A distinguished scientist, Willie Soon, finds his reputation “in play”
Guest essay by Walter Donway
Just over a year ago, I wrote an article on the “stomping” of Dr. Wei-Hock Soon, a distinguished astrophysicist who advocates study of the sun and its ever-changing juxtaposition with the Earth’s position, orbit, and axial tilt, as primary in explaining temperature changes on Earth. How interesting, but so what?
Well, publishing peer-reviewed scientific papers on solar irradiance in explaining long-term changes in Earth’s temperature (like the “Maunder Minimum”) directly and powerfully contradicts the established, mainstream (dare I say, “sanctified”?) wisdom of global warming as a result of anthropogenic CO2 –and alarming global warming, or, since global warming inexplicably has halted for some 16 years, all extreme weather events.
Well, I wrote that article at a time when Dr. Soon’s reputation was being systematically destroyed by the so-called “investigative arm” of Greenpeace. What alerted me to this Greenpeace campaign was evidence that stories appearing almost simultaneously in the “New York Times,” “Washington Post,” and “Boston Globe”–portraying Soon as a bought-and-sold tool of fossil-fuel interests–were nearly identical, slightly edited versions of a press release from Greenpeace.
Now, just this week, I happened to reread the Wikipedia entry on Dr. Soon. What a shock! As you know, anyone who registers can contribute to Wikipedia and entries on any subject are endlessly wrangled. I imagine that if Greenpeace can write stories for page one of America’s leading newspapers, it can win the mud-wrestling contest over Wikipedia entries.
Two lead paragraphs of that Wikipedia entry say:
“Soon disputes the current scientific understanding of climate change, and contends that most global warming is caused by solar variation rather than by human activity…. He gained visibility in part due to scientific criticism of the methodology of a paper which he co-wrote.[9] Climate scientists have refuted Soon’s arguments, and the Smithsonian does not support his conclusions, but he is frequently cited by politicians opposed to climate-change legislation.
“Over the past decade, Soon’s research and his salary have been funded largely by fossil-fuel interests…, which provided over $1.2 million in funding over 10 years, including $409,000 from The Southern Company and $230,000 from Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation. These funding sources were not disclosed in a number of papers published since 2008, leading the Smithsonian Institution to investigate whether Soon had violated conflict-of-interest policies… Soon says he has “always complied with what I understood to be disclosure practices in my field generally.”
Well, perhaps the writers or editors are not very precise, but the correct word is “rebutted” and not “refuted.” “Rebut” means offered a challenge, a counter-argument; “refute” means proven false.
As for the funding, I thought it might be worth republishing the article I wrote, at the time of this controversy, which pointed out that “clean” sources of government funds for research are not available to investigate hypothesis that potentially would contradict anthropogenic global warming. And those scientists who accept research funding from the private corporations whose existence is threatened by public policies–and, yes, ideologies–based on the increasingly dubious manmade global warming hypothesis–are portrayed by Greenpeace as little better than whores.
In view of this, I thought it worthwhile to republish my May 2015 article, “Another “Climate Denier Stomped,” which directly challenged those allegations that the partisans of anthropogenic global warming have at least for now transmuted into “the historical record” in Wikipedia and elsewhere.
For my article on the trial-and-conviction by public media of a courageous scientist, follow the link. I invite your comments on every side of the issue.
More: http://www.thesavvystreet.com/another-climate-denier-stomped/
Anthony, Mods – bunch of contact info etc published here you may want to remove (at bottom of piece).
agree, the phone number should not be revealed.
Thanks mods.
Tough work. I’d buy you a beer if I could.
Fixed, thanks guys.
w.
A number of minor spelling errors too
Bolded words are incorrect
I’ve got nothing but love for Dr. Soon. Please keep up the good fight, sir.
Keep fighting the good fight Dr. Soon! There are more and more people out here in the wild who are awakening to the facts that AGE is a fraud and a scam…
Error in second paragraph: “Mauder Minimum”. Should be “Maunder Minimum”.
Fixed.
w.
My sincere thanks to all who caught and pointed out typos and to Willis for correcting the typing of “Maunder.” I see another alert eye caught two spelling errors in the introduction. Proofreading my own work seems never quite successful, but I’m always too eager to submit the piece to wait for an editor. I think I’m just going to have to do that. Many thanks, again.
You are welcome, Walter. I think I’ve fixed the remaining typos.
w.
ouch…
Intervention required….mod?
Maunder is misspelled in the 7th line.
Because of the earth’s elliptical orbit the natural variation of incoming solar irradiance at ToA (100 km per NASA) fluctuates 90 W/m^2 from perihelion (1,413 W/m^2) to aphelion (1,323 W/m^2).
Because of the earth’s tilted axis the total solar insolation on a horizontal surface at the top of the atmosphere and 40 north latitude fluctuates 638 W/m^2 between winter and summer.
According to IPCC AR5 the heat added to the atmosphere by the increased CO2 over the 261 years from 1750 to 2011 is 2 W/m^2. IPCC AR5’s worst, worst, worst, worst case modeled scenario is RCP 8.5 W/m^2.
Considering the magnitude of these two natural variations how are we supposed to take IPCC’s modeled & projected atmospheric CO2 heating seriously?
So here’s another shot at my Q/A = U * dT. The irradiance of the photosphere at average, perihelion (closest) and aphelion (farthest) are 1,368, 1,413, and 1,323 W/m^2. The S-B BB temperature that applies to each of these is: 394.1, 397.3 and 390.8. The surface temperature is 288 K. The conductivity, k, incoming or outgoing is the same, 0.024. The distance is the same, 100 km. So incoming and outgoing should balance. The surface temp is adjusted to make them balance, a 6.5 C difference from solstice to solstice.
Voila!
5.6700E-08
Average/perihelion/aphelion……1,368.0………………….1,413.0……………….1,323.0……………..Diff
Incoming ToA T S-B BB……………394.12 K………….397.3 K…………390.84 K 6.48
Surface, In & Out…………………….288.00………K…………290.20 K…………287.00 K
ToA………………………………………..-90.00 ……..C………….-90.00 C………….-90.00 C
…………………………………………….183.00 K………….183.00 K………….183.00 K
Distance………………………………………100 km………………100 km………………100 km
k……………………………………………….0.024……………………..0.024…………………..0.024
Q/A In: k * L * dT……………………..254.68 W/m^2 257.09 W/m^2 249.21 W/m^2
k……………………………………………….0.024……………………..0.024…………………..0.024
Q/A Out: k * L *dT……………………252.00…….. W/m^2 257.28 W/m^2 249.60 W/m^2
Note that the calculated W/m^2 is very close to the 242 W/m^2 net ISR values of K&T’s et. al. power flux balances.
Anthony, Mods. Please edit out the personally identifiable information at the bottom which has been published in error.
Thanks, fixed.
w.
Dr. Soon:
I’m personally very much behind what you have to say and hope one day the world might listen. I believe it may be worthwhile to avoid high impact terms like “stomped” in your rebuttal?
Bartleby, obviously you have no problem with stomping.
You’re point is politically correct wording.
– interesting state of mind.
Hang in there, Willie. Nice fellow. Always returns my emails in a simply direct manner. It’s agony to watch quiet, deliberate and investigative people get trashed. The use of the “D” word to dismiss Dr. Soon makes my blood boil.
And those scientists who accept research funding from the private corporations whose existence is threatened by public policies–and, yes, ideologies–based on the increasingly dubious manmade global warming hypothesis–are portrayed by Greenpeace as little better than whores.
I found the above sentence unnecessarily defamatory of sex workers. Ethically, practically, socially, economically and environmentally, on the average whores are a whole lot better than Greenpeace campaigners, who are essentially parasitic organisms whose activities have on balance a harmful effect on human society and on the biosphere.
Agreed. Greenpeace makes prostitution look like the most noble of professions.
Older, too.
Whores make no money if they lie, cheat and steal! The ones who do that are arrested. The others can go for years and years making money and not be arrested. Arrest any government officials who lie, cheat and steal! 🙂
Sounds like the voice of experience, emsnews. 😉
I agree with all of this. I once took a newsletter writer to task for calling politicians “snakes,” a slur on snakes. My apologies to whores, except the kind at Greenpeace.
There IS at least a service provided.
seems just saying denier is enough proof. They don”t try to argue observations and data and conclusions. Really weak attack on Dr Soon.
“He gained visibility in part due to scientific criticism of the methodology of a paper which he co-wrote.[9] Climate scientists have refuted Soon’s arguments”
What a crock. The so-called ‘refuatations’ offered to the Soon and Baliunas Climate Research paper are trivial and almost irrelevant. The main point of the paper is that if you take the Warmists’ own published proxy records and scrutinize them, the 20th century is not unusually hot in the vast majority of them.
In almost all cases, individual proxies record periods from the last 1,000 years that exceed the 20th century as far as temperature. In many cases those proxies also reflect both the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age. Not in every case, but in many cases.
This was placed in stark contrast to the now refuted (in the proper use of the term) Mann hockey stick that eliminated both the MWP and LIA.
That paper set off a major firestorm because it was the Warmists’ OWN DATA, and the interpretation was SELF-EVIDENT. The nearest thing to a “rebuttal” was that the LIA and MWP might not be entirely global phenomena (unlike current GLOBAL warming that apparently affects only the Arctic and only nighttime temperatures).
I’m sorry, this just won’t do – this man has violated all ethical standards.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/22/us/ties-to-corporate-cash-for-climate-change-researcher-Wei-Hock-Soon.html?_r=0
“He has accepted more than $1.2 million in money from the fossil-fuel industry over the last decade while failing to disclose that conflict of interest in most of his scientific papers. At least 11 papers he has published since 2008 omitted such a disclosure, and in at least eight of those cases, he appears to have violated ethical guidelines of the journals that published his work.2
Now, I frequently read in comments here that climate scientists are only doing it for the money, accompanied by rigorous condemnation of said supposed fact…
If that’s your line, you can’t defend this man. Heck, no one can defend him – his ‘science’ was produced to order for his paymasters…
Nonsense. WIllie Soon did not get 1.2 million, WIllie Soon got 40k for 10 years, 1\3d of 1,2 million, the money was received by harvard Smithsonian who took 40% for overheads and divided the remaining 1.2 million between three scientists, you and the NYT are not being honest.
Secondly, Solar physics and effect on climate has nothing to do with the oil industry, it is not a conflict of interest and meanwhile (I posted this out to Orsekes who ignored it) Joel Schwartz at harvard and co author took over 50 million from the EPA between them and recently co authored a paper about the EPA clean energy plan (did not cite the conflict either and even asked EPA for more money while the paper was being written)
That was a real COI, and yet. Nothing from Harvard. Nothing fro Orsekes who is the one behind the Greenpeace effort against Soon. As for the “solar paper”, it was Schmidt and co, and the paper was and is bunk, Schmidt is not a solar physicist and he made highschool errors in the paper he co authored.
In short everything the NYT GP and WAPO and Guardian claimed, is all in fact completely false.
But alarmists dont let the truth get in the way of a good propaganda level huh.
It’s funny how you see integrity as bad and complete skullduggery as good, your world is upside down mate
If people are putting out science that fossil fuel derived CO2 is not the cause of climate change and are paid by fossil fuel interests to do it and don’t declare it, which is what he did, that’s clearly wrong, unethical, etc.
Griff September 28, 2016 at 8:13 am
That is NOT what he did. You seem to be of the school that believes “It must be true, I read it on the Internet!”.
w.
‘“It must be true, I read it on the Internet!”
Except he’s not ‘believing it’ – he’s pushing it. Basically doing exactly what he’s accusing Soon of. He is literally almost a caricature.
What is with the obsession of where money came from anyway? He declared his funding, surely it isn’t his business or requirement to declare someone else’s funding. Also, if McDonalds, BP, Exxon, whoever, funds something, how is it even slightly relevant? Unless it has been shown to bias results or conclusions, surely it shouldn’t matter where funding comes from?
If people are putting out ‘science’ that fossil fuel derived CO2 is a significant cause of climate change and are paid by anti fossil fuel interests to do it and don’t declare it, which is what they do, that’s clearly wrong, unethical, etc.
So all counter science gets no funding from gov coffers, so these scientists (getting funding is a big part of your job) have to look elsewhere.
It’s like preventing someone from using a well to get fresh water, them complaining about them drinking from a puddle.
Thanks for demonstrating how climate true believers frequently sacrifice their ability to think critically, along with their integrity in order to be part of the consensus.
“sacrifice their ability to think critically, along with their integrity”
I’ve never notice any of either from Griff.
Griff is a good back bench fanatic.
Griff:
You believe anything you read that suits your bias and religion. Show the audited report that shows where Soon got the money inti his account.
Et tu, Gerald ?
simplify, make your comments more succinct.
just type “Derp!”
can copy/paste that as needed to simplify.
Derp!
‘ his ‘science’ was produced to order for his paymasters…’
Hypocrisy – absolute and without fail. Talk about whores.
Universities have COI rules because they usually depend on public funding and the gods opinion of the taxpayers. They want to avoid POLITICAL controversy and bad press. It is NOT because they are worried that the research funded by the money will be phony. Disclosure rules have the same intent, to maintain political capital for science.
If a scientist is falsifying or fabricating data to push a false idea, that’s something completely different, and falls under real ethical misconduct. But taking money from any group to investigate anything and publishing the results accurately is not an ethical violation and never will be.
Peer review is there to scrutinize the interpretation of the data, the appropriateness of the experimental design, etc. It’s not there to question underlying biases. Science should be blind to the political spin. The fact that scientists can’t refute Dr. Soon scientifically and instead attack him for funding shows how biased THEY are.
“He has accepted more than $1.2 million in money from the fossil-fuel industry”
_____________________________
Griff, such accusations you’re sure not able to defend. Consequently you’re hiding behind an alias.
Who shall take you seriously?
Be sure the sentence
“The climate activist Griff has violated all ethical standards”
holds before every jury.
Griff has just proven himself to be either malicious, or too headstrong to read, or both.
Making stuff up again Grifter, you mendacious little shill for AGW?
And just how much do YOU get paid for posting your disinformation and making a total fool of yourself?
Don’t try to pretend you don’t, nobody could be THAT stupid.
AGU is sponsored by oil companies. Oil companies sponsor NPR, and a wide array of research and development on the cutting edge of science. Tax revenue from oil companies in-part funds NOAA, NASA, the EPA, etc. Your childish disqualification of Soon isn’t science, it is religious-like zeal. Everybody makes money somehow. The billions then TRILLIONS being scorched on rent-seeking advocates for “progressive” agenda items dipped in “green” virtue are just as “tainted”. You’re fighting a net-zero equation. ALL interests are self-interests. If oil company tax revenue were gone tomorrow, your precious government engine would quickly seize. Did you drive a car today? Use any electricity from the grid? You’re as “guilty” as Soon.
+1. for “the mud-wrestling contest over Wikipedia entries.”
Hi willis; I’m curious what you think of Javier’s work over at Judy’s.
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I think it is a heap of junk, but I’m writing a longer reply, because “It’s a heap of junk” is hardly sufficient.
w.
Thanks. I always appreciate your input, because you are rarely badly wrong. Here is another chance to look at solar influence on a longer than eleven year cycle, and a shorter than Milankovich timeline.
================
By the way, I was sorry to see that he didn’t reference Ruzmaikin, Feynman, and Jung, 2006, or is it 2007.
==============
Is Soon suing the NYT for defamation? I would gladly chip in to any fighting fund.
The NYT is going down in more ways than one. They are about to be sued by Trump as well. Time for a gawker style takedown of the Old Gray Lady.
“In science, refuting an accepted belief is celebrated as an advance in knowledge; in religion it is condemned as heresy”. (Bob Parks, Physics, U of Maryland). No prizes for guessing how global warming skepticism is normally responded to
This is certainly not the first attack on Dr. Willie Soon. These attacks on Dr. Soon are unwarranted and they are despicable. See my E&E article from 2005, excerpted below.
Regards to all, Allan
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/11/28/the-team-trying-to-get-direct-action-on-soon-and-baliunas-at-harvard/#comment-811913
I published the following article in E&E in early 2005. None of the ClimateGate revelations are really that new – the unethical, repulsive behaviour of the warmist camp was apparent even then. It was just not accurately described in the popular press.
[excerpts}
DRIVE-BY SHOOTINGS IN KYOTOVILLE
The global warming debate heats up
Allan M.R. MacRae
Drive-by shootings have moved from the slums of our cities to the realms of academia. Any scientist who dares challenge the Kyoto Protocol faces a vicious assault, a turf war launched by the pro-Kyoto gang.
These pro-Kyoto attacks are not merely unprofessional – often of little scientific merit, they are intended to intimidate and silence real academic debate on the Kyoto Protocol, a global treaty to limit the production of greenhouse gases like CO2 that allegedly cause catastrophic global warming.
,,,
But such bullying is not unique, as other researchers who challenged the scientific basis of Kyoto have learned.
Of particular sensitivity to the pro-Kyoto gang is the “hockey stick” temperature curve of 1000 to 2000 AD, as proposed by Michael Mann of University of Virginia and co-authors in Nature.
Mann’s hockey stick indicates that temperatures fell only slightly from 1000 to 1900 AD, after which temperatures increased sharply as a result of humanmade increases in atmospheric CO2. Mann concluded: “Our results suggest that the latter 20th century is anomalous in the context of at least the past millennium. The 1990s was the warmest decade, and 1998 the warmest year, at moderately high levels of confidence.”
Mann’s conclusion is the cornerstone of the scientific case supporting Kyoto. However, Mann is incorrect.
Mann eliminated from the climate record both the Medieval Warm Period, a period from about 900 to 1500 AD when global temperatures were generally warmer than today, and also the Little Ice Age from about 1500 to 1800 AD, when temperatures were colder. Mann’s conclusion contradicted hundreds of previous studies on this subject, but was adopted without question by Kyoto advocates.
In the April 2003 issue of Energy and Environment, Willie Soon and Sallie Baliunas of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and co-authors wrote a review of over 250 research papers that concluded that the Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age were true climatic anomalies with world-wide imprints – contradicting Mann’s hockey stick and undermining the basis of Kyoto. Soon et al were then attacked in EOS, the journal of the American Geophysical Union.
,,,
In both cases, the attacks were unprofessional – first, these critiques should have been launched in the journals that published the original papers, not in EOS. Also, the victims of these attacks were not given advanced notice, nor were they were given the opportunity to respond in the same issue. In both cases the victims had to wait months for their rebuttals to be published, while the specious attacks were circulated by the pro-Kyoto camp.
Scientists opposed to Kyoto have now been vindicated. As a result of a Material Complaint filed by Ross McKitrick of the University of Guelph and Steven McIntyre, Nature issued a Corrigendum in July 2004, a correction of Mann’s hockey stick. It acknowledged extensive errors in the description of the Mann data set, and conceded that key steps in the computations were left out and conflicted with the descriptions in the original paper.
Hans von Storch et al further criticized Mann’s work in the September 30, 2004 issue of Science Express. Von Storch commented in a Der Spiegel interview: “We were able to show in a publication in Science that this [hockey stick] graph contains assumptions that are not permissible. Methodologically it is wrong: Rubbish.” Researchers from the University of East Anglia and the University of Utah have expressed similar concerns.
The truth is there never has been any solid scientific evidence in favor of Kyoto. From the beginning, Kyoto has been politically driven, replete with flawed science and scary scenarios for which there is no evidence.
Kyoto advocates should finally admit that their pet project is foolish and anti-environmental – Kyoto is a massive waste of scarce global resources that should be used to alleviate real problems, not squandered on fictitious ones.
Allan M. R. MacRae is a professional engineer based in Calgary.
Ahead of the curve you were, but thankfully not off in the ditch.
============
This essay raises an important set of topics- the corruption of Wikipedia, the organized defamation of people perceived as non-believers- but it is written in a very unclear style.
Is this sudden change of temperature in the stratosphere in the south do not result from changes in solar activity?
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/strat-trop/gif_files/time_pres_TEMP_MEAN_JAS_SH_2016.png
Good question. I am very curious about the answer! Which kind of solar activity?
Lying and defaming people in order to gain more power is classic government ruling elite activities. Our rulers are set on taxing the peasants heavily and preventing them from using cheaper fuels so the super rich can run around this planet like crazy in private massive jets, big expensive private ships, drive cars that get 5 miles to the gallon and live in gigantic, multiple palaces.
Then Charles goes out on the balcony of one of the biggest palace complexes on earth to announce that pesky peasants should stop living in things bigger than a mud hut and they better walk, not ride in cars, and should all shut up or the earth will die.
The Pope does the same from his even bigger palace. Etc.
spot on. Charles, Gore, the Pope all have the same message. Their sin is gluttony. Already living high off the hog, they want us all to take less, so they can take more.
The church is perhaps the richest institution on earth, yet in many countries they are exempt from taxes. When passing around the collection plate, do they put money in the plate so that the poor and needy can share in their good fortune?
Or instead do they pass the plate around empty, expecting that the poor and needy place their last pennies on the plate, lest they burn in Hell? How is this any different than extortion?
ex·tor·tion
the practice of obtaining something, especially money, through force or threats.
A classic “ad hominem” attack on Dr Soon. I note no one discusses any sort of evidence Soon uses, just his funding. By that standard, all the other side wears knee pads.
The issue is he didn’t declare his funding…
Griff, those of us who have read about this case in detail are well aware that your repetition of that ‘funding source’ untruth is nothing other than a continuation of the baseless campaign against Soon. He was contracted to perform work by the recipient of the grants. It is not his responsibility to report other people’s income.
In short your accusation is mendacious, baseless, public and repeated. It is typical of the behaviour of those who would love to lead us to their version o Nirvana. To me your accusation means you are not to be believed because you do not report the truth about the matter. Soon, on the other hand, tells the truth, reports the facts he finds, and the facts do not support the erroneous idea that human CO2 emissions will lead to ‘runaway’ global warming, or even much at all. AG warming is certainly not distinguishable from natural variation which explains why there is no agreed value for the GHG sensitivity.
The funding went to Smithonian institute not to Willie Soon….
So, who should disclose it?
“The issue is he didn’t declare his funding…”
Wrong.
When will you stop making stuff up?
You got to be more subtle, Griff . . I mean, if you make it to the big time you can prolly fool a few half sleeping TV viewers with this sort of pearl clutching;
“I’m sorry, this just won’t do – this man has violated all ethical standards.”
But on a site like this, readers are likely to notice how “all ethical standards” was just you spinning up some drama queen BS, especially when you later write-
“The issue is he didn’t declare his funding…”
See, there’s more than one of them ethical standard thingies, sport ; )
Puts me in mind of a time when the church tortured truth tellers until they repented the truth and the executed them or just burnt them at the stake.
Drawing and quartering was particularly educational. The pulling of the guts was often well drawn out.
==================
Flyoverbob
I wonder if it is more appropriate to cite a pattern of behaviour that is not blaming ‘the church’ only. Atheist governments behave in exactly the same manner: crucifying political opponents for thinking, or worse, saying, things that are anathema to the ruling ‘party line’. In fact, party politics begs for these kind of interactions as opportunities for demonstrating party loyalty above all, even if it involves crime or offends common sense. Under Stalin and Pol Pot (and many others) people were routinely executed on the mere suspicion they were thinking wrong thoughts. Totalitarian responses are common enough but the rule of law and the forces inherent in the social contract prevent the ordinary bloke from acting on their impulses (if they are not drunk at the time).
The denouncing of scientists who report what they find is one of the early stages of ‘othering’ that will later be relied on to entice the public to tolerate lynchings.
Heh, it’s Caesero-Papism, but Caesar succumbed to climate change, and this Pope, alas, to Marxism.
==========
Dang, forgot to add that Caesarism succumbed despite the holocaust in Gaul.
==========
Nobody does hypocrisy like anti-religious bigots . . not even close, it seems to me.
Historically the petroleum industry has funded a great deal of open basic research. It was better than the current overall government sources.
Climate Science has made a fundamental statistical mistake, which Soon and Baliunas revealed. In statistics A+B is not always equal B+A. Specifically, the variance of the mean is less than the mean of the variance.
In other words, if you want to calculate natural variability, you need to calculate the variability for each proxy, then average the result. This will give you average variability. This was the insight of Soon and Baliunas.
If instead you average the proxies first, then calculate the variability, the variability will be appear to be reduced, because in fact you have made a fundamental mathematical mistake. You have not calculated the average variability, you have calculated the variability of the average.
This was the mistake that climate science made. This mistake has mislead a generation of Scientists. By working with the average of the proxies to calculate natural variability for the past, climate variability for the past was calculated to be much lower than it actually was.
Statistically, climate is not changing. It only appeared to be changing due to a mathematical error. Our current climate variability remains unchanged as compared to the past, and our current temperatures are well within the normal range of probability.
In other words, CO2 is not required to explain current temperatures, because current temperatures are well with the expected range given past temperatures and natural variability.
Nicely put.
Attribution, she’s a bitch,
Don’t know how just scratch that itch.
Puff the Magic Climate
Lived by the CO2,
Nature turned and bit him, someplace rich.
H/t, well, to me.
============
Ha, this is exactly what I’ve been doing with my review of NCDC surface data. I think Soon and Baliunas are very smart indeed lol
OH, and I have taken no money from anyone except my non-related employer.
Well said. As the saying goes, “There’s lies, damn lies, and then there’s statistics.” And THEN there’s idiots without a clue about statistics pretending to do statistics and REALLY giving statistics a bad name…
Averages are your friend. Averages will bite you in the rear without blinking an eye. ALWAYS be wary of averages.
Remember what 0 means. Zero has a meaning. 0C I can demonstrate in a lab without too much difficulty. 0K can be demonstrated in a lab with difficulty. 0 Anomaly on the other hand is a little more difficult to recreate. When you create it you have to make a lot of assumptions. A lot of really idiotic assumptions. The temperature can change within 20 feet significantly, but we will spread a single temperature over 1000 square kilometers without a thought.
All I know, is that if I was producing research on a topic, and money was coming from people with a stake in the answers, I’d make damn sure that I made clear to everyone who was giving money, and what possible stake they might have in the outcome.
The launching of the field of invertebrate parasitology/pathology came from Texas A & M Research Foundation projects 9 and 23 (~1947-60). It was funded by a consortium of petroleum companies. American Petroleum Institute Project 51 (~1950s) is only one of others. Need to make a list, the industry apparently not very good about this. Of course, this was before the age of demonization.
I think this is so bothersome to the left because when they pay for research they expect the answers that the already paid for. If you watch what happens to researchers who are paid by government who conclude anything but the ‘right’ answer you will see what happens. In other words, the left has replaced the Scientific Method with an expectation of preconcluded results. (My Money) + (Research I Paid For) = (Results I expected before I paid You).
“Soon disputes the current scientific understanding of climate change, and contends that most global warming is caused by solar variation rather than by human activity….
And Dr. Soon is absolutely correct.
As soon (no pun intended) solar activity is mentioned as the principal cause of natural activity, someone or another is waiting in the wings with the baseball bat…
a) Proxies (see Ferd Berple) above are affected by numerous factors from the point in time of being generated all the way to and including measurement (methods and accuracy). Wherever some kind of a contemporaneous instrumental record is available it should take preference to any proxy data.
b) Solar energy is stored in the oceans and has effect on the nearby land temperatures some years after its direct impact. Consequence of this is that looking for an 11 year solar signature in the land or ocean data is a fruitless exercise.
c) However, if it is looked at the change (delta) in the sun’s output, here taking the Group Sunspot Number as more accurate representation of the solar activity rather than the more familiar SSN (as recommended by Dr. Svalgaard) than it is perfectly clear that there is strong association between solar activity and the 300+ years of the Central England instrumental temperature records.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/GdCs1.gif
W. Soon says:“…most global warming is caused by solar variation rather than by human activity…. and so say many of us, regretfully we are not funded by anyone, the least by the fossil fuel industry.
Truth be told, Willie Soon is a not particularly big academic fish, in a moderately obscure pond.
That he becomes a hate figure in the climate-conflagration community for the crime of, umm, nothing apparently, speaks volumes. Those who choose to pursue him, for not ticking an administrative box that Greenpeace thinks he should have ticked, shows how hard they have to search for imagined villains.
Greenpeace are at least honest enough to not even attempt to disguise that they wish to destroy the life and career of Willie Soon simply , pour encourager les autres.
If only I had a lot of this much-alleged big oil money that I could send him to continue his work unmolested.
I was on a meeting with Wikipedia representatives. They told, that some pages were written and rewritten with a complete other text over and over again. And the most ‘rewritten page’ of the whole Wikipedia???? Yes indeed: Climate Change!!!
I once met Willie Soon on a conference. I also read one of his articles very seriously. I was impressed.
Because he is powerfull in his point of view, some people want to damage him. ‘Believers’ don’t have scientific points to do so. For that, they use Wikipedia that they can rewrite without clearly putting their name below it.
Very telling comment about Wiki. Thank you!
TSI is an indicator, every reasonable indicator between the sun, the observation of planetary orbits and climate agree!
I agree unpaid science/astronomy/engineering is called “amateur”…
I’m here to take no prisoners, science is a bloodsport!! bring it!!!
I decided to actually get surface data to look at because of how quickly it cools off after sunset while setting up to do deep space astrophotography (And had db skills to process all of the data).
I certainly am a proponent for encouraging the skills of amateurs. (non-paid professionals).
“As for the funding, I thought it might be worth republishing the article I wrote, at the time of this controversy, which pointed out that “clean” sources of government funds for research are not available to investigate hypothesis that potentially would contradict anthropogenic global warming. ”
This is incorrect, the most obvious counter example being the CLOUD project at CERN, which was received IIRC about 12M ECU of funding. Rightly so as the proposal was contained good science. I read Svensmark’s book “The Chilling Stars” and while Svensmark appeared unhappy with the level of funding he received, it looked decidedly above average to me. Clean souces of government funding clearly are available, but the proposal has to make a good case (and great claims require great evidence).