Guest essay by Ian Aitken
What does the future hold for the climate change debate? Will there ever come a day when we see the headlines across the globe, ‘It’s Official – There Is No Climate Change Crisis’? Hardly – for unless we find some way to leap ahead in the currently highly immature science of climate change and manage finally to pin down the exact direct and indirect (via feedbacks) warming effect of adding greenhouse gases to our atmosphere and the exact effects of natural changes in our climate the outcomes will remain uncertain. The eminent scientist Stephen Koonin has stated that, ‘Today’s best estimate of the sensitivity [of the atmosphere to the addition of carbon dioxide]… is no different, and no more certain, than it was 30 years ago. And this is despite an heroic research effort costing billions of dollars.’ Basically, unless the ‘Uncertainty Monster’ is slain (and there is absolutely no reason to believe that will happen in the foreseeable future) neither the believers nor the skeptics can ‘prove’ their case. In which case we seem to be in a ‘wait and see’ position. But for how long? Even if the current global warming Slowdown persisted for decades it would still be possible that dramatic and dangerous warming was just about to resume. Indeed in 2015 The UK’s Royal Society expressed the view that it would take 50 years of divergence between the observations and the climate models before they would be convinced that the theory of anthropogenic climate change was flawed. We cannot be absolutely sure that there will be no climate change crisis – only that it is becoming increasingly unlikely. So the politically-correct scientific shibboleths of the ‘climate change crisis’ idea may well persist for a great many decades.
Having persuaded the world to spend trillions of dollars on fighting man-made climate change is the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) really going to admit that the causes of climate change are actually far more complex than they originally thought and so they may have been fundamentally mistaken about both the attribution and quantification of warming? And what about the UK’s Royal Society and the American National Academy of Sciences, those most renowned of scientific institutions; are they going to admit that they may have put political correctness and scientific funding concerns before scientific objectivity? What about all those climate scientists who have been so careful to tacitly collude with the IPCC and not rock the climate change crisis boat; are they going to admit that their judgments may have been skewed by considerations of the self-interest of retaining their jobs, careers, incomes and pensions? And the many climate research units around the world; are they going to say, ‘Well we must go where the science takes us – if the science says that there actually isn’t a problem then we’ll just have to shut up shop.’ What about all of the senior politicians in the western world who have foisted an avalanche of regulations, taxes and controls on their electorates to ‘fight climate change’; are they going stand up and admit that their scientific illiteracy led them to be completely fooled? Are all those prestigious environmental organizations, such as the WWF, Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth going to admit they had only ‘signed up’ to the global warming scare because it happened to suit their agendas, attracted donations and increased their influence? Is the BBC, that globally respected bastion of impartiality and objectivity, going to admit to the people of Britain that it abused its position of trust by simply taking on face value the selective and spun science fed to them and taking an irresponsible and unjustifiably partisan editorial approach to the climate change debate? What about all those newspaper journalists who for years have been repeating NASA and IPCC Press Releases as ‘objective facts’, neither subjecting them to critical analysis nor asking any awkward questions? What about all those celebrities who have lined up to pledge their support for fighting climate change by flying less frequently in their private jets to reduce their ‘carbon footprint’? What about all those school teachers who (willingly or unwillingly) taught their pupils about the climate change crisis as though it was an undisputed fact? No, it just isn’t going to happen – far too many reputations and far too much money is at stake.
There is also the strange culture in science explained by the scientific historian Thomas Kuhn as, ‘Once it has achieved the status of a paradigm, a scientific theory is declared invalid only if an alternative candidate is available to take its place’. Note that he is not suggesting that this is right; instead he is saying that history shows it to be case. A credible alternative theory today is the ‘cosmic ray flux theory’; but for every dollar in research funding that goes into that theory and for every mention in the media of that theory there must be ten thousand that go into the IPCC theory. It just cannot compete. And anyway it is too late – the IPCC theory grabbed the high ground decades ago and has never surrendered it. Furthermore skeptical scientists are not suggesting that there is any single, simple theory to supplant the IPCC’s anthropogenic climate change theory, the ‘Climate Change Orthodoxy’. Instead they offer a theory that climate change probably derives predominantly from natural ocean-atmosphere oscillations and/or by natural solar variations (irradiation and cosmic ray flux) and/or by natural cloud cover variations and/or the Milankovitch Effect, i.e. it is probably predominantly just natural. On the one hand you have something that is superficially simple, certain and easy for the public and journalists and politicians to understand (‘our carbon dioxide emissions are definitely the cause of dangerous climate change and reducing them will definitely solve the problem’) and on the other hand something that is complex, nuanced, uncertain and requires a considerable knowledge of science to understand (‘various complex and interlinked phenomena in nature, none of which is well understood, are probably the predominant cause of climate change that in some ways will probably be beneficial but in others may not’). It is a very easy to understand, very alarming problem with a very ‘simple’ solution (‘decarbonize globally’) vs. a very hard to understand, very unthreatening problem with no man-made solution (since we are at the mercy of nature). Which is more likely to get the media headlines, sell newspapers and grab the public imagination? And simply admitting that our knowledge of climate change science is too slight to know ‘what causes climate change’ is never likely to supplant the dominant paradigm of the Climate Change Orthodoxy. Perhaps the Climate Change Orthodoxy theory lives on for little better reason than the failure of a simple, certain, compelling alternative theory to supplant it – and if the skeptical scientists are right then no such theory is ever likely to be found. Add to the huge vested interests of the media the huge vested interests of the scientists, the scientific authorities and the army of people who profit hugely from subsidized renewables and the dominant paradigm appears secure for the indefinite future.
Instead we may find the years rolling by with rising man-made greenhouse gas emissions yet modest, nonthreatening, global warming (and perhaps some temporary global cooling). In the fullness of time the inability of the climate change models to predict climate states generally, and atmospheric temperatures specifically, will become increasingly inescapable, the funding for climate change science research will quietly peter out (at first research into physical climate science, then later research into climate change mitigation, then finally research into climate change adaptation), the climate change researchers will quietly move on to other things (perhaps researching natural climate variability – or global cooling), the journalists and politicians will quietly stop talking about the climate change crisis – and the whole issue will quietly fade from the public consciousness. Basically, the man-made climate change crisis idea will probably simply follow a trajectory, not dissimilar to that of many other ‘man-made global crises’ (such as the DDT or BSE ‘crises’), of
1) Scientists misreading the evidence, confusing correlation, cause and effect – and then, long before the science is sufficiently mature to warrant it, leaping to alarmist conclusions
2) Scientists then exaggerating the risks (and suppressing uncertainties and contradictory evidence) in order to attract government funding to investigate the potential scare properly
3) Journalists hyping the potential scare in order to drum up public alarm (and sell newspapers)
4) The public, unable to understand the science, over-reacting and clamoring for political action
5) Politicians, unable to understand the science, over-reacting and responding to public alarm by rushing in ill-considered policies to mitigate the perceived risks
6) Politicians increasing scientific funding in order to find more evidence in support of the scare in order to confirm the rightness of their policies
7) Scientists duly supplying more evidence in order to attract further government funding (this evidence being used by journalists to drum up even more public alarm)
8) A rising awareness by scientists that the problem is actually much more complex (and the causes much more ambiguous and uncertain) than they originally surmised – and, anyway, far less risky
9) A rising awareness by the public and politicians that the risks have been exaggerated and the scare is not materializing – and the policies have done, and are doing, more harm than good
10) Scientists, journalists and politicians quietly retreating from association with the scare
11) The scare fading from the public consciousness
Today we are at about point (8). The trouble is that at this point the investment in the ‘cause’ has been so vast (both in terms of money and reputation/ego) that calling a halt has become virtually impossible (although Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris climate accord would be a good start). After (11), in the 2030s or 2040s perhaps, we may start to see many PhD theses being written by psychology graduates about the great global delusion of the catastrophic climate change scare of the early 21st century and the extraordinary story of how a small group of highly politicized scientists and computer modelers brought science into public disrepute as never before by corrupting the scientific process in order to achieve their hubristic and utopian goals.
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I have a radical idea. Let’s discredit science!
There is a growing public crescendo pointing out that science has become corrupt and ineffective and is causing immense harm. It’s time we started demanding more credible science. Probably the most effective thing we can do is insist on replication.
Most scientific research papers can’t be replicated even by the original authors. link Nobody should consider a paper worthy of being published in the prestigious journals without replication. Never mind peer review, it’s been shown not to work.
Insisting on replication would clear up 97% of the mess. OK, we know where I got that number.
Wrong, why we trust experts in spite of the fact that they most often wrong.
Rigor Mortis, Richard Harris shows that most medical research results are wrong, he shows the corrupt process that leads to that.
Expert predictions are garbage. People should learn to treat them as such.
“Richard Harris shows that most medical research results are wrong, he shows the corrupt process that leads to that.”
The government’s involvement and funding of science may well be what is causing the corrupt process.
The root problem is how to tell if research is good. Tenure committees and funders pass the problem on to the journals. The idea is that, if the research gets published in a high impact journal, it must be good.
My favorite example of passing the buck is the Bogdanov Affair. The Bogdanov brothers were accused of spoofing their PhD theses in string theory.
To paraphrase: “We don’t understand this string theory crap but if you can persuade a journal (or journals) that it isn’t bogus, we’ll accept that.”
We need basic research and somebody has to pay for it so I’m not against government funding per se. The question is about who to fund. A lottery might work as well as the present system. It would, at least, remove a bunch of perverse incentives that lead to really crappy research.
C.B., I agree. But I would add that before a study could be published, someone (normally the funding agency) should be required to fund one or more complete and independent audits of both the data and methods of the original study. After that both the original study and the results of the audit(s) would be published together, replacing the current pier/buddy review process with a paid and signed verification process.
Before any data, results or conclusions could be referred to as anything other than being unverified or conjecture, at least one additional independent study, using different data and methods, must be performed. Any published reference to the original study’s data, results and/or conclusions must be tagged/footnoted as unverified or conjecture until it has been replicated. This should probably lead to two levels of publication, one printing the unverified studies and another printing only replicated studies, both the original and the replication(s).
Following the above would have several advantages over the current system of publication. First, any study not worthy of replication would remain as nothing other than an interesting bit of data or conjecture. Academics could then be graded on the actual amount of verified and replicated research they performed and/or their ability to audit and/or improve upon other’s research, not on how good they are at writing proposals or technical B.S. This would would also limit use of unverified/purchased pseudoscience by politicians, businesses and N.G.O.s. And, it might eventually improve the reputation of science in the minds of the general public, that reputation having been almost destroyed by the current system (e.g., Climate Science, Nutritional Science, Medical Research and Education).
I have never seen any research that shows why the environment heating up a few degrees, equivalent of me moving from Virginia to Florida, would be any problem. After all, when people get old and feeble they move to Florida anyway. And the change takes place in the day it takes to drive down there, much faster than the 100 years it took for the world to warm a measly 1 degree. If farmers have to make changes due to climate change that will be just one more change they will make on top of the hundreds of changes they had to make to usher in the Green Revolution. That seems to be the gigantic hole in the alarmist’s position. Weather is suppose to get more extreme just because they say so. All studies previous to this latest scare claim it is global cooling which yields the most extreme weather.
The idea that warming is bad, let alone unquestionably catastrophic, is probably the most incredible part of this whole ridiculous meme.
+1. And warming by how much? And where? And when? Not much. Mid-latitudes. Night. Crises? I think not. And not much of any warming at all for the last 20 years. Amazing this “crisis”.
The problem is, it isn’t heating up. It seems to be indistinguishable from the 1970’s. 40 years of so called warming adds up to nothing!
Ian I believe there is a couple of thing you seem to have forgotten to factor in.
That is the damage caused by the fixes and prevention’s Lets look at alliterative energy as one example. As more wind turbine farms fail and solar fails to achieve as promised, people will start asking question. They will then look at other sources and re-accessing some of the old. As part of that reassessment they will have to look at how they negatively impacts the environment.This will open up some eyes and as other discover the real cost of the fixes and investigate then more eyes will open.
Second as the real environmental disasters become more pressing and as they figure out that climate change is not a fix. Activists and alarmists will become diluted as they move back to their pet cause. The result will mean more funds for other science. Scientist”s will then have a chance to jump ship before the ship sinks and give them a way out (that’s why I got out because I had doubts). It will also weaken the alarmist voice.
The entire AGW scam is being supported by useful idiots that are either bought or believe they will save the earth. All of them either directly or indirectly work at the behest of the UN. Without the UN/IPCC there would be no AGW. The stated goal of the UN is to bring about world wide economic change through destruction of Capitalism and replace it with Socialism. The UN is a HUGE organization with unlimited funds and no one to hold it accountable. They’ve managed to control the narrative so far so why would they stop? The enemy is the UN, not science.
What is being described – the inability of the AGW theory to be conclusively disproved – shows exactly why it is a pseudo-scientific theory. Scientific theories make clear predictions which, if proved incorrect, cause the theory to be modified or discarded.
Let’s remember that the IPCC is a UN agency constituted to support the case that global action is required to counter AGW. The drive behind the formation of the IPCC was a belief by a number of individuals and interests that global governance was necessary to avoid global conflict at least partly by redistributing wealth. This is exactly what Paris sets out to do – transfer wealth from the developed to the developing world. It has nothing much at all to do with reducing CO2 emissions – shut one factory down in the west and another more carbon intensive factory in the developing world takes its place. This is why there is absolutely no interest in the logical solution to countering CO2 emissions – namely by taxing goods and services according to the CO2 emitted in their production.
Fighting the AGW fight won’t solve the problem alone. We need to decide whether the global governance agenda (the EU writ large?) is valid. My opinion is that it is unaccountable, undemocratic and essentially opposed to the principle of liberty, and therefore to be opposed.
On the other hand, a series of international treaties designed to extend the benefits of the economic progress made by the developed world to the developing world in exchange for commitments to implement policies protecting individual rights and liberties and would be of value – as long as the developing world is accurately defined with a ranking of countries according to their progress, How China can be counted as ‘developing’ for the duration of the Paris agreement is beyond me.
By my understanding, ‘Cosmic ray flux theory’ states that during periods of low solar activity more cosmic rays are able to reach the Earth’s atmosphere and help seed cloud formation; thus creating a positive feedback (increased albedo) from the original forcing (reduced solar activity). Together these push global temperatures in a cooling direction.
Conversely, during periods of increased solar activity cosmic rays are effectively ‘batted’ away from the earth, reducing cloud cover and acting as a positive feedback on the warming caused by increased solar activity; so global surface temperatures warm up.
The current solar cycle, number 24, officially began in January 2008. It has been the least active solar cycle in living memory. So here we have a perfect opportunity to test the efficacy of cosmic ray flux theory. What have global temperatures done since Jan 2008; since the onset of the weakest solar cycle any of us have ever seen? Have they cooled, as expected by CRF theory?
The answer is that global temperatures have rocketed! The warming trend in the UAH v6 TLT satellite data set since Jan 2008 is currently 0.43 C/dec ‘warming’ (as of April 2017). That’s about as high as it has been for any similar length period throughout the entire UAH record; including periods with much higher solar activity. It’s a similar story with the other satellite data set, RSS, and all the surface temperature data sets too.
Perhaps the reason ‘cosmic ray flux theory’ doesn’t receive the scientific interest awarded to AGW theory is that it has been demonstrated, through observations made by multiple agencies, to be wrong?
DWR54…I think you included most of the recent super El Nino of 2015/16 in your ‘rocketing’ temperatures increase of .43 C/Decade. The alarmist scientists only claim .85 C warming since 1880, of which they attribute half to natural variability. And even a complete doubling of atmospheric CO2 will only lead to an increase of 1.2 C and that won’t happen until about 2050. The argument and debate really is what are the feedbacks, and what is reasonable to expect?
I’m not arguing that the trend since 2008 is indicative of future warming; just that it demonstrates the weakness of ‘cosmic ray flux’ theory. Even before the El Nino there was warming since 2008: http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/uah6/from:2008/to:2014.5/mean:12/plot/uah6/from:2008/to:2014.5/trend
How do you eliminate La Nino and the PDO from any global measurement? A bit tricky!
We do not know, simultaneously, the value of the cyclic components of our global temperature,
Making it very difficult to isolate any cyclic component.
Then you have CO2/H2O/CH4/Land use/greening/UHI.
Not so easy to tease out valid effects, if that is possible at all.
The above is what we are aware of, then there are the unknowns…….
DWR54, I’m not a big fan of cosmic ray theory either. However, when you feel the need to pick huge cherries to refute it, all you accomplish is giving the theory more credibility. If that’s all you have, you have nothing. Starting with a strong La Nina and ending with the super El Nino is beyond ridiculous.
About the only thing your comment accomplished is proving you are completely clueless.
Richard M
I remind you that the reason I started in 2008 is because that is when solar cycle 24 began. I said January, but having checked again it was December 2008. Here is the updated UAH chart: http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/uah6/from:2008.9/to:2014.5/mean:12/plot/uah6/from:2008/to:2014.5/trend
I’m glad we now agree that it is ‘clueless’ to start a trend at a peak or trough in the ENSO cycle.
DWR54, you can use any excuse you want for cherry picking but it is still cherry picking. Citing a trend when you pick huge cherries then makes you look even worse.
What you need to do is make sure your starting ending dates are not significantly influencing the trend. If you have both El Nino and La Nina event at the start of a trend, and your trend is long enough, then it won’t be a problem (as is the case for using 1997 or 1998). Same for the end of a trend. The key thing is to actually use your brain and understand how your choices of dates affect the trend.
I know that is asking a lot as your last sentence made all too clear.
“Perhaps the reason ‘cosmic ray flux theory’ doesn’t receive the scientific interest awarded to AGW theory is that it has been demonstrated, through observations made by multiple agencies, to be wrong?”
Possibly The theory is still not fully developed since we have very little data to show how cosmic rays affect cloud formation. That said there are other theories on why low sun spot numbers coincide with low temperatures.
One theory is based on the fact that the sun wobbles as it travels through spaced due to the orbits of the planets. This periodically moves the sun a little bit closer to the earth or further away. This distance change can be calculated. And as a result the amount of energy delivered to earth can be calculated. The variation is larger than the IPCC claims.
Another researcher has been trying to understand the semi periodic behavior of unusually wet years. He eventually did find a link between sun spot activity and unusually wet years. A mathematical model of his theory was created in 2007 and it predicted 2016 would be a wet year. The prediction appears to have been accurate. Many areas of the world have experienced flooding during the winter of 2016 -2017. California experienced its wettest year on record this year.
https://anhonestclimatedebate.files.wordpress.com/2009/02/2982-journal-of-civ-eng-vol-49-no-2.pdf
Steven,
“One theory is based on the fact that the sun wobbles as it travels through spaced due to the orbits of the planets. This periodically moves the sun a little bit closer to the earth or further away. This distance change can be calculated. And as a result the amount of energy delivered to earth can be calculated. The variation is larger than the IPCC claims.”
The entire solar system moves about the Sun’s center of mass taking all the planets with it equally. The planets are locked gravitationally in their orbits about the Sun and they just keep their regular orbital distance for that process. So the Sun does not move further and closer away as you suggest. The Sun’s wobble is caused mainly by Jupiter and Saturn, but even the inner minor planets provide a very tiny amount of tugging. For every action…there is an equal and opposite reaction. In this scenario, the distance from the Earth to Sun does not change because of this fact. The barycenter (or barycentre; from the Ancient Greek βαρύς heavy + κέντρον centre) is the center of mass of two or more bodies that are orbiting each other, or the point around which they both orbit. It is an important concept in fields such as astronomy and astrophysics.
You may be thinking the Earth/Sun distance change that is attributed to Aphelion and Perihelion which is currently about July 4th for the former and Jan 3rd for the latter.
From Wiki…
Earth is about 147.1 million kilometers (91.4 million miles) from the Sun at perihelion around January 3, in contrast to about 152.1 million kilometers (94.5 million miles) at aphelion around July 4 — a difference of about 5.0 million kilometers (3.1 million miles). These dates change over time due to precession and other orbital factors, which follow cyclical patterns known as Milankovitch cycles. (In about 12,500 years, these will be reversed for the respective hemispheres on Earth.)
Because of the increased distance at aphelion, only 93.55% of the solar radiation from the Sun falls on a given area of land as does at perihelion. However, this fluctuation does not account for the seasons, as it is summer in the northern hemisphere when it is winter in the southern hemisphere and vice versa. Instead, seasons result from the tilt of Earth’s axis, which is 23.4 degrees away from perpendicular to the plane of Earth’s orbit around the sun. Winter falls on the hemisphere where sunlight strikes least directly, and summer falls where sunlight strikes most directly, regardless of the Earth’s distance from the Sun.
In the northern hemisphere, summer occurs at the same time as aphelion. Despite this, there are larger land masses in the northern hemisphere, which are easier to heat than the seas. Consequently, summers are 2.3 °C (4 °F) warmer in the northern hemisphere than in the southern hemisphere under similar conditions.
steven F
The point is that in the current case low temperatures *don’t* coincide with low sun spot numbers. During this latest solar cycle, the weakest in living memory, new temperature records have been set in every single global temperature data set we have, including satellite data and we have seen record or near record rates of warming on a decadal scale.
As others here have pointed out, the period since 2008 has been dominated by the recent big El Nino; but If weaker solar output is so effortlessly overcome by natural ocean oscillations then they are hardly on a scale worth worrying about. Certainly nowhere near on the scale predicted by some, including David Archibald: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/12/20/a-dalton-minimum-repeat-is-shaping-up/
The planet will cool due to sudden interruption to the solar cycle. There is now some evidence of the start of cooling.
http://www.ospo.noaa.gov/data/sst/anomaly/2017/anomnight.5.25.2017.gif
The delay in cooling was caused by solar wind bursts from coronal holes that suddenly appeared on the surface of the sun even though sunspot activity was low. Coronal holes create solar wind bursts which causes warming in high latitudes and at the equator.
Comment:
Sunspots and coronal holes eject pieces of magnetic flux into space. The solar wind carries these pieces of magnetic flux out into space past the orbit of Pluto. The tenuous gas and magnetic flux is called the Solar Heliosphere.
The solar heliosphere blocks what is called for stupid archaic reasons Galactic Cosmic Rays GCR or Cosmic Flux CF most is physically, mostly high speed protons, physical name should have been CP (cosmic particles) The high speed protons GCR or CF strike the earth’s atmosphere and create cloud forming ions.
The cloud forming ions help clouds form, change the cloud optical properties, change cloud life times, and affect rainfall.
The second cloud modulating mechanism (in addition to the ion mediated nucleation, GCR mechanism) is the cloud modulating mechanism which is called electroscavenging.
Solar wind bursts create a space charge differential in the atmosphere which in turn causes an electrical current to flow from high latitude regions of the planet to the equatorial regions. This flow of current also causes changes in cloud properties and amounts in both locations.
Comment: Electroscavenging
High speed solar wind bursts created a create a space charge differential in the earth’s ionosphere which in turn causes a movement of electrical charge from the earth’s poles to the equator.
Why coronal holes appear, when coronal holes appear in the solar cycle, and at what latitude coronal holes appear on the sun surface is not known.
The electrical charge movement removes cloud forming ions in the high latitude regions which causes there to be a reduction in low level clouds and an increase in cirrus clouds. A decrease in low level clouds warms the region in question due to a reduction in short wave radiation that is reflected to space albedo and an increase in the high wispy cirrus clouds causes the region in question to warm due to increased greenhouse effect of the high altitude water.
The return electrical current changes cloud properties in the equator and changes cloud lifetimes in the equator. El Nino events occur when there is large movement of electrical charge.
Recently although the number of sunspots has been dropping there has been a large number of persistent coronal holes on the surface of the sun in low latitude regions. It is these coronal holes that are partially responsible for the lack of significant cooling of the earth due to the astonishing slowdown in the solar cycle.
Offset the anomalous number of coronal holes is a reduction in the solar heliosphere density of 40%. The low density of the solar heliosphere (Solar heliosphere is the name for the tenuous gas and magnetic flux that stretches far past the orbit of Pluto.) reduces the rise time of the magnetic pulse that is caused by solar wind bursts which in turn reduces the effect on the earth ionosphere.
Now finally the size of coronal holes on the surface of sun has started to shrink and the coronal holes have started to move to high latitude regions on the surface of the sun where they no longer affect the earth. Bingo, there will be a significant increase in sea ice in the Arctic and the planet will cool. We are experience the cooling phase of a Dansgaard-Oeschger cycle.
http://www.klimarealistene.com/web-content/Bibliografi/Tinsley2007,GlobalElectricCircuit.pdf
Atmospheric Ionization and Clouds as Links Between Solar Activity and Climate
http://sait.oat.ts.astro.it/MmSAI/76/PDF/969.pdf
William… As Spock would say, Fascinating! I learn something new here everyday, but this is something one should really give some extra serious thought to. A few questions?
“Why coronal holes appear, when coronal holes appear in the solar cycle, and at what latitude coronal holes appear on the sun surface is not known.”
Do you have any pet theories why/when/where they appear? I recall an obscure scientific paper from the 1980’s by an obscure German scientist, and his hypothesis was that it was predictable and caused by the orbital forcing of mainly Jupiter and Saturn, which caused the Sun to wobble about the center of mass of the solar system and these barycenter cycles somehow caused these through forces I am not sure exist, since I don’t know that his hypothesis gained any traction in that regard. But it sounded good in theory, and in about 1988 he predicted a cooling would be deeply intrenched by 2030. It seems things are lining up that way.
And on the chance you are a knowledgeable solar scientist…
“and an increase in the high wispy cirrus clouds causes the region in question to warm due to increased greenhouse effect of the high altitude water.”
Would all the multitude of high altitude jet liners spewing contrails of a lot of mainly water vapor exhaust (plus high altitude CO2), be a significant agent of high altitude warming in concert with differing Sun states? I recall after Sept 11, that when the skies were shut down over NA for several days, that some meteorologists noted that night time temperatures were a bit cooler, and day time temperatures were a bit hotter. Is there anything to this?
Low latitude coronal hole solar winds are now used as a major earthquake timing predictive tool with convergence streams to major low pressure systems and troughs on Earth providing a location predictive tool. See http://www.quakewatch.net for detailed information.
“Do you have any pet theories why/when/where they appear? I recall an obscure scientific paper from the 1980’s by an obscure German scientist, and his hypothesis was that it was predictable and caused by the orbital forcing of mainly Jupiter and Saturn”
Ron is this what you were thinking of? The theory was refined by including all 4 of the outer planets.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/10/13/solar-cycle-mystery-solved/comment-page-1/
Great post! This has a very loud ring of truth to it. It would be so nice to witness a resounding public vindication of truth and scientific process with the overturning of the anthropogenic global warming belief system before the eyes of the world, but people are so much more complex than that, and beliefs are far more sticky than facts. I would like to see opinion leaders who understand the swindle that has been perpetrated do more to encourage public debate about science and the flimsy foundations of CAGW. It might speed this process along, it I fear there will be no Hollywood ending.
Impossible to counteract emotional arguments with dry facts.
The alarm won’t be dropped until globalists find a better vehicle to achieve global socialism. Even then, the green NGOs have billion$ a year at stake, so won’t let it go until another environmental crisis is found to replace it.
What does the future hold for the climate change debate?
I think it can begin now. Debate has never really happened. Global Warming caused by man has just been vomited into existence by self-serving activist journalists, funding-seeking scientismists (Michael Nature Trick Mann), pandering politicians and, leftist social engineers. All a$$h0les
If the a$$h0les want to talk science I’d be willing but it has to be taken out of the realm of the UN for starters.
Truth by science should prevail. Not “truth” by popular opinion.
I speculate that as a consequence of a new truthful debate the activists will fade, funding will atrophy, and the obvious uncertainty and sh1tty modelling will reduce the debate to a complete bore, therefore obscurity.
Excellent article! I agree that psychologists will be snickering about the massive scare drummed up for nothing but to get money.
I agree – I’ve been following the Climate Change scare since 2009 and I fail to find the “Climate” part all that interesting. Clearly, nothing unusual is happening climate-wise that hasn’t already happened. Whatever caused the climate then, is probably causing it now; and honestly we haven’t the slightest clue.
Mr. Aitken, let me put it this way, as Mann did, blunt or even very blunt.
I do not really care about “whys”, ” hows” and “whats” about your motivations and the drive inspiring this blog post from your point of view or your position…… meaning that I am not being judgemental….
But still anyway regarding your blog post, it stands as a proper shiny “Trojan Horse”…. A “T.H” trying to default render null and valueless the Congressional testimony of Dr. Judith….in essence…..that what it is in it’s back bone.
Stop trying to increment ACC to a status of a theory or hypothesis…it is not it…….ACC is not a hypothesis or a theory……….The only theory there that strongly supports ACC is the AGW…….ACC is not a theory……any policy making in accordance to ACC, when AGW is dead and slayed……regards only the Data and the assessment about and in relation to climate and climate change, short and long term…….
is not any more about theories or hypothesis and the long silly fights and arguments in the context of hypothesis and theories….
ACC can be any thing else but not a hypothesis or a theory……..please do stop propagating such a silly thing….
If you think you have a valid and important point, as it stands, you have to get to give a testimony to the congressional hearing……and make clear your point that Dr. Carry’s testimony means not much, because ACC magically has turned to be a hypothesis…..good luck with it if you happen to find it persuading enough..
cheers
What are you babbling about now?
What is “ACC”?
Anthropogenic Climate Change
AG CO2 increase is claimed to cause AG Warming.
AGW is claimed to probably cause particular types of ACC.
AGW is the cause, ACC is the effect, in that argument.
He points out that there is a physics-based AGW hypothesis and holds that there is no viable (evidence based) ACC hypothesis.
The AGW hypothesis is struggling, largely because the the rapid increase in CO2 over the past 20 years without any meaningful rise in temperature.
There was never any evidence of an AG-induced change in the climate. That would require being able separate single contributors to a change in an inherently chaotic system and quantify their relative contributions. Good luck with that…
Crispin in Waterloo but really in Warsaw
May 28, 2017 at 5:27 pm
Thank you Crispin, for trying to explain my point to Meni….Appreciated a lot.
But if I may attempt a further explanation, at one particular point, that it is and seems important to me….
Yes you are right about the struggling of the AGW hypothesis as you put it, but from my point of view is a little or a lot more than it when concerning USA state….
There is a congressional testimony of Dr. Christy that simply destroys it, the AGW, literally.
The testimony of the brave Dr. which had his office sprayed with bullets if you remember……..
His testimony is enough in the way it stands, to fully support a USA stand against the Paris accord……
You see, in the context of this very blog post, as far as USA as a nation concerned the bang has already happened, very loudly and clearly, and very vividly , to a point that even Skeptics like ones here at WUWT can not actually believe it and see it OR HEAR IT…
In the USA nation the science has spoken and also testified before the Congress, very clearly, about the ACC and the policy dictated by it , and the science has being very much clear about it, with no ANY doubt at the point that persisting any further and flirting any further with any climate change policy, as per the ACC science is ridiculous and with no any bases in science…..and probably very dangerous when the economic impact considered
Four distinguished scientists have bravely testified about that, even when considering Mann in this simple aspect, have to be recognized , that he was also has being brave enough to stand up for it…..regardless of the outcome.
Simply as far as USA is concerned……the bang has already happened…the science has already spoken…now it is up to the governing powers and the elected politicians……As far as science is concerned the hands are clean, when concerning USA…….very strange but that is how is in principle by my point of view…
Please do consider in USA the big bang has already happened……no any chance for any whimper there any more in question or doubt……..
Dr.Roger Pielke Jr and Dr. Judith Carry with their testimony have scientifically tightly sealed and closed any other doors to ACC and climate change policy based on it, when further attempts than hypothesis and GCMs is considered and attempted to apply……
But what is very obvious is that the Dr. Christy’s testimony can not be actually challenged scientifically before the Congress or any where else……unless the one who could ever consider it is simply just a mad or silly one, and definitely a resident of the Planet B of Nay….
So when it comes to USA law makers the USA’s State department and the USA President, the call in the end about climate change policy has to be clearly weighted in accordance with the Scientific position according to the USA Nation and its scientific official position, as clearly demonstrated and uphold in the four testimonies before the congressional committee, I think, as per the stand that science officially has taken before the highest political and governing institution in USA…..if I am not wrong.
Big Bang…very very Big one…..no whimper there..:)
This probably went to long…:)
cheers
Every time a science was “official”, it turned out that it was pseudo-science. The climate science of the IPCC is official, so it’s pseudo-science. Quod erat demonstrandum …
True. As Feynman so sagely said, “Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts”.
Copernicus and Galileo began modern science by breaking free from the authority of the Bible and Ptolemy, and Vesalius from Galen. Science has progressed by showing humans how insignificant we are. Just as a child has to learn that it isn’t the center of everything, our species is stumbling toward maturity by recognizing how unspecial we are.
We do not reside at the center of the universe, which revolves around us. We are not a specially created, perfect species in God’s image. We do not have enough power significantly to alter our planet’s climate.
Catholic parochial schools used to do a good job of teaching kids that they aren’t special in a good way. Nowadays public schools do the opposite, trying to make every kid think he or she is special, which genetically speaking is true, if special mean unique. Even identical twins aren’t exactly. We are all born with our own mutations, which themselves may or may not be special. We accumulate more of them during our lives, hence getting even more “special”. But this isn’t what schools mean by special.
The “science” will stop the moment the university faculties and government/quasi-government institutions (eg UK Met Office, Nasa, NOAA, BoM etc) pushing it have their funding cut.
All it takes is a politician/political party in power who/which has the bottle to do it….or a real shooting war, or an economic crisis of epic proportions.
We may get any one of the three, or all of them, within the next few years. The worm is turning…
Fantastic article. I’m impressed by truth. Appreciate it when I discover it.
Nice work.
I fear the picture painted in this article is right, however there may be another possibility. Never underestimate the rats leaving the sinking ship. There may come a point where politicians prefer to blame scientists for ‘tricking them’, at which they will be as vocal condemning the science as they are supporting it.
‘..There may come a point where politicians prefer to blame scientists for ‘tricking them’..’
Unlikely. The pols will never turn their backs on those who pay for their campaign TV commercials — the NGOs. (And the NGOs are way too slick at fleecing the very rich and the very naive.)
Ronald Reagan in his 1987 speech to the UN, said:
“In our obsession with antagonisms of the moment, we often forget how much unites all the members of humanity. Perhaps we need some outside, universal threat to make us recognize this common bond. I occasionally think how quickly our differences worldwide would vanish if we were facing an alien threat from outside this world.”
It would be interesting to see how humanity would react to say, an incoming significant asteroid/comet destined to hit earth and perhaps destroy civilization. Would humanity collectively rise to the occasion and work together through hard work, monetary sharing and finally action to be able to actually do something about it? That would be our finest hour if we were able to rise above our sectarian tendencies and achieve that success. We know that if humanity is to continue thriving into the long term future, that we will have to finally work together to solve all our problems, known and unknown, and not destroy each other.
But, the radical CAGW meme, that we are all doomed unless we change our evil CO2 ways as an existential threat to humanity, is a false flag. And how the planet must come together to ward off this threat of imminent destruction. Of course, it is much more complicated than that but we see how the Paris Accord is flawed in allowing most of the countries on earth to continue unbridled expansion of CO2 activities while receiving the benefits of the charity of 10-11 OCED countries, who simultaneously must scale back their emissions while taxing their citizens to send the charitable proceeds to the countries who will then be able to unfairly compete on an playing field that is no longer level to us.
Of course all these beneficiary nations are going to proclaim how dangerous CO2 is, while China becomes the new leader on combatting global warming/climate change and will be selling all these countries their solar and wind products while continuing their aggressive pursuit of CO2 intensive activities. Why would we negotiate this particular deal, if the goal was to actually reduce CO2 emissions? Obviously, it isn’t about that, as is proved by the actual outcome of said agreement. But this global agreement on reducing CO2 to combat the threat of global warming and climate change has nothing to do with that goal. It is a good thing that an asteroid or comet is not coming our way, because we can’t even properly identify what the real problem is with CO2 or if we chose to, how to deal with it effectively if that was our real goal.
Way before Thomas Kuhn (1962), the mass psychology of crowds and their follishness had been recognized and documented by Charles Mackay in his “Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds” (1841). The AGW scam embodies a number of disparate crowds, all operating at the same herd instinct level. His book is due for an update as there are numerous new delusions to serve as examples, such as provided by the author of this blog.
How to end the “hoax” with a bang, not a whimper:
Take a new theory about climate. Conduct many repeatable experiments to show theory is valid. Use new theory and experimental results to build something practical and useful which you can sell for a profit (an energy producing device would be ideal). Skeptic/New theory enthusiast gets Nobel prize.
It’s like an episode of “Black Adder”.
“Sire, I have a cunning plan!”
No turnips required, just gravity and an ability to think with an open mind.
The warmistas are the only people that think that the climate is so simple that one theory that can be dreamed up in advance is all there is to it.
Skeptics know this is the simplistic nonsense of simpletons.
Oceanic acidification is the most likely diversion.
Seems doubtful.
The oceans have never been acidic and never will be.
And there is no evidence that the overall pH of the oceans is changing in a definable direction.
The fact that acidification is just another scare story won’t stop climatologists from endorsing it. They’re motivated by tree-hugger feelings, so any of man’s impacts on nature are viewed by them as harmful and indefensible.
And there is no evidence that the overall pH of the oceans is changing in a definable direction.
Yes there is. Stop lying.
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-F7iKEeFTbs0/U9mBOtLSRcI/AAAAAAAAA4s/VBbNA_o7vVE/s1600/Chart+%E2%80%94+Decline+in+pH+measured+at+the+Aloha+station.png
“tony mcleod May 29, 2017 at 4:30 am”
Models and estimates and small sample zones represent global ocean and acid content? Rain water is BELOW pH7, ocean is ESTIMATED to be 8.2, to 8.1. Acid? You need chemistry lessons!!
Ian, your thinking on how the CAGW thing will end is good, but your sorties into the underpinnings of the science you take at face value. Scientists did start off believing in what they were doing, but when doubt reared it’s head, they cooked the books and doubled down.
Even before erasing the Pause and it’s implications, , Mann et al felt the need to abolish the LIA and the MWP in 1998 and Santer found it necessary to write a hyped alarm for policy makers when the science section said there was no evidence yet of AGW in the 1995 report. Hansen had already delivered a dire warning to Congress in 1988 and felt the need to shut off airconditioners and close windows to heat the room up! Government saw a way to tax carbon and push a global governance agenda.
The alarm was manufactured early. If someone says their is a teapot orbiting the sun between Mars and Jupiter, should we keep an open mind,, pour trillions into it and wonder if it’s correct or not? Should sceptics have to offer an alternative theory?
You never know. When in 1964 Lysenkoism ended after having been rampant for 30 years it did so very abruptly. When Andrej Sakharov read the riot act at the 1964 meeting of the Academy of Sciences, denouncing Lysenko as a quack, the latter disappeared from public view overnight. Less than a year later Lysenko and his ism had been erased from the Soviet history books. In my last job in bioinformatics I had 3 russian colleagues, only one of them was familiar with its history and one of the other two had never heard of it.
It may, of course, have helped that the Soviet Union was a totalitarian state and also that in 1963 and 1964 the harvest had failed disasterously, demonstrating clearly the idiocy of that pseudo science. But perhaps, if enough people in positions of power are angry enough when they realise that they have been told very expensive porkies, who knows what would happen?
We need an alternative scare to replace the CAGW – how about some food scandal or water shortage?
>>
Basically, the man-made climate change crisis idea will probably simply follow a trajectory, not dissimilar to that of many other ‘man-made global crises’ (such as the DDT or BSE ‘crises’) . . . .
<<
Ozone hole.
Jim
I am generally in agreement with the gist of this, except that I predict the collapse of global warming pseudoscience will be much sooner and much more sudden. I give it five years. Of course, it will be quicker if we have a return of “the pause” and slower if we have another few years of warming. Watch how the next IPCC report handles the estimate of climate sensitivity; they can hardly leave it unchanged again.
We can expect the collapse to be messy, confused, and inaccurately interpreted by the media.
A model is the recent collapse of the “low-fat diet”, another government-promoted pseudoscience (see the book by Nina Teicholz). Although that doctrine has died, never to recover, there are still few people who grasp the point that the notion you can give yourself heart disease by eating fat is unfounded, and that government-promoted pseudoscience has led directly to the present epidemics of obesity and diabetes. You still find items on supermarket shelves boasting that they are “fat free”.
The consensus ideologues have various ploys at their disposal. One is to keep on saying what they say now, that the “deniers” deny there has been any warming, that CO2 is a greenhouse gas, and that CO2 emissions contribute to warming. Most typical consumers of the media have no idea that 99.9 percent of deniers don’t deny these facts but insist upon them. Another ploy is to give the impression that the retreat from high climate sensitivity has been occasioned by surprising new discoveries. And of course we will keep hearing that “even if it’s not as bad as we thought, we can’t be too careful.”
So, even though it may well be thirty or forty years before everyone understands that the whole thing was a major blunder, in which a segment of institutional science was hijacked by ideological zeal, the actual collapse of the pseudoscience will occur within ten years, and given a resumption of the pause, five years.
One thing to watch for is the orthodox catastrophists turning upon themselves and attacking each other with the viciousness they have heretofore reserved for skeptics, as some scientists, without openly abandoning the official line, make concessions which the more extreme proponents view as “denial”. We are in for some hugely entertaining shenanigans.
FIRST there would have to be actual modeling of climate done… this is where I get off the whole “CO2 BAD BAD” bus. There *aren’t* any actual models of climate. 100% of what has been pushed at us has been fucked up statistical trajectory sheets.