Guest essay by Eric Worrall
The Australian Attorney General George Brandis has stirred the climate pot down under, by asking a simple yet devastating question.
“If the science is settled, why do we need research scientists to continue inquiring into the settled science?” Brandis said on Tuesday.
“Wouldn’t it be a much more useful allocation of taxpayers’ money and research capacity within CSIRO to allocate its resources to an area where the science isn’t settled?”
The attorney general’s argument is similar to that used by the CSIRO chief executive, Larry Marshall, who said in an email to staff in February that further work on climate change would be reduced because climate change had been established.
…
“It doesn’t seem to me that the science is settled at all but I’m not a scientist,” he said. “I’m agnostic, really, on that question. But I can follow a logical argument.
“I am simply challenging the illogic of the proposition being advanced by the Labor party who say, on the one hand, that the science is settled but, on the other hand, say it is a disgraceful thing that we should make adjustments to our premier public sector scientific research agency that would reflect the fact that the science is settled.”
In my opinion George Brandis is spot on – government climate scientists are caught in a political pincer of their own making.
If climate science is settled enough to make confident predictions, why do we need so many climate researchers? If climate science is not settled, why do climate scientists keep pretending it is?
You don’t have to be a climate scientist, to smell the “inconsistency”.
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I couldn’t possibly comment.
Starting with Prince Charlie…
Some of the science is settled, but there are still questions. This happens in every field and is nothing unusual. There is only a problem if some people question those bits that are esablished. Even then the scientific debate can continue about those areas, but we can ignore the mavericks unless they start to adversely affect policy.
In astronomy it is established that the sun is at the center of the solar system. That does not mean we can stop studying the solar system. If someone proposes that the Earth is the center we pretty much ignore them because they are contradicting established science. It would only matter if they started to affect policy -say flat Earthers were succesfully preventing ocean shipping.
In biology, evolution is established science. This does not mean we can stop studying evolution. There are still lots of questions left unexplained, but the basic science is established. We do not take those that say evolution does not happen very seriously from a scientific perspective. We do take them seriously when they start to affect the education of our children.
The link between HIV and AIDS is established. That does not mean we stop studying AIDS. We can ignore those that say there is no link. That is we can ignore them until they start to affect policy which means thousand die of AIDS. Then we must challenge them.
You leave out the business of PERSECUTING anyone who questions anything related to ‘climate change’ ideology.
Oh? And what about those who are persecuted when they ask for a mechanism showing how evolution produced all the diverse life forms on earth; all from primevil slime?
Or those who ask for a definitive cause and effect mechanism between HIV and AIDS.
Or those that point out the frauds associated with diet and heart disease…
Or those that point out that the highest incidence of scientific fraud occurs in medicine, yet medical research is sacrosanct.
And what about……
I can go on and on, but you should see a pattern emerging.
emsnews and William. I am not sure what you mean by “persecuted”. If they ask for a mechanism for evolution that explains everything. Nobody has all the answers. If someone claims that evolution is wrong because we cannot provide an explanation for every little detail, then scientists will ignore them, as they ignore flat Earthers. If that person then claims that evolution should not be taught in school science (without creation as an equal) they will be challenged, and rightly so. I do not think that is persecution.
If by “definitive casue and effect between HIV and AIDS” you mean a complete explanation of every aspect of disease progression, then again they will be pointed towards the areas of uncertainty. If they claim that HIV does not cause AIDS becasue we do not have every single answer, they will be ignored. If they prevent administration of drugs because of their belief then they will be challenged. As they should be.
Medical research is not sacrosanct. There are a great many studies and published papers discussing the problems with medical research such as conflict of interest, publication bias and not specifiying the purpose of a study before the results are in (drawing a target round your shots after they are fired).
All of which are actually established facts with prediction and varified results. Not so climate Suedo science.
Astronomy shows that the “center of the solar system” is somewhere inside the sun not that the sun is the center. The center of mass of the solar system wobbles about inside the sun because the sun has by far the largest mass in the solar system, but it wobbles a bit due to the almost significant blobs circling around it. So your settled but on Astronomy is a gross simplification – but not wrong per se.
In biology, evolution is the best explanation hypothesis we have going, but to say “settled” is a stretch. There are still many controversies about what triggers the genetic changes that move one species to another, and very few mechanisms have been explained. In fact the whole term “evolution” is more of a broad concept than a “settled hypothesis”. We simply don’t know enough and may find that our simplistic understanding understates the real wonders of the process by orders of magnitude.
The HIV and AIDS linkage is established and the mechanisms for HIVs attack on the immune system are grossly understood (and even chemically to a large degree.) The problem is: we don’t know how to stop HIV from attacking the immune system of infected people. We know how to boost the immune system so the body fights off the infection for a while (a long while for many people,) but removing HIV from the system has been so far impossible. Thus researchers are no longer looking at the “link between HIV and AIDS” but are instead looking for ways to suppress HIV and boost the immune system’s response to it. No one is wasting time and money re-establishing the link between the virus and the disease. They do look continuously for variations and mutations on the virus, but that isn’t the same thing.
None of your straw-man examples show what you purport them to show.
Researches also do not know why some people are immune to HIV infection, such as sex workers in Africa. Worth while research IMO, but there is no special tax to fund it.
Owen in GA – I am not sure what you think I porported my examples to show. They show – as you have described yourself – that the “basic science” is settled but more research is needed in all these fields. You agree that it is more or less correct to say the sun is at the center of the solar system – or very much more correct than to say any other body is at the center. You say “what triggers the genetic changes that move one species to another” is not yet known, but the fact that one species does move to another – i.e. evolution – is agreed by nearly all biologists. You sat the link between HIV and AIDS is established, yet we still need to do lots of research into AIDS.
What is the common thread?
Evolution -that evolution exista is settled science, the details need more work.
Solar system. Basic arrangement settled science, but we do not understand everything.
HIV/AIDS. Link is settled science, but we need more research to find a cure.
Climate science – basic link between radiative forcing and temperture established, but need to do more work to understand the details.
Headline of this article – ““If the [climate] science is settled, why do we need research scientists to continue inquiring into the settled science?””
Substitute [evolution], [solar system] or [HIV] instead of [climate] and you could say exactly the same thing about any of those. This illustrates how the question asked by the Aussie Attorney general displays a staggering lack of understanding.
Seaice, the problem with the bits of this “settled” science is that is ordinary and not alarming. We have indeed warmed some coming up out of the LIA. It’s not enough to warrant the complete restructure of western society. Where it gets into interesting and alarming conjecture, the “science” breaks down and the “scientists” are more than reluctant to show their work. So reluctant they don’t show their work at all.
So why can’t anyone use the tenets of this “settled science” to produce a climate model that even approximates the observed values, why do they need to engage in fudging of the data ( there is no other way to describe what NOAA has done with SST) and why does their “science” not provide any explanation of how earth’s climate system has cycled between warm and cool over millions of years independently of CO2 levels? Why can’t they even explain the Roman and Minoan and Medieval Warm periods or the little ice age? A passive or non-biased observer might think that recent large scale climatic events That they studiously avoid might prove valuable in improving the catastrophically poor climate models that have so far been produced. The same passive or non-biased observer might conclude that we are trying to apply an infinite number of monkeys typing data into an infinite number of computers to resolve an issue that may not even exist!
Wrong graph Eric.
This is the one you (don’t) want……
https://mobile.twitter.com/ClimateOfGavin/status/689889733737082880
I doubt we will learn much from Schmidt except how to make the books look good.
A detailed analysis here:
https://climateaudit.org/2016/04/19/gavin-schmidt-and-reference-period-trickery/#more-21871
Thanks for the link.
I found this there:
“Gavin Schmidt
Jan 20
Gavin Schmidt @ClimateOfGavin
@hausfath they still need adjusting though…”
Of course they do!
https://climateaudit.org/2016/04/19/gavin-schmidt-and-reference-period-trickery/
Sorry, missed tonyM’s reply.
“Some of the science is settled…” Oh really? Like what, pray tell? Please, please, tell us, oh Great One, what we Skeptics/Climate Realists have missed all these years!
Take your time – we’ll wait.
I’m curious about that myself.
It will be very basic and not alarming, that we’ve warmed a bit coming out of the Little Ice Age, that CO2 is a GHG. Where their narrative gets frightening there is no evidence at all. They are as slippery as eels when it comes to wording.
Unfortunately Brandis is only one of about two or three individuals in the current government who has intelligence greater than a gnat. Consequently, what he has to say carries virtually no weight at all, either within the government or the public at large.
However, given the abysmal incompetence of Malcolm Turnbull and his merry band of eunich yes men, this rabble will probably be gone after the next election; only to be replaced by an even worse rabble.
I will be doing my part by voting “informal”.
Simple. The warmists of the world can just continue to spread the global warming gospel from where the expired climatecatastrophobics left off. I mean it’s all the same non-scientific computer modelled drivel pushing a political agenda. We could build a templs topped with a hockey stick so the true believers could get together on Saturdays and quote verses from the IPCC reports. We would save a fortune!
It would be nice to see real scientists study REAL environmental issues and let the truly talented engineers work on real affordable, reliable, and safe energy technologies. I could only image what we could, or could have accomplished.
Isn’t it delicious the way their words have been turned back on them ?
All 97% of them hoist on their own petard !
Funny, too, that even their much-bally-hooed 97% is a total fabrication whose sole purpose is to attempt to make any who would dare oppose what amounts to an ideology shut up.
Doublethink.
If you dont know what that is, google it.
At least in the US, we have a distinct choice between political parties on CAGW, which seems to not be the case in Australia or the UK.
There are definitely more skeptics on the conservative side.
I wonder if that has anything to do with watching the American news media? You see, the American newsmedia is about 80 percent Liberal propagandists (used to be 100 percent, not so long ago), who have distorted the truth about conservatives for decades, so naturally, conservatives would become skeptical over time as l!es are told about them, which they know are untrue.
So I think American conservaties come to skepticism naturally. They question the false reality created by the Liberal News Media every day, and that spills over into questioning the false reality of humans causing the Earth’s climate to change.
There’s also the fact that if you declare yourself a skeptic, you are assigned the label of ‘conservative’ (and usually racist, bigot, etc.) whether you are or not, regardless of your opinion on any other issue.
Well, just simply answering the question, Global Warming is a billion dollar cashcow for multiple industries/political parties/activist groups.
I’ve said for a while now, near as I can tell, the difference between a skeptic and a warmist (or at least the nominally honest ‘lukewarmist’ as the alarmists can simply be quantified as soapbox nutcases), is that a skeptic says ‘we might get a degree or two of warming… no big deal,’ where a warmist says, ‘we might get a degree or two of warming… AND we might see terrible trouble for our great grandchildren a hundred years down the road, so we should continue to fund my research and all related jobs.’ Basically, safely moving Armageddon down the road out of our lifetimes, so they can never be proved wrong.
Logical questions have no place in Australia.
I want the climate scientist to tell us how their solution will work.
They want to establish a Carbon Tax to stop global warming so, my question is how will that work.
How much tax is needed to stop the hurricanes and the tornadoes and the floods and the droughts and the millions to billions of people killed by rising sea levels?
At what CO2 level does the earth stop heating and at what temperature do these catastrophes get back to their normal level?
At what CO2 level does the ice stop melting and causing the oceans to rise and cover NYC?
How does giving politicians a brand new revenue stream save Miami from flooding?
So, I ask again, would someone please explain How does their solution work.
An even more relevant question is: “what happens to all the cash collected through the carbon tax?”
As always, follow the money.
This points to basic government economics. If the citizenry deploys their government to fix a problem the 1st law of unintended consequences kicks in: 1.Success leads to the unemployment line. Hence, once the Government Agency is fully manned the bureaucrats in charge, understanding that if they accomplish their mission they will put themselves out of job, create additional unintended consequences while keeping the original problem alive and nurtured.
this recalls the irony about those who harp on most about sustainability, usually when they are most successful there is little for them to do afterwards.
“You don’t have to be a climate scientist, to smell the “inconsistency”.
Wrong. That should be “You don’t have to be a climate scientist to smell the “inconsistency”.
No comma.
So if the science is settled, funding to the advocates of the current consensus should be reduced. And so it should.
My guess is that if and when the allocation of funds takes the logical turn and reductions begin to loom in earnest, the “consensus” will suddenly shift.
Whereas what we have now is the settled issue of “catastrophic anthropogenic global warming,” what we will then be facing will be “catastrophic global climate science uncertainty.”
Thus the biggest, most imminent threat to mankind will remain just what it is: climate.
But the threat will now be framed roughly in this fashion: if the world were to keep getting hotter from here on in, if the heat that we have keeps getting hotter, then we might perhaps reasonably expect that hurricanes will get worse, snowmobiles will disappear, hot wars will be hotter, California will remain prone to cyclical droughts, some butterflies will disappear, another ice age may be triggered, heavier snows may fall, and so on ad infinitum, precisely as the previously settled science had proven; but if the world were to keep getting colder from here on in, if the cold that we have keeps getting colder, it might be that hurricanes will get worse, motorcycles will disappear, hot wars will have to be fought under colder conditions, California will remain prone to droughts, some other species of butterflies will disappear, another ice age may well be triggered, heavier snows may fall, and so on ad infinitum, but for precisely reasons different from those the previously settled science had shown to be the case. We, the climate experts, just don’t know!
Therefore, with mankind’s fate hanging in the balance in this way, with our fate depending upon our knowing which of the two possibilities will most likely prevail over the course of the next one hundred years – significant global warming or global cooling — our funding must at a minimum continue as before, but preferably be significantly increased.
Anyone who doesn’t agree with this is a flat out tin-foil-hatted denier, either bought by the snowmobile industry or the motorcycle lobby, or possibly even both, because 99% of all of the world’s top climate scientists (already on the payroll) strongly agree, uh, on a great many things.
“Thus the biggest, most imminent threat to mankind will remain just what it is: climate.” Anyone who doesn’t agree with that is a flat out tin foil hatted denier? And on somebodies payroll?
Your claim of 99% of Top CLIMATE SCIENTISTS is like saying 99% of people with 4 years of college agree, so those of you with advanced degrees in more difficult scientific disciplines who disagree with us are flat out tin-foil-hated deniers.Norman, Hyperbolic much?
If your group spent it’s money determining the causes of Climate changes before the burning of fossil fuel and then delivered an explanation of what caused climate change then, why those condition will no longer manifest and why now a stable climate could be relied upon without the burning of fossil fuel. I just might remove my tin hat. Until then I remain respectfully skeptically yours.
Hi Bill,
I think you might have missed the purport of my comment. It is slightly impertinent toward the regnant “consensus.”
Everything after is giving expression to a point of view that I wholly disclaim and gently mock.
Furthermore, there are other hints, I think, that should be fairly obvious to a careful reader: a) that either the warming or cooling scenario results in the selfsame “dire” consequences that I list, none of which are really dire and b) the motorcycle lobby (?) and the snowmobile industry (?) paying people (experts?) to advocate pro or con anything related to climate change. There are, of course, other hints if you care to look.
Think “irony.” Think “satire.”
Apologies for skimming, – no irony implied.
Ooops. A bit of editing is in order, otherwise I’ll just end up confusing you more, and that would be entirely my fault.
So please permit me to fix that last comment of mine:
Hi Bill,
I think you might have missed the purport of my comment. It is slightly impertinent toward the regnant “consensus.”
Everything after — Whereas what we have now is the settled issue of “catastrophic anthropogenic global warming,” what we will then be facing will be “catastrophic global climate science uncertainty.” — is giving expression to a point of view that I wholly disclaim and gently mock.
Furthermore, there are other hints, I think, that should be fairly obvious to a careful reader: a) that either the warming or cooling scenario results in the selfsame “dire” consequences that I list, none of which are really dire and b) the motorcycle lobby (?) and the snowmobile industry (?) paying people (experts?) to advocate pro or con anything related to climate change. There are, of course, other hints if you care to look.
Think “irony.” Think “satire.”
There, hopefully fixed it. My bad. Although I had it right when I first hit the send, but had used the “smaller than” and “greater than” keyboard characters to set off the line I wanted to, well, set off.
Regards,
–N
I wrote this in November. https://patriotpost.us/opinion/39132
seems along the same lines
Seems like it’s early closing time for that particular trough.