus did in the health care epidemic of our nation. 75% of all chronic disease can be eliminated on a proper saturated fat diet. However it has take 50 years for the truth.
NY Times http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/26/opinion/sunday/the-global-diabetes-epidemic.html?_r=0
From Nature more Crap http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v414/n6865/full/414782a.html
That is indeed a f___kd up one.
Unfortunately, society is still too deep in the execution of that disaster to see it clearly.
We have not reached “mass loading” yet.
That’s why I keep pressing for the most basic quantitative classical physics . I see no way that electromagnetic , ie : radiative , phenomena can overcome the Divergence Theorem and “trap” energy .
GHG effects explain 0.0 of the difference between top and bottom of atmosphere temperatures . Show me the equations and experiments which prove me wrong .
Bob
Can you put that on a poster when you march on DC ?
Haven’t marched on WDC since just before L’l Bush awed Iraq .
Lotta good that did .
I think it all can be expressed in fewer equations than Maxwell needed .
Thank you for being among the few who have made the sacrifice you explained. Your actions do not go unappreciated though there is no tangible reward.
A sober and accurate assessment.
Dr. Curry seemed to be about to make a very good point concerning error bars but then trailed off. This seems to be the best area to hammer home to those that don’t quite grasp the statistical significance of what is being put forward by the true-believers.
When one understands that the margins are so large that the coolest of the last 20(ish) years could possibly match the warmest (and vice-versa), it can go a long way towards opening other avenues of questioning.
When the margins of error can contain every year in the measured period, doesn’t that just sort of show that the scientists’ own measurements (estimated) can’t even support their own arguments?
In reality, it would seem to me that the last 20 years or so have been remarkably stable in spite of all of the discussions to the contrary.
Dr Tim Ball states the obvious when he says courts and politicians can’t judge the science.
What he misses is that it doesn’t matter –the courts go to the peer-reviwed science for that judgment– Which is why Dr Ball lost, and will lose every time –essentially all peer-reviewed science concludes AGW, as do all the world’s Science Academies. Until Dr Ball can put a dent in that scientific consensus, he’ll get nowhere, and deservedly so.
Have to agree. All the time the planet continues to warm and there is no other feasible reason for the warming, then hearings like this will just be disregarded as noise. And what a crock anyway. It was just grandstanding by a politician trying to improve his nomination chances. This was never about the science.
“All the time the planet continues to warm”
Dream on.
http://www.climate4you.com/images/MSU%20RSS%20GlobalMonthlyTempSince1979%20With37monthRunningAverage%20With201505Reference.gif
Removing only half a decade (1993-1998) leaves No Warming during the last four decades: NADA. Yet more than 30% of all of the CO2 that was EVER emitted was emitted during those four decades.
“Truth if the daughter of time, not of authority.” – Francis Bacon
Ian is correct. Simon says:
All the time the planet continues to warm and there is no other feasible reason for the warming…
“No other feasible reason”?? Maybe Simon really believes that. But he probably also knows that the planet has gone through the same exact cycles in the past, and that there is nothing unusual or unprecedented happening now.
So, Simon, if human CO2 emissions are the cause of what we are observing now, how is it that the same thing happened before there were any human industrial emissions?
C’mon, Simon, explain that one for us. That’s like claiming that human CO2 emissions are exactly balancing global cooling, and that’s why there’s been no global warming for the past couple of decades. Even more preposterous, human CO2 emissions are changing with the industrialization of China, India, and a hundred smaller countries. But the putative global cooling is being exactly offset by changing ACO2?? That means the global cooling is changing at exactly the same rate as the global warming being caused by human CO2 emissions.
Simon, at some point your explanations go off the rails. You’re in epicycle territory now, inventing more and more convoluted explanations to support your failed CO2=AGW conjecture, when Occam’s Razor says the simplest explanation is most likely the correct explanation.
The simple explanation is that CO2 just hasn’t got the global warming effect claimed by you and your pals. If you disagree, here’s your chance to show us. So here’s the question again:
If human CO2 emissions are the cause of what we are observing now, how is it that the same thing happened before there were human emissions?
Explain, Simon. Or concede to Mr. Ockham.
“essentially all peer-reviewed science concludes AGW, as do all the world’s Science Academies.”
The consensus is about AGW, but the debate is about CAGW.
“essentially all peer-reviewed science concludes AGW”
Not exactly: http://www.populartechnology.net/2009/10/peer-reviewed-papers-supporting.html
+ 100
Thank you Dr. Tim Ball, bravo!
You have shared with us a great perspective for where we are, and how we got here. This helps us determine the way forward.
Dr Tim –
Do you imagine a debate is the appropriate process for dealing with somebody’s proposal to steal from you?
Do you fully accept that you will give up your stuff to whoever demands it and that you will also decide how much? How about the buck stops where you say it does – with you? How about not donating your earnings to thieves? How about not choosing what degree of slavery you will submit to and defying the premise?
Because when you negotiate, you have affirmed what you are and are merely dickering over price.
So no, your idea that negotiation will save you is wrong.
disengage from an opponent who has authority and you will disappear.
engage them where they are weak and you WILL weaken them.
feed em, ya breed em.
they would not otherwise be able to exist.
who feeds them?
and then wishes they wouldn’t eat…
that’s codependent cannibalism as far as i can see
Your suggestion works for an annoying fringe group with no power.
Alarmists were nothing special until the early 90s when they became identified as a political voting block. They did that via alignment with certain NGOs. Now they are entrenched with authority. You can ignore them and detach, but they’ll keep on coming until they are detached from the authority they control.
MOST of the silent majority tries to ignore them and self insulate and that of course plays into their hands because they already have the power they need to move forward.
Quite the sticky wicket.
The temperature record shown by Titley was cooked by NASA-GISS. The 1998 peak for instance had been nearly erased. That is why the point was lost.
Cruz should go after data fraud first, which he is now doing. Otherwise they will ALWAYS counter with fraudulent data passed as good. He should be able to say: “The data that you are showing was proved to be fraudulent.”
PS I am a strong believer in second chances. A climatologist who cooks temps SHOULD be given a second chance, to monitor the KFC cooker temp. Though under supervision against tampering for the first few years.
How about 3rd chances ?
Similar folks who rattled the cages for the next ice age in the 70s were resurrected to find CAGW as their new friend. It’s crazymaking and they keep attempting it because they don’t like what the a vibrant rugged and individualistic society.
As I was reminded by the stunning but oh so condescending organic farmer neighbor … “Our values are different and I just don’t expect you to have the frame of mind to understand where folks like me are coming from … “
Thanks, Dr. Ball, for starting this WUWT debate.
Settled science is not a permanent answer, as Newton would say, had he known what Einstein would publish.
Most who believe in CAGW will defer to the 97% when challenged. They aren’t experts, but the 97% are, and that’s their final statement on the matter. Until the 97% claim is dead and buried, there is no possibility of convincing the general public. The skeptic community needs to put out their own claims so there is at least an available counter-claim. Senator Markey, who likely knows the 97% claim is false, uses it effectively to dismiss everything the skeptic side claims.
Rep Debbi Wasserman Schultz ; Chair of the Dem., Nat., Committee was on CNN this AM : the question asked was. Climate Change was not mentioned in the Democratic debate last night. Answer bla bla bla 97% 97%
ScienceRules,
You have the Scientific Method backward. The ‘dangerous AGW’ conjecture (also called CO2=AGW) is put forth by the climate alarmist crowd. Therefore, they have the onus of providing a coherent scientific explanation that confirms their conjecture.
The onus is on the side making the conjecture; skeptics have nothiung to prove. The job of skeptics is to deconstruct, falsify, and debunk conjectures if at all possible.
Skeptics of the ‘dangerous AGW’ scare have done an excellent job of falsifying that conjecture, with the help of Planet Earth. The planet is contradicting the scare by not warming, as had been endlessly predicted by climate alarmists.
Doesn’t that convince you? Out of all the numerous frightening predictions of accelerating sea level rise, and runaway global warming, and decimated polar bear populations, and ocean acidification, and disappearing glaciers, and Arctic ice, and Greenland ice, and Antarctic ice cover, and inundated coastlines, and Tuvalu and Micronesia being drowned by rising oceans, and climate catastrophe in general, exactly none of those alarming predictions ever came true. They were wrong. All of them. In fact, no scary alarmist predictions have ever happened.
If the total failure of all the alarmists’ predictions convinces you that their dangerous AGW conjecture is wrong, then you are being rational. If the failure of all those predictions still doesn’t convince you that their conjecture is wrong, I have a question:
What would convince you? Please be specific.
Climate Etc. has started a link today on this very topic, at http://judithcurry.com/2015/12/20/what-is-there-a-97-consensus-about/
See also this link: http://www.joseduarte.com/blog/the-climate-science-consensus-is-78-84-percent
Thanks Roger
I ventured over there.
She’s runs a good page, but it’s low on participants.
CE needs a larger audience of posters.
She should consider merging her efforts with a larger page like WUWT or JoNova
Maybe an occasional joint publishing.
Obviously just my opinion.
Won’t ever happen. This site allows too many opinions of those whose minds are already made up. In a field with so politicized and with so many variables, it’s impossible at this point to know if anyone really knows the truth. Most here admit that there is simply not enough data to pontificate, but there are a few dogmatists whose pre-conceived ideas are as ridiculous as those of the most rabid environmentalists. Until the ad hominem stops, no true professional would associate associate herself (other than a few guest commentaries) with the sometimes vitriolic opinions expressed here.
Tom
The mosh pit is a messy place.
I agree that the ad homs are hurtful and have no place, but they seem to be kept to a dull roar here.
Based on your post, I think you would be surprised who wanders thru this webpage.
“She’s runs a good page, but it’s low on participants.”
There are a lot of influential/mainstream lurkers there though. The warmist elite is aware of what’s on her site. She’s probably silently influencing some of them to be braver, and giving them links and arguments they need to do so.
ScienceRules,
Well, you have just confirmed that you don’t know which way is up. And as always, you won’t answer a simple question. Instead, you ramble on incoherently, never answering questions, and never posting evidence that supports your belief. That is because you have no credible evidence, which is why you always fall back on your appeal to corrupted authorities.
Skeptics have nothing to refute, and climate alarmists have the onus of supporting their ‘dangerous man-made global warming’ conjecture.
You’ve failed miserably; you cannot even produce a single measurement to show what you believe is happening. There are no measurements of AGW, but if you want a Nobel Prize, just go find one.
Whenever someone like you shows up here and argues with nothing more than assertions, it is clear that you cannot support your belief; your assertions are all you’ve got.
Here on the internet’s “Best Science” site, baseless assertions like yours lose the argument. If you had credible evidence, you would have posted it by now.
“There are no measurements of AGW,”
..
(Note: “Buster Brown” is the latest fake screen name for ‘David Socrates’, ‘Brian G Valentine’, ‘Joel D. Jackson’, ‘beckleybud’, ‘Edward Richardson’, ‘H Grouse’, and about twenty others. The same person is also an identity thief who has stolen legitimate commenters’ names. Therefore, all the time and effort he spent on posting 300 comments under the fake “BusterBrown” name is wasted, because I am deleting them wholesale. ~mod.)
Well, well, well,
Another ignorant comment by the King of Ignorance, Busted Bluster.
Why even bother to explain? You wouldn’t understand anyway, and you would just post more baseless, unsupported assertions like that one.
(Note: “Buster Brown” is the latest fake screen name for ‘David Socrates’, ‘Brian G Valentine’, ‘Joel D. Jackson’, ‘beckleybud’, ‘Edward Richardson’, ‘H Grouse’, and about twenty others. The same person is also an identity thief who has stolen legitimate commenters’ names. Therefore, all the time and effort he spent on posting 300 comments under the fake “BusterBrown” name is wasted, because I am deleting them wholesale. ~mod.)
Busted Bluster says:
(Hint: the “W” in AGW is “warming”)
And the “A” refers to ‘man-made’ global warming. But as always, you have failed to produce any measurements quantifying how much global warming is man-made. The fact is, you don’t know if any warming is caused by human activity. You certainly have no data measuring AGW. If you did, you would be the first.
Thus, you fail; all you are doing is asserting your baseless belief that global warming is primarily caused by human CO2 emissions. That’s why you keep bird-dogging my comments: you’ve got nothin’ credible to contribute; my mere presence displays your inferiority, and you’re fixated on me. Admit it (or don’t. But readers can see your lame attempts to argue pointlessly with every point I raise).
But of course, you cannot prove that human activity causes global warming. You can’t even produce credible evidence. So as always, you fall back on your baseless assertions; your opinions. Your opinions are worthless because you have no supporting measurements. You have no data quantifying AGW.
Unless and until you can produce verifiable, testable measurements specifically quantifying the fraction of global warming attributable to human CO2 emissions, your entire argument is nothing but your uneducated opinion.
Global warming stopped many years ago, therefore the planet is debunking your baseless opinion. Every time you comment, you’re digging your hole deeper. Because everyone can see that you’ve got nothin’.
I think it’s fascinating to watch the warmists cling to the argument that skeptics have to disprove something that they haven’t proved. And, they are getting much pushier about it (could just be my impression).
They are losing so many of the things they predicted to be true.
Must be getting a little unsettling for them that people might begin to notice.
I think they will dive deeper into meaningless minutia and try to trot out old nonsense such as the particulate negative forcing effect. No shame. It will be telling to see if the science community can tow the line and not take the bait of genuinely debating the equivalent of grasping for straws.
Eventually, some well organized consortium of NGOs should retest the SCOTUS decision. SCOTUS deferred based on the preponderance of uncertainty and a spineless deferral to tail end of the probability risk. With the growing failure of warmists predictions, the time is approaching for a challenge.
“Skeptics have provided no coherent refutation of AGW that stands up to the scrutiny of peer-review; nor, apparently, do they wish to.”
Simply false .
On the other hand , you AlGoreWarming cultists have never , because you cannot , presented either the fundamental , in SI units , physical equations quantifying the “trapping” of energy by spectral phenomena , or any experiment demonstrating the effect .
Please do , because then we will have a way to construct perpetual heat engines and be done with all this landscape despoiling claptrap .
DBStealey,
Haven’t you heard? They have these new types of thermometers which are able to measure the anthropogenic portion of the temperature. Pretty cool, huh?
I think Mikey Mann has them, cheap.
I have a snap together hockey stick thermometer.
You can mix and match LIA, MWP, Roman, Minoan.
You can even program it to say “warmest evah”
SciencRrules continues to miss the central point: the onus is on you to produce convincing, evidence-based measurements showing that CO2 is the primary cause of global warming.
You’ve failed so abjectly to produce any evidence that it’s not surprising you keep missing the point.
DB
As Sciencedude points out, RIGHT or WRONG he expects skeptics to have to disprove what they haven’t proved. I’ve seen a good dose of this behavior in my life and I’m sure I’ve been guilty of it too. It’s hard to see it when your doing it.
It’s typically coupled with an emotional personal who doesn’t see that it’s up to them to provide at least a reasonable train of thought for why they cling to what they do and subsequently demand some sort of behavior. When you don’t perform the behavior the berating escalates. Funny thing is, after the dust settles and if the particular thing turned out to be the opposite of what they thought, there is rarely a review of past behavior. The really bad ones just keep repeating the cycle.
For what its worth, the worst thing to do is to get sucked in and reinforce the crazymaking … I think you have the right approach … RIGHT or WRONG as dude man says.
Peanuts from the gallery
ScienceRules commented: “… until the skeptics make a coherent argument in the peer reviewed literature, they have no chance of winning in the courts. Right or wrong, they continue to fail because, like Stealey, they consider it unimportant go do so….”
No one will give skeptic papers the time of day much less publish their views. If you think it’s because they are less “scientific” or “coherent” than most of the AGW drivel being published then you don’t understand the problem. Salamanders in North Carolina are exhibiting stunted growth because of global warming when only 6 specimens were examined received peer review and was published in a scientific journal as further proof of global warming. Is that what you mean by peer review? Skeptics have no voice because the media and educational institutions are denying it.
Courts will not listen to or judge scientific disputes. The basic argument is that it is “your paper” against “their paper” and they are not qualified to judge.
Not so fast! Courts will listen and judge scientific disputes where the Courts are presented with the ‘red flags’ that demonstrate scientific fraud has been committed and that there was an intention to mislead and deceive. Many examples of this have already been raised in the public domain. What has been lacking is placing the evidence before the prosecutors in every major legal jurisdiction, from America to Australia.
+10
Evidence has tilted towards the side of the skeptic
“Politicians are no better equipped or qualified to determine a science confrontation than the Courts.”
Dr Ball makes several good points: this approach was bound to fail. It failed because the Chairman and some Senators were acting as mere politicians instead of acting as Senators concerned with the administration of the law.
In my view, the hearing should have focused on compliance with the Data Quality Act rather than a forum for promoting skeptical views. The Senate and its committees have responsibility to monitor compliance with the Data Quality Act (DQA) or Information Quality Act (IQA), passed through the United States Congress in Section 515 of the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2001. This is a matter of ensuring that taxpayers are getting what they are paying for.
“Politicians are no better equipped or qualified to determine a science confrontation than the Courts.”
Senators are not merely “politicians”. Collectively with the House of Representatives, Senators represent the citizenry of the US, charged with responsibility to make the laws and to oversee certain activities of the Executive Branch. including Government Agencies.
The Congress and the Committee are authorized and mandated by law to maintain oversight of Government agencies. If Senators are advised by scientists that some climate data is of such low quality that the NOAA (among other agencies) exaggerates the level of warming within the continental US, then the responsible Committee is obligated to investigate. Scientists employed full time by the US Government as civil servants have no special status, unlike independent scientists and academics who undertake research for the US Government under contract.
As I understand it, a more appropriate basis for a Committee hearing would have been the recent paper by Antony Watts and others that demonstrated how few weather stations attain the high quality that taxpayers are entitled to expect.
From the point of view of the Committee, the data has been and still is collected and analyzed in a manner that is inconsistent with the Data Quality Act.
The Canadian approach is of limited relevance to the US, because committees of the Canadian Parliament (Senate or Commons) do not have the same authority vis-a-vis government agencies. Whenever the Prime Minister has a solid majority in both houses, then the Parliament functions merely as the Prime Minister’s poodle.
You wrote “the definition given to them by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) directed them only to study human causes of change”. Is there any documentation of this that I can cite? Thanks.
JP commented: “… “the definition given to them by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) directed them only to study human causes of change”. Is there any documentation of this that I can cite?….”
From “PRINCIPLES GOVERNING IPCC WORK” , second paragraph, ROLE:
“The role of the IPCC is to assess on a comprehensive, objective, open and transparent basis the scientific, technical and socio-economic information relevant to understanding the scientific basis of risk of human-induced climate change, its potential impacts and options for adaptation and mitigation.
IPCC reports should be neutral with respect to policy, although they may need to deal objectively with
scientific, technical and socio-economic factors releva
nt to the application of particular policies.”
WUWT, I need your help with a MODTRAN problem to address the claims made in this video by a warmist. You gotta love the scientific title “Denial 101.” That would be a joke it it didn’t come from one of our universities. In the video it is claimed that the tilt of the earth slightly warmed the N Hemi, that slight warming caused an outgassing of the oceans of CO2 and that CO2 warmed the earth to bring us out of an ice age. The CO2 went from 180 to 260 for a net heat trapping of 2.5 W/M^2. The temp also increased by 3°C, but I held temp constant. The obvious problem with this theory is that the N Hemi would have gone from a very very dry ice age climate to a rather moist climate that was conducive for plant growth and life. Changing Water Vapor from 0 to 1 resulted in a net heat trap of 70W/M^2 , or 25X the impact of CO2. Clearly the increase in water vapor resulted in the warming, not CO2. I would to further refine that example using the adjustment of 3°C and more accurate adjustments for the water vapor. Any help would be appreciated. Once I get a solid example I can then make a video to refute this video. I would also hope others would do the same. We need to make videos exposing the flaws of this theory using their own claims.
https://youtu.be/dHozjOYHQdE
BTW, the more I think about that explanation the more nonsensical it becomes. This about the dynamics. If Ice covered the N Hemisphere, the albedo would be great, reflecting more incoming light. There would be nothing absorbing the incoming radiation. As the snow and ice melt they flow into the oceans, slowing the warming of the oceans. As more ice melts, more of the ocean is exposed, allowing it to trap more heat. It would be as if a shade was being removed from the oceans. Once all the land ice has melted, the oceans would warm at a greater rate because there would no longer be glacier melt cooling them. The gradual decrease of the albedo and decreased glacier melt can explain the warming without the introduction of CO2. Am I wrong?
Very pro produced video out of Australia.
You have your work cut out for you to compete.
They even use heavy bass beat to appeal to your basic instincts, if you believe in such stuff.
On the humorous side I think I saw that jacket in the 60s.
And thanks for linking to these.
I’m going to watch more.
co2islife,
They seem to be neglecting the fact that the Southern Hemisphere has a lot more ocean than the NH. That contradicts their “theory”.
There are also the laws of radiative physics, which show that at current CO2 levels (≈400 ppm) the change in global T is so small that even for a large rise in CO2, the resulting rise in temperature is too small to measure.
This chart shows that even with a 20%, or 30%, or 50% rise in CO2, the resulting rise in global T would be only a tiny fraction of a degree:
Walking viewers through that cause-and-effect scenario is convincing evidence, which is supported by the fact that global warming stopped in the late 1990’s, and has not resumed despite the large rise in (harmless, beneficial) CO2.
DB
Thanks, I think I get it.
What she did was create the illusion of a false dichotomy.
She first shows the graphics of how CO2 and T seem to mirror each other, then presents the case that both T preceding CO2 and CO2 adding to temp increase are correct .. the false dichotomy.
Essentially she takes the minuscule temp effect of CO2 and tricks the listener to think that CO2 has a large effect on temp increasing.
Fascinating
Tim,
It’s too bad the courts don’t enforce the laws of physics. Three of which are consistently denied by the consensus.
1) Stefan-Boltzmann – The Earth looks like as an ideal gray body (emissivity = 0.62) from space with a corresponding sensitivity whose upper bound is less than the lower bound claimed by the consensus.
2) COE – The only way that more than 12 W/m^2 of feedback can arise from 3.7 W/m^2 of forcing to sustain a 3C surface temperature increase is to violate COE. (Consensus feedback theory assumes an amplifier with an unlimited external power supply which the climate does not have).
3) The second law – The heat engine producing the planets weather is the net result of evaporation, water vapor GHG effects, clouds, rain and weather and since its net result is to cool the planet (evidenced by hurricanes), the net feedback from water vapor all its consequences must be negative.
CO2good ,
Let’s get our physics right starting with step 1) .
One of the profound misconceptions which got me involved in this global statist nonscience is the notion that a gray sphere , ie : one with a flat spectrum , comes to any different temperature than a black body . It will come to the same temperature no matter how light or dark it is . This is the fundamental finding of Ritchie’s 1830s experiment which Kirchhoff , Stewart and I think others abstracted the fact that absorption and emission are just two directions thru the same filter . That is the temperature given by simply summing the impinging energy fluxes over the sphere . In our obit it is about 278.6 +- 2.3 from peri- to ap-helion . This value is the number which is of any use in calculations . ( Yet NASA does not list this gray body temperature for planetary orbits . )
I find it downright weird that I know of no other presentation of the calculations for arbitrary spectra than that which I presented at Heartland`s ICCC9 , http://cosy.com/Science/HeartlandBasicBasics.html , and elsewhere on my website . It boils down to a ratio of the dot products of the object’s absorptivity=emissivity spectrum with the source spectrum and with a Planck thermal spectrum . Surely someone in this crowd knows some radiant heat transfer textbook with the computation expressed and explained in classical notation . This is distinctly undergraduate STEM level basic physics yet seems to be generally very poorly understood .
Bob,
Here’s some data that shows how the output path of energy between the surface and space appears to be an ideal gray body whose temperature is 287K and emissions are 239 W/m^2 (emissivity = 0.62). Shown is the SB relationship for a black body, a gray body, the sensitivities of each and the presumed sensitivity by the IPCC.
http://www.palisad.com/co2/tp/fig1.png
The 20K small red dots are the monthly average emissions vs. temperature for constant latitude (solar insolation) slices of latitude. The larger dots are the average across the 3 decades of weather satellite data for each slice. Ironically, the data comes from the ISCCP project at GISS. The slope of this measured relationship is the sensitivity limit set by the energy path from the surface to space (about 0.3C per W/m^2)
When the input power is plotted against surface temperature, the slope of the curve becomes the slope of a black body at the surface temperature (about 0.2C per W/m^2). This sets the bounds of the actual sensitivity of somewhere between 0.2 and 0.3 W/m^2 rather than between 0.4 and 1.2C per W/m^2 as claimed by the IPCC.
All I’m interested in , first is the basic venerable experimentally verifiable quantitative physics . That 255K number I see in your graph is just a gross extreme value calculated assuming a step function spectrum with an absorptivity=emissivity ,
ae, of 0.7 with respect to the bulk of the solar spectrum and 1.0 over longer wavelengths , not an ideal gray body . It is nowhere near an accurate enough to explain the 4th and 5th decimal place variations in temperature all this noise is about . ( Theaeyou cite , 0.62 , corresponds to a temperature of about 247K . )There is no point to these extreme step function estimations when actual measurements of our spectrum as seen from the outside have been measured to some accuracy , and the associated temperature can be calculated from the ratio of dot products I present . Does anybody dispute or confirm that basic calculation ? It is implicit in the computation of the 255K number or the 247K corresponding to the ( 0.62 ; 1.0 ) step function spectrum you put forward . It is the very minor change in this spectrum as seen from the sun that is the only effect of GHGs on the planet’s mean temperature .
The real kicker comes from the fact that whatever that temperature calculated for the sun’s spectrum and a planet’s “Top of Atmosphere” spectrum , the Divergence Theorem says that the average interior temperature must match it . No electromagnetic phenomenon can “trap” and hold a higher kinetic energy density inside .
Only gravity can , and as HockeySchtick has presented , does in a straightforwardly computed amount .
Bob,
The 255K is the EQUIVALENT temperature of an ideal BB radiating the same 239 W/m^2 average that the planet receives from the Sun and emits to space. This is an EQUIVALENT quantification of the system. Equivalent modelling is a very powerful tool for analyzing complex system by distilling its behavior down to its average behavior, that none the less must conform to physical laws. This works because when using this method, the EQUIVALENT temperature of the surface very closely matches its average measured temperature.
An ideal BB surface (which the Earth surface approximates) whose average temperature is 287K emits about 385 W/m^2. Multiply this by an emissivity of 0.62 and you get the emissions of the planet. The grayness of the planet has nothing to do with the surface itself and is simply an artifact of the atmosphere as it delays emissions from the surface from reaching space. Consider the AVERAGE behavior of the planet if if had no atmosphere or had an inert atmosphere consisting of only N2 and O2 (which we can quantify exactly) and then incrementally add additional components one at a time and see what happens. Quantifiably, the emissivity will decrease as the surface temperature increases.
Spectral characteristics do not affect the warming capacity of a joule, as I said, a joule is a joule regardless of its source and the amount of work a joule can do is constant, although a joule can heat different materials by a different amount based on heat capacity. The point that the planet behaves LIKE an ideal gray body should be self evident from my previous plot by the alignment of measurements over a very wide range of temperatures with the ideal behavior of a gray body whose temperature is that of the surface and whose emissivity is 0.62.
More importantly, the graph I presented shows the nature of the error that led to an excessively high sensitivity which is the linearization of the relationship between temperature and forcing which ignored the T^4 dependence dictated by the Stefan-Boltzmann Law. AR1 justifies the linearity in the units of sensitivity as degrees per W/m^2 by claiming it’s linear over a small range, which of course it is, except that the center of the slope is the slope of SB and not an implicit slope passing through the origin.
And yes, gravity dictates the temperature profile of the atmosphere, as it does the temperature profile of our ocean and the temperature profile of the Venusian CO2 ocean (atmosphere) whose mass is roughly equivalent to the mass of Earth’s oceans. More importantly, the lapse rate related to the temperature of the N2 and O2 in the atmosphere has nothing to do with the radiative balance and emissions leaving the planet either pass directly from the surface or clouds to space or indirectly from GHG emissions that are not re-absorbed by other GHG molecules.
CO2 ,
I guess we are not as far apart as I thought . It sounds like you are basing the 255k number on actual measurement of our full
aespectrum as seen from the sun rather than the endlessly parroted ( solar 0.7 ; thermal 1.0 ) step spectrum which is used to “derive” it . I would very much appreciate a link to the spectral data and how it is collected because that does not strike me as easy .So you are agreed that except for the minor and easily calculated change in our spectrum as seen from the outside , CO2 has no effect on our mean temperature , and the GHG “hypothesis” for the difference between that “ToA” temperature and our surface temperature is false at a very fundamental level ?
Bob,
Yes, the 255K is based on actual measurements of planet emissions from 3 decades of weather satellite data. The planets emissions are directly measured by satellite sensors. The satellite sensors are relatively broad band and respond to energy within a spectral band. A spectral gap in emissions just means that fewer photons hit the sensor and the total power measured is lower, thus the equivalent temperature is lower. Sensors are also calibrated for absolute power given an ideal Planck spectrum representing a calibration temperature. Knowing how far the sensor is from the surface 1/r^2 can be applied to ascertain the total emitted power.
This is corroborated by indirect measurements of input power from the Sun based on reflection and direct solar measurements which results in the same magnitude of average power.
I do not agree that the only effect GHG’s has on the emitted spectrum. Atmospheric GHG’s absorb photons emitted by the surface. and that does affect the emitted spectrum. The overall shape of the emitted spectrum follows Planck emission at a temperature higher 255K, so if you tried to infer the temperature by the wavelength of peak emissions (Wien’s Law), you would get a much higher temperature since Wien’s Law assumes an ideal Planck spectrum.
In the steady state, Energy that enters the atmosphere must leave as the atmosphere has a limited capacity to store energy. The energy that exits the atmosphere can either leave the top into space and add to the direct emissions passing through the spectrally transparent regions of the atmosphere or be returned to the surface and accumulated with the incident solar power to warm the surface beyond that which the solar power can do on its own.
There are other problems with the IPCC definition of forcing at TOT/TOA (this is never sufficiently disambiguated in the AR’s). For example, an instantaneous 1 W/m^2 increase in solar power passing through the atmosphere is equivalent to an instantaneous 1 W/m^2 decrease in the power passing through the transparent window owing to increased GHG concentrations. These do not have the same effect because in the steady state, the entire W/m^2 of solar ‘forcing’ passes through to the surface, while only about 1/2 of the GHG related forcing is returned to the surface, the remaining half is ultimately sent out into space. This is the difference between energy entering the surface and having only one way out and energy entering the atmosphere having two ways out.
Another problem is that the IPCC definition of forcing obfuscates the negative feedback effect of ice and cloud reflection which leads to the bogus clam that GHG’s and clouds warm the surface by 33C. They neglect the 22C of cooling that clouds and ice has by reducing the input power via reflection, which is also part of the response of the system to forcing and can not be ignored.
Thank you for your answer . It’s perhaps the most detailed description I’ve seen of how our lumped planetary+atmosphere spectrum is measured from the outside . I think a text on these issues aimed at the quantitatively educated layman would go far in making the rational case . Roy Spencer had an excellent description of the many issues in “cleaning” satellite data a bit ago when describing his group’s move to their new , under 10,000 lines of Fortran system . But an overview text would be a very useful resource .
But , if the resolution of the data is only to the degree , then explaining 10ths of a degree temperature variations is beyond current capabilities . Further , if 255K , by coincidence the value calculated for a 0.7
aeratio , is the measured value , how come in one of your early posts did you give a value of 0.62 for the ratio ofaeover the solar spectrum to that over the longer wavelengths ? That ratio corresponds to a temperature of about 247.2K .Of course , what I’d call the effective radiative surface is not simply the ToA . It’s wavelength dependent and over the visible spectrum is generally either the actual surface of the earth , or cloud layers . ( I think Monckton gave a very evocative description here a while ago . ) However , that “surface” defines the boundary on which the Divergence theorem applies . There is no argument that CO2 and other “radiatively active” gases transduce radiant and thermal energy back and forth with their fellow atmospheric molecules , but that changes the variance of the temperature , not the mean . ( The relative lack of discussion of the effect of GHGs on the inertia of atmospheric temperature rather than the mean is another of those red flags which diverted me into this mosh pit . The discussion is just not on the equation by equation derivation I expect in any other branch of applied physics . I come at this from the perspective of such a nerdy APL programmer that I’m rolling my own : https://youtu.be/0u2_jKfo0A8?t=2h48m30s . )
In terms of the temperature gradient from the tops to bottoms of atmospheres , I think HockySchtick’s computations leave very little variance to be explained by anything but gravity . I actually have done little more than glance at his posts , but recognizing that the next excruciatingly obvious parameter to add the half dozen K expressions calculating the temperature of a colored ball in our orbit , is gravity , I’m content to leave it aside until I have some motivation and time to implement it in my 4th.CoSy . I’d rather someone just download 4th.CoSy and I’d just support them in implementing this physics themselves .
Bob,
The resolution of each pixel is 8 bits for most of the satellite channels. However, many thousands to millions of pixels go into a single measurement which significantly extends the resolution by the laws of averaging. Theoretically, this data can extract hundredths of a degree trends, but it only covers 3 decades of data which is insufficient for establishing any kind of long term trend. It’s still quite good for establishing the average response to change, which applies even more averaging and is how I’ve primarily used the data.
Absolute accuracy is hampered by GISS processing http://isccp.giss.nasa.gov which relied on a sloppy cross satellite calibration methodology that manifests significant jumps and drifts in absolute calibration when it looses continuous polar orbiter coverage, a polar satellite exhibits any drift or a replacement has a significantly different sensor response curve and this introduces more than 1C of noise to the data. I have my own tools to analyze the ISCCP satellite data and know how to fix this, but haven’t had the chance to do so, although I do have the TB of minimally processed data (close to raw) already downloaded and should be able to back out the ISCCP ‘adjustments’ and apply a better cross calibration algorithm. The tool is what I used to generate the plot in the earlier post and it provides me with a significant amount of other functionality and many ways to analyze and present data and compare data to models
The distributed nature of the emitting surface of the planet is why it’s best to model the atmosphere as a bulk object. This is where equivalent modelling really shines. The surface itself is better defined and more ideal with an emissivity at the boundary with the atmosphere close to unit which makes an equivalent gray body a very good match to the system, especially since changes to the surface temperature are what we are interested in.
It’s also no coincidence that the equivalent temperature of 255K corresponding to 70% of the 341.5 W/m^2 average input from the Sun is also the equivalent temperature of the energy emitted by the planet. Again, this is where equivalent modelling comes through since an EQUIVALENT temperature is a precise quantification of a rate of energy in joules per second (watts) and joules must be conserved.
I agree that CO2 does not change the average kinetic temperature of the atmosphere, i.e., the ideal gas temperature, since no NET energy from photon absorption/emission by GHG’s is transferred. Sometimes CO2 speeds up if the emission wavelength is less than the absorption wavelength, but equally and oppositely, some CO2 molecules slow down when the opposite occurs, moreover; only a tiny fraction of the photon energy is converted at once and as you said, this increases the variance, not the mean. But. its not the temperature of the atmosphere that matters, its the temperature of the surface.
The value of 0.62 is the equivalent emissivity of an ideal gray body whose temperature is the average temperature of the surface of Earth and whose emissions are the average emissions of Earth into space (equiv to 255K) based on the Stefan-Boltzmann Law.
Wow, you should see the email I got back trying to get some things clarified. Warmists don’t like you looking behind the curtain. Watch the video above and it makes every case you need to debunk the AGW theory.
1) It claims that the tilt of the earth warmed the N Hemi. (note, it hasn’t tilted back, so it is still warming)
2) It claims that the slight warming got the oceans to release CO2, priming the CO2 engine. Problem is, increasing from 180 to 220 only trapped 1.2W/M^2. That isn’t enough to warm the globe.
3) In reality what did the warming do? A) as the ice receded in exposed more ocean to the warming sun B) it turned a very very very dry ice age climate into a normal N Hemi climate that is conducive to life and growth. That means H20 was added to the dry air. Using the default H2O for the N Hemi, that added 70W/M^, or over 50X the trapped heat of CO2. H20, not CO2 is what warmed the atmosphere.
4) As the glaciers melted they slowed the warming of the oceans, but eventually the stopped cooling the oceans, and the oceans warmed more rapidly releasing even more CO2 and H2O.
That is a CO2 free explanation of why the earth warmed and has been warming, and it doesn’t need CO2 at all. That is a far better explanation that what is explained in the video. I would encourage everyone to start promoting this CO2 free explanation and watch the warmists freak. As I’ve said, you should see my email. Warmists don’t want you looking at things this way. It is blasphemy.
When are we scheduled to tilt back ?
I think that Ferdberple made an excellent suggestion which is to start a campaign against the use of private jets. This will start to show who is genuinely concerned about greenhouse gases and who is just grand standing. I would suggest, also, that in talking with others we state clearly that we do not believe in global warming and, what is more, no one else does either if we look at their actions. We need to drive home the disconnect between the words and the actions.
Patrick
The skeptics’ written testimonies were excellent, but, sadly, Data did not trounce Dogma, as discussed here http://www.globalwarming.org/2015/12/21/climate-change-hearing-lessons-from-data-vs-dogma/. Skeptics can win the live debate in the hearing room, but to do so they will need limit the number of witnesses to just one or two and strive to pursue a single line of inquiry from the start to the end of the proceeding. Using that strategy, Former House Small Business chairman Jim Talent (R-Mo.) Congresses thoroughly discredited the Clinton administration’s Kyoto Protocol economic analysis in a pair of hearings during the 105th and 106th Congresses. I saw it with my own eyes and tell the tale here: https://www.masterresource.org/climate-economics/climate-hearings-in-the-112th-congress-gop-chairmen-will-need-talent-like-jims/
Great link.
Fine article.
Easy to follow observation.
http://centerforriskcommunication.org/risk-communication-consultants/
The above link has been used to make the message for many a client. Can’t hurt to know how they do it.
Demosthenes was practicing
rhetoric with pebbles in his mouth. Young Japanese employees mount an elevated
place in the city and sing the
anthem of their company.
Tears of shame in the face.
And folk bands playing in the backstage behind iron roller blinds protecting against bottles.
Thrown after them by the animated crowd.
Lawyers humiliate their clients:
The goal is public standing.
– thats what You’re experiencing right now, Dr. Tim Ball. –
Wish I had Your nerves – Hans
The scientific community needs to police itself. Unfortunately, we have created a $9 billion per year incentive for scientists of all levels to look the other way. I left the field once I realized that it is not possible to question the “consensus” without severe repercussions to one’s career prospects. Those of us who left and are on the outside looking in have no influence or credibility. Working scientists are going to have to save science.
You do have credibility .
The hearing was the first time that key facts were put on record in a public forum: the most important being that the satellite temperature is far more credible than the surface temp being falsely used to show warming.
As such no one can now claim they did not know the surface data was corrupted and that the satellite temperature must be the first port of call when assessing current warming.
Like the butterfly effect, this might not seem a large change but the effect will be profound.
Here’s a summary of the video evidence : https://youtu.be/Kpbkj0iac6M