My response to Neil deGrasse Tyson about denial of science.
Guest essay by Donna Hedley
I love Neil deGrasse Tyson. He has done so much to make science interesting and understandable. He is wise and humble. His love for science is infectious. However, I think he is wrong when he talks about the denial of science, especially when it is about climate change.
I agree with him when he says we need to become scientifically literate and that is something I have endeavoured to do over the last few years. I have come to be better understanding of what science is, and how it works. I am not a scientist, but I do have a brain and believe I have come to some intelligent conclusions. Not only that, I am open minded enough to listen to alternative ideas. I want to know the truth, even if it means that someday, someone can prove the CO2 is a problem. But as of today, I am not convinced.
I started this journey because I wanted to prove to someone that Global Warming was real. Yes, there was a time that I believed in it.
After all, the scientists were saying so, and who was I to disagree? What I found out was there are many knowledgeable people who questioned the hypotheses. I also found out that in the science world, this is what is supposed to happen. People are not supposed to be put down because they had different ideas. If their ideas were unsound, science will figure it out in the end, if given the chance to do so.
I don’t claim to know or understand everything, but what I learned was enough to make me question the status quo on the subject Anthropological Catastrophic Climate Change (ACCC). I also learned that questioning is good. If you don’t ask questions, you will not learn anything thing.
Neil talks about people denying science. I would like him to explain to me, just who is denying science and what they are denying about science. From my studies, they don’t deny that the climate is changing, that it is a bit warmer then is was 100 years ago, or that mankind has had something to do with it. They just question by how much and if it is a real problem, and what percent of it is our fault. This is a question that even Bill Nye could not answer.
What about real denial, like the denial of medieval warm period, which happened approximately between 1000 to 1250 when temperatures were higher then today, and people prospered because of longer growing seasons, and Vikings lived on Greenland (which they can’t today because it just too cold)? What about the denial of the little ice age that lasted from about 1300 to 1870, when plagues and famine were rampant, and people died by the millions? Could it be that the warming we have been experiencing over the last 100 years might have been the planet still coming out of the ice age? Science is all about considering all angles of a topic, all the possibilities.
Neil talks about how someone makes a premise or hypothesis and then others look at it, and do experiments to confirm validity. Scientists are supposed to do their utmost to disprove a theory. If it can’t be disproven, then it should be considered as possibility true. But even when that happens, new evidence can materialize that could change the picture yet again. That is why science is never settled.
How can one do real world experiments when it needs to be done on the real world — that is, the entire planet. Consider how big the planet is. How will it ever to fit in a lab? And while CO2 has been proven to cause some warming, what experiment can prove, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that when you factor in all of the variables involved in influencing the climate, such as clouds, the sun, wind, and the ocean — to name only a few — that CO2 is the main reason for the warming? How can we be sure that we even know of all the variables that affect the climate? Can we be sure that there are no other variables involved that we are not even aware of yet? You know, the stuff that we don’t know that we don’t know. All I suggest is that there are too many variables, to many unanswered questions to say that we know enough about why the world is warming and what it really means, and therefore cannot be pinned totally on CO2 as the starting point. If it cannot be proven, then any of the additional arguments are irrelevant.
So how can we trust the the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) who’s sole purpose is to prove that CO2 is the only cause of ACCC and does not even consider looking at other possible causes? Why does the IPCC not even consider the 100s of papers – peer reviewed and published in excellent journals — which do not support ACCC? Is it because these papers might contradict their premise and purpose which is to prove that CO2 is the cause?
Since whole world experiments are somewhat impossible, scientists rely on models that give projections. But if they cannot fully understand all of the possible factors that effect climate, how can we rely on models. They give some ideas of what might happen, but they can’t really tell what will happen for sure. They are only guesses, possibilities, not guarantees. For example, over the past 30 years, many of the climate models predicted that snow would be a thing of the past by now. Well, here in Ottawa, we had snow this winter, and lots of it. It has been a long cold winter. This neither proves or disproves ACCC, but points to the fact that the models are not reliable.
There are many scientists that do not support the status quo on ACCC. They do research which presents alternative views. They get their papers reviewed and published. The problem is, their voices and views are just not heard, or, if we do hear about them, they are presented as villains and funded by big oil, which is usually not the case. They are accused of denying science. Yet, they are doing exactly what Neil says scientists should do. Why are their efforts any less relevant just because they don’t go along with the status quo?
Doesn’t that sound a little Orwellian, the idea that people with a different point of view are presented as somehow – evil? Take for instance the story of Dr. Judith Curry. While Neil is an intelligent and established scientist in his own right, he is not an actual climate scientist, like Dr. Curry. She has impeccable credentials, including 186 published journal articles and two books. She went along with the status quo on ACCC, believing it to be real and trusting in what she was being told about it. Until she started to really look at the details which made her change her mind.
Bam, she is now an oil funded climate denier. Funny how one minute she has no connections with big oil, and the next minute she is in their pay. I wonder how that happens? How ridiculous, and scary – and easy it is to be trashed for not going with the status quo. Here is what she had to say about why she changed her mind when she spoke at a recent senate hearing.
“Prior to 2010, I felt that supporting the IPCC consensus on human-caused climate change was the responsible thing to do. That all changed for me in November 2009, following the leaked Climategate emails, that illustrated the sausage making and even bullying that went into building the consensus.I came to the growing realization that I had fallen into the trap of groupthink in supporting the IPCC consensus. I began making an independent assessment of topics in climate science that had the most relevance to policy. I concluded that the high confidence of the IPCC’s conclusions was not justified, and that there were substantial uncertainties in our understanding of how the climate system works. I realized that the premature consensus on human-caused climate change was harming scientific progress because of the questions that don’t get asked and the investigations that aren’t made. We therefore lack the kinds of information to more broadly understand climate variability and societal vulnerabilities.As a result of my analyses that challenge the IPCC consensus, I have been publicly called a serial climate disinformer, anti-science, and a denier by a prominent climate scientist. I’ve been publicly called a denier by a U.S. Senator. My motives have been questioned by a U.S. Congressman in a letter sent to the President of Georgia Tech.”
https://judithcurry.com/2017/03/29/house-science-committee-hearing/
She is a scientist with distinction and integrity. But when she looked at the evidence and decided that things were not what they seemed, she instantly became a villain. How can this behaviour be justified in the name of science?
When the models of the past 30 years don’t work, when the best they can come up with to prove CO2 causes catastrophic global warming is using terms like “likely”, when top scientist, who exemplifies distinction and integrity, is accused of being funded by big oil when they are not, when there are many scientists have peer reviewed papers that have alternative findings, you kind of have to pause and consider, maybe the “deniers” have a point.
You don’t have to agree with me – I won’t vilify you if you don’t. My purpose is not necessarily to change your mind, but to present some reasons why you might at least be willing to consider that if someone like Judith Curry could change her mind because she realized that she was not being told the whole truth, maybe you might consider it as well. And maybe, Neil deGrasse Tyson, as awesome as he is, is mistaken.
While WUWT continues to say climate change isn’t an issue, over in the real world, Louisiana has had to declared a state of emergency over its disappearing coast lines.
http://gov.louisiana.gov/assets/EmergencyProclamations/43-JBE-2017-Coastal-Louisiana.pdf
Just by going with reality, I’d have to go with Neil deGrasse Tyson on this one!
Ben
LA has been losing coastal land since long before CO2 took off, as the proclamation itself acknowledges. Sea level is not rising there any faster than anywhere else, but the land is sinking.
The silt loads from the Mississippi and other rivers have also abated, despite floods, thanks to feverish silt clearance operations both upstream and closer to the LA ports.
Totally natural phenomena keep getting conveniently blamed on man-made “climate change”. In the case of Mississippi, people are partly responsible for the disappearing coastal areas, but not because of CO2.
Your “example” of global warming, which no one here denies has happened, is problematic. Coast lines are affected by many things, slowly-rising oceans (again, no one here denies that sea levels are rising, as they have been since the start of the holocene) being just one. Of course you prefer sticking with NDGT, rather than doing your own research. You have a Belief system to protect after all.
Another comment lost in cyberspace.
Short version. Land in coastal LA is sinking. Sea level isn’t rising there any faster than anywhere else.
The process has been going on since long before CO2 started rising, as the proclamation acknowledges. Silt control doesn’t help.
The loss of coastal areas has nothing to do with “man-made climate change”. Some human activities have had an effect, but not GHGs. However, it’s mostly natural.
New Orleans Is Sinking, (and I don’t wanna swim) Great song by the Tragically Hip
The Coastal Louisiana State of Emergency has nothing to do with “climate change”. Rate of global sea level rise, as measured by satellites is modest and it is not accelerating since at least 1992, while severe storms hitting the coast directly are becoming less frequent in the last decade.
On the other hand we have
1. Subsidence Processes in Coastal Louisiana
2. As a result marshes and swamps that serve as a vital barrier and a first line of defense against storm surge and flooding are disappearing.
Go with reality.
Might be true Chimp! I just spent a couple of weeks over there but didn’t hear anything relevant. Sounds like you know more about the topic than me, so I’ll bow to your wisdom.
Cheers,
Ben
Ben,
Dunno about wisdom, but land sinking in LA is common knowledge in the USA. It long predates Katrina.
Even the MSM acknowledge the fact of long-term subsidence:
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/new-orleans-is-sinking/
When I was taking my Geology degree back in the late 70s, we studied the Mississippi River Delta and its history of flooding, channel meandering, and the insanely complicated stratigraphy that arises from same. One of main points of the study was that the sediment deposited in the delta was constantly sinking, producing a gigantic lens of sediment miles deep and extending far out into the Gulf. If humans have changed the silt deposit patterns to reduce that inflow into the delta, the subsidence is going to continue with less simultaneous deposit of new sediment. Result: sinking landscape and “rising seas.”
Ben, very poor example. Nothing to do with climate. Louisiana is losing coastal barrier islands for two reasons. 1. Channelization of the Mississippi mouth. Look at a map. See that long narrow Mississippi neck protruding into the GoM. All that silt would have replenished the rest of the coast but for maintaining main river navigability. 2. The coast is subsiding from water, oil, and gas extraction.
What is your evidence that AGW is not a contributing factor? Sea levels in LA are rising at 4X the global rate. https://phys.org/news/2017-03-louisiana-wetlands-struggling-sea-level-global.html
benben, you are back, good to see you.
As you may know, the Louisiana coast is totally dominated by the Mississippi river delta. The delta covers thousands of square miles and totally dominates the southern part of the state. River deltas have an ecology and geology all their own. The land of the delta is constantly sinking due to settling and compaction of the sediments of which it is made. In a natural setting, this loss of elevation is compensated for by the addition of more sediments from upriver. As the river spreads out over the delta, the water flow slows down, and the sediment falls out. Delta subsidence and new deposition balance out.
What happens if the sea level rises, as opposed to the delta sinking? Same thing. The river hits brackish water from sea water intrusion a bit earlier, slows down a bit sooner, and starts depositing fresh sediments a bit sooner. The system compensates. The delta height and sea level are in a constant dynamic equilibrium.
So what is happening to the coastline here?
In two words, “spring flooding”.
To control annual floods in the delta and bayou country, the entire lower portion of the river is now controlled by a system of levees, dykes, and dams. This has two consequences. First, the river does not drop sediment and build up the delta as it used to. So subsidence becomes an issue, and it has. The second consequence is that the river holds its sediments all the way to where the river channel meets the ocean, at the extreme end of the delta. It is here that the river drops all it’s sediment, rapidly extending the extreme end of the delta out to sea. This can be seen quite dramatically in navigational charts put out 20, 40, 60, 80 years ago. Another consequence of this delta building is the need for constant dredging of the channel and river mouth area to keep the shipping lanes open.
This whole situation is by no means unique to the Mississippi. This conundrum is faced by people in major river deltas all over the world.
Global Warming has nothing to do with it. Neither does Climate Change.
benben:
I would not be so quick to declare the models OK based on that one plot (#22). The observations get out of the gutter only during the just passed El Nino year. Then there is the question of just how this graphic was put together. (Warmists have been known to play a little fast and loose with the artwork after all.)
While you are on that site page, check out figures 14 and 15. Same system, but tells a whole different story.
That should make even you want to take a closer look at what is behind the curtain.
When will the models be good enough?
Umm, when they are not wrong about everything??
OK, flippant answer.
A cornerstone of greenhouse warming theory is the existence of the mid-troposphere hot spot. In addition to theory, the models all predict it. It is not there. Huge, huge problem. The existence of the hot spot was finally largely ruled out about 2013 or so. The warmists stopped talking about it, and that fact, along with The Pause, was the reason Global Warming was rebranded as Climate Change. Remember that one??
Second, the models are calibrated (tuned) against a past history which is, in fact, a fantasy.
The current history is as follows:
A) a shallow rise from 1900-1945
B) no rise 1945-1975
c) a steeper rise 1975-present
The history used to look like this:
Absolutely, totally different
A) a rise 1900-1935
B) a decline 1935-1975
Interesting that it was not until after WWII, in the post-war economic boon that CO2 emissions really took off. But the temperatures did not go up, they went down. Temperatures did not just go down a little, they went down for 4 decades, and ended up right where they started in 1900. No relationship to CO2, whatever.
Tune the models to that history and you are getting somewhere.
(Everybody starts running around waving their hands in the air and shouting, Soot! Particulates! Sulfur Dioxide!)
Here are some questions to ponder:
Consider the long term secular warming trend of ~0.12 degree/decade in the UAH satellite data set.
A) What if the trend continues for a few decades, as we continue warming from the Little Ice Age.
B) What if the trend reverses and we enter a multi-decade cooling similar to 1935-1975.
C) What if the trend continues for a century recreating the climate which existed during the Medieval Warm Period.
If we do get a new Warm Period, I make this prediction:
A group of hardy Vikings from Iceland will sail to Greenland and set up housekeeping. They will build resort hotels and cater to Adventure Tourists and Eco-Tourists. The government of Denmark will have no objection, remembering well what a bloody mess happened last time they got in a squabble with their kinsmen from the Northern Tribes.
Question for your modeler friend:
How do the models handle the greenhouse warming of water vapor vs. CO2, given that water absorbs IR much more intensely (molecule for molecule), over much wider range, and there is so much more of it.
Thanks for that river delta explanation, TonyL.
Hmm not very convincing TonyL. I mean, I can see you are convinced yourself, there is no doubt about that. The main problem is that there are so many bizarre lies going around on WUWT, it kind of falsifies whatever factual things you try to through up. Like, people that seriously think the UN and iPCC are out to take over the world are crazy, period. See todays WUWT post.
I asked my modeler friend. Water vapour is pretty well represented in the models, as it is considered to be the strongest feedback loop (warming from just CO2 doesn’t really do all that much scary by itself). A huge amount of research has gone into the role of water vapour. Feel free to read up upon it: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01DON7H78
Anyway, the point is moot. In my country at least we are moving away very fast from renewables, and it’s a great thing because we’ve been importing a lot of it from Russia. I’d rather spend a bit more on my electricity bill and make it locally than throw money at Vladimir P. Then, in around 2030 when we’ve reached ~35% renewables, we can look again and see whether it makes sense to spend the significant amount of money it costs to go beyond that level of renewables on the grid.
Cheers TonyL!
yes yes guys I was wrong. But since I have your attention, what do you think of this study?
https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/04/once-more-with-feeling-climate-models-dont-exaggerate-warming/
Cheers,
Ben
Another study proving that the data is wrong.
What do I think of it? Not too much.
The whole argument rests on two key points that the author sets out.
Let’s repeat that. “model sensitivity is greater in the latter part of the simulation”
1) Models all the way down.
2) Short term sensitivity is a combination of models and observations, and still is poorly constrained. How poorly? Well, if the actual value comes in at the low end, Global Warming is too small to be significant, and the CAGW train is derailed. That poorly constrained. But put this aside for a minute.
Now they claim that a model-only based sensitivity far in the future is significantly greater than the current sensitivity. Worse, they perceive this increase with such confidence that they base the rest of their case on it.
Oh. My. And to think Judith Curry talks about her Uncertainty Monster. No uncertainty here.
But, how might this work?
Again, it is worth repeating. “enhancing feedbacks that boost warming”
The best measurement data, at this point, is that feedbacks may well be negative. Some people have even advanced the argument that if feedbacks are positive, we should have seen some evidence of them in operation by now. In all fairness, rock-hard evidence for these secondary feedbacks, positive or negative, remains elusive. But it is not looking too good for the “positive feedbacks” crowd.
But, again and again, no uncertainty here.
This is their whole case.
Ars Technica is a committed warmist site, I would not look to them for unbiased information.
Yes, they want to bolster CAGW at every turn, but this is just grasping at straws.
Nice analysis TonyL. So, I have a question for you (a serious question, not a rhetorical jab). When are the models good enough? Because David Middleton put up a bunch of graphs here on WUWT a while back:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/04/17/the-good-the-bad-and-the-null-hypothesis/
And if you go to figure 22, you’ll see that the actual temperature at this moment is right smack in the middle of the range predicted by the models. So I talk to my climate modeling friends (my flatmate programs these models for his PhD), and he’ll say: ‘Well Ben, these models are made to predict long term multi-decade warming trends, and while they might not always be 100% accurate in the short term (but still accurate within the 95% confidence interval), they work really well for these longer term timescales, and that is what the models are made for in the first place’.
And then you look at figure 22 again and what I see is that my flatmate is right. The models got the average temperature right. Because that is where the current temperature is. in the middle of the graph.
So what would you want the models to show before you start thinking, ok they might be on to something?
Cheers,
Ben
benben:
Look just above your post at 1:10pm
I wrote a reply, and it ended up just above, in the wrong place.
TonyL, yeah I read that and it’s a good comment on the article. But my follow up question still stands: the current temperature lines up really well with what the models the temperature would be around now. So what else do you want? Serious question!
benben:
Look UP! UP!
I Said: Misplaced Comment!
Look Again! Up!
oh sorry TonyL, you’re right, I missed that. A bit busy but I’ll return to this tomorrow!
If you believe that global warming, sorry I mean climate change is causing coasts lines to disappear selectively in Louisiana then you really should take geology course or two so that you can really understand processes other than eustatic sea level rise that cause relative sea level to fall and rise. Subsidence of this delta region is the major culprit of costal changes here and many other coastlines around the world.
I love the way you warmistas declare that if it’s bad, it must be caused by CO2.
If you had spent 15 seconds checking, you would have found that the problem is the Louisiana delta is sinking because flood control measures over the last century have removed most of the silt that used to rebuild it every year.
But go ahead, keep making a fool of yourself.
MarkW, you have some issues man. I made a little jab, was proven wrong, and have no problem saying I was wrong. Stop being unpleasant. I’ll say though, if you turn out to be a 15 year old with a permanent temper tantrum, the joke is on me
We do understand somewhat reproducible non-equilibrium thermodynamic systems, that is, the ones where microstates belonging to the same macrostate can’t evolve into different macrostates.
Unfortunately the terrestrial climate system is not of this kind. It is chaotic. And that means it is not reproducible. Difference between states starting from arbitrarily close to each other grows exponentially with time (see the butterfly effect), therefore it is irreproducible, no matter how macrostates are defined.
Theoretical understanding of irreproducible non-equilibrium thermodynamic systems is lacking. So, computational models trying to emulate them are flawed.
On the other hand, we could indeed bring such a system into the lab, we just need a member of this broad class other than climate, one that would fit into a lab setup happily.
The experiment could be done on a tiny fraction of the cost consumed by futile computational models, but neither climate scientists nor anyone else ventured into this field of non-equilibrium thermodynamics so far. Why?
The idea of an experiment sounds simple, but one would need to have vertical transport of heat in the lab setup. I have no idea how you could have a 60,000 foot high test station. Then there is the issue of clouds, cosmic rays, dust, SO2, albedo, wind, ocean currents, etc.
In other words, it can’t be done. It is a fantasy. We need two earths, with one inhabited by primeval man.
Nope. A semi transparent container with a fluid in it, irradiated by an intense light source, put on a thermally insulated rotating table, in a vacuum chamber whose walls are cooled by liquid nitrogen from the outside is a perfect example of an irreproducible quasi stationary closed non-equilibrium thermodynamic system. It is not Earth of course, but before we try to understand that, we should surely study behavior of other members of this its class.
As soon as we have a reasonable computational model of the experimental setup, which predicts effect of initial parameters and statistical spread between experimental runs, we can proceed to climate.
However, predicting the behavior of even such a simple system is impossible until we improve our understanding. And that’s my point.
For example it is proven, that reproducible quasi stationary non-equilibrium thermodynamic systems lend themselves to the Maximum Entropy Production Principle.
On the other hand most of the entropy production on Earth happens when incoming shortwave radiation (light) gets absorbed and thermalized, so we could increase rate of entropy production easily by decreasing albedo.
However, Earth is not pitch black, quite the contrary. Therefore irreproducibility plays a central role.
BTW, Mercury, which has no fluids on its surface to make it chaotic, is black indeed.
Rogue waves are another good example of models not reproducing reality. The best models said a rogue wave might occur once in 10,000 years. Then the EU space agency put up a satellite and found several in the first few weeks. So much for the models.
Hi Donna,
You said “I started this journey because I wanted to prove to someone that Global Warming was real. Yes, there was a time that I believed in it.”
Saying such gives others the incentive to say/think you do not believe in “it” and are in complete denial … that you think there is no temp increase (“Global Warming” means different things to different people). Although later on in your essay you acknowledge that we have experienced warming over the last hundred years, others will stay attached to your initial statement and point at you as being typical of a denial mentality (“… don’t listen to her … she there is a thermometer conspiracy throughout the world”)
Be precise in your terms and require that others do the same (“Global Warming” means different things to different people)… thanks for the article and your input.
I am not a scientist and I agree scientific literacy is important, but I am going to ignore the overwhelming majority of scientific evidence and try to convince everyone else to do the same.
[Strange comment. If you think the scientific evidence is overwhelming shouldn’t you be saying so and use the evidence to make your case? Or are you just being dishonest on multiple levels in which case you should take up crochet or some such because you are of absolutely no use here. . . mod]
What evidence? Every claim that I have ever heard regarding such data was refuted years ago.
Strange indeed! Perhaps he forgot to include a sarcasm tag?
Or perhaps he is on the side of the skeptics and his poor English composition had him agreeing “I am going to ignore the overwhelming majority of scientific evidence and try to convince everyone else to do the same” meaning that the supposed scientific evidence of the alarmists is very stretched, and he is ignoring what some in the alarmist science camp say is scientific evidence and arguing for others to do the same which is to say that we should ignore the political science that is in favour of the warmists. Sort of a double negative…if anyone gets what I mean.
If he meant literally what he said, then he is nuts because the science is on the side of the skeptics. Which then makes out the political climate scientists to be even nuttier than this guy. Care to elaborate graebg?
It sounds like graebg at April 21, 2017 at 12:19 pm is simply making the point that the supporters of CAGW are saying something along the lines of:
“I am not a scientist and I agree scientific literacy is important, but I am going to ignore the overwhelming majority of scientific evidence and try to convince everyone else to do the same.”
They refuse to realize how absurd they are when they do that.
If he wants to be taken seriously he should make himself available for public debate. Short of this he should be ignored.
I posted on the YouTube :
Let’s see NDT experimentally falsify the computations at http://cosy.com/Science/warm.htm#EqTempEq . Then we’ll be talking a return to physics .
His problem? Scientists tend to trust scientists in other fields thinking them competent and unbiased.
And why wouldn’t they. Noone can be an expert in every area. You have to hope there are reliable people in areas you are unfamiliar with who you can depend on to lead you in the right direction.
That works real well when honesty of thought is involved. However, dishonest scientists make things much more complicated when trying to find the truth, and unfortunately we have an abundance of dishonesty in climate science, so you have to be your own climate scientist these days in order to find the truth. That’s probably one reason WUWT does so well.
pure bull
“For example, over the past 30 years, many of the climate models predicted that snow would be a thing of the past by now. Well, here in Ottawa, we had snow this winter, and lots of it.”
Can you point me to the models that said that snow would be a thing of the past in Ottawa by 2017?
Humans are basically religious animals. Religious “truth” is authority and consensus, which requires that heratics are silenced. Endless repetion and environmental threats secure the dogma’s. Science is a deviation of religion: it is truth disconnected from authority and consensus which requires education in reasoning and numerical methods.
Climate alarmism is the new state religion. So policies can be implemented without technical- and financial justification. Indeed, the church never needs to proof it’s theses. We have turned our back to the enlightenment.
People and states both do seem to need belief systems. When the Communist God failed, its adherents needed a new religion with which to impose their collectivist will upon the masses. The Green God arose to replace the overthrown Communist God, which had replaced the Christian God in Europe and the belief systems Confucianism and Buddhism in Asia. In parts of Asia and Africa, the Communist God, “History” or “Scientific Socialism”, made inroads against Islam, but ultimately failed there, too.
Neil has been taken in by the pressure of fashion.
I learned my climate science in the 1950s and 1960s, the politically uncorrupted days of Hubert Lamb and the basic thermodynamic knowledge that the surface temperature of planets with atmospheres was a product not only of insolation from the nearby star but also of the mass of an atmosphere engaged in the thermodynamic processes of conduction and convection.
Then, in 1968, I decided to earn a living from the evidence based practice of Law rather than the maths based and largely theoretically based science of meteorology but nonetheless I maintained an intense interest in ongoing climate changes because I could see that such changes were obviously happening albeit (I could see from reading historical material) on a natural rather than anthropogenically induced basis.
Around 2000 I noticed that the warming changes of the previous couple of decades (since the mid- 70s climate shift) had gone into reverse and that such reversal was the opposite of the then fashionable AGW scenario. Basically, I noticed that the poleward, zonal drift of the jet stream tracks had gone into reverse despite AGW claims that humans had induced that poleward, zonal shift.
By 2007, having got past the distractions of career progression and childcare I renewed my interest in climatology and found utter insanity.
All the earlier scientific progress had been abandoned and any reference to it was considered sacrilege. The proponents of AGW were themselves in denial of all earlier knowledge.
The entire climate debate had become centred on radiative physics alone with the thermodynamics of mass working with conduction and convection utterly ignored, indeed relegated to an unwelcome irrelevance.
So, in the face of that, I started burrowing down into the basic principles of climate, thermodynamics and radiative physics in order to completely reconstruct my climate knowledge. In the process I found that the AGW proponents were the true denialists and that the earlier, discarded knowledge provided a sound basis upon which to build.
The outcome is a series of articles now spread across the blogosphere and collated here:
http://www.newclimatemodel.com/
I know from real world observations that I have it right.
How long before Neil, and the rest of you, catch up?
See above comment https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/04/21/i-love-neil-degrasse-tyson-but-he-is-wrong-on-climate/#comment-2481660
Norman, I agree with your post which points out the longer term natural climate variability which the AGW proponents are completely oblivious to. Or rather they suppress knowledge of it.
However, my point goes closer to the heart of the AGW deception by pointing out that Earth’s surface temperature enhancement above that to be expected from insolation alone is actually due to atmpospheric mass conducting and convecting and therefore nothing to do with radiative gases at all.
From Dr. Curry: https://judithcurry.com/2017/04/21/a-red-team-exercise-would-strengthen-climate-science/#more-22992
I’ll just thrown in my usual comment. I will ask anyone if they would please draw a likeness of Jezebel Montague. What? You don’t know what Jezebel Montague looks like? Well, maybe I should pose this request to the “climate science modelers” instead. See that is my point, really. How can you draw a likeness of someone you don’t know? You can use generalities and come up with a picture of sorts because you have general ideas of what a woman looks like, but would it be a likeness of Jezebel Montague? The point is if you don’t know what you are drawing – be it Jezebel or the climate – you cannot model it. We do not know enough about the actual functioning of the climate to write a program that can model it. Since a program is going to function completely according to the core values and variables written into it, it can’t give you good output unless there is an accurate understanding of what is being modeled. The IPCC can commission a million models based on the wrong core values, and they never will have a “model” that will work.
And one other thing. It isn’t “science” that has gotten the black eye from “climate pseudo science.” It is the word “scientist” that has been trashed by it. Sad, really, but the fact is people haven’t developed a distrust of “science,” any more than they always have, but they will now question anything that comes from “scientists.” Sort of like the way we are going with “doctors” and the FDA and the useless garbage that comes out of that organization.
So, he now joins Stephen Hawking on the same bandwagon of famous scientists who mistakenly advocate human-caused-CO2-climate change.
Rising CO2 levels induces stupidity in only the brightest and most popular scientists. Something must be done to find a cure !
Hawking has also said that hostile aliens are on their way to destroy us, unfortunately I think that brilliant mind is slipping.
A few years back Hawking declared that if we don’t do something about CO2 the Earth is going to end up looking like Venus.
Only a few of the most rabid warmistas are dumb enough to make that claim.
When I heard that comment by Dr. Hawking, that Earth would become another Venus if we didn’t reign in carbon emissions, then I quit listening to much of what Dr. Hawking ever said after that. And now I question some of what he said prior to that about everything. Scientific academia is more about politics than is about proper science, at least for the last 20 years since the hockey stick BS and even earlier, what Hansen said in the 1980’s that embarrassed NASA. It will be interesting to see what comes of the “science march” tomorrow and how it is framed in the media. I suspect it will be even more contentious, since the MSM likes a good contentious story to sell copy.
The problem is that simple experiments could be carried out but, despite always referring back to simplistic experiments of Arrhenius, the claim is made that experiments cannot be done.
Simple experiments would be:
1. To have a mixture of N2 and O2 at say 15C then add CO2 to 400ppm to see if the CO2 as the only radiative gas starts radiating photons of infrared without any being broadcast upwards from a warm surface.
2. With a large volume of water at 15C in a tank illuminate the water with infrared to the equivalent of 3.7watts/sqr meter and (a) see if there is any change in the temperature of the water and (b) any change in the humidity of the air above the water and (c) if any air currents are observed above the water.
3. Repeat 2 with a steady airflow over the surface equivalent to a 5 knot wind. **
Why have such simple experiments not been done? I would suspect that: showing that CO2 acts as a radiator without need for infrared from the surface; showing that infrared cannot warm a body of water thus more than 70% of the surface of the planet cannot be warned by ‘downwelling’ infrared; and, showing that infrared and wind cause significant cooling to a body of water (70% of the planet). Each of these would falsify the catastrophic anthropogenic global warming hypothesis. So why are they not carried out?
** put a dry hand under a blown air hand drier – it gets unbearably hot; put a wet hand under a blown are hand drier – it feels cold. QED.
It really is embarrassing how little science some of those on our side know.
1) CO2 doesn’t radiate photons in the infrared region. It absorbs such photons then transfer the energy to other molecules through collisions.
2) CO2 doesn’t warm water, the sun does. If the air is warmer then the water has to warm up in order to transfer the same amount of energy into the atmosphere.
I think you need to read up on the transfer of kinetic energy from a collision to thermal radiation by Carbon Dioxide. A simple discussion of this is at pp59 of Principles of Atmospheric Science indexed as process 2.5.6.
Neil deGrasse Tyson seems to be defining “scientifically literate” as “to believe what the scientific experts tell you without question.” But that is not what it means to understand science. Science is a method that works for everyone and does not need an authority to tell you what is true. If you, as an individual, can find something wrong with a scientific theory or “emergent truth” through observation or experimentation, you are doing science and your skepticism is valid and legitimate.Ans no authoritarian or peer review can change that.
Tyson is also wrong that public denial of scientific theory is something new. And many times, the public was proven right – eventually.
Some examples:
Caloric Theory – heat consists of a self-repellent fluid called caloric that flows from hotter bodies to colder bodies. The basis of early meteorology and climate science. https://tinyurl.com/j33xvc9
Deadly Tomatoes – barber-surgeon John Gerard, believed tomatoes were poisonous because they contained low levels of the toxic chemical tomatine. On 28 June 1820, Colonel Robert Gibbon – not a scientific authority – famously disproved this by publicly eating a tomato. https://tinyurl.com/n345p4v
Physiognomy – the assessment of character or personality from a person’s outer appearance, especially the face. https://tinyurl.com/lm7y2xa
All this denial business is just an attempt to shut down discussion. To short circuit the process and jump to a quick conclusion, so that climate “findings” can be used for a political agenda. This is especially egregious because none of the climate models have successfully predicted future global temperature, as of yet. (I believe the very simple model of a straight line with a slope of +.5 Degrees Celsius per 1000 years would likely more accurate over the long term, at least until the end of the modern inter-glacial period. But that’s just eyeballed from the Vostok Ice Core Data.)
Dear guest blogger,
you ARE a scientist. Whatever anyone tells you about ‘the scientific process’, it’s really nothing more than asking questions, which is precisely what you have been, and are doing. Hypothesising, theorising, analysing,recording, reviewing etc.etc. are nothing without Kipling’s Honest Serving Men:
I KEEP six honest serving-men
(They taught me all I knew);
Their names are What and Why and When
And How and Where and Who.
I send them over land and sea,
I send them east and west;
But after they have worked for me,
I give them all a rest.
I let them rest from nine till five,
For I am busy then,
As well as breakfast, lunch, and tea,
For they are hungry men.
But different folk have different views;
I know a person small—
She keeps ten million serving-men,
Who get no rest at all!
She sends’em abroad on her own affairs,
From the second she opens her eyes—
One million Hows, two million Wheres,
And seven million Whys!
The Elephant’s Child
It was written almost in frustration at his daughters incessant desire for information.
What I see from the scientific community is the desire to impose their answers on we ‘uneducated children’ without listening to our questions.
What they universally tend to forget is that their education and wisdom is for the benefit of all humanity, not just them, and they should have the wherewithal to communicate that to we laymen, in laymen’s terms.
That is their calling and in most cases, our right, as taxpayers invariably subsidise education. As we should.
You simply have to ask the question, why do we even know this guys name. What groundbreaking contribution has he made to the sciences? Can anyone name, off the top of their heads, the guys that first isolated graphene, anyone of the team of doctors about to reverse paralysis, or anyone for that matter that is behind the coming great technological breakthroughs? The answer is simple, no one knows this guys name because of his scientific achievements, but because he is a sell out to political ideology, pure and simple.
And we sceptics continue to sell the science.
Pathetic really, in the face of politics.
This is easy:
1) He led the fight to make Pluto not a planet (why this matters ….I dunno).
2) He manages a planetarium.
3) Um…uh….
I agree with him on Pluto, but given his involvement in the issue, might have to rethink my position.
Pluto only failed to meet the litmus test for a planet, because it failed to clear its orbit of smaller comets, asteroids and debris etc. Hardly a proper test, given Pluto’s smaller size and proximity to the outer solar system for which we are now only observing directly. I understand there is now a movement afoot to reinstate Pluto as a planet. I hope it succeeds.
I thought it was a big sleight against science in that movement to throw Pluto under the bus, and it was another reason why I just quit watching anything he made for TV, which is about all he does other than managing a planetarium. And talk shows…
“Pluto only failed to meet the litmus test for a planet, because it failed to clear its orbit of smaller comets, asteroids and debris etc. Hardly a proper test, given Pluto’s smaller size and proximity to the outer solar system for which we are now only observing directly.”
It’s not ever a fair test, since by that test, Earth would not be considered a planet either, since Earth has not cleared it’s orbit. There are currently asteriods accompanying Earth around the Sun.
TA,
There is no comparison between the objects in Pluto’s orbit and Earth’s. The odd asteroid crossing out orbit is but a tiny fraction of the number of bodies in the dwarf planet’s path.
All the planets have “cleared their neighborhoods” by orders of magnitude more than Pluto or any other dwarf planet of candidate for such status. Pluto’s path is littered with Kuiper Belt objects and the many bodies thrust into its way by Neptune’s gravity, ie near-in Trans-Neptunian objects.
Pluto’s highly eccentric and slanted orbit even takes it within Neptune’s orbit, leaving a very large object in its neighborhood.
The reclassification was a good call, IMO. Otherwise there would soon be thousands of “planets” in our solar system.
Please excuse the left index finger typos.
Chimp, I don’t really have a big problem with reclassifying Pluto, but the Earth not only has asteriods crossing its orbit occasionally, the Earth also has a few asteriods in the Earth/Sun Lagrangian areas, so the Earth does actually have asteriods in its orbit that it has not cleared.
>>
TA
April 22, 2017 at 3:41 pm
. . . the Earth also has a few asteriods in the Earth/Sun Lagrangian areas, so the Earth does actually have asteriods in its orbit that it has not cleared.
<<
It’s interesting that you consider objects orbiting in the stable L4 and L5 Lagrange points to be uncleared. The Earth’s few “Trojan” asteroids is actually only one. Jupiter has the most known “Trojan” asteroids in the Solar System, and by your argument would not be considered a planet that has cleared its orbit. I don’t think anyone is trying to remove Jupiter’s planetary status (except maybe you).
Jim
>>
Q0z82p57EX!
<<
My browser is acting up–that is supposed to be my name (not my former password).
Jim
jim wrote: “It’s interesting that you consider objects orbiting in the stable L4 and L5 Lagrange points to be uncleared.”
And your definition of an “uncleared” orbit with respect to whether a Sun-orbiting body is a planet or not, is?
jim wrote: “The Earth’s few “Trojan” asteroids is actually only one.”
So far, but one’s enough for my point. We may find more soon.
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2017/osiris-rex-begins-earth-trojan-asteroid-search
Feb. 9, 2017
NASA’s OSIRIS-REx Begins Earth-Trojan Asteroid Search
jim wrote: “Jupiter has the most known “Trojan” asteroids in the Solar System, and by your argument would not be considered a planet that has cleared its orbit.”
That was my point. Glad you got it.
jim wrote: “I don’t think anyone is trying to remove Jupiter’s planetary status (except maybe you).”
No, I’m not either. I’m just saying the “uncleared” criteria is a little vague.
My question is, where did the Greeks disappear to? There used to be Trojans *and* Greeks, but now all I see mentioned is Trojans.
>>
No, I’m not either. I’m just saying the “uncleared” criteria is a little vague.
<<
So let’s see–Jupiter clears 97% of its orbit (hat-tip to climatology), and having objects in its stable L4 and L5 constitutes an uncleared orbit.
>>
My question is, where did the Greeks disappear to? There used to be Trojans *and* Greeks, but now all I see mentioned is Trojans.
<<
I thought they were always called “Trojans.” I now see that Jupiter’s L4 asteroids are called the “Greek camp,” and Jupiter’s L5 asteroids are called the “Trojan camp.” Also names for the Geek camp asteroids are Greek and names for the Trojan camp asteroids are Trojan. I didn’t know Homer’s Iliad could provide more than a few dozen names. They must be making some up.
Jim
“So let’s see–Jupiter clears 97% of its orbit (hat-tip to climatology), and having objects in its stable L4 and L5 constitutes an uncleared orbit.”
I wonder how you and Chimp know that Pluto’s orbit has not been cleared. Are we expecting Pluto to be colliding with another body in the near future, or far future?
I will say that reclassifying Pluto is probably the right thing to do. It definitely is in the same category as the other dwarf planets we have found, and we are probably going to find more of them.
As to the Trojans and Greeks, yes Jupiter is where this originated. Astronomers started finding Lagrangian objects around Jupiter and they started naming the ones in the L4 position after Greek heroes of the Trojan war, and named the objects found at the L5 position after Trojan heroes. So after that, I always associated Trojans with L5 and Greeks with L4. But, noone ever mentions the Greeks anymore, so I just threw that out there as an item of historical interest.
>>
I wonder how you and Chimp know that Pluto’s orbit has not been cleared. Are we expecting Pluto to be colliding with another body in the near future, or far future?
<<
I don’t know what Chimp knows or doesn’t know. Ever hear of the Kuiper belt? Pluto is in the Kuiper belt. The Kuiper belt is hardly clear of objects–being larger and more massive than the asteroid belt.
Jim
“I don’t know what Chimp knows or doesn’t know. Ever hear of the Kuiper belt? Pluto is in the Kuiper belt. The Kuiper belt is hardly clear of objects–being larger and more massive than the asteroid belt.”
After rereading Chimp’s comments, he seems to think there are a lot of objects in Pluto’s path, but I think that is just guesswork. Maybe good guesswork, but still guesswork. Pluto being part of the Kuiper Belt doesn’t necessarily mean any other objects are in Pluto’s current orbit.
I’ll just note that Pluto has been orbiting the Sun for a *long* time, and when the New Horizons space probe flew through the system in July 2015, there was no evidence of any recent collisions, on Pluto or any of its moons. It looks to me like Pluto has been in a benign environment for quite some time.
I’m sure this has been addressed before, but I missed it. If Pluto is not a planet because it failed to “clear its orbit,” then why isn’t it the same for Neptune. Pluto spends some 20 years of it’s orbit inside of Neptune.
>>
Reid Smith
April 26, 2017 at 2:01 pm
Pluto spends some 20 years of it’s orbit inside of Neptune.
<<
Most of the planets orbit in or very close to the plane of the Ecliptic. Pluto does not. If you look at a 3-D projection of the planetary orbits, Pluto never crosses the orbit of Neptune. Pluto’s orbit does go nearer to the Sun than Neptune. Pluto and Neptune are in a 2:3 resonance, so Pluto is never near enough to Neptune to collide or be ejected.
Jim
Just for fun, here are some captured images from my solar system simulator. This first image is looking from above. The mishmash of names in the middle is about two dozen asteroids and the planets of the inner Solar System:
This second image shows the Solar System rotated so you see the planets edge on. Pluto’s orbit is completely outside the other planets:
This third image shows Pluto’s orbit from another angle:
This simulator is showing the planets in their current position for April 27, 2017. I’m using published orbital parameters.
Jim
Sorry, but Dr. Tyson is one of the most dangerous things in the world: a smart sounding nitwit. I’ve frequently heard him make statements and claims that on the surface seem plausible, but once you think about them for a bit are completely unscientific claptrap. for example:
“Somebody’s diagnosed with terminal cancer. The doctor says, “You got six months to live.” You say, “You mind if I get a second opinion.” “Of course, go ahead.” Go to a second doctor, you’ve got five months to live. Go to a third doctor, seven months to live. So basically, you’re going to be dead in six months, plus or minus, OK? What happens? You’re alive a year later. OK. You’re alive two years later. Three years later, the cancer’s in remission. Five years later, it’s gone from your body. The American Medical Association—is that what they’re called, the AMA?—has got to be the most powerful association in the world, because no one questions those diagnoses. But I can tell you this, I taught physics to pre-med students who became doctors. Not all of them were smart, I assure you. Not only that, they’re all trained in the same system, so three separate doctors that all went through the same system of medical schools—that’s not actually three different opinions. It’s the same opinion, just nuanced by what the person had for breakfast that morning…. So I’m just impressed that it’s impossible for people to think that they just had idiot doctors diagnose them, or that it was a diagnostic failure.”
What is so very wrong with the statement? When a doctor gives you a diagnosis, he is saying, in essence that the peak of the bell curve, that is the normal distribution of time that a person has to live with this diagnosis, is 6 months. If you live 2 years, what does it mean? Just that you are in the 5% or 1% outside the 95th or 99th percentile of the normal distribution. Nothing more complicated than that. The doctor was not dumb, or wrong. He doesn’t actually know exactly how long you will live (medicine isn’t magic); he is just giving you the average time most people live, based on statistics.
Anytime you parse out what Tyson says, and outside of his very narrow field, it ends up being smart-sounding dumbness. Which goes with the observation by Will Rogers: “Everyone is ignorant, except in different subjects.” When people who have managed, through sweat and hard work, to master a hard subject; they have a tendency to think their opinion on other subjects is more than just uninformed blather. But that is often not the case.
I read a survey the other day that said people who get a second doctor’s opinion, get a different diagnosis 88 percent of the time.
Define “different”. Define “diagnosis”. Not saying there are not dumb doctors, but medicine isn’t magic. It is not even physics. A doctor looks at the symptoms, at whatever he gets from tests, and makes a guess at what is most likely your malady. Usually a doctor is working with 55% of people with these symptoms = disease X, 25% have disease Y, 19% = disease Z, and 1% have an unknown disease. So yes, different doctors can make different diagnosis, happens all the time. Just like different car mechanics, both experts, can diagnoses different problems with your car. Doesn’t mean they are fools. They are just making well-informed guesses after all.
Look at dGT’s CV sometime. He has a total of 14 published articles to which his name is attached. Actually, 13, because one is “author et al.” In another, he’s one of 43 contributors.
He’s mostly famous because Carl Sagan took him under his wing as a teenager. I have zero respect for him as a scientist. The Earth has warmed, sure, but there’s no evidence CO2 has caused it, only models that don’t match observations. He wouldn’t know”baloney” from his butt.
If you want to know who are the real scientists, ask them who has reproduced their work. Ask them for their methods and data results. If they hand you their methods and data for you to find out what is right/or wrong with it, you have a scientist. If they don’t give you this information so you can replicate or not, they aren’t a scientist. When any of these people are asked to testify about climate, they should be asked these questions: who has replicated the work, and have the methods and data been released to confirm or verify the results? A no to either question means their work is meaningless for the purposes of policy.
Sadly, Jeffrey, people like Michael Mann lie in response to those questions.
Wow, what a, carefully crafted, thoughtfully worded, dodge job. You offer no sources, no links, and no actual credentials for Curry.
What you are doing is playing the pry bar. Trying to wedge your gentle rebuke, (filled with pretend admiration, while all the time trying to cast doubt) into whichever crack you think your thinly veiled smear job will do the most damage.
It’s sad, and you really should talk to Neil, get his side, before you make accusations.
Just a thought…
????????
“no actual credentials for Curry”
You act like you do not know who Judith Curry is. Not good for someone who wants to participate in the debate.
Here is a pro tip, scroll up until you find the WUWT blog list. Under the section Lukewarmers, you will find her name. Click the link, it takes you right to her own blog. There are lots of links, and many references. Included is a catalog of all her publications.
Enjoy!
… not being a publicist or a venue manager, I don’t think Neil would take the time to talk to her.
(have you any idea of his fee range?)
What public figures say about global warming has almost nothing to do with science or what they really believe. What would happen if Tyson and Bill Nye admitted global warming is not a problem? They go from being high paid rock stars to disgraced nobodys. They are entrenched in their positions economically. I don’t think Tyson believes Global warming is a problem, but his high income and lavish lifestyle depends on him staying popular, and his popularity would take a big hit if he said what he really thinks. The amount of public speaking fees Tyson would lose if he said what he really thinks is enormous and he knows it. In global warming the bad guy is Big Oil, so saying you don’t think Global warming is a problem is seen by most as defending Big Oil, and it is digging your own grave as a popular public figure.
The whole discussion about climate models being wrong, measurements don’t support the alarmist rhetoric, they don’t care. They want the skeptics to shut up because climate skeptics are spilling the beans to the public on the baloney behind the nice cash flow they have set up.
I think Tyson must hate himself because he knows when he looks in the mirror he sees a guy who has sold out his scientific principles to maintain his cash flow.
I don’t share the the view that Tyson is a credible science popularizer, when he is wrong too many times on basic science,here is an incomplete list of errors he has made:
Fact checking Neil deGrasse Tyson
http://hopsblog-hop.blogspot.com/2016/01/fact-checking-neil-degrasse-tyson.html
===================================
He has been caught other times for his simple errors that would be easy to avoid if he did his research more carefully:
Scientists Who Are Actually Really Stupid: #1, Neil deGrasse Tyson
“Social justice-inspired grievance culture has flavoured much of Tyson’s output during his media career. Indeed, some observers say he’s more left-wing propagandist than rigorous thinker these days. His reboot of Cosmos, for instance, was saturated with progressive garbage designed to appeal to liberal-minded students and lefty geeks.
The problem is, every time Tyson plays to this crowd, he has to get his facts wrong to make the argument work. Take his gushing tribute to Giordano Bruno, who was burned at the stake. None of the details are correct. Bruno wasn’t a scientist: he was a cult leader who dined out on wild conjecture and guesswork.
Elsewhere in Cosmos, Tyson makes other serious errors. I say “errors” but for a man of his ostensible erudition you do have to wonder how these mistakes and bizarre claims keep creeping in. He says Venus is suffering from global warming, for instance. And I think we can live without the televisual trope of space ships making sound in space — unless Tyson is claiming no more astrophysical literacy than an episode of Star Trek.
Because he has given up on the scientific method in favour of progressive politics, Tyson has jettisoned fairness and fact in favour of slipperiness and propaganda: he is caught again and again repeating quotes that he appears to have simply made up, or which at a bare minimum are stripped of essential context or provenance. He shows no interest in correcting the record or addressing these mistakes — we’ll be diplomatic and call them mistakes — which does rather cast doubt on his entire benevolent genius schtick, don’t you think?”
http://www.breitbart.com/tech/2015/12/21/scientists-who-are-actually-really-stupid-1-neil-degrasse-tyson/
=====================================
He doesn’t excite me as someone I should listen too as he is a pompous blowhard with an ideology to push on everyone else who isn’t a leftist.
There are plenty more about this error prone leftist,nerdy,snobbish gasbag,to read about,here is a google link to browse through:
https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=Neil+Degrasse+Tyson+errors
Hey SST –
Sunsettommy April 21, 2017 at 4:05 pm
“I don’t share the the view that Tyson is a credible science popularizer,…”
How about this?:
“I share the view that Tyson is an incredible science polarizer…”
/grin
[Or, “uncredible science polarizer”? .mod]
Then he is a NEGATIVE polarizer!
Climate “Science” is Pseudo-Science; A Point-by-Point Proof
https://co2islife.wordpress.com/2017/04/05/climate-science-is-pseudo-science-a-point-by-point-proof/