Guest Commentary by Kip Hansen
“Multiple scientific assessments have concluded that man-made climate change is real and poses risks to human health and the environment. Even so, Scott Pruitt, the Environmental Protection Agency administrator, told Breitbart News on Monday that he would like to essentially re-litigate the science of climate change.
In an interview with Breitbart’s Joel Pollak, Pruitt proposed setting up opposing teams to debate key climate science issues.
“What the American people deserve, I think, is a true, legitimate, peer-reviewed, objective, transparent discussion about CO2,” Pruitt said.
Pruitt voiced support for a “red team-blue team” exercise to foster such a discussion. The red-blue team concept gained prominence in a Wall Street Journal commentary by Steven Koonin, a professor at New York University.
Koonin argued that such an exercise would subject the scientific consensus on climate change to a rigorous test. The red team would challenge consensus findings from scientific assessments, and the blue team would have the opportunity to respond.
“The outcome of a Red/Blue exercise for climate science is not preordained, which makes such a process all the more valuable,” Koonin wrote. “It could reveal the current consensus as weaker than claimed. Alternatively, the consensus could emerge strengthened if Red Team criticisms were countered effectively.””
— EPA’s Scott Pruitt wants to set up opposing teams to debate climate change science. Washington Post — 7 June 2017 — by Jason Samenow
Why is this report almost entirely wrong?
The Washington Post’s Jason Samenow is an experienced journalist. He certainly is experienced in climate science communication. According to his Wiki entry “Samenow worked as a climate change analyst at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Climate Change Division from 2000 to September 2010. Samenow launched and oversaw the EPA’s public website on climate change. … In early 2004, Samenow established CapitalWeather.com, the Internet’s first professional weather blog.” (apparently, while an employee of the Federal EPA.)
When Samenow’s weather blog, CapitalWeather.com, was absorbed by the Washington Post in 2008, Samenow came along and is now the Washington Post’s Weather Editor.
However, like other federal employees that have turned to the internet to express their views on climate science, Samenow is not a disinterested, unbiased reporter of the facts. So, instead of journalism, we get advocacy and commentary where we should see news.
What Does Samenow Get Wrong?
Nearly everything. Scott Pruitt, the Environmental Protection Agency administrator, did speak to Breitbart News on Monday but he did not say “that he would like to essentially re-litigate the science of climate change.” Climate Science is not subject to “litigation” — not then, not now, not in the future — so it certainly cannot be “re-litigated” even if Pruitt desired that.
Of course, that is not what Scott Pruitt said. What he did say is “What the American people deserve, I think, is a true, legitimate, peer-reviewed, objective, transparent discussion about CO2,” Pruitt voiced support for a “red team-blue team” exercise to foster such a discussion. He refers to Koonin’s Wall Street Journal editorial in which Koonin argued that such an exercise would subject the scientific consensus on climate change to a rigorous test. [see Judith Curry’s “A ‘Red Team’ Exercise Would Strengthen Climate Science”].
Samenow repeats and doubles down on his original error with “In an interview with Breitbart’s Joel Pollak, Pruitt proposed setting up opposing teams to debate key climate science issues.” The last thing Pruitt, or any sensible person for that matter, wants is to have opposing teams debate climate science.
The Washington Post author apparently has no idea what a Red Team Blue Team exercise would be for a scientific question. Maybe he has confused with it Dr. Suess’s Red Fish Blue Fish. Maybe Samenow should have looked it up in the Wiki. [If you don’t already realize why I say Samenow is clueless, you should read the Wiki, read Dr. Curry’s essay linked above and do a Google on Red Teams.] Samenow refers to the approach as re-litigation and debate. It is neither.
”Samenow writes: “Historically, red teams have been called upon in military exercises as a way to introduce alternative ideas and, ultimately, strengthen organizational performance. But David Titley, a climate scientist at Penn State University and retired Navy rear admiral, said introducing a red team into climate science doesn’t make sense. “Science already has a red team: peer review.””
In case no one at the Washington Post reads their own Science section [here and here] depending on peer-review to ensure correct results is a fool’s hope. Peer review is coming under increasing scrutiny, especially in fields that have strong indicators of publication bias and ideological bias, in fields where there is a strong and professionally-enforced consensus. I needn’t point out here that climate science is one such field.
The Intelligence and the Tech Security worlds have been using Red Team’s for quite some time, and the approach has become quite sophisticated.
What Red Team Blue Team is meant to do in the Intelligence World is to obviate the influence of “group think” among intelligence analysts, who tend to be a close knit group. According to Psychology Today: “Groupthink occurs when a group values harmony and coherence over accurate analysis and critical evaluation. It causes individual members of the group to unquestioningly follow the word of the leader and it strongly discourages any disagreement with the consensus.”
In Intelligence, this has fairly recently led to a US President being advised to go to war, and doing so, over the alleged existence of weapons of mass destruction, which were figments of groupthink among America’s intelligence analysts.
In a scientific field, groupthink leads to studies that “go along to get along” — to publication bias where the ‘best journals” only publish papers that agree with the emerging consensus or the field’s opinion leaders, drowning out by volume any differing voices and pushing dissenting papers downline into less prominent, less prestigious journals, where they do not have any influence and are seldom, if ever, read.
And that’s what Climate Science needs — a remedy for the groupthink that has led to attitudes like that of Peter Frumhoff, director of science and policy for the Union of Concerned Scientists, who is quoted saying: “The notion that we would need to create an entirely different new approach, in particular for the specific question around global warming, is unfounded and ridiculous…”.
So much for a search for better understanding.
# # # # #
Post Script: I once made a suggestion at Climate Etc. that the whole field of Climate Science might want to hit the RESTART button. A properly constituted Red Team would fit the bill to re-evaluate the field, discover misunderstandings, discover unknown unknowns, and direct future research to find the answers to known unknowns.
I’d like to see your comments, especially on the use of Red Teams in the real world, your professional lives. – Kip Hansen
Lead image credit: One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish by Dr. Seuss
# # # # #
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
When “scientists” like Gavin Schmidt refuse to even be in the same room with skeptical scientists, you’ll never have agreement.
I think it is expecting too much to think Gavin Schmidt, or any of the others pushing the CAGW narrative are going to come around to the skeptic side. They are entrenched.
The truth will eventually dig them out. The truth will set us all free, although it might not make all of us happy.
Of course the alarmists are alarmed by the formation of a red team to challenge the blue team. As Lindzen pointed out, all legit climate scientists are on the red team. The blue team consists of environmental activists, fake scientists, politicians and media. The red team vs. blue team game will be amusing to watch!
Red team
http://cdn.fansided.com/wp-content/uploads/usat-images/2016/04/9849395-nba-cleveland-cavaliers-at-dallas-mavericks-850×560.jpeg
Blue team
http://archive.onekama.k12.mi.us/m2009/Sports/TeamPhotos/10.BBB.gr7_7350.jpg
“Of course the alarmists are alarmed by the formation of a red team to challenge the blue team.” Ok, who for example among blue teamers are actually alarmed by this? I can see where some would say “why should I debate you when there’s a consensus to the contrary.” There was a prevalent agw view promoted in the 8 years of democratic party rule. Those in that camp would be reluctant to debate even the lukewarmers.
One complication. The prevailing view in the mainstream press is aligned with a vague alarmism represented by people like John Kerry and Al Gore. The reaction in this sphere and among academia-enforced alarmism will not be favorable. This will give cover to those who will resist involvement.
Instead of sport like game (red team vs blue team) why not a scientific method.
There is some experiments worthy to falsify the theory of Climate changes do to the human activities?
If not, then it’s not a scientific matter. If yes, why not let different University perform the required open (reproducible) experiments?
Another red team Task?
Many of the fundamental measurements about climate have changed over the years. Not just global surface temperature, but also TSI at TOA, rate of sea level rise, polar ice loss/gain, etc.
These changes will make many early papers wrong. I have not seen many corrigenda. Have you? Will the Red Team be charged to examine?
Geoff ==> A proper Red Team would establish guidelines to use when evaluating accumulated knowledge. This would include discounting early conclusions based on understandings that later have had to be changed to align with newly discovered principles. It also means discounting conclusions that are based on earlier conclusions that are no longer valid. This is what is so valuable about a deep systematic review from a Red Team perspective.
The Blue Team has been “going along to get along” — there are conclusions that one must not appear to counter at the risk of your reputation. Steven Mosher has been listing them above, comment after comment, the same old true-sounding Climate Warrior talking points — many long since discardable.
The genius-level Physicists and the world-class Statisticians on the Red Team will find a lot to send to the circular file cabinet.
Based on the paleoclimate record and modeling results one can only conclude that the climate change we are experiencing today is caused by the sun and the oceans over which mankind has no control..It is all a matter of science.
There is no real evidence that CO2 has any effect on climate. There is no such evidence in the paleoclimate record. There is plenty of scientific rational to support the idea that the climate sensitivity of CO2 is zero. If CO2 really affected climate then the increase in CO2 over the past 30 years should have caused at least a measureable increase in the dry lapse rate in the troposphere but such has not happened. It is all a matter of science.
The AGW conjecture cannot be defended because the conjecture is just too full of holes. The largest is that the radiant greenhouse effect upon which the AGW conjecture depends, has not been observed anywhere in the solar system including the Earth. The radiant greenhouse effect is science fiction as so must be the AGW conjecture. It is all a matter of science.
Pruitt has in a single maneuver exposed the fact the “consensus” was political not science based. The blue team reactionary response only confirms it.
The actual science debate is very small since CO2 impact is a belief system with few empirical supports. The variables are to great and the human inputs too small. Of course they don’t want to debate that case. That’s why consensus was created to create a room where everyone basically pre-agrees and usually for a political reason not a scientific one.
Anti-carbonists, the Blue Team, The consensus should be ashamed and mocked which Pruitt effectively and subtlety has done. Real science would never have gone this way, the consensus for policy support was never real science but lobbying. It doesn’t take much trolling for the big mouth Blue Teams political commonality to get exposed which Pruitt has succeeded in demonstrating. The fake “integrity of science” retort will be rolled out next and Blue’s false outrage mode and virtue triggering goes into high gear.
I’d like to agree with you, but Michael Mann has scored minor victories by bullying critics with legal threats while playing the victim at the same time. When he meets a serious opponent like Mark Steyn, who is up for going toe-to-toe with him in the courts, his legal team go all quiet and slow….aided by sympathetic and conveniently-incompetent judges. The wheels of justice have slowed too much for it to be an accident.
Generally, courts have rightly stayed away from ruling on things like scientific ‘facts’ and the eternal verities of religion but they are falling short in this matter. The reputation of the legal system may take a big hit if they don’t publicly wash Michael Mann right out of their hair.
“The wheels of justice have slowed too much for it to be an accident.”
It is taking an awfully long time which raises questions. I haven’t heard Steyn comment on his case in quite some time. He should probably publicy complain about how long the court is taking to hear the case. If he doesn’t, noone else will.
“He should probably publicy complain about how long the court is taking to hear the case.”
He did so in his testimony to Congress.
Not being a scientist I see one big mistake in this article that seriously concerns me. Climate science is being ligated right now in the Exxon/Mobil lawsuit. If the state of New York brings this suit and succeeds then in the eyes of the law a president has been set and climate science is then settled in the view of the courts at what the court establishes that day. Any further studies or future consciences would have to be ruled on in court to be valid.
“If the state of New York brings this suit and succeeds”
It won’t. The New York Attorney General has no case to make. He would have to prove that humans are causing the climate to change in order to make his case. Since, to date, noone has been able to prove that humans are causing the climate to change, the NY AG will not be able to make a case that Exxon was hiding something that in reality doesn’t really exist, or at the least cannot at this time be proven to exist.
The NY AG is a partisan Democrat who uses his office as Attorney General to attack his political party’s opponents. He just within the last few days filed a charge against Eric Trump.
The Democrats will stoop to any low to attack their opponents, and the NY AG is one of the lowest of the bunch. Using his office for pure political purposes. He ought to be removed from Office. The U.S. AG should be looking into the actions of the NY AG.
mikehickey ==> The Exxon case has very little to do with climate science and a lot to do with politics.
The court will not adjudicate the science.
Once upon a time Berkley Earth was the official skeptic backed Red team…
and then they (exhaustively) confirmed the science.
Every time it is going to be the same result: ‘it is warming, the surface temp data is OK (no the UHI effect is not distorting it)’
Griff, you forgot your signature tag line “and CO2 is the culprit”. Or are you a bit more open minded these days?
Griff, you are not so well informed I’m afraid. The BEST-record shows some disagreements vs. GISS, they use a better working infill, see https://climateaudit.org/2017/05/18/how-dependent-are-gistemp-trends-on-the-gridding-radius-used/ . UHI: there are locations where it recently distortes ( not in US and EU) and a few locations were are no distortions. Over all very small.
When it comes to the models (CMIP5) there is a greater disharmony, see http://berkeleyearth.org/graphics/model-performance-against-berkeley-earth-data-set/ .
And yes: CO2 is a forcing. There is NO disharmony. And also a thinkable “red team” will find no other result. The most important question is: How are the real values of TCR / ECS. For ECS somewhere between 1.5 and 4 as it was found about 20 years ago… it’s a shame IMO.
“Once upon a time Berkley Earth was the official skeptic backed Red team…
and then they (exhaustively) confirmed the science.”
Did Berkley Earth confirm all the adjustments that were made to the historical temperature record? You know, the ones where ALL the historic temperature records were cooled in the past to make things look much hotter today. Doesn’t it seem a little odd to you that these adjustments ALWAYS went the same way: Cool the past, to make the present look hotter? What are the chances that ALL the world’s temperature records had to be adjusted downwards?
Did Berkley Earth study the Climategate emails before they “confirmed the science”?
Actually, Griff, the Berkeley team confirmed the validity of the temperature record. That was their job. The only skeptic on the team was Judith Curry, who objected to some of the gratuitous conclusions voiced by other team members.
True, one of Koch’s put up the money, but there was no indication that the results were biased in any way.
Scaft1,
Dr. Curry is hardly a skeptic. It’s a nice false flag for alarmists to say so. David Brooks at the Times is a “conservative”?
Is the point transparent enough or do we have to hammer the absurdity of your claim into the dirt.
Sir, you are terribly and horribly wrong in your assessment of Dr.Curry. I suggest you retract your claim lest you be branded a fool.
“(exhaustively) confirmed”
Really?
I pointed out that they were armed with blanks before they fired their first shot. Their method was theoretically faulty based upon information theory in the Fourier Domain. The scalpel cuts out the signal leaving them to play with the noise.
2011.04.02 from Expect the BEST, Plan for the Worst
This was reiterated in 2012.12.13 Circular Logic Not Worth a Millikelvin
Willis, a long time supporter of the scalpel method, put the objection to Zeke on 2014.06.28 Problems with the Scalpel Method
On 2017.01.30 Willis followed up on the status of the question:
BEST is no Red Team. At “best”, they are fooling themselves with big computer processing. At worst, BEST is a Blue Team “Fifth column” trying to fool US with big computer processing.
I would like to note and thank ChiefIO for his approving comments about my Fourier Domain observations:
Some More Trouble With Temperatures and Nice Analysis>”Some More Trouble with Temperatures….” 31 January 2015
The Best study pre-dated the Thomas Karl adjustments and I have not heard whether they’ve updated their series since then.
Berkley Earth did not “confirm” the science of CAGW, Griff. It merely provided another estimate of historical temperature rise since the end of the Little Ice Age. And those historical temperature estimates have no correlation with the concentrations of CO2 in our atmosphere.
I’d rather invest in polygraph machines and see which climate scientists are willing to be hooked up to them.
If you have one side telling the truth and the other telling the exact opposite are we all supposed to accept the resulting middle ground as an accurate representation of the truth?
I suggest none of this is even necessary. Simply take away all government funding and let the results of private funded research lead the way. Now, I am not saying to follow the results blindly but I think a truer outcome will result because it is likely that private money will not be wasted on someone chasing rainbows just to get a paycheck. And, when having to compete for that private funding instead of receiving handouts from the gravy train, it should remove much of the political falsehoods that are being touted as real science.
I’m so clueless. Apparently Mosher and others know of some formal description for red/blue teams and I don’t.
I thought it would be something I’d like to do if I ever stumble across the winning ticket for Megabucks:
Start a climate science foundation that likes to write checks with the goal of pursuing scientific inquiry to learn how the world works (as opposed to supporting the political spin of the day).
For research projects, assemble two teams of researchers. Assuming that all researchers are biased, put those who think Earth is warming faster/cooling slower than it may be on the red (warm) team. Put those who think the opposite on the blue team.
Let each team know about the other, maybe even socialize or at least pass on interesting data sets and hypotheses. (Of course, given some team makeups, “socializing” could mean a brawl, so let’s not encourage that!) Ideally they’ll come up with reports with the same conclusions. That likely won’t happen, so then put both teams together to write a final report, guided by some dictatorial scientist/editor who somehow doesn’t have a measurable bias. Then feed it to peer review.
If the result is a paper where everyone agrees, fine. It could be a paper where there’s no agreement between the two teams, that’s also fine. Those papers ought to provide direction for future research.
Comments above seem to imply one team represents conventional wisdom, one represents people looking outside of the box, or at least challengers to the conventional wisdom. I’d much prefer a coequal approach with the goal of understanding how this planet of ours ticks.
I think Samenow wrote a perfectly reasonable article, and Hansen is just being pedantic. No one cares whether “re-litigating” or “debate” was used instead of “discussion.” Samenow got the story across. Find something useful to do, Kip.
Jim Carson ==> You make the same mistake that Samenow does — totally fail to understand what a Red Team Blue Team exercise is.
Take the advice I give Samenow: “Samenow should have looked it up in the Wiki. [If you don’t already realize why I say Samenow is clueless, you should read the Wiki, read Dr. Curry’s essay linked above and do a Google on Red Teams.]”
Since carbon dioxide is the issue, let me offer the true story of what you should know about it.
********************************************************************************
What is there to say about carbon dioxide? It has been disappearing so that he present day carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is only one sixteenth part of CO2 we used to have in the Cambrian, 500 million years ago. Understanding why this happens is quite simple: the internal workings of the planet earth are slowing down, same way it happened to Mars. Its giant volcanoes that once belched carbon dioxide are now silent. A linear connection from carbon dioxide recorded in the the Cambrian to the point that represents the present day can be extrapolated to show that carbon dioxide will disappear entirely from the earth in only 13 more million years. CO2 is plant food and plants will disappear in half that time.And along with plants, all higher life forms, including us, will also disappear. The only effect your silly decarbonation will have is to slightly decrease the time left for us on this earth. I suggest switching all funds assigned to climate research now over to a maximum effort to discover inhabitable planets we can reach. And all non-research climate funds go to geo-engineering research. It must be done immediately because the fate of mankind is too important to let politicians screw up the effort to bail us out of this Armageddon trap.
P.S.: Put someone on to determine an accurate SD for the timeline.
o
*********************************************************
CO2 is the pretense, not the issue at all.
Global order is the issue and who benefits from a particular managed structure.
The bottom line is that the Alarmist side are liars, only pretending to do science. They have too much at stake. They are depending on the CAGW gravy to keep rolling along.
You can’t discuss anything with liars.
The trouble is Bruce, you are correct on the basics, is that most skeptics conceded.to the false legitimacy of the AGW premise and then hoped rational thinking would save the debate. If it weren’t politics at the core that might have been a fair estimate.
The great lesson here was pretending a political agenda was “science” to begin with. About of 1/3 of high school graduates can’t find Germany on a world map without word labels. Almost half think a large rock falls faster then a small one. Many can’t name the sides of the U.S. Civil War in the most generic way, North and South? That’s sad but skeptics thinking to their grave the climate debate is a complex series of technical disputes over human CO2 contributions and resulting impact is worse then sad. It’s obtuse to the Nth degree.
Pruitt at best was just trolling the Blue Team and they so deserve trolling. The idea a serious debate structure is going to be organized to finally win the science debate should be a segment on Watters World;
The Red vs. Blue was a quick tidbit to remind observers that there really is a Blue Team that doesn’t care at all about anyone who disagrees with the 40 year + carbon regulatory rationalized fake science. Unfortunately, snark isn’t going to win the climate war either. Do people really think Blue would show up and play by fair debate rules? Skeptics? Committed to losing since the mid-80’s at least.
The high horse of shouting “science” in a movie theater has been figured out. The world just isn’t as gullible thanks in part to the academic depravity of the climate CAGW advocate community. I’m glad to see Pruitt trolling and labeling them as the “blue team” which pretty much sums up blue state dead end thinking around the climate agenda.
Of course calling it globalist, a collectivist proxy descended from Soviet levels of science care taking would be even more accurate and withdrawal from the entire UN Climate Framework cabal the more correct policy in response. This is still kiss-in-the-ring banter on the margins. Blue will be back on the “integrity of science” shtick in no time flat. Red will be smeared as “big oil” shills, Holocaust Deniers and all the rest. In short, a re-run we’ve all seen a thousand times over 40+ years.
Instead of incremental shrillness why not just get to total honesty?;
Denounce the consensus as corrupt, denounce the UN Climate Framework as anti-American rubbish which it is. The relatively meager spawn of Paris was low hanging fruit. The whole monster must be destroyed and the is the sham of the IPCC agenda science spun from the 70’s and 80’s greenshirt appeasement and various cronies of many stripes must come to an end. With extreme prejudice. It would be strong optics for Team Trump to watch a real meltdown of the armchair Marxist academic left, the core of climate policy advocates. He should welcome the full conflict and end the wishy washy hairsplitting of accepting base anti-CO2 dogma while trying to control policy excess that results. CAGW are make-believe claims. Then slash and burn all crony green subsidies, purge NOAA and NASA of junk science and deploy a commission into academic science corruption of which climate “science” is shinning example.
Instead Pruitt’s boss is floating “renegotiation” of a destructive Paris “deal” only validating a fraudulent underlying “science”. The same kind of thinking as the many congressmen floating the idea of US and UN foreign aid to a failing Soviet Union. This went on in the late 70’s and through the 80’s as well.
As Reagan best summarized the Cold War outcome; “We win, they lose”. It should be the same here. CAGW climate fraud supporters lose, actual science and individual rights supporters win. The blue team is only going to smear and defraud further, they will never defend their science since it’s opinion not science proof to begin with. They’ll never validate others views outside their own. Like I said, this is a re-run.
Is this board under special moderation for some reason?
[No, why? . . . mod]
Took a long time to show my entries with many other posts in between.
https://www.eenews.net/stories/1060052668
EPA downsizing, started in 2013.
How’s it going to work?
I can only see red/blue turning into the (party) political bun-fight it already is. Who would be the umpire, who would judge the winner?
It can only be a further leap into The Swamp.
Problem is, skeptics and other non-believers are too late to the party. The horse is well and truly biolted.
Someone, right at the very outset should have has the bravery, guts and self-belief to stand up and ask any one of 3 questions
– Just How Does This GHGE Work?
– How can anyone say the climate is changing without really and actually quantifying it?
– How does temperature relate to climate, esp absolute temps rather than temp differences between places?
But nobody did. The house was full of gutless wonders who didn’t want to look, or were scared of, being foolish.
It takes a Big Man to admit a mistake but, to actually do so, enhances his ‘bigness’. It a very (for lack of a better word) attractive trait.
But the Snake Oil Salesman entranced everyone and it’s too late now.
Just like Montreal. No-one dared stand up and ask the ‘stupid’ question.
Not least because exactly the same ‘scaredness’ or fear of looking foolish, that let the thing get started is now keeping it alive. The warmists are scared of being shown to be wrong, to be made to look stupid and so will do almost anything to maintain their ‘dignity’
Stupid human pride
How would it work? Similar to the old Climate Dialogue site, but fancier.
Problem is, skeptics and other non-believers are too late to the party. The horse is well and truly biolted.
Wrong analogy. An Innocent Man has been convicted and is in jail. Should the Defense give up?
This explains a lot.
“The Secret History of the Iraq War”
Youssef Bodansky
“In Intelligence, this has fairly recently led to a US President being advised to go to war, and doing so, over the alleged existence of weapons of mass destruction, which were figments of groupthink among America’s intelligence analysts.”
I realize this is a very common belief, but it’s completely wrong. The WMD definitely existed (just ask the residents of Halabja, many of whom are horribly deformed from a sarin attack) and the regime was definitely not complying with the required effort to identify and destroy all WMD and WMD programs, the problem was these more or less perfectly obvious facts became conflated with the idea that we would find stockpiles of WMD after invasion which didn’t necessarily follow for any number of reasons. A Red Team exercise might have exposed some doubts about certain particular claims but it wouldn’t have changed the thrust of the conclusions at all.
Also, note we were pretty much at war with Iraq from roughly 1991-2012, whether we liked it or not. The 1991 decision can be criticized on any number of valid grounds, the 2003 decision simply acknowledged the reality that the decision to stop the tanks outside Baghdad and negotiate a settlement was just as dumb an idea as doing so with the Axis Powers would have been in the 1940s.
Yeah, Bush 41 left some unfinished business in the Gulf.
This is what a carping anti-war left does to the common sense of some Republicans. Bush 41’s desire to satisfy the anti-war Liberals caused him to withdraw prematurely befoe the job was done.
Drawing a parallel between bad intelligence in Iraq and bad climate science may be a good analogy. In both cases, politicians got in the way of the problem solvers and changed the rules of the game.
My take on how we got to this mess begins in 1992. The change from politicians relying on science to guide environmental policies to one of politicians manipulating science to achieve political objectives began in at the United Nations meeting in Rio in 1992. That meeting produced Rio Declaration Principle 15 (now called the Precautionary Principle), which states: “Where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to prevent environmental degradation.”
Politicians have interpreted Principle 15 to mean that science can simply be by-passed when formulating policy. If one can hypothesize a one percent possibility of out-of-control global warming, measures should be taken to prevent global warming. The cost-effective part of the Principle is ignored. The result has been an incredible increase in environmental regulations not based on science. The one percent solution replaced the scientific method both in Iraq and in climate science.
The fallacy in this application of the Principle is that the probability of environmental issues associated with a warming earth may be no greater than the probability of environmental issues associated with a cooling earth. Policies that might be appropriate for the warming case would be diametrically opposite to those appropriate for the cooling case. Under this reality, applying the Precautionary Principle and promulgating any environmental regulation makes no sense whatsoever. The damage that would be done by acting based on the wrong premise, a warming or a cooling planet, nullifies arguments to take any action until the science is right.
No, this mess begins on or before June 23, 1988 at the Wirth / Hansen Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee hearing…. You know — the one where Tim Wirth shut off the air conditioning.
Obviously, the political machinations began before this public date… But June 23, 1988 is a key date.
All right, look, kids,
This IPCC Climate Sensitivity, either Transient or Equilibrium, is based on the premise that the 0.7 Degrees C warming from 1880, if it can be believed at all due to the hideously inaccurate nature of the so-called Global Average Temperature, assumes that all “Warming” from somewhere around 1880, if there was any at all, is entirely due to the increase in CO2 in our atmosphere.
I tried to calculate it from First Principles, completely impossible, requires this assumption, except, the climate changes by itself year to year. Is this not QED??? My high school physics professor loved it when I quoted this Latin stuff, Quod Era Demonstrandum, There I Have Demonstrated It.
This assumption has no basis in fact, there is no proof, might be, might not be. Since Global Average Temperature was completely impossible to calculate until recently, all these shrill voices calling for the destruction of our modern economy are revealed as Leftist Fools.
Mosher and Stokes are invited to refute, otherwise invited to SHUT UP.
“Climate Change” is now a propaganda term for runaway global warming that will end life on Earth, caused by humans burning fossil fuels.
There is no science to back up that claim.
Absolutely none.
There are many theories about what causes global warming — none remotely close to being proven true.
Since no one knows what causes global warming, there can be no (process) models or (meaningful) predictions — there are just opinions disguised as models, and wild guesses disguised as predictions.
The fact that there have been 30 years of WRONG predictions/wild guesses makes the popular runaway global warming from CO2 + the positive feedback “tripler” … seem to be nonsense.
What purpose would a Blue versus Red Team serve when neither team knows exactly what causes climate change, and neither team can predict the future climate?
Assuming the current government bureaucrat “scientists” would make up the blue team:
— They own the historical data, and have already “adjusted”, infilled and manipulated it to show more warming — and they probably “lost” the raw data.
— They are very experienced with BSing about the coming climate change catastrophe and some have experience with questioning by Congress and speaking on TV.
What makes anyone think even a very scientifically literate Red team could convince anyone the Blue Team, backed up by 30 years of climate change propaganda, was wrong?
We have had continuous natural climate change for 4.5 billion years.
(1) The Blue Team wants us to believe natural climate change suddenly stopped in 1940 and man made CO2 took over, with no explanation of why that happened, how it could happen, and no evidence in the temperature record that anything unusual happened.
(2) And in the “era of manmade CO2” since 1940, we had negative correlation of CO2 and temperature from 1940 to 1975, positive correlation of CO2 and temperature from 1975 to 2000, and no correlation of CO2 and temperature from 2000 to 2015.
The Blue Team would be based on a theory, with no scientific proof, that leads to a future catastrophe that is always coming in the future … and we have been waiting 30 years so far … and the climate keeps getting better.
There is no science and no reasoning behind 30 years of claims of a coming runaway warming — no amount of science and reasoning can change opinions that were never based on science in the first place.
What we need and don’t have is a leader such as Trump or Pruitt willing to stand up and say there is no scientific proof that CO2 controls the climate and the flat temperature trend in the past 15 years is evidence of that.
You can not refute a secular religion like the “CO2 Obsession Climate Change Cult” when people in authority remain silent.
Red Team + Blue Team = total waste of Green money.
Climate blog for non-scientists
http://www.elOnionBloggle.Blogspot.com