Guest Opinion: Dr. Tim Ball
“You can have brilliant ideas, but if you can’t get them across, your ideas won’t get you anywhere.” Lee Iacocca
In his essay, “Reflections on Mark Steyn’s ‘A Disgrace to the Profession’ about Dr. Michael Mann” Rick Wallace wrote,
Tim Ball, Fred Singer and others have been countering the AGW meme for a few decades, but to little avail.
He is correct. Yes, there is a slight increase in the number of skeptics as evidenced by the increased readership at WUWT, but it is a fraction of even total Internet users. Even those who read and comment on WUWT articles on the site often say they are not scientists or don’t fully understand the topic. Others demonstrate their lack of knowledge and understanding without the caveats.
Wallace continues,
But why is this? Why haven’t their voices carried? And, conversely, why was The Team so successful in getting their message out? Was it because, possibly for quite other reasons, there was already a receptive audience at hand? That there was an existing matrix of attitudes and beliefs to which the AGW belief system could adhere? And this matrix served to amplify some messages while it filtered out other, conflicting messages.
In a preface to the essay, Anthony Watts wrote,
“Given what happened today in live testimony before the House Science Committee where Dr. Mann was testifying, this review seems germane and timely.”
We can add to the timeliness the recent Washington D.C Heartland Climate Conference held (March 23-24, 2017). The conference was held with the opt
imism created by the election of President Trump and appointment of Scott Pruitt as head of EPA. By some accounts, it was a successful conference that spoke primarily to the science issues and some of the economic ramifications. In doing so, it overlooked, as skeptics have consistently, Iacocca’s challenge. These events will have little impact on effectively slowing the anthropogenic global warming (AGW) juggernaut. It will join the list of events, which I and others expected would crash the vehicle. Just a few key examples
· The 1988 claim by James Hansen before Senator Timothy Wirth’s orchestrated piece of theatre that he was 99 percent certain that humans were causing global warming.
· The 1997 Byrd-Hagel Resolution asked US Senators whether they wanted to vote to ratify Kyoto Protocol. They voted 95-0 not to vote on ratification.
· The 2009 Heartland Institute Climate Conference was presenting skeptical views on a world stage.
· The 2009 leak of 1000 emails from the Climatic Research Unit (CRU). These emails were clearly carefully selected to provide evidence of wrongdoing that the public would likely understand. It didn’t help.
· The 2010 release of 6000 more CRU emails further documented the malfeasance, which Mosher and Fuller summarized in their book Climategate: The Crutape Letters;
“The Team, led by Phil Jones and Michael Mann, in attempts to shape the debate and influence public policy:
Actively worked to evade (Steve) Mcintyre’s Freedom of information requests, deleting emails, documents and even climate data
Tried to corrupt the peer-review principles that are the mainstay of modern science, reviewing each other’s’ work, sabotaging efforts of opponents trying to publish their own work, and threatening editors of journals who didn’t bow to their demands
Changed the shape of their own data in materials shown to politicians charged with changing the shape of our world, ‘hiding the decline’ that showed their data could not be trusted.”
The juggernaut survived these charges that would have shut down completely any other program. The CRU and the IPCC are still operating. This was the same Michael Mann who appeared before a US Congressional House Committee on Science and Technology Hearing titled “Climate Science: Assumptions, Policy Implications, and the Scientific Method along with Judith Curry, John Christy and Roger Pielke Jr. The event received praise from skeptics and people who know and understand what has been going on. They focused on Mann’s character, manner, methods. Julie Kelly wrote a National Review article titled “Michael Mann Embarrasses Himself before Congress” that summarizes most of the skeptic’s perspective. She observes,
‘If the climate-change evangelist can’t be bothered to take a House hearing seriously, why should anyone take him seriously?”
This is incorrect. Mann took it very seriously, was well prepared and exploited it for every political opportunity – he dominated the entire proceedings. He had the advantage of not caring or having to care about the truth. His performance was designed for most of the public who have no idea about what is true. He knows this works because that assumption has driven the juggernaut from the start.
Mann also understood the political and manipulative nature of Congressional hearings. They are charades supposedly seeking the truth, but are really designed to make the politicians look good. They use the opportunity to put material on the official record that supposedly supports their position in the form of appeal to higher and wider or popular authority. Often, the politician simply read their staff-written position paper and don’t even bother with the expert.
My challenge to skeptics is to view the hearing as an uninformed citizen. From that perspective, I would argue that Mann was the most effective and persuasive. He was assertive, apparently provided hard evidence, had the backing of most scientists and scientific societies. He turned the minority status role the organizers gave him into the base for his victimization role. It wasn’t a debate, but he turned it into one and clearly believed, as would most uninformed observers, that he won.
He also believes he won because he marginalized his three opponents by calling them deniers in the pay of corporate entities. They believed they deflected this challenge with the help of the Chair, but that added to his victimization because it placed the Chair against him. The deniers said he was wrong, but because of time constraint offered no alternate explanations. They said the computer models were wrong but didn’t explain how or why. Their answers were properly vague because there are few definitive answers, but that contrasted with Mann’s confident assertiveness. Their vague answers underscored that they were a fringe group, thus justifying their denier label. They said Mann’s claim of increasing severe weather was incorrect but offered no graphs to prove it. They clearly had personal animosity to Mann but denied it when challenged. They provided no motive or even an explanation for why all these thousands of scientists would present false material and information and offered no explanation for their inferred claim that Mann was cheating.
Mann presented his latest research relating changes in the changes in the Jet Stream with severe weather. Nobody at the hearing pointed out that his claims were scientifically incorrect and the result of false computer model simulations. It is evident that Mann and his fellow authors did little historical research on the vast amount of data and literature beginning with the discovery of the Jet Stream during WWII and the work of Carl-Gustaf Rossby. The format of the hearings prevented any cross examination of Mann’s material, so it again made him more authoritative that the “deniers.” Overall, by trying to control the hearings and achieve their result the organizers played right into the hands of a person determined to disrupt the proceedings.
A major reason it appeared to the uninformed observer that Mann ‘won’ was the inability of the “deniers” to provide definitive answers. They are correct but think of the contradiction this creates for the uninformed. This small group of deniers is saying we don’t know the answers, but Mann is wrong.
The sad part is most skeptics would not have done any better. I watched another group of skeptics make a similar disastrous, unable to see the forest for the trees performance, before the Canadian parliament. They were asked questions that none of them could answer all the questions. The answers they gave were scientific jargon that few in the room understood. Worse, their answers indicated bad science by the AGW proponents. If so, was it bad because of incompetence or deliberate malfeasance? Either way, it raises several questions that if left unanswered or unexplained only give Mann credibility. If the science was wrong why and how did it pass peer review and go unchallenged? If it was deliberate malfeasance, how could so few people fool the entire world? Either way, if you make or infer the charge, you must provide an explanation and a motive. I did not hear that in the Ottawa or Washington hearings.
I did not attend the Washington Conference, partly for lack of funding, but primarily because I saw nothing to slow the political juggernaut that is global warming. I offered to make a presentation bringing everybody up to date with my legal situation, but also providing the political context for the lawsuits. Why did three prominent IPCC members, Gordon McBean, Andrew Weaver, and Michael Mann, bring, what amount to SLAPP lawsuits against me. I think there are two fundamental reasons. They could not say I wasn’t qualified, although they tried. I also had an ability to explain the complexities of climate and climate change in a way most could understand. I honed these skills by
- Instructing basic weather knowledge and forecast skills as an operations officer in Atlantic Canada and sub-Arctic and Arctic Canada.
- Teaching a first-year university climatology course for 25 years.
- Teaching a required Science credit university course for Arts students for 25 years.
- Teaching a non-credit university course for Seniors titled “The Way the Earth Works” for 25 years.
- Giving hundreds of public presentations to professional groups in primary industry like farmers, foresters and fishermen whose economies are directly impacted by weather and climate over 40 years.
- Writing a monthly column, Weather Talk” for Canada’s largest circulation farm magazine Country Guide. I was fired after 17 years because of action by a single Board member.
- Writing a monthly column for The Landowner for the last seven years.
- Giving hundreds of open forum public presentations over 40 years.
- Publishing a first-year university textbook on climatology.
A good example of the latter is important because it illustrates the challenge and explains why groups have been so ineffective, as Wallace identifies, in “countering the AGW meme.” Recently, I gave a public presentation in Mount Vernon in Washington State. The organizer warned me that people were in attendance who planned to disrupt the proceedings. There was no disruption, and when I asked what happened, the organizer told me that they left with one person commenting, we have never heard any of this before.
The solution to breaking the AGW meme is not in the science, good or bad because the public doesn’t know the difference. It is in showing how the science was created to achieve a predetermined result, namely the demonization of CO2. Then you must provide a motive. Why would scientists pervert science as David Deming identified in his letter to Science and congressional testimony?
“With the publication of the article in Science [in 1995], I gained significant credibility in the community of scientists working on climate change. They thought I was one of them, someone who would pervert science in the service of social and political causes. So, one of them let his guard down. A major person working in the area of climate change and global warming sent me an astonishing email that said, we have to get rid of the Medieval Warm Period. “
I made this challenge to explain climate in a way the public can understand the main theme of my presentation at the First Heartland Climate Conference in New York in 2009. I know from many discussions during the conference that few understood. Those that did were already in the education and communication business; people like Marita Noon who is now working for the Heartland Institute. A major point in my presentation was to accept that whether you like it or not Al Gore’s movie was a remarkably effective piece of propaganda. His latest effort is not even that, but most of the public won’t know. It is ineffective because Gore’s motives and hypocrisy have been exposed, not because public understanding of the science has improved.
Wallace’s charge that Tim Ball, Fred Singer, and others have challenged the AGW meme to no avail is correct. This, despite all the scientific evidence presented over the years up to and including Heartland’s 12th Conference and the recent Congressional Hearing. Little or nothing has changed. What is the solution?
Trump won in the minds of working and middle-class people, which is where the climate war must be won for lasting victory. They only need to understand enough science to know how it was corrupted, but they must know the motive. Until that happens, all the AGW proponents need to say is that Trump is acting to line the pockets of his billionaire friends. Mann demonstrated the technique in his congressional presentation.
Fundamentally, it has never been proven that CO2 is capable of increasing global temperatures. I personally think it does just the opposite, since it constantly emits and only occasionally accepts a photon. That is, it emits because it is an emissive gas, is above absolute zero K, and has an ample supply of energy from both the inert atmosphere and from photons emitted from earth. CO2 molecules constantly emit photons. I don’t know the ratio, but I’d suspect a CO2 molecule emits thousands of photons for every photon received by radiation. They are lossy, unlike oxygen, nitrogen, argon, which only conduct energy (lose energy) through contact. Simply, CO2 cools the atmosphere.
The very underpinning of the AGW hypothesis rests on ONE SINGLE idea – that CO2 traps energy and causes earth’s temperature to rise.
In the 60’s, we sent men to the moon. Isn’t it worth it to actually use true science to evaluate CO2’s role INSTEAD OF accepting century-old experiments as fact? As a laser engineer, I know a lot about the behavior of gases. I also know that if it was proven that CO2 has nothing, whatsoever, to do with climate, then the ONE SINGLE IDEA behind AGW would be eliminated, thus bringing down the house of cards. It is a one-legged stool, and the AGW’ers have had a heyday keeping it balanced, because no one bothers to prove or disprove that one legged idea. It is time. And this administration, regardless of what I think of it, could fund sufficient studies to either validate or disprove the predominant hypothesis.
I know there many that understand this – the gas laws don’t distinguish between types of gases, so NONE of the concepts of the gas laws is different for CO2 than it is for nitrogen.
Lastly, 95% of all the CO2 released each year is natural – from the earth, and not from man’s activities. For the AGW hypothesis to be ‘true’ it would have to be proven that only 5% of the annual CO2 emission is responsible for ALL of the so-called CO2 warming that is claimed.
Eliminate CO2 as a player. Remove the finding that CO2 is a dangerous gas. Let them come up with another concept other than CO2 as a man-made problem for earth.
I have to agree. Perhaps someone will correct us, but I have never seen any evidence that Carbon Dioxide actually causes warming in the real atmosphere. As you say unlike Nitrogen and Oxygen it is a radiative gas and will be radiating away any energy gained in collision with other gas molecules. So yes you will see infrared photons from Carbon Dioxide but it is a false assumption that they were all from scattered incident infrared photons.
The other aspect that is assumed is that infrared photons returning to the surface will warm the surface. This is not true for the more than 70% of the Earth surface that is water or the surface that is vegetation. All incident infrared will be absorbed by the first water molecule a micron or so into the water surface and increase the evaporative heat loss from the surface as latent heat of evaporation is also taken. Convection then takes the heat higher into the atmosphere to release the latent heat of condensation and then freezing.
Only rock and dry earth surfaces will be warmed by infrared and of course Stefan Boltzmann tells us that as the temperature of the dry surface increases for each degree C the radiation of heat will increase by the 4th power.
Finally, why are ‘scientists’ using temperature as a metric for atmospheric heat content? Scientists should know that thanks to the presence of water droplets and vapour raising the enthalpy of the atmosphere the metric they should be using is kilojoules per kilogram. 100% humid air with mist droplets at 75F has more than twice the heat content of a similar volume of 0% humid air at 100F. a drop in tropospheric humidity could easily account for the fractions of a degree temperature change just by lowering the atmospheric enthalpy.
Stop being dragged into the wrong arguments. Ask the alarmists why they are measuring atmospheric temperature, as it is the wrong metric? Ask them if they think infrared heats water..as it is 70% of the world’s surface.. Ask them if they know what a radiative gas is and what happens if you add a radiative gas to a mixture of warm non-radiative gases. Scoff at their ignorance then say that as they almost certainly knew the right answers why do they persist in misleading non-scientists?
There’s no accumulated storage from co2 in the temperature record. Water vapor regulates any increases back out by condensing less water at night, which allows more of it to cool to space.
I can show you, https://micro6500blog.wordpress.com/2016/12/01/observational-evidence-for-a-nonlinear-night-time-cooling-mechanism/
I totally agree with you John. All efforts should go in that direction: explaining how CO2 can not be the factor driving temperature fluctuation.
A great column here on WUWT. I agree that the issue is getting the FACTS out to the public. Problem is, the AGW crowd does not concern themselves with science. They have been indoctrinated by the media, Gore movies, and liberal educators at every level. Due to this incessant indoctrination, AGW has become a religion. Now you tell me, how do you refute religion??????????????????
Keeeeerrect! (Elmer Gantry 1961).
Don’t worry Dr. Ball. The truth always has a way of getting the last word. Now that we have had nearly 40 years of natural cyclical warming since the late 1970’s, that tide is shifting to a cooling trend as part of the next cyclical down turn in temps starting with the next dozen years and lasting through the 86 year solar cycle. When the warming doesn’t continue year after year as CO2 emissions creep higher, the jig will be up for CAGW. You can’t fool everyone all of the time, for too long.
Humans have indeed caused some minor warming, but not to any extant that could be considered the new climatic driver. To say humans are now the driver of climate would be the height of arrogance and the public will understand that instinctively when the evidence proves otherwise and temperatures not only stop rising, but they level off and start fading to cooler annual temps as part of the natural solar cycle.
Climate truth has been wandering in the desert the last 40 years…but that shall pass. What will seal the fate for CAGW will be the average folk over the next 15-20 years seeing that they were had by a group of deceivers in academia, politics, and media. Paying for crap and trade, or a carbon tax designed only to steal their hard earned money, it is likely they will be very mad to boot.
Hopefully it doesn’t get too cold…
I don’t think Dr Ball is worried, he is simply stating a few well observed facts. And he is correct about Mann being the winner. He held court. The other three did not do a good job in curbing the untruths.
It is what is said that is recorded, not good intentions and shoulder shrugging.
I am sorry you don’t understand the dynamic. CO2 is the only theory in town. It doesn’t matter if it is a bad theory. It has no competition. As long as temps keep going up, (or can plausibly be made to appear to go up) even so slightly, people want an explanation. And they will take a bad explanation over none at all. That is why Mann wins.
Now Svensmark’s explanation of climate change would be an opposing explanation that people might accept, but he can’t get the scientific community on board. He can’t seem to get any traction with it among the populace, scientific or otherwise. So AGW has no competition.
The only way AGW dies is for temps to stay stagnant for another 20 years or so or for them to abruptly fall and stay down for awhile.
Nature will have the final say. But what was being discussed is winning a debate or the public perception. A bad explanation usually beats no explanation in the mind of the public. Try winning a legal case without an opposing explanation. It is damn hard if all you got is that the other side is wrong and you are not guilty or at fault.
David,
This will be condescending, but I see no other way.
1. The Left and the Climate Cultists pseudoscientists depend on the linear simplistic thinking your statement conveys/embodies (that is CO2 theory has no apparent external competition).
2. Engineers, mathematicians, and scientists who understand (or studied) dynamical, non-linear systems also understand apparent oscillations and strange attractors behavior is common in nature. Internal variability of a complex system means there is no such thing as a static equilibrium.
3. GlobalClimate is a non-linear, dynamical system (1st IPCC AR)
4. Considering 1. – 3. above: CO2, nor any external forcing, is needed to explain the natural climate variability of the last 160 years, including the rise in GMST from 1980-2000. (Which is why the climate cultists wanted to get rid of the similar 1940’s GMST blip).
@Joel O’Bryan: This is exactly the problem Dr. Ball points out: you’re still trying to win a scientific argument using facts & figures, BUT IT HAS NEVER BEEN A SCIENTIFIC ARGUMENT, not ever, nor at any point.
The “debate” (I use the term loosely) has always been a way to accrue political power over the poorly-educated. As such it is no different than the “debates” over gun rights, abortion, or pork-barrel spending. This “argument” (& those others as well) have always been and continue to be won by those willing to pander to emotion, simplistic thinking & a good TV/stage presence.
Dr. Mann “won” with the average person simply because he (exempli gratia) “had the courage to show up, fight the good fight, and tell those clowns where to stick their denialism!” He was sincere & direct & unequivocal, while the legit scientists were being the exact opposite — or put another way, while they were being professional, credible scientists who are legitimate experts in the field of study supposedly under discussion. I’ve said this before, but Dr. Ball has said it far more eloquently than I: the “climate science debate” has never been about the science.
As such, I’ve long since given up believing that this battle can be won with facts, or evidence; even clear, simple logic is useless as ammunition at this point, because the argument is Political, Emotional, verging on Religion for many. And just how many religious folk do you know who are persuaded to depart from their faith because of something as mundane as “scientific evidence?” Hmmm?
Joel, this is the nonlinear cooling in affect.
See you can understand this
https://micro6500blog.wordpress.com/2016/12/01/observational-evidence-for-a-nonlinear-night-time-cooling-mechanism/
Prime mover #1 for the anti CAGW message in the USA and by association much of the world: We no longer have a POTUS and administration championing Climate ‘Change’ every chance they get and inserting it in every department’s agenda. Instead we have an administration that is openly skeptical. That’s a HUGE difference. Remember, AGW is last on the list of concerns for US citizens so expecting a full metal jacket assault this early is presumptuous.
Agreed, +10
We are not winning the war because we haven’t started fighting yet.
“Trump won in the minds of working and middle-class people, which is where the climate war must be won for lasting victory.”
I reckon this hits the proverbial nail!
He probably would not have beaten Sanders. Because Sanders appealed to middle class people as well. And Sanders was big on climate change and renewables.
Middle class Americans are NOT big on climate change OR renewables or social democrats or democratic socialists.
To the mods…I left a comment on this post just below Myron Mesecke’s comment around an hour or two ago. Why has it been removed?
Never mind, I now see that it is moderation.
One of their wars to send the human race to the stone age (except those of their religion) was lost before they even started- they had no chance whatsoever. Other wars to send money and power to their friends- very hard to fight.
This is truly a fascinating debate. My entire interest in the issue is precisely this; how can such a flawed theory, with holes the size of mountains, become so widely accepted? For some reason, climate alarmists have managed to frame the issue from day one. Why has this happened? We forever hear that 2016 or 2015, or whatever, is the hottest year on record. But this is nothing but a red herring. The issue is the rate of temp increase. It’s now been 30 years since James Hansen went to congress and the global temp has risen barely a fraction of a degree. Yet we never hear this. His predictions have failed miserably. On a positive note, most people think global warming is a non issue. They just don’t care enough right now because they don’t see how it affects them. And maybe it doesn’t. Taxes go up slightly, so do power bills. Nothing really substantial. Nothing will change, however, until the Michael Mann’s of the world are successfully cast as villains.
Jim, “My entire interest in the issue is precisely this; how can such a flawed theory, with holes the size of mountains, become so widely accepted? For some reason, climate alarmists have managed to frame the issue from day one.”
To me ? , Money and exposure through the MSM, These people set it up like a movie or a theatrical play; Every one involved had a role, a contract and a salary to do this. The Nobel Price scenario was the set up, they started it ( just look at Obama’s “Peace Price” after being president for what 3 months?), just about everybody is under the impression that a Nobel Price winner is some sort of “god” and from then on the skeptics were on the losing end. I know this sounds simple but think of the method. The “masses” are easily manipulated and the left has been doing it for a century. Those that control the media are way ahead of the truth.( What was it again? A lie is half way across the planet before the truth gets it’s boots on, these days with the net the truth can’t even get out of bed before the lie has circled the world a few hundred times.). I am afraid we will have a hard time to change this and unless the skeptics don’t get “hard assed” we will continue to be on the losing end. I am also afraid that this ( Dr. Ball’s) article will get smacked by the MSM.
Sorry about the rant but was said in and with a lot of frustration and anger.
“This is truly a fascinating debate. My entire interest in the issue is precisely this; how can such a flawed theory, with holes the size of mountains, become so widely accepted?”
This “humans causing the Earth’s climate to change” narrative has been decades in the making.
From the 1940’s to the 1970’s, climate scientists were concerned with Global Cooling. As temperatures went down, they kept predicting they would continue to go down and the Earth was going to enter another ice age, and after a while they started connecting human activities to the cold as one cause.
Then in the late 1970s, the temperatures started heating up, and Global Cooling was no longer the issue, instead it became Global Warming, and of course, humans were causing it. The Global Cooling promoters just did a 180 degree turn and became Global Warming promoters as soon as the temperatures changed.
When the Global Warming narrative first started, there was not much information on which to base an opinion pro or con. It took a while for skeptics to start making their voices heard on the subject, as knowledge increased. By that time, the narrative had been established in the public mind, not based on facts, but on pure speculation.
As time goes on, more and more people develop a vested interest in continuing the CAGW narrative because of the money and political power they stand to gain from it.
How about this retort to the CAGW promoters: Hey, you guys were wrong about Global Cooling. Why should we think you are now right about Global Warming?
+ 10.
Wished I had said that …or said it as clear.
The Lee Iacocca quote puts the failure on communication, in this case the inability of skeptics to convince. As experience shows, this is true; the skeptics present reasoned arguments and the AGW believers are immune to them. You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him think. Surprisingly this applies to many scientists too.
“If the science was wrong why and how did it pass peer review and go unchallenged?”
Good question. An even better question is “how can we fix the science process?”.
“If it was deliberate malfeasance, how could so few people fool the entire world? Either way, if you make or infer the charge, you must provide an explanation and a motive.”
These two questions are not mutually exclusive. Explanations and motives have been provided, many of them.
A few years ago, you could have tried to reason why God does not exist. It wouldn’t have worked. Now it’s the other way around for many. Something changed, and not because of any logical reasoning. AGW is almost on that level. Belief will eventually change, Until then you are a missionary, making one convert at a time.
I will note, this election season for about half the population, revealed a corruption that you would only find in a comic book, as other fiction novel would never be written, as to be too unbelievable that people would not read it.
And yet, the other half thinks we’re crazy.
Same goes for the 40-year war on “saturated fat” as a supposed direct cause of heart disease.
“Tim Ball, Fred Singer and others have been countering the AGW meme for a few decades, but to little avail.” Well said! The meme thrives on faulty argumentation but faulty argumentation has been forthcoming from Ball, Singer and the others. To defeat the meme, Ball, Singer, and the rest of us must expose the meme for what it is: a swindle.
I have been explaining how and it was a swindle for 30 + years. Read my book “The Deliberate Corruption of Climate Science”
https://www.amazon.com/Deliberate-Corruption-Climate-Science/dp/0988877740/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1491323194&sr=8-1&keywords=The+deliberate+Corruption+of+Climate+Science
I think a lot of us with science backgrounds would profit from reading the history of Athens. We are so focused on science that we can’t see that the AGW campaign is really an exercise in the kind of “democracy” that brought Athens to her knees in 403 BC. Al Gore has no credentials as a scientist, but he knew how to whip up a mob. Ditto the Science Guy. Just consider Nye’s ridiculous experiment with the two cookie jars. He had no idea of what he was doing, but he wanted others to believe and honor him, and he found a huge audience that wanted to go along with his fantasy. Contrast that silly piece of theatre with any of G. I. Taylor’s videos about fluid dynamics, and you will understand the enormous gulf that separates the public face of the AGW crowd from classical western science.
Very few of us would regard a life spent along the lines of Gore or Nye as one worth living. But they glory in the apparent adulation. So too Michael Mann and the rest of that crew. The advancement of knowledge in the realm of science is of no concern to them, or they would have apologized a long time ago. But that doesn’t concern them. They are focused on other things that they believe are of greater importance.
Most of us are concerned about preserving some small semblance of integrity in the fields to which we have devoted so much time and effort. But that is tangential to the public policy problem as it has been framed. And we don’t seem to be aware that the ground is shifting under the very fabric of our society in similar ways in other intellectual venues. A large segment of the educational community is devoted to replacing our heritage of the rule of law, private property, and the endowment of fundamental rights in all humans with a slapdash philosophy that based mainly on greed and envy, and is packaged as “social justice”. Few of our children understand why America was formed as a federation of states, with careful delineations of federal power amongst coequal branches, and a 10th Amendment that reserved rights to individuals beyond those specifically mentioned in the preceding nine amendments. Instead, they presume a rightful world would be one that is ruled by the majority, with no rights for those not in the majority. This is the tragedy of Athens replayed once again. Worse, few in Europe, the sewer that immersed the world in global wars twice in the last century, have ever embraced ideas like those that created the United States of America. And yet these throwbacks to a age of feudal values, the idea of rule by a select elite, are regarded as the hope for the future.
+++!
Perhaps there are too many government funded”climate change” jobs here at stake. Right down to the makers of nature documentaries that finish off with a plug for “man made climate change”.
The problem would have evaporated long ago except the biased MSM are not the independent news reporters of long ago. Most of them are activists who support the Democrat philosophy and have thus bought into the Lysenkoism that is now an inseparable part of it.
Remember, when it comes to main stream media, bad news will always outsell good news
Another problem is that “news” has become “entertainment” and they are becoming indistinguishable one from the other. The only mandate is getting clicks, eyeballs and ratings, Truth is irrelevant.
As Eddie Izzard has said in his “Dress To Kill” special, the trick to winning the war on climate change follows a formula:
70% how you look
20% how you sound
10% what you say (or in other words, the truth)
If you really want to know why we aren’t winning the war, it’s because the population is too stupid to know right from wrong, science fact from science fiction, fabrication from research, truth from lies—and ultimately the war is about emotions, not science. It is far easier to show implied plight of starving polar bears, of melting glaciers, of cyclone devastation, and claim “If only we didn’t burn fossil fuels, all these things would no longer happen!” regardless of how big a lie that actually is. Emotions spur action, period. Few have the critical thinking skills and willingness to devote the necessary time to research the topic in order to arrive at a conclusion of their own. It is far easier (as well as human nature) to defer to others when an individual feels ignorant about a topic, or weighs the ROI cost associated with learning said topic sufficiently to be their own expert. This is why doctors take a “throw as much against the wall to see what sticks” approach to health care, why financial planners will suggest investments which do nothing but line their own pocket, and why scientists will look towards consensus herd mentality when their personal research funding is on the line.
You want to win the war? Start making AGW skepticism about emotions. It’s not about the science, it’s about the formula.
In some sense the skeptics are winning the war. Roughly half the American population views the claims of the alarmists with skepticism.
What would it take to bring around the other half? Reality. If the global temperature refuses to rise at a fast enough rate then enough climate scientists will eventually become uncomfortable with the consensus that the dam will break. But it may take decades to play out.
Of course, there’s also the possibility that the alarmists will be proven correct.
Lots of comments here, so this will probably get lost in the haze. The motive is: Carbon dioxide is the holy grail of pollutants. Everything else. Everything. Can be mitigated or eliminated from industrial emissions. Almost everything has commercial value. SO2 from metal smelters, fly ash from coal plants, are two examples. The green movement figured out how to kill industry and they have been running with it ever since. They hate capitalism. They hate success. They hate the US. And they hate anyone and everyone who doesn’t hate these things as much as they do. The result is they believe they are on the side of the angels and they can do and say anything. The solution is to ask why they hate. Don’t argue. QUESTION. When you comment on a story in the news, don’t get angry. Don’t argue facts. Ask the person why they hate so much and what they have against the poor. If they ask for specifics, don’t give any. They will prove your point without a reply. Make them look like the angry ones because they are. Politely ask them if their friends are as cruel and hateful as they are. Don’t engage too much. Let them rant on and prove your point. Realize that people are trying to bait you. Don’t go beyond a single comment. When arguing with a friend, say “ok, ok, I surrender, jeez I didn’t know you were this crazy about things”. Don’t explain why they are crazy. Let it fester in their minds. An excellent thing to do is throw up your hands and say “can’t argue facts with a zealot”. And don’t. Don’t argue facts. Quietly and calmly and continuously point out that you can’t argue with zealots. If they say” am I a zealot”, don’t say yes or no, say “can’t argue with zealots”. Most importantly. QUESTION. Not the science. Question their morals. Their motives. Their need to be superior. Their anger. Finally, remember that in most forums there are more than you and your adversary. There are lots of others reading. Those are the people you are convincing, not the zealot arguing with you.
Whether your method of dealing with them is right, I’m not sure, but I think your right about the motive. It’s ‘the earth has cancer, and we are it’ idea which underlies the modern environmental movement, although many groups are too smart to come right out and say that, they don’t want to alienate less radical contributors. But deep down it’s the driving philosophy: any effect humans have on nature must be a bad one. Undoing all human influence on the planet is their lofty goal. For such believers evidence that the human contribution to climate change is small and that the majority is natural will be no reason to give up the battle.
To be fair on the Christy, Pielke, Curry trio, they were not invited to comment on Mann’s latest published paper, or for any one of a number of purposes that Dr Ball suggests as desirable. They were before a committee to examine “Assumptions, Policy Implications & the Scientific Method” re Climate Science.
I credit the trio for having the wisdom to see Mann digressing from the terms of reference and for taking the more correct path, rather than following Mann’s wrong path. Dr Ball, which path would you suggest was proper?
Much of what you write has been observed for years. There is not so much a problem of not knowing a sceptical case, more a problem of how to have it heard. The good, positive suggestions you make are fairly self-evident, but the ways to have them heard when MSM, Learned Societies etc are strongly batting for the other team, are difficult to achieve.
Perhaps you have not chosen the best example with this Hearing. Much of what you write seems more applicable to another example, maybe a more general one.
Geoff
I’d say a practical answer might be to get an audience with lawmakers, one at a time.
Sadly, I have to agree with Tim Ball on his analysis of the situation and several others who expanded on that same theme. Anybody who looks honestly at the science would have a hard time finding anything to suggest an impending catastrophe from an increasing level of CO2 in the atmosphere….and plenty to suggest that it might actually be beneficial. But, as we know, most people don’t look at the science and their sources are the MSM, newspapers, the popular science press (perhaps), social media and, of course, the Hollywood glitterati. What were once objective & reasonably-balanced sources of actual news (e.g. BBC) have become rabid endorsers & promoters of CAGW and all other manner of unfounded “green” fantasies. Delivering soundbites, heartstring-tugging photos and outrageous fantasist visions of a world in the near future without hydrocarbons are the kinds of things that ensure total belief in the “new religion” and confirmation that what is being done is right. Recruiting national institutions (Various learned societies, National Geographic, high-profile TV naturalists like Sir David Attenborough, etc. etc.) trumps (sic) anything offered up by those of us who seek to derail this circus.
As somebody else commented, one of the key issues has been the subversion of the education system. Children are taught this distorted reality from an early age all through school so anyone who challenges that “received wisdom” must clearly be wrong or have some agenda. I encountered this situation personally with my own son, recently – a 1st class Honours graduate in Chemical Engineering – and was shocked beyond belief. Apart from the education system, there are many other inputs that help sustain this nonsense. Anyone who has watched kids cartoons in recent years will quickly encounter the kinds of eco-junk preaching (as opposed to genuine & valid environmental stewardship) that insidiously continues the indoctrination of a brand new generation of believers.
In the long game, science and Nature will ultimately prevail but that might not be anytime soon and, indeed, the risk to genuine science is acute. Eco-religious dogma is replacing critical thought. It may be time to consider new strategies to counter this dangerous and egregious movement. Removing or denying funding may be one approach but it is insufficient IMHO. The recent uptick in hysterical comments from the MSM and the deluge of alarmist verbal diarrhea is designed to keep the faithful in line and to overcome any doubts these adherents may have. We need to start using whatever means we can to get the message out including, if necessary, the same techniques used by the CAGW proponents. We need brave, vocal, succint communicators to explain the reality and get the facts across to billions of people…..or we risk losing this fight. And that’s a very dark thought indeed.
I look at the science.
When I read a story in the ‘MSM’ I find mostly there is a link to the science and I go read it.
And the science overwhelmingly says ‘it is warming, the climate is changing and the effects are not mostly beneficial’
When I read skeptic views, they often first attack the MSM – the messenger – without referencing the linked to science.
I am not prepared to believe that the likes of New Scientist, which I have been reading for 50 years, is for example some sort of lefty/biased/got at publication. It remains a leading reporter of science as it always was.
Griff,
Pretty well all climate stories in the MSM are alarmist, and are probably based on a new scientific paper that is also alarmist. So, if you check on the scientific paper it will also be alarmist.
The problem is that papers generally only cover alarmist stories and ignore sceptical stories. After all, it’s catastrophes that sell newspapers.
Are you serious about the New Scientist? I bought it regularly for some decades, but a few years ago stopped buying it. I refuse to support a magazine that promotes scientific fraud.
And it has been hopelessly wrong. Some years ago it ran an article entitled “The Continent that Ran Dry”. It was about the Australian drought that had lasted for years. Naturally, according to NS it was all the fault of climate change. Presumably they believe there have only been droughts since CO2 was invented.
I looked up the BOM web site to find the precipitation data. It was excellent, I just had to select a region and up popped the precipitation graph from around 1900 onwards. First, it was apparent that for the entire continent there had been an increasing trend for some time. The drought was not continent-wide, which is strange if it was caused by “climate change” or global warming.
I then looked at the regions affected by the drought. Rainfall had indeed been falling somewhat over recent years. But, looking further back, rainfall had increased significantly over previous decades, and had been above average. In reality, the falling trend simply showed that rainfall was returning to its long term average.
According to the data the continent had not run dry and the article was pure anti-scientific propaganda. And i seem to recall that Australia has had rather a lot of rainfall since then!
When I checked the BOM site recently I could find no trace of those useful and easy to use graphs. It’s as if they have tried to hide that inconvenient data.
Right here at WUWT you’ll see an enormous amount of discussion of the science, and your comment about “referencing the linked to science” is completely wrong.
Time after time sceptics show how the empirical data contradicts and refutes so much of the alarmist science.
If you think CAGW is right, how do you explain the enormous discrepancy between the measured global temperatures and the climate models? They are out by around 100%.
Chris
Whatever it is you think you are looking at, it isn’t science. It is what Dr. Feynman referred to as “Cargo Cult Science”. You have amply demonstrated your total lack of interest in actual science, in your role here as token climate troll.
Griff: Either you’re reading completely obscure papers and listening to a MSM that is in an alternate reality, or I suspect you suffer from the most serious case of selective attention I have ever seen.
Your last sentence indicates a serious confirmation bias.
Congratulations Griff, you must be the most juvenile retiree in the world!
Which coal mines did you grow up near again?
Is you ‘identity’ under threat from reading these comments about your ‘religion’?
Come on, Griff…..you can’t be serious! If you really did read the science (or looked at the actual data), you couldn’t possibly make such a statement. A minor and unremarkable warming trend in effect during the blink of an eye in terms of our planet’s 4 billion year history doesn’t presage the end of the world. ALL the scientific evidence points to the fact that cyclical ice ages are the phenomena to fear and that warmer periods with higher atmospheric CO2 levels are beneficial for the planet AND its inhabitants.
As for New Scientist, I’m afraid you are being misled. I gave up on it a long, long time ago. So should you!
Fortunately, the term “snowflake” (I personally like “dewdrop” better) is beginning to swirl. I believe this counter meme will wreck much havoc on the CAGW belief.
Although I do agree with you and Dr. Ball, generally, all it takes from huge numbers of people to simply drop CAGW in its tracks, are some bad blackouts due to the Wind Turbine fantasy. Hopefully, the people of the UK will actually learn from the South Australians, and not need to prove it to themselves. But after a few of these unfortunate and damaging cases, I am quite optimistic that the CAGW cult will be sufficiently marginalized. Unfortunately, this actually supports Dr. Ball’s argument. People have been brainwashed and propagandized. We cannot easily undo that unfortunate fact. But it will end with experiential learning.
Okay, Griff, baby, I teed it up for you. Now knock me out of the park with a brilliant expert opinion on how wonderful wind power will be. Don’t forget to add how productive and efficient this will be for human economies. We’ll all be swimming in “green wealth.”
Oh, yeah I forgot to mention, ridicule will also slowly erode some of the brainwashing. Ridicule CAGW beliefs as often, and cleverly as you can. I made a motivational poster about failing grids due to wind turbines: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2gSdrnbsEEOcWVfUm1UVTAxbFU
And when the Roman Empire faltered, the Roman Catholic Church arose. Same intentions, except the money flowed the other way, inward. Control over a large portion of the people still eminates from Rome.
Thanks Dr Ball
1. Congressional testimony is theatre. Cuedos to opposition for seeing battlefield.
2. Most common mistake that the genuine make is to treat the disingenuous kindly.
3. Thieves love to lurk in the dark. They are happy that CAGW is low interest. The BIS is counting the money while side deals are carved out with BRICs.
4. Politics is the front stage game for backstage decision making. Please stop hoping they will ultimately fix this charade. The patient was in ICU. All DJT gave you was a temporary breather.
Pathological behaviors dont play by the same rules you do. First there are the thieves and then there are the sycophants. The sycophants are hooked much in the same way they are hooked to any of the current CULTURE BATTLES. The common theme is they see it as an injustice and an expression of the patriarchy. Facts are last on the list of things that matter to the audience you are trying to persuade. Ahhh INDENTITY POLITICS.
Watch someone like Jordan Peterson and how he exploded on the scene (over 20M views in 6 months) concerning the absurdity of multiple genders and C16. He taps his little monster to deal with outright monsters. He’ll sprinkle a little science here and there but as a clinical psychologist he knows what hes dealing with and lowers the boom on the absurd.
CAGW has to be equated with ABSURDITY before the pendulum swings. Your making headway with some right side of the bell curve thought leaders among the masses. Continue to target those cool kids/adults and the rest of the masses follow.
Once you elevate the absurdity youll elevate the cultural attention and the thieves will go onto something else. Thieves hate the spotlight.
Methods. Team up your resources and use the cool tools of the day. Visual media is where its at. For example, virtual reality (VR) is about to begin to dominate. Beat them to it.
You have a golden opportunity.
You CAN beat them at their own game.
I personally think that one of the reasons sceptics have such difficulty getting their message across can be seen on this page. Instead of using data or science to argue their case, they use politics or economics. The usually answer to evidence posters don’t like is to suggest such ideas are based in left wing beliefs or the claim that researchers are just appealing for cash.
You need more than that.
You need valid studies which support your stance. Some people do use such resources, but they are painfully absent in many responses.
You need valid studies which support your stance.
No you don’t. That just gets you into a “my studies are more credible than your studies and mine are 97%” argument.
All you need is to understand SB Law and CO2 is logarithmic. If you understand those two very basic things, the alarm is over. The challenge is that despite how basic these things are, try explaining them to an average adult and their eyes glaze over in seconds.
But I would argue that skeptics ARE winning the war, just not on the timescale of a human life. For how long did the average person believe the earth was flat? Centuries? The prevailing theory in optics was that you could “see” because of rays shooting out of your eyes. Simply asking why you could not then, shut your eyes and see the backs of your eyeballs, ought to have doomed such a silly notion, yet it was prevailing “science” for nearly a thousand years.
Skeptics are winning a very long slow battle. If we were losing, a few billion people would be starving to death right now, and most of the rest of us would be living in abject poverty. We’re not because governments know that the very fastest way to be thrown out of power (in a democracy) is to sewer the economy, and tyrants know that the very fastest way to foment rebellion is to sewer the economy. So they all pay lip service to the CAGW meme because it is a convenient fiction with which to increase taxes provided they are not raised to much that the economy gets sewered.
It may take decades or even centuries, but somewhere down the line our descendants will look at CAGW in the same history chapter as tulip mania.
Totally agree. In 100’years, we will study this issue to determine how this insanity could possibly happen and how science was perverted for personal gain, as well as the group think that has really propelled the issue. Governments from wealthy countries right now pay lip service to the issue and throw small scraps of money at it, but they will never do anything to jeopardize the economy.
What ‘evidence’? There isn’t any, none at all. All you have is a slight moderation of lower temperatures at night and in the winter in the northern hemisphere, resulting in very slightly increased averages in certain locations, not globally. The reason, simply the effect of increased concentration of removal of vegetation due to larger cities/towns due to population growth and migration.
‘CO2’ is a mythical monster. God help the human race, it hates itself.
Gareth Phillips
You are so WRONG, it may not be possible to be MORE wrong.
Dr. Ball’s article is about the politics of CAGW — he is an expert and a victim of climate politics.
His article is not filled with data — why would you expect the comments to contain data and numbers?
CAGW is a left wing false boogeyman to scare people into allowing their government to seize more power over the private sector, through new regulations and new taxes on energy use.
The climate itself, in 2017, is as good as it has ever been for humans, animals and plants, in at least 500 years.
Nights are not as cold as they used to be, and more CO2 in the air is greening the planet.
The climate in 2017 is wonderful — there is no problem — and the average temperature range since 1850 has been unusually small (one degree C.)… and within honest margins of error for the measurements
(+/- 1 degree C.).
Predicting the future climate is not science.
If you don’t realize that, then you need a Climate Science 101 course.
Predictions of the future climate are meaningless because specific causes of climate change are unknown, and that’s why we have 30 years of consistently wrong (97% wrong) predictions … and 3% of predictions are “right” only by chance — like a stopped watch being “right” twice a day.
By “predictions” I mean GCM (climate model) simulations.
There are no data for the future climate / average temperature.
There are no studies / predictions of the future climate that can be accepted as “valid” without waiting at least a few decades to see what happens — even then a lucky guess could be mistaken for a good prediction.
The CAGW skepticism should be based on seeing an obvious hoax (the false claim that humans can predict the future climate).
You can’t fight speculation about the future with science — CAGW is a “catastrophe” that is always invisible (unless your body can detect very slight warming outdoors at night, while you sleep) and is always off in the future — the perfect political boogeyman.
CAGW is 99% politics and 1% science.
Based on your comment, you have no clue that is true.
I provide a free climate blog for non-scientists
as a public service, at this link:
(You need some learning).
http://www.elOnionBloggle.Blogspot.com
Kill Climate Change and everything connected to it by killing off its money flow. Start with the UN and governments. Everything else will fall away. Thank god for Trump! It only takes one determined powerful person backed up by millions of people who believe Climate Change sucks to make it happen.
Good approach! I would also add clawing back some of the money that climate alarmists and other enviros have already stolen.
Trump will not do what is necessary, because his daughter and Rex T are supportive of the IPCC and its alarmism.
Pruitt only looks to roll back regulations, not CO2 mania.
Lets face it, Our three blew it. They even admitted to “believing” that humans caused SOME climate change. They are simply not up to the task of convincing anyone. For example, Judith correctly points out the 1910 to 1940 warming rate being the same, but prior to significant man made CO2. This is a hugely important fact. It refutes ANY claim that we can attribute ANY warming to our CO2 since 1975. Any warming effects due to agriculture are not relevant to the argument. Judith is a timid mouse up against wolves. Intelligence and credentials do not count.
Thus Tim Ball is correct. The skeptic side was a huge failure, because our ‘representatives’ are hopelessly outmatched in the political arena. They should stay home.
Richard Lindzen and William Happer are better at it.