Guest opinion: Dr. Tim Ball
The public face of climate science practiced by the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), and their offspring the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) were for a political agenda and only secondarily for the money it engendered. However, their methods were made much more effective by magazines and journals who promoted their flawed science primarily for money and sometimes secondarily for politics. Magazines and Journals, often with considerable influence, latched on like giant sucker fish to further themselves not to promote truth, accuracy, and public understanding.
There was a time when Scientific American (SA) occupied a unique niche on the newsstands. It was a magazine about science for the public. It was genuine science usually written by scientists, not a popular pseudo-science magazine like all the others. It was interesting because most people did not understand much of what was written. People that knew about the topic realized it was a very broad overview, but realized it was for public consumption. They published fascinating articles drawing issues to public attention without political bias. Three I recall that were valuable in the climate debate were; John Eddy’s article on the missing sunspots; Stommel and Stommel’s piece on 1816, the year with no summer; and an early article about the influence on ocean temperature measurements of the switch from leather to metal buckets and then engine intakes.
Now, SA is a sensationalist, biased, apologist outlet for the IPCC global warming science. It appears the transition was driven, even before the full impact of the internet, by declining sales. Now, in my opinion, SA is no different from any of the other pseudo-science sensationalist magazines. Coincident with the shift was a decline in contributions from scientists and an increase in articles by professional (?) journalists. With climate articles, the majority came from scientists directly involved in the IPCC deception. Doom and gloom and sensationalism sells and even better if it fits the political bias of those involved in producing the magazine.
The same pattern developed with the two pre-eminent journals Science and Nature. There was a time when academics paid to have articles published and also paid for receiving a quantity of the article once published. There was a period when universities paid for subscriptions and a few academics purchased their own. As the cost of producing the journals increased subscription costs became prohibitive. This coincided with declining government and private monies to researchers and universities. Some publishing houses, such as Elsevier, saw a business opportunity and took over. We are all now familiar with the ‘paywall’. We also experience the merchandizing that occurs if you buy an article. It triggers an ongoing email promotion of “articles that might be of interest” similar to the follow ups from Amazon.
As global warming became a bigger political issue some in the media began searching for sensational scientific speculation articles. They were written up with the active voice headline declaring “scientist says,” then followed by an article with some of the conditional phrases academics use to temper their arguments. A major problem is that few journalists have science degrees or any scientific training. This means they only look at the science that feeds their sensationalist, “the story is everything” objective.
Some journals spawned different vehicles to expand circulation and exploit sensationalism. Nature started Nature Climate Change in 2007. I was made aware of its existence and bias at the 2009 Heartland Climate Conference when a reporter from that publication asked for an interview. I quickly realized he was not interested in objectivity or elucidation so terminated the interview.
Their editorial policy is set out on their home page as
Scientists are often accused of poorly communicating their findings, but improving scientific literacy is everyone’s responsibility.
True, but only if it is balanced and objective.
Nature Climate Change is owned by the Nature Publishing Group that is a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited. This is interesting because they were the publishers involved with the Velikovsky travesty, one of the most egregious examples of the conflicts that occur between publishers and a search for the truth. You can read Velikovsky’s side of the story in his book Stargazers and Gravediggers that Amazon describes as follows.
In one of the greatest acts of censorship in American history, a powerful lobby of establishment scientists forced Macmillan to suspend publication of Immanuel Velikovsky’s “Worlds in Collision” – the first shot fired in the campaign against Velikovsky’s “heretical” views. Here, with enormous dignity and intelligence, Velikovsky himself tells the full story of one of the most shameful book-burning episodes of our time. This is Velikovsky’s final word on the matter, and it forms an important inside account of a scandal that shook the worlds of science and publishing alike.
Velikovsky became a target for Carl Sagan, an early promoter of human CO2 caused global warming. That claim became central to the argument about the threat of higher CO2 levels. He challenged the claims of the levels and cause of temperatures on Venus. Sagan felt so threatened that he published a book Scientists Confront Velikovsky. It is about all his claims thus collectively including Venusian CO2. He is not to be believed on anything.
The interactions between publishers and scientists at the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) were revealed by the leaked emails in the Climategate scandal. On the web site Reason a 2009 article titled Climategate and Scientific Journal Chicanery by Ronald Bailey reports on the experiences of Eduardo Zorita.
By writing these lines I will just probably achieve that a few of my future studies will, again, not see the light of publication. My area of research happens to be the climate of the past millennia, where I think I am appreciated by other climate-research ‘soldiers’….
I may confirm what has been written in other places: research in some areas of climate science has been and is full of machination, conspiracies, and collusion, as any reader can interpret from the CRU-files. They depict a realistic, I would say even harmless, picture of what the real research in the area of the climate of the past millennium has been in the last years. The scientific debate has been in many instances hijacked to advance other agendas.
These words do not mean that I think anthropogenic climate change is a hoax. On the contrary, it is a question which we have to be very well aware of. But I am also aware that in this thick atmosphere and I am not speaking of greenhouse gases now- editors, reviewers and authors of alternative studies, analysis, interpretations, even based on the same data we have at our disposal, have been bullied and subtly blackmailed. In this atmosphere, Ph. D students are often tempted to tweak their data so as to fit the ‘politically correct picture’. Some, or many issues, about climate change are still not well known. Policy makers should be aware of the attempts to hide these uncertainties under a unified picture. I had the ‘pleasure’ to experience all this in my area of research.
The important point here is that Zorita expects retribution from the reviewers and editors thus making them accessories before and after the fact.
Another way to control the message is to be both reviewer and journal editor. This appears to be what happened in the dominance of IPCC and CRU scientists as editors of the Journal of Climate. Donna Laframboise poses the question
We’re supposed to trust the conclusions of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) because much of the research on which it relies was published in peer-reviewed scientific journals.
But what happens when the people who are in charge of these journals are the same ones who write IPCC reports?
After listing all the people, some 13 by my count, who served as editors or in some other editorial capacity on the Journal, Laframboise asks,
“Is no one concerned that there is no distance whatsoever – never mind anything approaching a firewall – between the people who decide whether a study deserves to join the haloed ranks of the scientific peer-reviewed literature – and the people who then write IPCC reports declaring what this peer-reviewed literature tells us about climate change?
And let’s not even talk about what percentage of the published papers authored by some of those mentioned above earned their peer-reviewed status via the Journal of Climate. That’s another story for another day.”
In an article written shortly after the leaked emails appeared Robert Tracinski said,
“Not content to block out all dissent from scientific journals, the CRU scientists also conspired to secure friendly reviewers who could be counted on to rubber-stamp their own work. Phil Jones suggests such a list to Kevin Trenberth, with the assurance that “All of them know the sorts of things to say…without any prompting.”
Sadly, many were willing for various reasons. Tracinski summary is telling.
The picture that emerges is simple. In any discussion of global warming, either in the scientific literature or in the mainstream media, the outcome is always predetermined. Just as the temperature graphs produced by the CRU are always tricked out to show an upward-sloping “hockey stick,” every discussion of global warming has to show that it is occurring and that humans are responsible. And any data or any scientific paper that tends to disprove that conclusion is smeared as “unscientific” precisely because it threatens the established dogma.
A major factor in making journals and magazines vulnerable to persuasion from the people at CRU was the business model applied and the requirement for a profitable operation. It was the practice of the business world to either ignore the science as I explained in an earlier article or donate money to those attacking them in a form of corporate market place appeasement. Proof of this is seen in the fact that one company fighting back makes a headline – Exxon Stands Up to the green Bullies.
The real breakthrough will come when this headline appears in the mainstream media, but don’t hold your breath, there is much more money available as long as government funding continues.
Addition by Anthony. (3/6/2016)
There is a follow up to this post here:
For the record I’ve never supported Velikovsky’s ideas in the book Worlds In Collision. But I DO support discussing them in the context of learning, because if you can’t learn from mistakes, you aren’t doing science. – Anthony Watts
I stopped reading Scientific American some time after graduating from engineering school, and before law school, when it became apparent to me that it began to denigrate engineers as not being real scientists, just technicians that need not be listened to. It was about the same time as I read a book in the mid 80s that spoke about why the public was loosing faith in science, much if it caused by the revelations about certain miracles that were in fact the opposite (DDT, thalidomide, and others). It was all so political.
Now all of the people I knew in high school and university that were Marxists are against globalization and are greenies, but only when it suits them to make a point and not really in their personal choices. They just want to tell me I am right wing and wrong because I try to read the science and question the plot that we should all just accept. I was told by one years ago that he didn’t need to read or understand any of the science because real scientists had the answer…and they were not engineers.
There was nothing wrong with DDT, and Thalidomide was the result of inadequate testing in Japan.
Thalidomide never made it through the testing process in the US.
Speaking of “paywalls”, this article should be read by all http://bigthink.com/neurobonkers/a-pirate-bay-for-science . Especially note this instruction ” Users now don’t even have to visit the Sci-Hub website at all; instead, when faced with a journal paywall they can simply take the Sci-Hub URL and paste it into the address bar of a paywalled journal article immediately after the “.com” or “.org” part of the journal URL and before the remainder of the URL. When this happens, Sci-Hub automatically bypasses the paywall, taking the reader straight to a PDF without the user ever having to visit the Sci-Hub website itself.” Murray
seems to show this website is under heavy load message a lot of the time
Mentioning World’s in Collision in your argument seems highly counter productive Dr. Ball. It is very much in the vein of “The Electric Universe” theory.
I find the theory that Venus passed by Earth in the 15th century to be about as credible as young Earth creationism.
When we challenge ‘orthodox’ science it’s important to stand on solid ground in all parts of our arguments.
I agree. It’s not an an example I would have chosen to lead with.
I took it to mean that Velikovsky was mentioned for the way Sagan and others treated him, and not necessarily to validate his ideas.
One thing I would say in Carl Sagan’s defense regarding the Velikovsky affair is that in his COSMOS series he said that the worst thing about the affair was not the quality of Veilkovsky’s science but that they tried to suppress its publication.
For sure. Unfortunately, Dr. Ball also misrepresented elements of this famous episode. See my comment to Mosher upthread. Knew about it because was an option for an included illustration in the truthiness chapter of Arts of Truth (2012). Ended up using Madhoff’s ponzi scheme instead. Subtler, and an easier synopsis of a single reference book on something many people will remember, rather than a tangled thread of references in books about books to a 65 year old controversy about a theory that was prima facie goofy.
Mosher equating me with a Velikofsky believer shows how much ammunition such misrepresentations give to warmunists. In this case, blanks, but still regretable.
Seems like you had something to say.
Care to try again, cus I got nothing out of that.
Ok. Dr. Ball’s post unfortunately misrepresents the Velikofsky kerfuffle, and in doing so hands more ‘deniers are nutters’ ammo to the likes of Lew. Not good. Especially here at WUWT.
I knew this because had researched this 65 year old rather famous kerfuffle for a previous book example, before dropping it in favor of something better for the books purposes (Madhoff). So was able to repond to Mosher upthread just from memory (except for checking Amazon for current availability of Velikofsky’s nutter book Worlds in Collision).
None of us can be correct about everything. Velikovsky was right on many things, and wrong on many others, just as Sagan, or Newton, or anyone else you care to name. Read up on what Velikovsky said and wrote before towing the Sagan line. I challenge you.
Just fyi, Velikovsky predicted hydrocarbons would be found on the moon.
ukus, I suggest to read it more carefully then.
It’s been a while since I read anyone defending Velikovsky.
But no worries, Tim, an own goal is still a goal.
It’s interesting but predictable that the anti-Velikovsky venom still flows freely after all these years. As pointed out by a number of observers during the Velikovsky scandal, he must be the luckiest thinker who ever lived for having made so many correct prior claims (‘predictions’) on the strength of a supposedly flawed theory. If he was so wrong, as many Sagan worshippers on this forum seem to believe, how could he have made so many correct predictions based on his ideas? Was he just lucky? What would be the chances of that? I keep hearing people claim with authority that Velikovsky was necessarily wrong or that he was deluded, but I never hear anyone explain precisely why he must be. It is enough for them merely to say so. They then quote Sagan as their authority because Sagan wrote a book denouncing Velikovsky as a fraud. Little mention is ever made of the fact that Sagan himself never read Velikovsky’s books and was known himself for having come up with crackpot ideas like his belief, peddled in the mid-sixties, that Phobos (one of the moons of Mars) was hollow and peopled by aliens. Yet he had the temerity to attack Velikovsky for proposing a fundamentally sound idea that Venus was at one time seen by the ancients as a comet and that it approached the Earth and caused havoc. Sagan himself admitted that there was nothing inherently flawed or impossible in this notion. The advantage Sagan had over Velikovsky was that he, Sagan, was idolised by the media and the science establishment. He could say no wrong. Sagan was infallible, a paragon of virtue. So anything and everything he said became holy writ. Which, unfortunately, it still is.
People who routinely knock Velikovsky without reading his books or without knowing the full story as to what happened between 1950 and 1974 when Sagan’s circus came to town, are no better than those who promote manmade global warming and denounce the sceptics without knowing the facts. It’s more important to have an actual argument than merely a mantra to repeat.
This is not to say that Velikovsky was right in everything he said and wrote, but he most certainly was on the right track. Go read Stargazers and Gravediggers. That book is an eye-opener!
Oy vey!
*rolls the eyes*
The problem is, being right is only step one. You have to “show your work”, and his work is flawed.
Part of my job is auditing data so that we can be sure reporting standards are met. One manual I use is 1,200 pages long, so yes, there is room for interpretation. As I tell clients, the answer “4′ means nothing in isolation, if the question you asked is “What is 2+2?” when in fact what you should have asked is “What is 5-1”?
CaligulaJones February 29, 2016 at 8:57 am says;
The problem is, being right is only step one. You have to “show your work”, and his work is flawed.
Now I am going to ask you to show your work. Which work are you referring to specifically, and make no mistake, Velikofsky had a lot wrong,…..
I would like to add another example; Edison’s successful attempt to smear Tesla. Most people are unaware that we use Tesla’s electrical grid, not Edison’s, and yet Edison is viewed today as an American hero, Tesla, until very recently remained in obscurity.
Tesla was portayed as a “crackpot” and a “mad scientist”. Sounding familiar yet?
1oldnwise4me@reagan.com February 29, 2016 at 12:19 pm says;
Sysiphus, it was not a battle between Edison and Tesla, it was a battle between Edison and Westinghouse.
You’re kidding, right? You are really going to say it was Westinghouse? Even though Westinghouse was investing in Tesla’s system. You did read the full page that you posted, didn’t you?
Why don’t you find someone else’s heals to nip at.
It seems to me that what has happened is that the economics of science publishing has enabled a switch from contributor driven control to marketing/managerial driven control. In turn this created an opening for the ‘lesser lights’ of science to get to the front of the queue by cosying up to the publishing managerialists. It is pretty much what happens in the schoolyard when teachers do nothing about bullying or when the cops go easy on the streets and don’t get out and about on the beat, the thugs take over.
Not so much a conspiracy as a dereliction of duty by or defunding of the gatekeepers and the creation of a thug friendly world.
On a positive note, the recent paper acknowledging the existence of the ‘pause/hiatus’ and including Michael Mann no less indicates that perhaps Gaia has finally had enough and is going to kick ass.
Or the thugs saw an opening, amplified the opportunity and are institutionalizing themselves. I often wonder lately about the concept of conspiracy.
I wouldn’t consider the above scenario a conspiracy, but I have seen the alluding to it being poo pooed as conspiracy thought.
The political rape of the climate issue and the “climate science” reminds me of an episode during my study in sociology at the University of Amsterdam, causing me to steer away from this study, well on my way to the masters degree, and switch to a more “normal” course like town planning at a different faculty. All the signs and mechanisms described by Tim Ball were there clear to see as well. This is nothing new.
It is 1968. In Paris there were these student revolts and they spilled over to other places like Amsterdam. There was the funny and hippie side of the “provo’s” and “Kabouters” (gnomes) and the flower power movement, and there was the more sinister side of the organized leftist activism.
Here is a bunch of guys mostly from intellectual families flirting with leftist ideals and putting them into practice. Mao and Castro were unchallenged hero’s in those days, and these guys in Amsterdam from the ASVA student organization were proud to systematically disrupt the lessons, courses and work groups of teachers and students, even to sabotage and end the career of professors. And to what purpose? To take over the supposed authoritarian way of directing the science education and make it more “democratic”. However, once they succeeded – as they did to a large extent – it became clear from the start they were far worse and extremely authoritarian themselves. They had no science to offer, only empty leftist slogans.
So not a lot has changed. Mao and Castro were no gods any more, the Communist Party in Holland is long gone, The Berlin Wall has collapsed, the USSR is no more. But the appeal of the elitist activism to manipulate the masses is ever present. And the universities? In a cramped reaction to the “progressive” turmoils they became like streamlined “science” factories and science itself to a high degree became commercialized in that they were expected to produce in quantities, as if science is something you can program the outcome of by bureaucratic and political rules. You may speculate that the devaluation of journals like Nature, Science and Scientific American is an inevitable outcome of this process.
The warmists and the skeptics have different audiences, target-groups if you like. That is why there is no real and open debate going on between them. The warmists are mainly targeting the general public, the governments and the money. Skeptics are more like the traditional scientists, they target mainly their subject of interest.
In a way doing pure science is a luxury. An academy used to be a place to learn a general “universal” perspective. As soon as practicalities like money, career planning and political preferences start intervening, the science gets easily corrupted. The paradox is, and this goes for creative work in general, if you apply too much pressure and expectations in advance, the free play and expression and inventiveness become the victims.
In as far as “institutionalized science” is a victim of this political maneuvering of the warmista’s I am not sure I am too worried, as “institutionalized science” is essentially very different from pure science. A pure scientist is a bit like an artist. An artist needs his freedom for his work and development. If he depends mainly on his work for his maintenance, for most artists life will not be easy. This is not different in science. It is part of the game.
Well, Jurgen, the ASVA students organization was a spearhead of the Communist Party in the Netherlands. Via the one-man-one-vote claim they tried to infiltrate our university (we are of the same age and studied at the same university). What happened with the Dutch Communist Party? They became a part of our greenies. This move was official and I considered it strange because the Communists never showed any interest in environmental issues.
+10
An articulate read. Thanks for taking the current history thru a quick post 60s influence.
I remember those days well as I grew up and went to school in Holland as well, Kabouters!! ( today I would call them under miners of society)
This paper is interesting.
Looks like the start of a ‘reverse ferret’ by amongst others, Michael Mann, no less.
http://www.nature.com/articles/nclimate2938.epdf?referrer_access_token=rO_LAj7Squh3f_qt6natqdRgN0jAjWel9jnR3ZoTv0OqExA1EwYluYLwiaayT9ble9FcNagQ1ss5L1V0KiWd-xzbFQjp8p3e-nUsgU7jNuUykRRWZpgMltUfROWf3xSKeGSSY7TvMiWdaeBCmNzlbQKCodQ3ivWje8eZYAs8Dr1uu8L-i3CHt8f_jYiil5eUpRpdxdWDCSCvqts_NYB_l8yUG-b6Qu0dtrZLMnaUyec%3D&tracking_referrer=www.nature.com
(apologies for URL length, but it gets you through the paywall)
You are right! I’ve noticed the same thing and I thought about manipulation again. More than that, the IPCC seems to ignore so many scientific facts, including this one: http://oceansgovernclimate.com/ipcc-ignores-human-impact-on-atmospheric-water-vapor/.
Thanks.
I read a couple of Velikovsky’s books, including Worlds in Collision. Very persuasive, IMO. Has anyone refuted his (correct) prediction that Venus would have a retrograde revolution?
See above: getting a prediction correct is one thing. Getting it correct because your science is correct is another.
So what you’re saying essentially is that he got his predictions correct because he was lucky, not because they were based on a plausible theory or that he actually got his science right. His ‘predictions’ were merely conclusions he drew from having developed a consistent idea, that even the gold-plated Carl Sagan agreed was plausible and actually quite possible as did others of his detractors. As I said above, if Velikovsky is necessarily wrong as you seem to imply, he must be the luckiest thinker who ever lived for having made so many correct predictions based on an incorrect theory. That of course is absurd. Velikovsky must have gotten something right surely.
Interestingly as you no doubt know, Richard Feynman argued that if your theory is capable of making correct predictions, it is a reliable indicator that you are at least on the right track. This is something Velikovsky did numerous times. Yet for some reason Feynman’s dictum doesn’t apply to him. Why is that? It is merely traditional, fashionable and ‘politically correct’ to claim that Velikovsky was necessarily wrong. It is merely something people like to say; repeating the same mantra, as you have just done, without knowing why they think so.
I don’t think it would have mattered what Velikovsky said, or how much evidence he accumulated in support of his hypothesis because the minds of his detractors were tightly closed. As some still are today.
So far as I know Velikovsky made absolutely no significant valid predictions that can’t be explained by the “even a blind squirrel occasionally finds an acorn” paradigm. The number of his false “predictions” and the way he had planets bouncing around the solar system like billiard balls makes his conjectures meaningless in the real world (and, yes, I did read “Worlds in Collision”).
And, no, his work should not have been censored by the publisher.
As a wet behind the ears science graduate, in 1980,s Australia, I read new scientist magazine. have not done that for nearly a decade now.
What happened recently with my (alarmist) newspaper may be suggestive. Three months before Paris their propaganda campaign was launched. Day after day we got a bombardment which was over directly after Paris. It was a travesty of journalism but that is not the point here. Such campaigns are based on an editorial decision, comparable with what happened at the BBC. This is not the work of some isolated journalists but the policy of chief editors. I would like to see an international network analysis of chief editors, comparable with what Donna Laframboise did.
ME, Ich nehme ein Deutscher an. Welche Zeitung? Zukunftlige Forschungsmoeglichkeiten.
Thanks for this comment although I have to note that German is not the language we use in the Netherlands, a small country situated between the UK and Germany. The subject of this post by Tim Ball is written in the header but he already goes off the rails in the first paragraph. If it were a matter of money, what about journals who did not participate in the climate propaganda? Why should we concentrate on a few deteriorated journals? Go to a library and note how many newspapers and journals just disappeared. It is normal that journals disappear and therefore meaningless to complain about a sick or dying journal. Let the historical question be why some journals in the Netherlands collaborated with the Germans during WW2 while others did not. No historian made the proposal that is was a matter of money or declining sales.
A few years ago the list was discovered with attendants of a BBC editorial meeting, among them a few climate activists (initially called scientists). Isn’t that peculiar? Usually, activists do not participate in editorial meetings. The BBC climate policy was set-up in that meeting, presided by the chief editor, a key figure, determining the policy, having contacts with the publisher, and subjects in the political and scientific arena.
It is my hypothesis that in almost every western country a major broadcasting company, a newspaper, and a journal were infiltrated by climate activists. The most vulnerable were the left-leaning media because the climate narrative easily fits in their content. It is no accident that in the same time the BBC meeting adopted climate-censorship, my newspaper did the same. Where does this medieval idea come from? Have you ever seen a journal that made and published the editorial decision to censor all comments about the stock markets, folk music, or any subject of your choice? I am glad Tim Ball put this nasty subject on the table.
How solar cycle changes causes cyclic warming and cooling of the planet is unaffected by human ignorance, cult beliefs, and propaganda to push/fight the climate wars.
It is absurd that the cult of CAGW’s beliefs have not been affected by the paradox that there has been 18 years without warming at a time in which anthropogenic CO2 has increased year by year. The skeptics are not skeptical. CAGW has been proven incorrect, there is no statistical evidence of even AGW. The corollary to the fact that has been 18 years without warming is that the majority of the warming in the last 150 years is not due to the increase in atmospheric CO2.
Observations continue to support the assertion that the solar cycle has been interrupted which is unbelievably different that a slowdown in the solar cycle.
If the paleo record is guide to the future we are going to experience significant and rapid cooling.
Comments: Salby’s recently updated analysis shows no less 66% of the recent increase in atmospheric CO2 is due to natural causes (warming oceans and a mechanism that causes increased deep earth low C13 CH4 release). Salby’s assertion is supported by two other peer reviewed papers that arrive at the same conclusion using different data and analysis methods.
It appears the entire scientific basis of the IPCC is incorrect. The majority of the warming in the last 150 years is due to natural causes (solar cycle changes) and the majority of the increase in atmospheric CO2 is due to natural causes (warming of the oceans and an increase in deep earth low C13 CH4). If that assertion is correct both increases (temperature and atmospheric CO2 levels) will significantly drop due to the interruption to the solar cycle.
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/davis-and-taylor-wuwt-submission.pdf
It is comical that scientists have known for almost 20 years that the planet cyclically warms and cools and that the cyclic warming and cooling of the planet correlates with solar cycle changes.
Greenland ice temperature, last 11,000 years determined from ice core analysis, Richard Alley’s paper. William: As this graph indicates the Greenland Ice data shows that have been 9 warming and cooling periods in the last 11,000 years.
http://www.climate4you.com/images/GISP2%20TemperatureSince10700%20BP%20with%20CO2%20from%20EPICA%20DomeC.gif
A first class comment, to my mind, William. Thank you.
Observations continue to support the assertion that the solar cycle has been interrupted
Nonsense.
SA went bad so I cancelled my subscription more than a decade ago.
“You can ignore reality but you can not ignore the consequences of ignoring reality.” Ayn Rand
You can check the reality yourself and verify a 97% match between model and measured average global temperature at http://globalclimatedrivers.blogspot.com It identifies the drivers of climate change and even quantifies the tiny contribution from CO2.
“As the cost of producing the journals increased”
hug?
Roger Pielke Jr. has a piece on his blog about a book, Galileo’s Middle Finger. It’s a study of several cases of what happens when scientists conflict with activists.
It’s meaningful for Pielke who also suffered because he told the truth.
The author, Alice Dreger, shows how activists tried to destroy the lives and livelihoods of researchers whose results conflicted with activist orthodoxy.
This book is important because it has been widely reviewed. It puts the idea before the public that activists often oppose the truth (in very nasty ways). Such pressure leads to the corruption of science. Once the public accepts that, it is a short step for them to see how it applies to climate science.
Like many main street media publications running out of money and time they are desperate
so objectivity ,research and intellectual honesty go out while shallow sensationalism comes in .
It won’t save them but like a candy bar they got a quick short term fix .
“Scientists ” were only too happy to provide the candy and charlatans pretending to have a crystal ball
meet the need . Politically correct politicians were drooling over the prospect of a new sources of guilt taxes and the UN desperate for cash helped create the story behind one of the biggest scams in history .
You new the scam was at full boil when banks and religion jumped in .
You would only blow $$Billions if you actually didn’t have it . Too many other really useful places
to spend it .One of the only reasons this massive fraud has gotten this far is because the “have ” nations
have no credit card limit .
“One of the only reasons this massive fraud has gotten this far is because the “have ” nations
have no credit card limit .”
Just because the card has not been cancelled yet for exceeding the limit does not mean there is no limit.
Just ask Greece, or Detroit, or Puerto Rico.
Good article Tim – thank you.
Scientific American, Science and Nature have all fallen into disgrace, due to their slavish adherence to global warming alarmist nonsense.
What will happen when the world starts to cool, which we suggest is imminent – starting by 2020 or sooner?
Will the world wake up, or continue to believe that they are at risk of dangerous manmade global warming?
Global cooling has happened before, from about 1940 to 1975, even as atmospheric CO2 increased, and that should have been enough evidence to disprove the CAGW hypothesis. The fact that the CAGW hypo lives on is a testament to the gullibility and corruptibility of many academics and politicians.
If we are correct and global cooling is imminent, I suggest that global warming alarmism will finally fall into disrepute, and those that so aggressively promoted it will too.
The world will realize that the alarmists have squandered trillions of dollars of scarce global resources, and have needlessly caused widespread fear, driven up energy costs and increased winter mortality.
Rather than using Velikovsky as an example of how disagreement with the mainstream of opinion is treated, a better example would have been Bjorn Lomborg who was almost charged with scientific heresy by the Danish.
Yes, and I rather liked his succinct rejoinder to those who accuse him of not having much peer-review published: all material produced by a university press is considered peer-reviewed.
‘New Scientist’ and the BBC ‘Focus’ magazine are equally as bad as SA at being full of propaganda passed off as science
I am constantly surprised by the tone of comments of many “attack dogs” who respond to pieces like Tim Ball’s in sites like WUWT. it’s as if anyone or anything that supports. CAGW is to be castigated. Scientific American, Nature, and other journals of similar ilk are dismissed as being without merit because of their support of CAGW, somehow dismissing all of the other scientific content. Please have some balance. How can you dismiss the good work of scientists, their reviewers and journal editors in other fields.
I notice that The Guardian comes in for its customary opprobrium, again for its CAGW support. This is the paper I read, but not for it’s climate change coverage (my wife says I grind my teeth when reading that). Even the Guardian sometimes publishes letters from “skeptics” – it published two of mine which because I used my UEA address, got me in trouble with my ENV_CRU colleagues and attacked by Monbiot- both sources of pride.
Please be more discerning In your criticism of those who do not share your opposition to CAGW. Climate science is not the end all and be all of science. Remember it is that science that ultimately will destroy the nonsense that passes for most climate science today.
Thank you Alan Kendall.
I agree that not everything in ScAm, Science and Nature is false – that conclusion would be foolish.
I do suggest that the slavish adherence to CAGW nonsense by ScAm, Science and Nature has disgraced these once-respected journals and their organizations, and they are not to be trusted.
They have fallen from grace.
Best regards, Allan
It is very difficult to put one’s finger on where self delusion ends and wickedness begins. It starts as self delusion and ends up as planned delusion, like a little lie made to make yourself feel a little bit more comfortable can end up as a big lie that is actively hurting others on a big scale, no one ever wanted to go down that track but many of us go down it again and again. Phil Jones seems like an addict.
There is room in all this for studies on this site on pattern making, and what we see in patterns (ie how scientists are reading the data). If you ask someone to look for Y in a pattern they will see Y, and if you ask a person to look for X they see X. The same person can see Y and X, but when they are looking at X they cannot see Y and when they are looking at Y they cannot see X – like the duck rabbit, but in this case dismissing data that is superfluous to what you want to see. It is inevitable, we all need to be aware that we are all doing it.
Then there is the matter of subconscious decisions, we ascribe reasons for why we are doing things that do not match the reasons the zombie world of the subconscious caused us to do that thing. It is easy to demonstrate, and people who have had their corpus callosum cut (communication channels between the brain hemispheres) will demonstrate beliefs in why they guessed something that does not match the known reasons. Again we are all doing it on a huge scale all the time.
There is our constant belief in oneness, when in actuality one is always a conglomerate of disparate things that are always changing, splitting and forever mutating. Facts are always plastic.
And finally our belief in our own rationality, when in truth rationality is an evolutionary afterthought that governs us to the best of it’s ability but always fails. Science does it’s best to take the plastic out of the packaging, it will always be a compromise.
Thank you Julian for your thoughts.
You write about subjectivity in decision-making, but there is a much better measure of evaluating one’s decisions and that is objectivity.
I suggest that one’s predictive track record is perhaps the best objective measure of one’s technical competence.
The IPCC and the global warming alarmists have a negative predictive track record, because none of the alarmists’ scary predictions of runaway global warming, wilder weather, climate refugees, or countless other warming-caused disasters have materialized.
Based on its negative predictive track record, the IPCC and the warmist camp have NO technical credibility.
In comparison, here is my (our) predictive track record, from an article that Sallie Baliunas, Tim Patterson and I published in 2002 in the PEGG. It is now available at:
http://www.friendsofscience.org/assets/documents/KyotoAPEGA2002REV1.pdf
Our eight-point Rebuttal includes predictions that have all materialized in those countries in Western Europe that have adopted the full measure of global warming mania. My country, Canada, was foolish enough to sign the Kyoto Protocol, but then wise enough to ignore it.
[2002 article in “quotation marks”, followed by current commentary.]
1. “Climate science does not support the theory of catastrophic human-made global warming – the alleged warming crisis does not exist.” NO net global warming has occurred for more than 18 years despite increasing atmospheric CO2.
2. “Kyoto focuses primarily on reducing CO2, a relatively harmless gas, and does nothing to control real air pollution like NOx, SOx, and particulates, or serious pollutants in water and soil.” Note the extreme pollution of air, water and soil that still occurs in China and the Former Soviet Union.
3. “Kyoto wastes enormous resources that are urgently needed to solve real environmental and social problems that exist today. For example, the money spent on Kyoto in one year would provide clean drinking water and sanitation for all the people of the developing world in perpetuity.” Since the start of global warming mania, about 50 million children below the age of five have died from contaminated water.
4. “Kyoto will destroy hundreds of thousands of jobs and damage the Canadian economy – the U.S., Canada’s biggest trading partner, will not ratify Kyoto, and developing countries are exempt.” Canada signed Kyoto but then most provinces wisely ignored it – the exception being now-depressed Ontario, where government adopted ineffective “green energy” schemes, drove up energy costs, and drove out manufacturing jobs.
5. “Kyoto will actually hurt the global environment – it will cause energy-intensive industries to move to exempted developing countries that do not control even the worst forms of pollution.” Note the huge manufacturing growth and extremely polluted air in industrial regions of China.
6. “Kyoto’s CO2 credit trading scheme punishes the most energy efficient countries and rewards the most wasteful. Due to the strange rules of Kyoto, Canada will pay the Former Soviet Union billions of dollars per year for CO2 credits.” Our government did not pay the FSU, but other governments did, bribing them to sign Kyoto.
7. “Kyoto will be ineffective – even assuming the overstated pro-Kyoto science is correct, Kyoto will reduce projected warming insignificantly, and it would take as many as 40 such treaties to stop alleged global warming.” IF one believed the false climate models, one would conclude that we must cease using fossil fuels.
8. “The ultimate agenda of pro-Kyoto advocates is to eliminate fossil fuels, but this would result in a catastrophic shortfall in global energy supply – the wasteful, inefficient energy solutions proposed by Kyoto advocates simply cannot replace fossil fuels.” Governments that adopted “green energy” schemes such as wind and solar power are finding these schemes are not green and produce little useful energy. Their energy costs are soaring and these governments are in retreat, dropping their green energy subsidies as fast as they politically can.
IN SUMMARY:
All the above predictions that we made in 2002 have proven correct in those states that fully adopted the Kyoto Accord, whereas none of the global warming alarmists’ scary warming projections have materialized.
Thank you Allan,
I am in no way defending the IPCC or the people who indulge it. It seems to me that things are pretty rotten within the CAGW advocacy movement and they have departed from using scientific ethics and standards.
I have no problem in dismissing M Mann, or even the likes of Phil Jones or Trenberth who I wonder – are they weak minded or pathetic or dishonest? I have trouble understanding how there junk has survived so long and why it has not been put right by a few dozen scientists and journalists, but it has not. It seems a site like this which is read by millions and works night and day to present accurate and fair data and analysis is ignored. I try to understand how and why this is happening.
This problem is not just happening in science, it is rampant in the way politics is presented too.
I admire good science and the ethics of good science (such as you outline above)..
Good thoughts Julian, thank you.
A few more thoughts below – climate heresy now, but conventional wisdom in 10 to 20 years(?)
Best regards, Allan
References:
Cold Weather Kills 20 Times as Many People as Hot Weather
June 13, 2015
By Joseph D’Aleo and Allan MacRae
https://friendsofsciencecalgary.files.wordpress.com/2015/09/cold-weather-kills-macrae-daleo-4sept2015-final.pdf
Presentation of Evidence Suggesting Temperature Drives Atmospheric CO2 more than CO2 Drives Temperature
September 4, 2015
By Allan MacRae
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/06/13/presentation-of-evidence-suggesting-temperature-drives-atmospheric-co2-more-than-co2-drives-temperature/
Observations and Conclusions:
1. Temperature, among other factors, drives atmospheric CO2 much more than CO2 drives temperature. The rate of change dCO2/dt is closely correlated with temperature and thus atmospheric CO2 LAGS temperature by ~9 months in the modern data record
2. CO2 also lags temperature by ~~800 years in the ice core record, on a longer time scale.
3. Atmospheric CO2 lags temperature at all measured time scales.
4. CO2 is the feedstock for carbon-based life on Earth, and Earth’s atmosphere and oceans are clearly CO2-deficient. CO2 abatement and sequestration schemes are nonsense.
5. Based on the evidence, Earth’s climate is insensitive to increased atmospheric CO2 – there is no global warming crisis.
6. Recent global warming was natural and irregularly cyclical – the next climate phase following the ~20 year pause will probably be global cooling, starting by ~2020 or sooner.
7. Adaptation is clearly the best approach to deal with the moderate global warming and cooling experienced in recent centuries.
8. Cool and cold weather kills many more people than warm or hot weather, even in warm climates. There are about 100,000 Excess Winter Deaths every year in the USA, up to 50,000 in the UK and several million worldwide.
9. Green energy schemes have needlessly driven up energy costs, reduced electrical grid reliability and contributed to increased winter mortality, which especially targets the elderly and the poor.
10. Cheap, abundant, reliable energy is the lifeblood of modern society. When misinformed politicians fool with energy systems, real people suffer and die. That is the tragic legacy of false global warming alarmism.
Allan MacRae, Calgary, June 12, 2015
The complicity looks more like ad placement dollars in a wide variety of media outlets especially leading up to the Paris meetings. That came without the courtesy of labeling it as sponsored content. Other weak media groups are tapping the funds as an ongoing lifeline in a declining circulation market.
Main stream media does cater to their advertisers.
And they are aware of the PSA ad budgets of politically controlled agencies too.
I make no brief for Velikovsky either, but it is amusing that Carl Sagan’s attempt to refute Velikovksy by calculating the odds of near-collisions of planetary bodies neglected the force of gravity. Dr. Robert Jastrow of NASA wrote a letter to the NY Times and said:
“Professor Sagan’s calculations, in effect, ignore the law of gravity. Here, Dr. Velikovsky, was the better astronomer.”
Dr. Ball, I was very happy to read this essay. You’ve named them all– Scientific American, Science, Nature, all journals I once respected and have watched turn into fishwrap over the past 20 or so years. I haven’t discussed it with anyone, mostly because I don’t anyone to discuss it with, so I really appreciate you validating my opinion. It’s remarkable we picked the same magazines. I’ve never even met you much less discussed the subject, but you picked exactly the same set I had.
I think there’s something there. Thanks.