Guest essay by Eric Worrall
The increasingly frantic efforts to “medicalise” criticism of climate orthodoxy has taken a new turn, with a claim that theories cannot be disproven in of themselves. Theories can only be disputed by people who can provide a settled alternative theory.
The abstract of the study;
The ‘Alice in Wonderland’ mechanics of the rejection of (climate) science: simulating coherence by conspiracism
Science strives for coherence. For example, the findings from climate science form a highly coherent body of knowledge that is supported by many independent lines of evidence: greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from human economic activities are causing the global climate to warm and unless GHG emissions are drastically reduced in the near future, the risks from climate change will continue to grow and major adverse consequences will become unavoidable. People who oppose this scientific body of knowledge because the implications of cutting GHG emissions—such as regulation or increased taxation—threaten their worldview or livelihood cannot provide an alternative view that is coherent by the standards of conventional scientific thinking. Instead, we suggest that people who reject the fact that the Earth’s climate is changing due to greenhouse gas emissions (or any other body of well-established scientific knowledge) oppose whatever inconvenient finding they are confronting in piece-meal fashion, rather than systematically, and without considering the implications of this rejection to the rest of the relevant scientific theory and findings. Hence, claims that the globe “is cooling” can coexist with claims that the “observed warming is natural” and that “the human influence does not matter because warming is good for us.” Coherence between these mutually contradictory opinions can only be achieved at a highly abstract level, namely that “something must be wrong” with the scientific evidence in order to justify a political position against climate change mitigation. This high-level coherence accompanied by contradictory subordinate propositions is a known attribute of conspiracist ideation, and conspiracism may be implicated when people reject well-established scientific propositions.
Read more: http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11229-016-1198-6
This has got to be one of the most ridiculous claims Lewandowsky has ever promoted. “Something is wrong” with the current theory is a perfectly valid scientific position. A demonstration that a theory is useless at prediction does not have to be accompanied by a settled alternative theory – simply demonstrating that the current theory is wrong is enough.
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Some more information on this paper is on the hi-uzuru blog:
http://www.hi-izuru.org/wp_blog/2016/09/a-new-consensus-paper-at-first-blush/
and the last four posts on my blog, starting with:
https://trustyetverify.wordpress.com/2016/09/21/lewandowsky-and-cook-in-wonderland-incoherent-skeptic-views-or-incoherent-views-of-the-authors-on-skeptic-views/
in which I try to explain how Lewandowsky, Cook and Lloyd distort the skeptic view in the extreme.
I posted this in February 2009. To date, my beloved America, you are following the script. Please stop.
Regards to all,
Allan in Calgary.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/02/21/ikes-second-warning-hint-it-is-not-the-military-industrial-complex/#comments
I hope this modest rant gets past the moderators. Forgive me – it’s early and I haven’t had my coffee yet. I haven’t written much about East Germany, and wanted to record this experience.
In July 1989, I went on a business trip through Checkpoint Charlie into East Germany during the last months of the Communist regime. The Berlin Wall fell later that year, on November 9.
Canadians had been fed the Big Lie by our socialist NDP Party leaders (and some of their Liberal Party fellow-travelers) that East Germany was the “Workers Paradise”.
Some paradise! Raw untreated sewage flowed into every river. Factories poured smoke into the sky and all sorts of pollutants into rivers and streams. Two-stroke Trabant automobiles spewed white oily smoke, so much that you could not see the car you were passing until you were beside it! Rail transportation systems were similarly backward. Industrial design in electrics and electronics had not progressed much past WW2 standards. Some old buildings still showed the scars of WW2. New buildings were covered with rivers of rust, probably since the steel re-bar was placed too close to the concrete surface. In every respect, East Germany was horrid.
Most importantly, East Germans lived in a constant state of real fear, lest the Stasi (secret police) find them in breach of something (or nothing) and destroy their lives.
What does this have to do with the topic at hand? Hopefully, not much. But there are disquieting parallels arising in my next-door neighbour, the USA.
Ike’s (Eisenhower’s) “Second Warning” is uncanny, especially in the context of the fraud of catastrophic humanmade global warming. The science is NOT settled. There has been NO debate, because the warmists have no case.
There is no evidence that CO2 significantly drives recent temperature. CO2 lags temperature at all measured time scales. There is no evidence that the modest (natural) warming of recent years has been anything but beneficial. On the contrary, the possibility that Earth is entering a natural cooling cycle is much more threatening to humanity.
Nevertheless, the CO2 Abatement juggernaut rolls on, with easy lies like the “Mann hockey stick” quietly discarded and replaced by easy new falsehoods, like Antarctic warming.
Electrical energy generation is being severely compromised by false claims that wind power and corn ethanol will actually help – they won’t.
Reductions on American living standards and personal freedoms can be expected, all in the name of “global warming”. In fact, the world has not warmed for a decade, and global cooling is likely due to the recent phase shift in the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO). Paradoxically, we are completely unprepared for global cooling, since we are still obsessed with the myth of global warming.
As an aside, I hate the name “Department of Homeland Security”. Maybe it’s nothing, but it reminds me “Lebensraum”. That, coupled with officious young airport security men shouting at confused old people to “Take off your belt! Take off your shoes!” really puts me off at. If these officious little brats ever start goose-stepping around the airport, it would only make the picture complete.
Obviously, I dislike excess government authority, and the global warming hoax hands excessive power to those who really want to use it. It is ironic that these power-hungry little people, who want to run our lives, often cannot even manage their own personal affairs.
Good luck, my beloved America – you’re going to need it in the days ahead.
“Good luck, my beloved America – you’re going to need it in the days ahead.”
Yes, we will, and thank you very much for the sentiment. If we get lucky and defeat the status quo, maybe it will help more than just the United States.
Thank you TA.
Canada and the USA have stood together in war and peace for the past several hundred years – except for some unpleasantries during the War of 1812, when you burned Toronto and we burned the White House. Nobody here likes Toronto, so we still think we got the better of that deal. 🙂
A USA election is imminent. For most countries, I suggest that the question of a Hillary vs a Donald would come down to “who gets energy right (Donald), and who gets it utterly wrong (Hillary).”
Cheap, reliable abundant energy is the lifeblood of society, and our very cheap fossil fuel energy should provide our two countries with an overwhelming economic advantage, IF the greens would stop sabotaging our economies to advance their far-left political objectives.
Since the USA is a global power, there are more issues than just the domestic economy – I don’t think you need any more foreign wars for a long while, except to exterminate terrorist gangs. So you might ask yourself who is more likely to start a needless foreign war that will further bankrupt your treasury.
The USA should stick to token “weekender” invasions like Grenada. You might consider Quebec – they’re nearby, they’ve been acting up for quite a while, and you’ve already done Toronto. 🙂
Best personal regards, Allan
Lewandowsky is an amazing example of mental health and intellectual integrity.
… primarily of the ‘lack thereof …’
In 2020 do you think they’ll be 111% Certain?
As 111% certain as Lysenko.
Why did I read that as 111% cretin?
“Hence, claims that the globe “is cooling” can coexist with claims that the “observed warming is natural” and that “the human influence does not matter because warming is good for us.” Coherence between these mutually contradictory opinions can only be achieved at a highly abstract level, namely that “something must be wrong” with the scientific evidence in order to justify a political position against climate change mitigation.”
One only needs to change the “is cooling” to an honest “is warming slightly”, and then there is no contradiction. And without the science to separate natural warming from human caused, there is no justification for climate change mitigation.
Somewhat agree with the study. Would change the title though to “Deniers do not have the balls to Provide a Coherent Alternate Worldview, which incidentally exist since 2009 in Svensmark Cloud Theory.”
OK, I understand one has to be careful, just in case, one in a million, etc. but if warmists can run with their garbage like the Earth was on fire, where are your balls people? It is the most likely “Alternate Worldview.”
Here are two sentences from Lewandowski et al.:
“Science strives for coherence. For example, the findings from climate science form a highly coherent body of knowledge that is supported by many independent lines of evidence: greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from human economic activities are causing the global climate to warm and unless GHG emissions are drastically reduced in the near future, the risks from climate change will continue to grow and major adverse consequences will become unavoidable.”
Your logic about coherence, young man, is quite wrong. I have put in more than sixty years doing and teaching science and I completely disagree that such ignorant ramblings have anything to do with science. You still have much to learn – start using your science education instead of wasting your time with ideology. Every religion has its own coherent view of the world. Your global warming doctrine is just one more of these misguided religions. Science seeks truth about the universe, not coherence of a misguided consensus that the likes of you are pushing. Science seeks to illuminate our understanding of the world, not mold opinions to conform to ignorant views of an ideology that is unrelated to the real world.
Agree Arno – great post.
340 W/m^2 ISR arrive at the ToA (100 km per NASA), 100 W/m^2 are reflected straight away leaving 240 W/m^2 continuing on to be absorbed by the atmosphere (80 W/m^2) and surface (160 W/m^2). In order to maintain the existing thermal equilibrium and atmospheric temperature (not really required) 240 W/m^2 must leave the ToA. Leaving the surface at 1.5 m (IPCC Glossary) are: thermals, 17 W/m^2; evapotranspiration, 80 W/m^2; LWIR, 63 W/m^2 sub-totaling 160 W/m^2 plus the atmosphere’s 80 W/m^2 making a grand total of 240 W/m^2 OLR at ToA.
When more energy leaves ToA than enters it, the atmosphere will cool down. When less energy leaves the ToA than enters it, the atmosphere will heat up. The GHE theory postulates that GHGs impede/trap/store the flow of heat reducing the amount leaving the ToA and as a consequence the atmosphere will heat up. Actually if the energy moving through to the ToA goes down, say from 240 to 238 W/m^2, the atmosphere will cool per Q/A = U * dT. The same condition could also be due to increased albedo decreasing heat to the atmosphere & surface or ocean absorbing energy.
The S-B ideal BB temperature corresponding to ToA 240 W/m^2 OLR is 255 K or -18 C. This ToA “surface” value is compared to a surface “surface” at 1.5 m temperature of 288 K, 15 C, 390 W/m^2. The 33 C higher 1.5 m temperature is allegedly attributed to/explained by the GHE theory.
BTW the S-B ideal BB radiation equation applies only in a vacuum. For an object to radiate 100% of its energy per S-B there can be no conduction or convection, i.e. no molecules or a vacuum. The upwelling calculation of 15 C, 288 K, 390 W/m^2 only applies/works in vacuum.
Comparing ToA values to 1.5 m values is an incorrect comparison.
The S-B BB ToA “surface” temperature of 255 K should be compared to the ToA observed “surface” temperature of 193 K, -80 C, not the 1.5 m above land “surface” temperature of 288 K, 15 C. The – 62 C difference is explained by the earth’s effective emissivity. The ratio of the ToA observed “surface” temperature (^4) at 100 km to the S-B BB temperature (^4) equals an emissivity of .328. Emissivity is not the same as albedo.
Because the +33 C comparison between ToA “surface” 255 K and 1.5 m “surface” 288 K is invalid the perceived need for a GHE theory/explanation results in an invalid non-solution to a non-problem.
References:
ACS Climate Change Toolkit
Trenberth et. al. 2011 “Atmospheric Moisture Transports …….” Figure 10, IPCC AR5 Annex III
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=7373
http://principia-scientific.org/the-stefan-boltzmann-law-at-a-non-vacuum-interface-misuse-by-global-warming-alarmists/
“Don’t bring me problems without solutions.”
O.K. Here’s an alternate solution, the thermal resistance of the atmosphere.
But first – the earth.
The temperature at the core of the earth is considered to be about 5,700 K. Heat, energy in motion, moves through the earth to the colder surface creating a thermal gradient per Q = U * A * dT. Folks who deal with ground source heat pumps say that at around 30 feet or 9 m below the surface the temperature holds a steady 55 F or 13 C. Deeper than this the earth gets warmer as one approaches the core.
When the air above is less than 13 C heat flows from the ground to the air faster than from the core to the isothermal layer and the ground cools off to the point that the water freezes same as your house cooling off because the furnace can’t keep up with the -15 F outside.
When the air above is more than 13 C heat flows from the air to the ground adding to the heat flowing from the core to the isothermal layer, the ground heats up making all those little seedlings so very happy.
Want to know the heat flux from the core to the isothermal layer? Simple, it’s the TSI that balances that net flow by maintaining 13 C from the isothermal layer to the surface and air.
Per Q = U * A * dT the ground power flux into the ground with 1.5 k at an air temp of 80 F / 26 C is 176 W/m^2. Likewise the ground power flux out of the ground with 1.5 k at an air temp of 32 F / 0C is -176 W/m^2. So what do you suppose the TSI might be that exactly balances the ground power flux at 13 C? How about 176 W/m^2.
The atmosphere.
The atmosphere provide thermal resistance, not because of radiation but because of conduction, convection, latent properties of water vapor and, yes, radiation.
I’m told that air conduction does not count for much. I’m not buying it. Granted thermal conductivity at sea level is low, but molecular density decreases with elevation until at top of troposphere it is 10 % of the sea level. Conductivity approaches zero, resistance goes infinite, U for the entire atmosphere is somewhere between surface and infinity. The only way for heat to continue to flow from ToT is by radiation. S-B BB applies here, not at the surface.
The thermal resistance of the atmosphere is a complex combination of conduction, convection, latent properties of water vapor and, per Trenberth Figure 10, 63 W/m^2 of surface LWIR which adequately explains why the surface is warm without the upwelling/downwelling/”back” radiation GHE illusion.
So what your saying is that a warmer climate will actually SAVE the planet … by reducing the amount of heat drawn from the Earth’s core and dissipated to the atmosphere we prolong the finite heat stored in the Earth’s core and prolong its life ….
Global warming … its does a planet good!
😉
Lewandowsky et al, and indeed the entire IPCC and its “Climate Change” cheerleaders entirely miss the simple point – it is best summed up in the legal maxim: Qui allegat, probat – who alleges, must prove.
The Climate Change brigade bears the burden of proving their hypothesis is correct (or at very least explains accurately what is observed). So far they have failed, pretty miserably at that.
Personally I cannot wait for the day the Climate Change meme is put on trial before the English Courts under English law. And that day is coming given the massive sums which are channelled into “preventing catastrophic climate change” on the pretext that anthropogenic CO2 is causing the change. One day soon, someone or some interest group will wake up to what is increasingly looking like a gigantic scheme to defraud the taxpayer.
On the day a Class Action (or better still a criminal prosecution) is commenced against an appropriate defendant, all the “Climate Change” nonsense will be tested in trial court, with proper rules of evidence applying and probing forensic cross examination of “experts” by the finest legal minds.
And then the meme will be found out for what it is – complete and utter tosh dressed up as science….
The assertion that “Deniers cannot provide a coherent worldview” is itself a proclamation that a Denier conspiracy exists.
In a puff of Lew logic, this paper outs Lewandowsky and Cook as the real conspiracy theorists.
Game, set, match.
The “coherent alternative worldview” that we provide is otherwise called “a worldview based on observations of reality”.
I can see how that would confuse Alarmists.
/grin
Who really cares what these two dingbats have to say.
“cannot provide coherent alternative world view”. ? It’s not only coherent , it’s forthright, honest, unbiased and based upon observation not conjecture or manipulated data. Historical data without manipulation simply doesn’t support the CO2 anthropogenic theory regardless of how many models are produced. It’s laughable yet the intellectual and political crowd seems to believe they can somehow bully the science into something it’s not. And anyone who questions their ridiculousness shall be squashed and labeled an ignorant heretic.
The latest Lew paper is so much nonsense. It starts with a false premise equating the warmy position with truth, and goes downhill from there. Lew completely ignores time, not uncommon in climate I might add.
For example he believes that people can’t believe in global cooling and warming simultaneously, yet I can coherently say that the last 150 years has warmed, but sometime in the next 10000 years it will probably cool to the next glacial (based on Millankavich), this is perfectly coherent, I can also say it has cooled since the Holocene optimum and warmed since 1900. People can also change their minds, if you asked me in 1996 if global warming could be dangerous I’d have agreed, (because I had not evaluated it yet) if you ask me that now I’d say CAGW was virtually impossible – totally incongruous YES – but separated by 2 decades and a change in knowledge and therefore decision. Many of Lew’s examples fall into this category. He also asserts that accepting that warming is natural(acknowledging warming) and belief that CO2 is good for mankind is somehow contradictory. This ignores the established fact that while warming may have negative consequences it also has a positive consequences and the direct consequences of CO2 rise on the biosphere is undoubtedly positive with even the IPCC acknowledging that negative consequences will not manifest before 2 deg above preindustrial.
Speaking of incongruent and incoherent statements, Lew asserts that the Oregon petition is invalid because the participants were largely not climate science but indeed has written this whole nonsense as a non-climate scientist expecting it to be accepted as valid – how dissonant is that! On his own logic if the fact that the participants in the Oregon Petition are invalid then so is his missive – on the same basis, that as a non climate scientist he is unqualified to comment.
He apparently holds the simultaneous view that all non climate scientists should be ignored while he as a non climate scientist must be listened to, I guess that marks him as a conspiracy ideationist (based on his own logic). Doctor – Heal thy self
Of the 31 “science” organizations that petitioned Obama two were bona fide “climate” science organizations, a half dozen were related “earth” science organizations, the rest were about as “climate” sciencey as an after school astronomy club. I mean, the national board of nemotologists. Give us break!
People don’t seem to have noticed that one of the themes of the paper is smearing Anthony.
Geoff Chambers has a post here
https://cliscep.com/2016/09/24/more-bad-smells-from-the-lew-cum-cookhouse/
where he writes:
“It makes no secret of the fact that its only purpose is to insult and denigrate people that the authors don’t like (Mainly Ian Plimer, Christopher Monckton and Anthony Watts).”
See also the blog posts by Trustyetverify and Brandon Shollenberger that are linked from there.
In Table 2 of the paper there are two quotes from Anthony, and the authors falsely claim that these two quotes are “contradictory and incoherent”. One quote says the climate is complicated and there isn’t a linear relationship between CO2 and temperature. The other says that there isn’t a steady linear increase in temperature and that ‘climate change’ can be used to describe anything. There is absolutely nothing remotely contradictory between these two statements.
How ’bout this for a coherent principle: “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof.” ?
I don’t see any “proof” of climate change commensurate with the “claim” –assuming there is a coherent claim. And, by the way, what is the claim? That sea levels will top the Statue of Liberty by 2100? That billions will dry of drought as the Himalayan glaciers melt in 2035? That children of England of the 2000’s won’t experience snow? Which claim is the standard 97% of all forecasters support? Once we have a claim identified, then we can quibble about what sort of evidence does, or doesn’t, exist for it.
The claim — it is warmer now than ‘it used to be’ — doesn’t require much proof at all, but doesn’t require much in the way of a response, either. The claim — we can’t keep dumping CO2 into the air without ANY effect — isn’t much of a claim either. The answer is, each ton so dumped has less and less effect, just like adding a layer of paint to an already-painted window doesn’t much change the amount of light or heat transmitted through the glass. These aren’t extraordinary.
It’s interesting that Lew and co are asking for a coherent oppostion. How ’bout this — the “Club of Rome” conspired to find a crime that industrial civilization could be guilty of committing? So, a conspiracy. That’s coherent, right? Would he be happy to have such a contrary cohesive position to debate?
“the findings from climate science form a highly coherent body of knowledge that is supported by many independent lines of evidence: greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from human economic activities are causing the global climate to warm and unless GHG emissions are drastically reduced in the near future, the risks from climate change will continue to grow and major adverse consequences will become unavoidable. People who oppose this scientific body of knowledge because the implications of cutting GHG emissions—such as regulation or increased taxation—threaten their worldview or livelihood cannot provide an alternative view that is coherent by the standards of conventional scientific thinking.”
Now this is how to spread disinformation. You start with a premise that I think most people would agree with and run off with wild assumptions in hopes that no one will notice that’s only what they are.
Premise: greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from human economic activities are causing the global climate to warm – general statement most likely to be true
Wild assumptions claimed to be knowledge:
1. climate will stop changing if we reduce our GHG emissions
(“unless GHG emissions are drastically reduced in the near future, the risks from climate change”)
2. There will be major adverse consequences.
( “major adverse consequences will become unavoidable. “)
3. Regulation and increased taxation are the way to cut GHG emissions
(“the implications of cutting GHG emissions—such as regulation or increased taxation”)
4. If you can’t find an alternative reason, they must be correct
(“People who oppose this scientific body of knowledge…. cannot provide an alternative view that is coherent by the standards of conventional scientific thinking.”)
So the only thing that could even be considered as true knowledge is that the Earth is warmed by GHGs. All the rest is bs.
I always laugh when one side of a debate wants to set the rules, be the moderators, and be the judges.
“I always laugh when one side of a debate wants to set the rules, be the moderators, and be the judges.”
This is the goal of the IPCC and the self serving consensus it crafted around the reports it publishes in order to justify it’s excuse to redistribute wealth under the guise of climate reparations. It may seem humorous that science allowed this to occur, but the resulting multi-trillion dollar consequences are far from funny.
Cracked and Lewandopey will have Karl Popper spinning in his grave.
Mind you they are both so pig-ignorant that they haven’t heard of him.
As Pauli said about a paperin quantum physics, “So bad its not even wrong”.
I have a theory about what sequence of numbers to bet to win at roulette. I keep losing but that doesn’t prove my theory wrong because other people can’t come up with a better one????
Lysenko’s theory of trait inheritance was never refuted by an alternate theory because anyone who suggested an alternative theory was taken outside and shot. (Pretty much how climate change works.)
I have a theory that Lewandosky and John Cook the Books are a couple of nutters and no one can prove my theory wrong because they can’t present a coherent theory to the contrary?? …. Hmmmm, wait a second. Maybe there is something to this.
Eugene WR Gallun
A “COHERENT ALTERNATIVE THEORY” already exist…..Main point is that a theory
alone is not good enough, it needs to be proven for at least OVER 10,000 years of
the entire Holocene. And this has been accomplished, google “Holocene Climate Pattern
Recognition” or see http://www.knowledgeminer.eu/climate_papers.html . In total, the series
contains 7 papers, of which the first 5 are online (8500 BC – 1 AD), and the following 2
(covering 1 AD – 1150 AD, and 550 AD -2110 AD) will be online in the next few weeks.
Therefore, Lewandowsky can have his way, no problem, the theory is there, and a 10,000
year time span should be sufficient to prove this coherent alternative theory. JS
Who is this David Hoffer? His comments above are brilliant
– someone telling the people he knows the truth about the terminator, he’s seen the documentary
– answering leave me alone with that terminator, it’s the plot of a movie – ain’t enough
– Lewandowski writes 3 volumes ‘the real story of the terminator’ – for a coherent answer.
Has anyone taken these failed climate models and correlated them with real measured data by adjusting the unknowns like feedback parameters until the predictions match the measurements? In other words, correlate these models like anyone in engineering would do and then see what the predictions for the future would be? It does seem strange that there is so much criticism of these climate models and how the predictions don’t match the measurements but so little written about what they would predict if they were corrected so they did match the measured data. That would be the answer to this paper’s claim about no alternative theory being proposed. Simply saying here is what we should really expect in the future.