Guest essay by Michel de Rougemont
Heretic? You’re welcome!
Hysteric? Please cool down!
We hear that global warming is highly dependent on the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, this gas that is required to sustain life on Earth and that is also emitted when burning flammable stuff, such as wood, coal, mineral and organic oils, or methane.
If you are told “this depends on that”, you are invited to examine available data observed over time to draw a representation of this on the y-axis vs. that on the x-axis.
So, in all logic, you should be interested in a representation of the temperature evolution in dependence of the atmospheric CO2 concentration.
Yes, you should, but, looking hard into the latest IPCC Report (the fifth of Working Group I, to be precise), no diagram of that sort can be found among its 1535 pages.
So, asks the judge: what is the evidence that the victim was attacked by the suspect? And the expert is not able, or willing, to provide any evidence. Is he actually an expert, or an incompetent prosecutor?
Among the available observed climate data are the so-called temperature anomalies (Ta), summarized as global monthly means, and the atmospheric CO2 concentrations ([CO2]) over the same time span. But time line diagrams show us only that, since the beginning of the industrial era, the global mean temperature went up by 0.8 to 1 °C, and [CO2] increased from 280 ppm to 405 ppm.
So, what? The suspect was there while the victim developed fever, is it enough evidence of culpability? As for any circumstantial fact, the answer must obviously be no. Presence is required, but is not sufficient to prove anything.
The next question is then: how fast was warming going on when [CO2] was low, and when it is now high? If a correlation can be shown, then a stronger case against the alleged culprit could be opened.
Using a simple spreadsheet to calculate these changes, and smoothing them over a 7-year filter[1] so that a cloud of data points can be seen as a trend line, the following diagram is obtained:
Zero on the y-axis means that neither warming nor cooling takes place.
At high [CO2] some cooling was observed, at lower [CO2] high warming rates were observed.
Honestly, no statistically valid correlation tying warming rate to [CO2] can be derived from it.
Sorry, no statistical significance, no hint of a proof!
Why do the IPCC experts avoid looking at such simple relationship? I can only guess, and my guess is that they are either blinded by their greenhouse assumption, thus faithfully ignoring any other indices, or they deliberately hide what would prevent them to obtain a capital punishment sentence. In any case they behave away from any scientific honesty.
Mainstream yes, but a highly polluted stream.
This is all the available observational data; any other relationships are conjectures, however plausible they might be, no evidence. Therefore, all possible heretical interpretations must be made, for example that one: from all possible known and unknown causes of the observed global warming, the anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions may have, or not, a contributing role. No scepticism, no advocacy, no unsustainable allegation, plain factual view.
I have only one questions to ask to all mainstream climate-experts, and their gullible followers in the public, the media, and in the political world:
What observational evidence can you provide to sustain the allegation that temperature is “very likely” and mostly driven by anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions?
Notes:
Originally published here: http://blog.mr-int.ch/?p=4150&lang=en
Contrary to almost all mainstream climate scientists whose sustained professional life depends on an on-going climate alarmism, including peer reviewers, I have no conflict of interest in relation with this subject.
My sources are all publicly available data series.
I can provide my spreadsheets to anyone who asks politely via the contact page of this blog.
[1] Why seven years?
Because it’s uneven, large enough but not too long, and it is already documented in a famous book.
On the rate of Warming vs CO2 it would be interesting to see marked major volcanic eruptions, El Ninos/La Ninas and the introductions of clean air acts and chinese industrialisation. Also a rolling average of the data so we can see if on average warming is accelerating.
Such a lot of new ideas on this site. “We” can’t mean us, humans, humanity. It means the royal “me”. So. Humans won’t switch from fossil fuels for hundreds of years, if ever. No possibility of running short then? Downwelling longwave radiation doesn’t heat the oceans. I’m not sure why, but no doubt there’ll be a fantastic explanation forthcoming. Learning is one of the great experiences of life.
No, we have abundant fossil fuels for two hundred plus years. However we have abundant nuclear fuel for many thousands of years, and the technology to use the fuel we now consider waste.
Per the oceans I already explained above. CAGW theory demands the warming START in the troposphere where it is MIA, therefore whatever surface warming we have had is not from CO2.
Also regarding ocean heating, SW radiation penetrates up to 800 feet below the surface, thus has a residence time and potential accumalation of days, years, decades and centuries.
On the otherhand, LWIR is 100% absorbed in the first few microns of the ocean skin, and simply accelerates the water cycle, using its energy in evaporation, increased conduction, increased reduction of energy at elevation to space, and reduction of SW insolation into the oceans.
Yes, DSR warms the ocean. But you don’t think that DLR would slow the surface cooling?
Insulation around a water heater works to prevent heat loss due to density. Problem is, to have the same density factor for a water heater insulator in the atmosphere would take a CO2 concentration of over 40,000 ppm. At 400 ppm the effect is roughly equivalent to encasing your water heater in tissue paper approximately twice the thickness of a human hair
It is not a question of can LWIR slow the surface cooling. The much better question is “How much does x quantity of LWIR warm the surface vs am equal quantity of SW radiation.
As energy is eternal amything in a radiative balance can only change its energy one of two ways, by a change in input, or a xhange in residence time of energy in the system. The residence time of LWIR being 100% absorbed at the ocean skin surface, phase changed into WV, and carrying that energy via convection to altitude where it can now radiate to space, while simultaneously BLOCKING vastly longer residence time SW radiation fron reaching the oceans means it has much less then 1% of the warming potential of an equal amount ( watts per sq M) of SW radiation.
The truth is EVERY WL of incoming insolation must be evalulated based on the residence time of said WL of insolation. Not all photons are equal.
Fantastic explanation to order: IR radiation in the CO2 active bands can penetrate the ocean surface far less than the thickness of a human hair. In the rare instances where the atmosphere is warmer than the ocean and the downwelling IR can “stick”, the warmed water is at the top of the column, and has a very strong tendency to STAY at the top.
Thus, the situation quickly reverts to normal where the ocean is warmer than the atmosphere, and net energy transfer is from the ocean to the atmosphere.
The lower panel below (Singh et al 2006) shows sensible heat flux, the kind thermometers measure, from the ocean to the atmosphere. Only the brightest white areas of the ocean receive energy from the atmosphere.
How does insulation around a hot water cylinder work? Just a thought.
It works by interfering with convection in the surrounding air.
Insulation around a water heater works to prevent heat loss due to density. Problem is, to have the same density factor for a water heater insulator in the atmosphere would take a CO2 concentration of over 40,000 ppm. At 400 ppm the effect is roughly equivalent to encasing your water heater in tissue paper approximately twice the thickness of a human hair
The density of “insulation” in a Dewar flask is ZERO
That is because a Dewar Flask insulates with a vaccuum
The longer you study a subject,
the more you realize you do not know yet.
Much of what you learn in life is that
there are many things you previously “learned”
that were not true.
This site does not have “new” ideas.
It has old, proven ideas, and great skepticism, formerly called “science”.
No wild guess computer games predicting a climate catastrophe 30 years in a row here
… they are not real MODELS after 30 years of WRONG predictions — they are computer games
The so-calleed models are merely complex versions of the personal opinions of the people who programmed them (goobermint bureaucrat (non)scientists who would lose their jobs if they ever
opined that their models might have made wrong predictions 30 years in a row
because CO2 does NOT control the climate … just like in the past 4.5 billion years)
This site also has common sense.
— When people predict the future climate, or future anything else,
some of us have enough wisdom to know they are very likely to be wrong,
especially when no one even knows what causes climate change!
When a politician predicts a coming catastrophe
unless everyone does as he says,
we know that’s an old strategy to gain power,
whether the boogeyman is “communists”,
“weapons of mass destruction”
or runaway global warming.
Well, I have learned 2 things reading this thread.
1) Several people here seem to think that wet sidewalks cause it to rain.
My favorite example of the stupidity of thinking that if two variables both rise over time then one causes the other comes from the 70s which was a period of very high inflation. Both the salaries of kindergarten teachers and the price of whiskey were rising rapidly. So, obviously, the kindergarten teachers where drinking much more and causing the rise of whiskey prices!
2) Many people here think that CO2 can make the temperature go up on this planet.
In spite of all data showing that temperatures go up first and then after a lag we see CO2 go up — regardless of that — people still believe CO2 causes the earth to warm. As someone now banned from this site used to say; they believe cold things can heat up hot things. (I knew in the 70s that taking thermodynamics would someday cause me to be out of step with the modern world)
The CO2 delusion has to be the biggest delusion in history. (yes, I know that is a very high bar)
I thought laboratory and other experiment showed CO2 absorbed and re-emitted LWR? Following on from work by Arrhenius in 1896 or thereabouts. And someone checked this out in the atmosphere? Feldman?
Nothing you have written on this thread shows any indication that you have thought about these issues at all. I really don’t care that you wallow in ignorance. (the handle is a dead give-away)
Formerly Stephen Hawking
The laboratory experiments are not conclusive,
but suggest mild warming from CO2.
A + 1 degree average temperature increase in 200 years
with CO2 rising 2ppm per year = ho hum!
(assuming people are still burning coal and other fossil fuels the whole time)
In real life there is mining and extraction of fossil fuels.
In real life there is refining of oil into gasoline and other fuels.
Then the fuels are burned, adding MANY chemicals into the air, not only CO2,
including soot that blocks sunlight in cities … and also falls on the ice and snow in the Arctic,
where the darker snow and ice then absorbs more solar energy than pristine snow and ice would
… and that might explain why there has been so much warming in the Arctic
… and almost no Antarctica warming (something that would NOT happen with
greenhouse warming)
In addition, there are known man made changes to the average temperature:
Measurement errors, inadvertent or deliberate:
— 1800’s thermometers tended to read low (exaggerating the warming since then),
— Heating effects of economic growth near surface thermometers
— Repeated arbitrary “adjustments” to the historical data increasing warming,
— Wild guess data used for grids where no real data were available (majority of earth’s surface),
easily biased by bureaucrats who predicted, and want to see, more global warming, and
— A change of sea temperature measurement methodology caused a one-time temperature increase
All of this adds up to MANY possible causes of measured climate change
(and some we may not yet know about) — some natural, and others man made.
No one has any idea what causes climate change in any meaningful detail.
No one knows what a “normal” average temperature is.
No one can honestly claim that the average temperature trend
in the past 150 years has been unusual, much less “bad”, or “dangerous”.
The warming since 1880 has been mild — possibly just measurement errors.
Unlike the expected continuous “global” warming,
affecting both poles the most,
along with a “hot spot” six miles up over the tropics,
that would be a signature of greenhouse warming.
here is what we have actually had:
— Many decades with no warming (such as early 2000s to 2015),
or cooling (1940 to 1975),
— The northern half of the Northern Hemisphere has had much more warming
than the southern half of the Southern Hemisphere.
— No tropical “hot spot” ever found.
We are still told CO2 controls the climate, yet:
1940 to 1975 — CO2 up, average temperature down (negative correlation)
1975 to early 2000s — CO2 up, temperature up (positive correlation)
early 2000s to 2015 — CO2 up, temperature flat (no correlation)
Anyone who thinks, or says, climate science is settled, is an idiot.
And there are a lot of climate idiots out there,
including Al “The Blimp” Gore!
Markstoval,
A little over the top…
That two variables go up over time may be because they:
1. are uncorrelated and it is just coincidence
2. are both driven by a common cause
3. influence each other.
In the case of CO2 there is (at least theoretical) evidence for 3., even in both directions.
In spite of all data showing that temperatures go up first
Which is evidently false: CO2 follows temperature at all time scales from seasonal to multi-millennia, but you have zero evidence that any natural process caused the 110 ppmv increase over the past 165 years, which obviously leads temperature as the current CO2 levels in the atmosphere should be ~290 ppmv for the current average ocean surface temperature per Henry’s law…
Ferdinand,
No, you are incorrect in that assertion. At the end of the Little Ice Age around 1870 temperatures started to rise. There was no man-made CO2 being released then. As far as we know there was no increase in CO2 due to any cause. Temperatures went up, and then later on so did CO2. (a lag)
I will agree that there are factors that cause temperatures to rise first and then that causes CO2 to go up. That would be more #2 than #3 though.
CO2, on net, may have a cooling effect but it does not warm the planet. Someday mankind will realize that.
See: US Standard Atmosphere for much better way to look at the problem.
” around 1870 temperatures started to rise. There was no man-made CO2 being released then.”
…
James Watt patented the steam engine in 1781.
..
“deep shaft mining in the UK began to develop extensively in the late 18th century” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_coal_mining#Pre_1900
Engleburn:
Please add
4 Measurement error(s)
5 Some combination of (1), (2), (3) and (4)
Underseas volcanoes add CO2 of unknown quantities.
CO2 measurement methodology changed in 1960 from a questionable
accuracy ice core proxy to good accuracy real time measurements,
with Michael Mann style data splicing of both data sets.
There were 80,000 real time CO2 chemical measurements pre-1960
— has anyone tried to replicate ANY of the old measurements to see the CO2
changes over time using the SAME measurement methodology?
I know the old measurement locations were generally too close to CO2 sources,
but they are real time data — perhaps a few local measurements could be replicated,
even if the locations are not at all useful to determine a global average.
I have concern with such great trust of proxy data for CO2
Especially when some people claim ice cores are the perfect proxy for CO2 measurements …
while average temperature estimates from the same ice cores are worthless?
That doesn’t make sense.
Nor does your claim that exactly 290 ppm would be the natural CO2 level — not because Henry’s law is over 200 years old, but because accurate sea surface temperature measurements are difficult, if not impossible — given all the different SST measurement methodologies that have been used .. compiled with each other … with unknown margins of error.
I think it would be more accurate to merely state
that roughly one quarter of the CO2 in the air
is likely to have come from humans burning fossil fuels
— is “290 ppm” false precision?
My current dream is doubling the CO2 level and further greening the Earth.
I’m confident tripling the CO2 level would be even better for green plants.
It’s hard to imagine something that benefits green plants
would harm humans and animals
“So, what? The suspect was there while the victim developed fever,”
No, the victim came out of hypothermia.
I think the silly idea the so-called “scientists” promote is that CO2 is the forcing and the warming releases more CO2 – outgassing from the oceans, which the acts as a feedback. So CO2 is a forcing and a feedback. Or something like that.
Indeed, but what I meant was temperatures have returned to a normal from a cold period (mini ice age) as opposed to warming above supposed normal temps. A fever is above average while hypothermia is below average.
The silly idea is that anyone with sense
could “stick his or her head out a window”
and realize the climate in 2017 is wonderful .
If you lived in the same place for many decades
you might have noticed nighttime lows are not quite as
cold as in the 1970s and 1980s —
there is no bad news from climate change
except in the warped minds of some people who are never happy
— satellites even show the earth is greening from more CO2
— some brown areas are now green
— so our plants are happier too
— along with the people and animals who eat them !
The silly idea is that the harmless plant food CO2 is really an evil satanic gas ….
… but gross air, water and land pollution in China and India don’t matter
… even though there is so much air pollution
in China that some eventually reaches our own left coast
(California, Oregon and Washington) .
But I guess that doesn’t matter?
The big question every one avoids is how is it the Vikings were farming in Greenland in an area today that still will not support this endeavour? Granted this was a short time period but it does show us that natural fluctuations are extreme and we simply do not have the data to “prove” conclusively. Unless perhaps this was the result of their extreme flatulence….not to mention one volcano can produce more CO2 than humans can in years
Oh I got that wrong too. I thought CO2 from human activity was a hundred times that from volcanoes.
You are correct, Ed is wrong.
Norse dairy farming in Greenland lasted more than 400 years.
Actually, we don’t know human v. volcanic sources of CO2, since most volcanoes are underwater and haven’t even been discovered.
Well simple calculations show human activity accounts for more than enough CO2 to raise the level 40% from 280 at industrialisation to >400 now. I think I read somewhere that so-called “scientists” showed isotope studies found the carbon was from fossil fuels.
Isotope studies aren’t dispositive because there are other sources of 13C than human activity.
So there is not “more than enough” to show that the whole alleged increase from 280 ppm to 400 ppm is due to humans. Most of it however probably is. Science just can’t say with any precision how much.
Note that in the unusually warm, super El Nino year of 2016, CO2 increased by about four ppm rather than the usual lately two ppm. This suggests that perhaps only half of the observed increase is from human activity and much of the rest from outgassing from oceans warmer now on balance than they were in AD 1850, at the end of the LIA.
But in any case, your comment wasn’t responsive to the issue of comparing man-made to volcanic sources of CO2. The amount of emissions by humans can be estimated with acceptable precision. From volcanic sources, not so much, since we don’t even know how many there are.
Gabro,
Near all inorganic CO2 has a 13C/12C ratio of around zero per mil (a standard originally based on some carbonate rock). That is the case for (deep) oceans, most carbonate deposits, volcanoes,…
Near all organic CO2 has a 13C/12C ratio of (far) below zero per mil, thus containing less 13C in ratio to 12C. That ranges between -24 per mil (vegetation, average fossil fuels) and -40 per mil (natural gas) and below.
The atmosphere is in between at currently -8 per mil and rapidly dropping thanks to fossil fuel burning.
The only alternative would be that a lot of forest are burning down lately (near half of all forests on earth!), but as the oxygen balance – and satellites did show: vegetation is currently a growing sink for CO2, not a source, the earth is greening…
In 2016, human emissions were at around 4.5 ppmv, increase in the atmosphere around 3 ppmv. Still nature was a net sink for ~1.5 ppmv CO2, despite the increased temperature… That is the case for every year since 1960, thus it looks like that near all CO2 increase is man-made…
Some of the largest volcanoes and volcanic fields are monitored and what they spew is measured by measuring the CO2/SO2 ratio in the plumes and SO2 in the surroundings, as that is much easier to monitor without other interfering sinks/sources. Here for mount Etna, one of the largest continuous CO2 emitters on earth:
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v351/n6325/abs/351387a0.html
Extrapolated to all known large to small surface volcanic systems together, that gives less than 1% of human emissions per year…
Even the Pinatubo, one of a magnitude larger than all other volcanoes together, caused a drop in the CO2 rate of change, partly by lowering temperatures, partly by enhancing photosynthesis due to scattered sunlight…
Underwater volcanoes play little role: as long as the gases don’t reach the atmosphere, these are dissolved in the enormous mass of CO2 derivatives already present in the deep oceans…
If you like your climate, you can keep your climate.
I’ve heard something like this before … and was left disappointed.
Michel de Rougemont, this is quite a wild straw man. You are plotting rate of temperature increase against absolute CO2 concentration to hide correlation. Why?
Imagine any other two variables that depend on each other (beer and blood-alcohol?) and you will see where you’ve gone wrong. To get more drunk, is it necessary to drink the beer faster and faster?
IPCC AR5 TS.6 Key Uncertainties.
Self explanatory.
Nicholas, I keep a hard copy of TS.6 for true believers to get mad about when I point it out. It doesn’t change anyone’s mind because climate is a political issue. It is fun, though, watching the fireworks.
Gabro. Do you think all the investigations into “climategate” were rigged. I know Prof Michael Kelly FRS was involved in one investigation, and he doesn’t think we need do anything about so-called “global warming”. So why didn’t he find the cheating you talk about? Maybe he’s not very bright – he’s at Cambridge University.
Academic and government bureaucrats cover each other’s ar$es. It’s as simple as that.
Regardless of their opinions about “climate change”, the Old Boys’ Club will stick together to keep the trough taps of government-funded “science” going.
There is absolutely no doubt that goobermint bureaucrat computer gamers
and other so-called “scientists” have predicted the future temperature,
and they also own the actuals for the historical temperature,
which they have repeatedly “adjusted” so the historical surface temperatures
now show double the warming they showed in 1999 … in spite of the fact that
the average temperature barely changed since the early 2000s.
The Michael Mann (probably your hero) hockey stick chart spliced two completely different sources of temperature data (a proxy not useful for temperature data, but never mind that) and he did not show the overlap where the proxy data showed cooling, and the real time measurements showed warming.
He truncated ONLY the proxy data that contradicted his intended “propaganda”, and we skeptics found out, and his chart went from the highlight of the next IPCC report … to never being mentioned again!
Al “The Blimp” Gore probably still uses the chart, but he’s the Bozo the Clown of climate science (which is mainly politics..
“Climate scientists” investigating fellow “climate scientists” … and you see no conflict of interest problem?
How about Mike Pense “investigating” Donald Trump?
How about Loretta Lynch “investigating” Hillary Clinton?
Try to get a doctor in your state to testify in a malpractice suit
against any other doctor in your state!
Oh my … a dishonest “investigation” is very possible.
But we don’t need no stinkin’ investigation …
How about YOU actually READING some of the ClimateGate emails by yourself
and stop parroting what people of your political party tell you to think about them?
I know that independent thought is difficult for members of the leftist borg
— but we libertarians
prefer investigating ourselves,
not parroting like you!
I don’t know much. How I envy the experts on here, they seem so sure their opinions are correct.
And there’s the corundum: Nearly every working and publishing climate scientist on the planet accepts human activity is causing global warming via the greenhouse effect. So what are the experts on here expert in?
You are sorely mistaken. The best, senior climatologists and atmospheric and oceanic physicists and chemists are skeptics. So-called “climate scientists” are rent-seeking computer gamers and mathematicians, and not very good ones.
Besides which, you’ve committed the fallacy of argument from authority. Just the facts matter, not the initials behind a person’s name. Need I yet again post Dr. Feynman’s lecture on the scientific method?
The argument from authority is not a formal fallacy. Generally it means searching until you find an opinion that suits your purpose. Often just one self-anointed expert, who disagrees with other experts – that’s why he is chosen. Lawyers do this to throw doubt on the evidence and bamboozle juries.
What is important in science is the balance of informed opinion. Scientists work and collect evidence, and offer explanations. That is evaluated by other experts. Eventually a consensus may form, which offers us the best view of reality. For non-experts to defer to what the experts have decided is not an appeal to authority. It is what rational people do.
Richard Feynman knew about the greenhouse effect and greenhouses gases. There is no evidence he disagreed that more CO2 would cause Earth to retain more energy.
What is the scientific method? Is it defined in a book, like a bible? Isn’t it what the global community of scientists, as represented by the Royal Society, National Academy of Scientists, American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Physical Society, American Chemical Society etc etc etc decide? That’s what my dad says anyway. He knows a bit about physics.
Really? Appeal to authority is old (argumentum ad verecundiam [sp?]). It amounts to quoting Doctor Whoosis as dispositive, and not using Woosis’ actual arguments or facts.
Additionally, Gabro, the “data” other climate scientists use to predict wrack and ruin come from wildly varying interpretations of IPCC climate model outputs. RCP 8.5 (the misnamed “business as usual” scenario) comes from demented imaginations of a dystopian world with out-of-control population, extreme poverty, widespread environmental degradation and other unlikely outcomes.
Also, IPCC AR5 had to reduce midterm model “projections” because the internal workings of the models egregiously manipulated real world physics so as to greatly overstate likely warming.
No, Stepanie, the “balance of informed opinion” means absolutely nothing in science. It is almost always wrong. The whole point of the scientific method is to challenge consensus.
All that matters is whether your hypothesis can make testable predictions capable of being shown false, and that your results are repeatable. Thus you need to make all your work available, instead of trying to hide it, like Jones of HadCRU.
Feynman: “Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts.”
CACA is thus anti-scientific.
One of the problems with today’s climate meme is that the theory was developed during a a short period of general warming, Gabro. It caught on and all the late 20th century data seemed to support it. A bunch of the world’s politicians, NGOs and various rent-seekers jumped on the band wagon as it fit their power and money needs. I know; as a renewables developer I was an ardent supporter of portfolio standards, mandates, must-take and the like when lobbying politicians.
Come the 21st Century and early skeptics started picking at the foundations. Since CAGW had become “revealed truth,” the backlash was overwhelming. Everything contrary was denied. Reputations and careers were destroyed.
Now, through the 21st Century, contrary evidence keeps piling up. Alas, the beneficiaries of the meme continue to fight tooth and nail. As portions of the dogma are proven false, ideologues deny all proof and search for ways to ostracize “deniers.” Weird “studies” are made to show the emperor does have clothes.
This will continue until temperatures in the 2020’s reveal some sort of a denouement. One way or the other or something else.
Actually Stephanie, Feynman’s sister is a CACA-skeptic scientist. As is his former colleague Freeman Dyson, academic heir to Einstein.
The scientific method doesn’t have a Bible. It’s a process, well understood since at least AD 1543. To the extent that it’s codified, please see Karl Popper.
And his prominent physics colleagues Will Happer, like Dyson, also at Princeton, Richard Lindzen of MIT and Nobel Laureate Ivor Giaever, among numerous others.
But they are real scientists, unlike Hansen, Schmidt and Mann, who aren’t climatologists, as were genuine scientists Bill Grey, the Father of Hurricanology and Reid Bryson, the Father of Climatology.
Hanson, Schmidt, and Mann are more like Climastrologists than climatologists with failed prediction after failed prediction
As to
There is also no evidence that he thought that additional energy retained by the Earth would be detrimental or catastrophic
There is every reason to believe that Richard Feynman would have been a skeptic, like his astrophysicist sister:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joan_Feynman
Any real scientist has to be a CACA skeptic, since there is no evidence in favor of the CACA hypothesis and all the evidence in the world against it.
Just a few examples showing that in every century, the “balance of expert opinion”, ie consensus, has always been wrong:
In the 16th century, the consensus was that Earth lies at rest at the center of the “universe”, while the sun and planets orbit it in perfect circles. The consensus was also that the moon was more perfect than the Earth, that larger objects fell faster than smaller ones and “unnatural” motion required a push, while “natural” motion resulted from an object seeking its natural place.
In the 17th century, the consensus was that fossils formed in rock accidentally to look like parts of living things, or that they fell from the sky, that Earth was created in 4004 BC and a global flood later covered the highest mountains.
In the 18th century, the consensus was that pholgiston was responsible for combustion, and species couldn’t go extinct because of the Great Chain of Being, in which every link was made perfect by God.
In the 19th century, the consensus was that there could not have been ice ages, that species are immutable, each created individually by God, that disease is caused by the humors or miasmas and that space and time are absolute, while gravity acts instantaneously at a distance.
In the 20th century, the consensus was that the continents are fixed, so can’t “drift”, that outbreak floods from ice-dammed lakes didn’t make the channeled scablands of the Pacific NW and that ulcers aren’t caused by bacteria.
Science exists to show the consensus false.
Also in the last century, the consensus first was that the universe was stable, then that it was expanding, then, at its end, that the expansion was accelerating.
Note that the history of science shows the gradual realization that everything changes, the universe, galaxies, stars, planets, other celestial bodies, climate, species and atoms, which can even change into each other.
This is contrary to the consensus on the universe and everything within it, except weather, at the dawn of the scientific revolution. Both the biblical and pagan scientific universe were considered stable and perfect, although in pagan science there were dissenting voices, and in the Bible, God could visit calamities upon those who ticked Him off.
I do complement you, Hawker, on your true statement “I don’t know much.”
You are in even worse condition than that — you “know” many things that are not true!
In fact, it is your leftist “team” that are the so called “experts”.
That STARTED with the conclusion that burning fossil fuels will cause runaway warming
and end all life on our planet. Then they work backwards — and after 30 years of work,
they defend their beliefs with the following “scientific” conclusion:
“Because we say so”
Your argument by authority doesn’t impress us.
I bet you even believe there is a 97% consensus.
Only fools believe that after many honest analyses refuted the number.
I feel sorry for you because you can only parrot what you are told.
We can believe that humans have some effect on the planet,
and even believe that CO2 causes some warming,
WITHOUT jumping to the idiotic conclusion
that CO2 is the “climate controller”
and will cause runaway global warming that will end all life.
It doesn’t matter if 100% of scientists believe in runaway warming
— that doesn’t make it correct.
These are wild guess predictions of the future climate
by people who have not even demonstrated the ability to predict next year.
I can’t wait for your next comment:
Save time — just post:
“I’m dumb on the subject of climate science,
and here is what I believe in”
Came across this at the independent, thought i would share the fun-
“As a scientist I have to comment on this. Climate Change is not the most pressing issue facing the human race. In fact, the more urgent matter is erosion. Erosion is getting so bad around that World that the lowlands are starting to fill. Within a few years, mountains may not even be recognizable. If this continues for the next 30 years, the Earth will actually become flat. If the earth is flat…you guessed it…it will stop revolving and moon will move to orbiting Mars. The worst case scenario is that the water on the Earth’s surface spills of the sides and all living things die for the lack of water. I anticipate that an article on this will be published in Nature with authors from the UN very soon”
How dare Mars steal out moon!
Based on theory, the 1 to 1 relationship should be between temperature and the LOGARITHM of the
change in CO2 in the air . I’m a global warming cynic, but I got a pretty significant result when I did this using both NOAA and UAH figures.
Year <-c(1980,1985,1990,1995,2000,2005,2010,2015)
NOAA Temp <-c(287.09,286.86,287.25,287.28,287.25,287.48,287.53,287.72)
UAH Temp <-c(287.09,286.87,287.11,287.22,286.90,287.38,287.67,287.38)
lnCO2 <-c(0,0.0223574,.0437740,.0607774,.0848716,.1116248,0.1370376,0.1645785)
When I ran a correlation, I got for NOAA temps, an increase of 3 C for doubled CO2, with p value of 0.125%
I got for UAH temps, an increase of 2.34 C for doubled CO2 with a p value of 4.5%
Needless to say, I think there were other reasons than the direct effect of changes in log CO2 versus changes in temperature creating this spurious relationship.
CO2 is far from the only change in the air since 1980 or especially 1880, and also far from the most important.
In reply to Gabro
I’m also aware of the spuriousness of cumulativevalues in time series,
https://www.academia.edu/21366801/THE_SPURIOUSNESS_OF_CORRELATIONS_BETWEEN_CUMULATIVE_VALUES?auto=download
and the arcsine rule.
http://wmbriggs.com/post/257/
The obvious flaw is that over the 35 year period, there was a net increase in CO2 and a net increase in temperature.
Per Munshi’s paper, the overall increase in both CO2 and Temperature is probably going to lead to a spurious correlation.
When I change the figures to
Change in temperature over the last 5 years,
Temp <-c(0,-0.23,0.39,0.03,-0.03,0.23,0.05,0.19)
and ln CO2 change over the last 5 years
lnCO2 <-c(0,0.0223574,.0214165,.0170035,.0240942,.0267532,0.0254128,0.0275409)
and run a correlation, I get a negligible correlation, and a p value of 0.5875, meaning that such an extreme deviance can happen by chance alone over 58% of the time.
I’ve listened to a lecture by Ivar Giaever. He said he just Googled global warming that morning and didn’t know what the fuss was all about. He didn’t seem to understand even the basics of climate science. Ditto Freeman Dyson. He said he didn’t know anything and might be wrong, but thought a bit of warming might be good.
So, if there is a wide, deep and longstanding consensus is, as there is with man-made global warming, based on the evidence as judged by experts, the opposite is true because a consensus is almost always wrong. Is that what you’re saying?
Evolution, relativity, quantum mechanics, plate tectonics must be wrong too. It’s all very confusing. Thank you for your patience in explaining this to me.
By the way, are you a Nobel Laureate? If not you could be. Have a paper published in Nature or Science or another high impact journal. Millions of research scientists would be very pleased to see man-made global warming proved false. They’re not all involved in climate science you know and could use the money going for that research themselves for something else.
Good luck and God Bless. Steph.
No, Stephanie; your “longstanding consensus” is based on an aberration where temperature rise coincided with CO2 increases for a short period of time. Before that time and afterwards, there is no correlation. The excuses for early 20th Century warming and the 21st Century hiatus are falling into disrepute.
Oh, and like Mann is a Nobel Laureate?
Please cite Dyson saying he doesn’t know anything.
He actually did data-based work on climate during his career, which is why he is so skeptical of models.
Giaevar put himself through a course on climate science far more intensive than Googling. Please listen to one of his lectures. But it’s true that for anyone with even a BS in a relevant scientific discipline, it’s easy to see the glaring, fatal flaws in CACA.
What long-standing correlation? There was an accidental slight correlation from c. 1977 to 1997. But before that the correlation was strongly negative. After 1997 there is also no correlation. As CO2 growth accelerated, temperature stayed flat.
Thus is CACA falsified. QED. All the non-existent “experts” in the world can’t hand wave away those facts.
Stephanie Hawking June 29, 2017 at 1:54 pm
“Evolution, relativity, quantum mechanics, plate tectonics must be wrong too…”
Why? None of these have become established laws by consensus or because the scientists involved were important, but because they have been proven. There is no evidence for what hasn’t happened yet such as ‘climate disaster’ is x years time. The idea of climate ‘disaster’ is an assertion which doesn’t count for much in scientific terms. This reminds me of an online argument I had with a particular conspiracy enthusiast who argued that all the comments in favour of a particular conspiracy was evidence! In addition, just by repeating something endlessly doesn’t make it true; that is either an obsession or superstition.
When Newton wrote/defined the Universal Law Of Gravitation it didn’t really matter what any one thought, or if they agreed or not, because the law proved itself and continues to do so, and is tested on a daily basis.
The things that we know about our climate are that we have been in an ice-age for the last 3 million years and the last 450 thousand years can be characterized as long periods (100k years) of ice age conditions, interspersed with brief inter-glacial periods. The inter-glacials are 8c to 10c warmer, sea levels are 100 meters higher and the massive ice sheets retreat. In the last 450 thousand years there have only been 5 short inter-glacials including the one we are in. The previous inter-glacial was 120,000 years ago and it was warmer than now. It is worth noting that the oldest ice in Greenland is 110,000 years old. Are you saying the ice age is over? Because that would be a really neat trick if we had managed to perpetuate this inter-glacial just by increasing the CO2 composition of the atmosphere by 1% of 1%. (CO2 has increased from 3% of 1% to 4% of 1%).
Interesting point Stephen that the oldest Greenland Ice is 110,000 years old. This means that during the last interglacial period temperatures increased sufficiently and for a long enough period to completely melt Greenland only to begin re-freezing at the start of the next Glacial Period
Nice response Stephanie, you have demonstrated that you are a master of logical fallacies and argumtative errors. Here is your star…
Paragraph 1: ad hominem
Paragraph 2: loaded question
Paragraph 3: false dichotomy
Paragraph 4: appeal to authority
Argumentative errors…
Hawker, you sound dumber, and more combative, with each comment.
I can’t wait for you to get hysterical !
Climate science is mainly a lot of questions, and very few answers.
That’s what you need to know but apparently will never learn.
Just because some people with college degrees tell you what to think,
does not mean they are right and you should trust them.
The fact that so many politicians are involved in climate change
is almost a sure sign of exaggerating, misleading and lying.
Oh, I suppose they are leftists politicians — and they could never lie to you?
Only Republicans and conservatives lie?
Sometimes the smartest people in the room say “I don’t know”.
Not you of course — I mean actual smart people
No one has to prove man made global warming is false.
It is the job of the alarmists like you to prove runaway warming is not a fantasy.
The first problem the alarmists have is demonstrating that anything abnormal
has happened to the climate since the era of man made CO2 emissions
began in about 1940.
Well, 1940 to 1975 had global cooling — did you forget about that ?
Then there was a big step up in the average temperature from the early 1990s
to the early 2000s — mysterious, because CO2 would not cause such a fast jump up.
And then there was a flat temperature trend from the early 2000s to 2015,
after which a natural El Nino temperature peak happened .in 2015/2016
… almost identical to the El Nino peak in 1998 — 17 years earlier.
That temperature flat trend from early 2000s to 2015
so annoyed the government bureaucrat scientists
that they arbitrarily “adjusted” the data in 2015
and declared we now have a rising trend
— and never mind what they said from 2003 to 2015.
But in fact, if you look at a chart
you will still see a flat trend from about 2003 to 2015
— how could that happen with all the CO2 added to the air in those years ?
By the way, I have yet to win a Nobel Prize
so I guess everything I have learned about climate change
in the past 20 years means nothing to you.
PS: Did you know that half of all professional meteorologists
do not believe in dangerous global warming ahead?
Of course what could they possibly know about the climate?
The ONLY people who “know” the climate in 100 years are a very small
subset of scientists —
— the government bureaucrat computer gamers —
— and they say a climate catastrophe is coming
— in fact they have been saying that for 30 years
— and only they see it coming
— and only they must remain on the goobermint payrolls
to keep track of the coming catastrophe!
Predict a climate catastrophe every year
= permanent job security for bureaucrat scientists.
They claim the “science is settled”,
yet they keep their jobs studying the climate
by playing computer games
and making wrong wild guesses about the future climate !
Produce the evidence that shows the science wrong and claim your Nobel Prize. No good quoting a few self-anointed “experts” with no published work in the field.
That’s simply an appeal to authority. Two or three carefully chosen old chaps to dispute a solid consensus. Lindzen’s can claim to be a climate scientists yet he can produce no persuasive evidence the consensus is wrong. Otherwise he would. Nobody refuses a Nobel Prize.
Steph,
Clearly you have never read a single word written by Lindzen. He has indeed showed the CACA consensus to be utter garbage, in great detail.
The Nobel is awarded by a committee of a few Scandinavian socialists. That they support CACA means nothing.
The fact is that there is not a shred of actual physical evidence in support of the CACA hypothesis. Which is why the c@nspiracy ringleaders need to try to silence the opposition, ie real scientists.
You’ve been shown here over and over again how the “science” of CACA is wrong. You just can’t handle the truth.
All you have is appeal to the authority of third rate, government and academic “scientists” who aren’t really scientists, since they don’t practice the scientific method and most of them don’t even have backgrounds in science but in computer programming and math.
They are trough-feeding bureaucrats not fit to hold the lab coats of real scientific giants like their opponents.
“That’s simply an appeal to authority. Two or three carefully chosen old chaps to dispute a solid consensus. Lindzen’s can claim to be a climate scientists yet he can produce no persuasive evidence the consensus is wrong.”
Um, you do realize that the invocation of a consensus is the textbook example of the “appeal to authority” fallacy, don’t you? Just about every comment of yours on this thread offers nothing more than an appeal to the “authority” of the scientists whose views you like. It’s a little too much that you accuse another of committing your own sin when they simply point out that some scientists disagree with your precious consensus. (You ought to look up the term “projection.”)
To those with actual critical reasoning skills, being forced to invoke a “consensus” that the science is settled on some proposition actually disproves the proposition that the science is settled. Truly settled science is self-evident and needs no invocation of authority. I don’t have to rely on the opinions of experts to aver that the acceleration of gravity at the Earth’s surface is 9.8m/s^2, or that splitting a Uranium atom produces a lot of energy, etc. Don’t mistake the truth that scientists form a consensus on things that have been scientifically demonstrated to be true, with the illogical presumption that scientific truths are demonstrated by a consensus.
The “consensus” was wrong about your girl Hillary winning the election !
You don’t know this yet, and probably never will,
but progress in science almost always results from one scientist,
or a small team of scientists, contradicting the “consensus” of scientists.
You could look it up: “the history of science”,
but that would require some effort on your part.
And since you already “know” all the conclusions about climate science,
and “know” the climate 100 years into the future,
so there’s no need to learn anything more when you start with conclusions …
just like modern climate science !
Kurt June 29, 2017 at 11:18 pm
You could not possibly be more wrong. The only reason I mentioned all the world-class, eminent scientists who are skeptics is because Stephanie claimed the bogux consensus.
Read my many comments here about why the consensus is wrong. My whole point is not to appeal to any authority other than nature, the only authority, which clearly shows CACA false.
My post was responding to Stephanie’s, not yours.
Dear Stephanie,
Forget the SkS 97% nonsense, a doubling of CO2 concentration in theory causes ~1C warming, that’s it.
Start from the other end, use your common sense, I respectfully suggest that anyone claiming windmills and solar panels can come anywhere near to satisfying the energy demands of for instance this (Tokyo and many others) …
http://allswalls.com/images/tokyo-at-night-wallpaper-1.jpg
… are flogging a dead horse — are out of their minds.
Another good example is New York City, Manhattan Island, to supply just the residential needs from solar would require panels covering an area the size of Kings, Queens, and the Brooklyn. To include the financial district would require an area half the size of Long Island or roughly 20 times the size of NY, NY. Now, to include charging batteries for night time and power balancing, you would need to double that again.
So, to energize NY, NY (59 sq K) from solar and supply sufficient additional energy to charge battery back-up you would need to cover ALL of Long Island (3629 sq k) sounds like a good use of space to me, of course 12 – 1100MW nuclear reactors could supply the same energy using a space around the size of central park and not require batteries for night time
Instead of blowing billions on fake science, why don’t we do as the Egyptians did, build a splendid pyramid in the Nevada desert, to Gaia, the ancestral mother of all life. Make Nevada a religious Mecca. This may seem like a monumental boondoggle, but as least the Egyptians, and now the Gaia worshippers, will have something to show for it.
A pyramid instead of windmills would indeed be a good deal for the world. But better yet would be to invest wisely the trillions wasted on “renewables”.
We’d build Temples everywhere and encourage a pilgrimage to Nevada at least once in a lifetime (for those who can afford it). CaChing$$$. Trump, are you listening?
And, and a gospel founded on six commandments, no eight or maybe ten. Doesn’t really matter. Thou shall not hinder the wind. Thou shall pour forth the sacred gasses that my creatures may thrive. Thou shall not covet the sun, for this is the work of Shamshmagog. Working on it…
Great Idea!
Already been done!
http://i18.photobucket.com/albums/b141/ctbig/Las%20Vegas/LasVegas005.jpg
4) Thou shalt not defile thyself by consorting with the demons and devils in Las Vegas for they make unnatural petitions and wasteth their seed.
Having made the point about lack of evidence, I made a self-critique of this article in my blog.
Link: http://blog.mr-int.ch/?p=4165&lang=en
BTW: The Pearson R2 of the dTa/dt vs [CO2] series is 0.1622
The inference that it is Man-Made CO2 that causes an increase in global temperature was made by politicians NOT by scientists. The IPCC reports are extensively re-written by diplomats and bureacrats ( ie non-scientists) before being released to the press.
More evidence and detail in my blog article:-
http://steelydanswarandpeace.blogspot.co.uk/2010/09/ipcc-reports-are-poltics-not-science.html
Essentially the CAGW argument boils down to “correlation is causation.” They can show an empirical correlation between co2 and temperature and imagine a way in which these might be causally related therefore they claim that they have proven causality.
I tend to be a “pattern” type watcher….. of many, many sets of data across a very wide spectrum of “stuffs”. I try to cut out the “noise” and look for trends, correlations, etc, etc. I see references to 2009 data. I had just been looking at such and came across this tid bit f solar activities. There were also many events going on during the 2009 data set. Some man, some nature, some geophysical. Anyways ……….
Spotless Days
Current Stretch: 0 days
2017 total: 42 days (23%)
2016 total: 32 days (9%)
2015 total: 0 days (0%)
2014 total: 1 day (<1%)
2013 total: 0 days (0%)
2012 total: 0 days (0%)
2011 total: 2 days (<1%)
2010 total: 51 days (14%)
2009 total: 260 days (71%)
Updated 30 Jun 2017
So we have a consensus of maybe 30,000 experts — publishing climate scientists — versus no more than a handful of other climate scientists, namely Lindzen, Spencer, Christy, Curry, who don’t accept the consensus (although some say they do), but somehow their opinions are right.
Somehow deferring to 30,000 climate scientists and the global community of scientists, as represented by the Royal Society, National Academy of Science, American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Physical Society, American Chemical Society and every scientific institution and society on the planet is an Appeal to Authority … but appealing to a handful of dissenters is not. Indeed it where the truth lies and reality found.
Yeah right!
So you have a minor variation on “appeal to authority”. It is still a fallacy.
Appeal to Authority is not a formal fallacy. Deferring to experts is what a rational person does. You don’t wake up in the morning and go about discovering the sum of human knowledge for yourself before breakfast.
The Appeal to Authority is considered a poor argument because people often search till they find someone who agrees with them. Often the “authority” is not an expert in the field. Giaever, Dyson, Happer fall into this category. Often they are on their own – nobody agrees with them. That’s why they’re chosen. Often they produce no evidence using the scientific method – scientific publishing. Again Giaever, Dyson, Happer fall into this category.
A scientific consensus of experts is an entirely different thing. Such a consensus is how scientific knowledge comes into existence. All that we consider scientific knowledge is science that has become accepted by experts. It may not be 100% correct but it’s our best view of reality.
Since Fourier in 1824 work has been done on the greenhouse effect of CO2. Arrhenius in 1896 estimated a doubling would mean an increase of 3C. This he calculated with pen and paper.
There is nothing new about global warming. It was predicted. It is now observed and measured.Human activity is introducing massive amounts of ‘extra’ energy into the climate system, destabilising it.
That’s what the global community of scientists has concluded after a hundred years and more of research.
The reasons normal science is rejected are not scientific. The reasons are something else.
Stephanie(?), do the vast majority of scientists agree with the principle of CAGW?
Stephanie,
You could not possibly be more wrong on every single baseless assertion. You’re also repeating yourself, without having responded to the prior instances in which you’ve already been shown wrong as wrong can possible be.
Argument from authority is indeed a formal fallacy, recognized as such for centuries, at least.
A healthy, normal person is always skeptical of authority and should try to see for him or herself whether what the alleged experts say makes any sense at all. Science is the belief in the ignorance (and error) of experts. Any normal person has seen over recent decades just how wrong the so-called experts have been about so many issues, some of life and death.
What matters is whether the alleged expert can back up his claims with facts. CACA advocates can’t, which is why they try to silence opposition from real scientists.
While the various versions of appeal to authority predate John Locke, he might have been the first recorded, in his 1690 “Essay Concerning Human Understanding”, to identify “argumentum ad verecundiam” as a specific category of argument. Modern logicians have come down on his side vx. those who previously tried to water down the fallacy, with qualifiers such as “unqualified authority” or “authority outside specialization”. Any such appeal is now once again recognized as a logical fallacy.
Rather than appeal to authority, cite the alleged experts actual evidence and reasoning in favor of their position. That’s all that matters.
The short version of “appeal to authority” I learned some 40 years ago was that it was the use of the “authority” as conclusive without actually using any of the authorities logic or evidence.
Stephanie,
Since you reposted the same drivel without replying to my prior length replies, here they are again:
Just a few examples showing that in every century, the “balance of expert opinion”, ie consensus, has always been wrong:
In the 16th century, the consensus was that Earth lies at rest at the center of the “universe”, while the sun and planets orbit it in perfect circles. The consensus was also that the moon was more perfect than the Earth, that larger objects fell faster than smaller ones and “unnatural” motion required a push, while “natural” motion resulted from an object seeking its natural place.
In the 17th century, the consensus was that fossils formed in rock accidentally to look like parts of living things, or that they fell from the sky, that Earth was created in 4004 BC and a global flood later covered the highest mountains.
In the 18th century, the consensus was that pholgiston was responsible for combustion, and species couldn’t go extinct because of the Great Chain of Being, in which every link was made perfect by God.
In the 19th century, the consensus was that there could not have been ice ages, that species are immutable, each created individually by God, that disease is caused by the humors or miasmas and that space and time are absolute, while gravity acts instantaneously at a distance.
In the 20th century, the consensus was that the continents are fixed, so can’t “drift”, that outbreak floods from ice-dammed lakes didn’t make the channeled scablands of the Pacific NW and that ulcers aren’t caused by bacteria. Also in the last century, the consensus first was that the universe was stable, then that it was expanding, then, at its end, that the expansion was accelerating.
Science exists to show the consensus false. The CACA consensus is easily shown false, but persists because politicians have embraced it to achieve their anti-human ends.
CACA is far from “normal science”. It is not just unscientific, but antiscientific, a fact recognized by the best real scientists.
But, please, in your own words, state the reasons why you believe in the repeatedly falsified hypothesis of CACA? Is it only because that’s what Mann, Hansen, Schmidt, Trenberth and Jones say, or have you actually studied “climate science” and climatology yourself?
Tom Halla June 30, 2017 at 5:42 pm
That is indeed both its original and once again correct formulation. If you use the cooked books and faulty logic of CACA advocates, it shows them for the shameless scoundrels they are.
The fallacy went through a period in which some non-logicians tried to amend it much as Oreskes has tried to mutate the scientific method, but strict logic won out, at least in philosophical circles, if not on Planet CACA. One school said that the fallacy of appeal to authority should apply only to non-expert authority, but that is clearly wrong. Another school said it should apply only to genuine authority expressing opinions outside its area of expertise, such as, eg, Einstein endorsing a brand of cigarettes.
But both Locke and modern logicians agree that any appeal to authority is a grievous fallacy. The proper approach is to use the actual arguments of the alleged experts. If they stand up, then no appeal to authority be required.
Luis,
Your joke is getting tedious.
I showed you one of Hansen’s papers in which he says that climate change could make the earth uninhabitable. Only on Planet Luis does that not mean a catastrophic result.
What could be more catastrophic than everyone on earth dying?
Luis,
I’ve given you a list of thousands of scientific papers on catastrophic climate change.
Everyone reading this exchange now knows you to be a raving lunatic at best and more likely a paid trollbot.
LOL @ur momisugly Gabro, can’t even post a reply in the proper place in a thread.
Gabro, I’m still waiting for you to post one of the “hundreds if not thousands” of peer reviewed scientific papers that has the word “catastrophe” in the title or in the abstract.
…
If there is such a thing as “Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming” (CAGW) you would think at least ONE paper would mention it.
” raving lunatic at best and more likely a paid trollbot.”
…
Wow, so now you’re engaging in name calling.
…
Does that mean I win the argument?
Luis,
They’re all there in the link I posted to Google Scholar, which, as apparently you don’t know, is a source for peer-reviewed academic papers. Here are just a few with “catastrophic climate change” in their titles, and/or referencing catastrophic global warming/climate change in their bodies. These are just from the first page of the search:
https://academic.oup.com/reep/article-abstract/5/2/275/1565182
http://rsbl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/6/2/253.short
http://agris.fao.org/agris-search/search.do?recordID=US201300029964
http://heinonline.org/HOL/LandingPage?handle=hein.journals/penv23&div=8&id=&page=
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1744-540X.2009.00557.x/full
Now, please answer my repeated question:
If climate change or global warming have no negative consequences, then why worry about them?
And another:
Is rendering earth uninhabitable not a catastrophic consequence?
Luis Anastasia June 30, 2017 at 8:21 pm
No. You lost it before you even started it.
Trollbot isn’t a name. It aptly and accurately describes your behavior.
Yet more links to papers with catastrophic in their titles are in moderation.
Good night, shameless bot.
You forgot to address: “raving lunatic”
…
I do believe that qualifies as “name calling”
….
So does “shameless bot”
Luis, it does describe your online behavior. Asking for references and then rejecting them as not fitting your criteria is purely Troll 101.
Tom Halla, I asked for links to scientific papers. Gabro provided a link to Google Scholar. In case you are unaware of the difference, Google Scholar does not publish scientific papers. Secondly, if you examine the results from Google Scholar, you’ll notice they are not papers on climate science. .
Stephanie Luis,
I, like you, am a pathetic loser in life and love. I wonder how much you get paid to post errant attack nonsense here. I need a job, however degrading, that I can do from my mom’s basement. She’s threatening to throw me out if I don’t at least buy my own high caffeine soda pop.
Thanks!
Appeal to Authority is not a formal fallacy. Deferring to experts is what a rational person does. . . . Often the “authority” is not an expert in the field. Giaever, Dyson, Happer fall into this category.”
It’s certainly a fallacy when a person, as you do, not only defers to a favored authority’s opinion, but presumes the expertise of that authority, absent any objective evidence of such expertise. Please, tell us how any existing climate scientists has objectively shown how good they are at climate science? What makes Gavin Schmidt and Michael Mann “experts” having opinions you can safely defer to, while Dyson and Happer are just outcasts whose ramblings you can ignore?
If I’m listening to an engineer who has designed a large number of bridges, roads, buildings, etc. – all of which have been safely used for decades, tell me that a crack in a bridge he has examined presents a structural weakness that needs addressing, I can rationally rely on that and spend a lot of money to fix the crack. When Michael Mann comes up with a theoretical graph of what he thinks temperatures were like thousands of years in the past, based on tree ring proxies, all while secure in the knowledge that no one has a time machine to go back and verify that his graph is accurate, I instead rationally dismiss that graph as being mildly interesting, but nothing that can be relied upon as being accurate, since there is no way of testing its accuracy.
If you think that any climate scientist qualifies as an “expert” then you need reexamine your definition of “expert” and ask yourself hard questions about whether your initial assumption of their expertise is one of mere convenience, or as you put it, because you are “someone who agrees with them.”
No, Stephanie, you don’t get anything. Let’s just take one small example, among many: the social cost of carbon (SCC).
I have extensive experience in economic and feasibility analyses. The EPA economic analyses of the SCC I have seen are outside the realm of real economics. For example, I, and the Federal guidelines for economic analyses, say that a discount rate of about 7% is appropriate when looking at major facility investments. The EPA used figures around about 3%. That makes wild claims of harm out in the future overwhelm near term benefits of CO2.
And let’s not forget they looked out 300 years. Any analysis beyond about 20 years is pure fantasy. Also, their own analysis showed net benefits over a reasonable planning horizon. Additionally, they have no concept of what our economies and technologies will look like in the future. IPCC AR5 RCP 8.5 is a dystopian view of our world; unchecked population and pollution, with low technological development.
So, reasonable skeptics aren’t painting a broad brush. Straw men about rejecting all climate science may work at SkS, but they are paid to ridicule skeptics. Read the well-founded analyses presented here and you will maybe find truth in the specifics of targeted critiques.
Virtually every “expert” said your girl Hillary would win and Donald had no chance.
A consensus can be very wrong !
Steph you are sounding dumber with each post.
— please stop because you are about to lose your temper !
Your actual argument is that a coming runaway warming will end all life on earth because a few hundred government bureaucrat climate modelers predict that, as a requirement for getting and keeping their jobs!
The reasons normal physics and climate science are rejected has nothing to do with science or economics.
Any scientist showing the consensus of — to all intents and purposes — every publishing climate scientist on the planet and the global community of scientists to be wrong would be hailed a hero and handsomely rewarded financially by most governments around the world who are committed to reducing CO2 emissions to reduce global warming. They would be mightily relieved to be shown GHG emissions don’t matter
Nobel Prize, anyone?
Clearly, you’re a shameless trollbot.
You keep posting the same drivel without replying to the lengthy responses to your prior exactly the same drivel.
The pack of lies perpetrated by the cabal of at most a few dozen “actively publishing (lies)” anti-scientific “climate scientists” has repeatedly been shown false by real scientists of the highest caliber.
The Nobel committee has no interest in promoting real science which show the consensus c@nspiracy false. But it has managed to be published, despite the efforts of the Team to squelch it, as blatantly revealed in the Climategate emails, but already well known in scientific communities.
When are you going to present the reasons why you believe these charlatans?
“When are you going to present the reasons why you believe these charlatans?”
I understand the greenhouse effect. I have looked at the evidence. Part of the evidence is the consensus. I see no published work that undermines the science. Just a lot of ballyhoo on blog sites.
You know so little. You don’t even know the Appeal to Authority is NOT a formal fallacy. In any case it doesn’t mean what you think. It means picking an outlier to suit your purpose. An out and outlier.
It wouldn’t matter if the sea level rose 10 metres and the temperatures soared to cooking, we would still hear the refrain: A B C D Anything But Carbon Dioxide.
Yes, Stephanie, we believe you understand the greenhouse effect. But what about the 3X CO2 water vapor theory? That one has fallen flat on it’s face. No increase in water vapor. No tropical troposphere hot spot. No warming tracking models.
Add in a few more examples of climate scientists’ misses and we get grounds for some real skepticism. Instead of providing real answers, your consensus heroes shuck and jive in the main.
Stephanie,
I’ve repeatedly showed you that appeal to authority is indeed a grievous logical fallacy, recognized as such at least since 1690. Or are you a greater logician than John Locke? That you fail to read what others write shows you can’t handle the truth. You just keep spouting the lies which you’ve been spoonfed by professional liars. Your ignorance of logic is total.
That there is a greenhouse effect hardly confirms the CACA hypothesis. The GHE of doubling CO2, measured in the lab, is 1.2 degrees C. Thus going from 280 ppm to 560 ppm would, without feedback effects, raise world temperature a beneficial 1.2 degrees C. No danger, no catastrophe, just even more greening of the planet, such as we’ve enjoyed by just the rise to 400 ppm since AD 1850.
Catastrophic Anthropogenic Climate Alarmism thus needs to assume positive feedbacks not in evidence, largely from increase water vapor in the atmosphere due to warmer weather. But earth’s climate system is self-regulating, and positive feedbacks thus rare to nonexistent. CACA ignores the many well-known negative feedback effects, such as evaporative cooling and clouds, ignored or downplayed in the GIGO climate models.
Hence, real climate sensitivity, ie temperature rise from a doubling of CO2, has been shown not to be the 1.5 to 4.5 degrees C assumed by IPCC, but rather 0.0 to 2.0 degrees C, or possibly net negative.
There is no historical correlation between rising CO2 and rising temperature, so CACA has been repeatedly shown false. CO2 rose dramatically after WWII, but earth cooled just as dramatically. Then for 20 years, rising CO2 and slight temperature increase happened accidentally to coincide. But for the next 20 years, even more rapid CO2 increase correlated with flat temperatures. So, as I said, falsified by the time-tested scientific method.
You have shown yourself utterly ignorant of the most basic scientific and logical issues involved. No wonder you won’t respond to your betters.
Gabro, there is no such thing as a “CACA hypothesis”
Luis, you are hair-splitting. You know quite well what is derisively being referred to, the IPCC catechism on CO2 induced global warming.
Luis,
Sure there is. It’s the whole point of the “climate change” ho@x.
It goes like this:
1) CO2 is a GHG.
2) Therefore more of it in the air must necessarily heat the atmosphere.
3) This heating will be up to 4.5 degrees C per doubling.
4) Thus, heating of such intensity must surely cause dangerous, nay, catastrophic consequences.
Dunno how you missed this hypothesis. It has been in all the papers and on TV.
Now, if your point is that CACA doesn’t qualify as a scientific hypothesis, I might be with you on that one, as its advocates shy away from making testable predictions capable of being shown false, and that its “results” be repeatable, among other requirements, all of which the conjecture fails epically.
“I might be with you on that one”
…
You’d better be because there is no use of the term “catastrophic” in the scientific literature.
Tom Halla, please post a link to a scientific paper that expounds the “catastropic”
…
Thank you in advance.
Gabro calling climate science a “ho@x” makes you look dumb.
….
Maybe you can get Senator Snowball to throw another one on the Senate floor?
Luis,
It should be obvious that, if supposed man-made climate change isn’t catastrophic, or dangerous, as Obama put it, then it isn’t a problem.
The “literature”, aka pack of lies, is replete with the supposed dire consequences of man-made climate change. How could you have missed it?
So which is it? Is man-made climate change a good thing, or is it a threat? If we are supposed to give up fossil fuels to stop it, then it had better be the gravest threat humanity has ever faced.
Luis Anastasia June 30, 2017 at 7:05 pm
YHGTBSM!
Where have you been since 1988? Apparently on some other planet.
How did you miss Hansen’s predictions of a runaway greenhouse effect, leading to the Venus Express and boiling oceans?
The whole point of the CACA conjecture is that AGW is bad, very bad, real bad, so bad that we need to end industrial society.
Gabro: ” How could you have missed it?”
…
Please post a link to a scientific paper expounding the “catastrophic” strawman you are promoting.
Luis Anastasia June 30, 2017 at 7:08 pm
Your saying it’s not a ho@x makes you look ignorant, stupid and a dupe of a monstrous sc@m.
There is no scientific basis whatsoever for the proposition that manmade GHGs are going to cause negative consequences for earth. So far more plant food in the air has only been good.
I’m happy to be in company of such not so dumb scientists as Richard Lindzen, Will Happer, Ivar Giaevar, Freeman Dyson, Bill Grey and Reid Bryson.
Whom do you have? Mickey Mann? If is to laugh. Who is the dummy here?
Luis,
I could post hundreds. It’s not a strawman. How can you be so dense as not to realize that if there are no negative consequences to AGW, then there is no problem. That should be obvious to a child.
But since you ask, hard as it is to believe that you’ve missed this, here is a whole book, not just a paper, by the Father of CACA, Jim Hansen:
https://www.amazon.com/Storms-My-Grandchildren-Catastrophe-Humanity/dp/1608195023
Luis,
http://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/climate-catastrophe-coming-even-sooner
Presidential science advisor John Holdren:
https://www.climateemergencyinstitute.com/catastrophe.html
Nature:
https://phys.org/news/2017-06-deadline-avert-climate-catastrophe-experts.html
How can you possibly be so ignorant of catastrophic forecasts and post on this blog?
Four years to avert catastrophe:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-4651742/2020-deadline-avert-climate-catastrophe.html
Three years:
http://www.cosmicscientist.com/we-only-have-three-years-to-prevent-climate-catastrophe-but-there-is-hope/
Catastrophe in 2020:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eric-zuesse/climate-catastrophe-to-hi_b_4089746.html
Breeding pairs in Antarctica:
James Lovelock’s (since recanted) predictions of humans reduced to a few refugee breeding pairs in Antarctica:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/james-lovelock-you-ask-the-questions-1640175.html
Where have you been for the past three decades?
Luis,
Seven other scientific references, including some very recent ones, to catastrophic anthropogenic climate alarmism, are still in moderation, because of so many links.
Only an ignoramus who has been packed in cotton since 1988 could imagine that “catastrophic” is a “straw man”.
Gabro, a “book” is not a peer-reviewed scientific paper.
…
Please post a link to a peer-reviewed scientific paper that expounds “catastrophe”
Luis,
There are hundreds if not thousands.
How could you have missed them.
I posted seven but the links were so numerous that they’re in moderation.
Can you possibly really be this dense, or are you just trolling?
Again, why would anyone worry about alleged AGW if it didn’t have supposed negative consequences, “dangerous”, “catastrophic” or worse?
Gabro, Science 101: Science does not make value judgements. The term “catastrophic” is a value judgement. Climate Science does not say warming is “good” nor does Climate Science say warming is “bad”. Science is incapable of rendering such value judgements.
…
..
“Catastropic” is a strawman not supported in the scientific literature.
“There are hundreds if not thousands”
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GREAT!!!!
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How about one with the word “catastrophic” in the title.
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If you can provide that how about one with “catastrophic” in the abstract.
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Just one. Should be easy with hundreds to choose from.
Luis,
How naive you are. Science most certainly does reach conclusions, among which among the CACA c@nspirators is frequent use of “catastrophic”, “dangerous” and “threat”. Where do you suppose Obama got his “dangerous”, if not from his “science” advisors, whose job consists of making exactly the judgements which you so wrongly imagine that scientists aren’t called upon to and don’t make.
http://rsta.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/371/2001/20120294
“Burning all fossil fuels, we conclude, would make most of the planet uninhabitable by humans, thus calling into question strategies that emphasize adaptation to climate change.”
Hansen, James (2008-12-17). “Climate Threat to the Planet” (PDF).
Luis,
“Catastrophic” doesn’t have to be in the title.
Read the paper’s conclusion, such as the one I just posted.
Again, please tell me why anyone should be worried about AGW if it isn’t dangerous, catastrophic or a threat to humanity?
And why doesn’t “catastrophic” on the cover of Hansen’s book count?
He is the former head of NASA GISS, the very epicenter of the CACA cult.
The link to the royalsocietypublishing.org does not have the word “catastrophic” in the title nor in the abstract.
.
Strike one.
Hansen’s book is not part of the peer-reviewed published scientific literature.
Luis,
Do you realize how foolish you look suggesting that “a planet uninhabitable by humans” doesn’t imply catastrophe?
Hansen makes the same arguments in his book that he made in his scientific papers.
Do you enjoy making a fool of yourself?
“Catastrophic” doesn’t have to be in the title”
…
Yes, how about finding it in the abstract.
“a planet uninhabitable by humans”
…
The moon is uninhabitable by humans, but we went there.
Luis,
Here’s your big chance to educate yourself in the vast literature of “catastrophic climate change”, in a single link to the many Google Scholar papers on the topic:
https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=catastrophic+climate+change&as_sdt=1%2C38&as_sdtp=&oq=catastrophic+climat
252,000 results.
Luis Anastasia June 30, 2017 at 7:59 pm
OK, I see now that you’re just pulling everyone’s leg and wasting our time.
Since eight billion people couldn’t live on the moon, we all would die. If that’s not a catastrophic effect, then what, pray tell, is?
“Hansen makes the same arguments in his book that he made in his scientific papers.”
….
But Hansen doesn’t mention “catastrophe” in any of his scientific papers.
..
If you disagree, post a link to one of his papers where he expounds “catastrophe.”
Gabro, I asked for a link to a scientific paper, you gave me a link to Google Scholar.
…
The first paper: “…. implications of structural uncertainty for the economics….”
The 2nd paper is titled “The politics of climate change”
The 3rd paper is…. “…My target audience here are general economists…”
…
Seriously Gabro, do you have a high school understanding of basic science?
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I guess not…
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Now, one…
…
Just one
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One paper with “catastrophe” in the title or abstract dealing with climate science.
…
You said there were hundreds, please give me one, instead of a stupid Google search that doesn’t even provide me with a paper on climate science.
I sincerely hope that Stephanie and Luis never meet, mate and produce viable offspring, for the sake of the future of humanity.
Assuming that they aren’t the same trolling individual. In which case I pray they never get cloned.
Humanity has enough imbeciles already without making more.
I’m not entirely convinced they aren’t the same person.
The issue has never been whether or not the Globe is warming.
The issue has always been the hypothesis that Man’s CO2 is the cause.
From Hansen’s “best case-worst case” on, observations don’t support the hypothesis.
(Even after Hansen “et al” have adjusted past observations.)
Appeal to Authority IS NOT a formal fallacy. Indeed it is an informal fallacy if and only if the “authority” is not an expert.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority
Fallacious forms
When misused, the argument typically forms an informal fallacy.[23] This form of the argument occurs when the presumed authority appealed to is compromised in some way; such as being an expert in the wrong subject or is giving views from one side of an active controversy.[22] Some examples of this are citing a popular astrophysicist for claims about molecular biology; an Olympic athlete’s endorsement of a product they do not use;[24][25] or a long retired professor’s claims about a current debate in their field. This forms an informal fallacy because the first proposition is untrue.[22]
Valid forms
The valid form of argument is one in which a recognized and knowledgeable authority on the relevant subject is appealed to by citing a statement by that authority. This is a form of inductive reasoning in that the conclusion is not logically certain, but likely.[22] Examples include following the treatments prescribed by a medical doctor, or citing a respected author to establish claims of fact in a written work.[22]
====================================================
http://www.logicalfallacies.info/relevance/appeals/appeal-to-authority/
An appeal to authority is an argument from the fact that a person judged to be an authority affirms a proposition to the claim that the proposition is true.
Appeals to authority are always deductively fallacious; even a legitimate authority speaking on his area of expertise may affirm a falsehood, so no testimony of any authority is guaranteed to be true.
However, the informal fallacy occurs only when the authority cited either (a) is not an authority, or (b) is not an authority on the subject on which he is being cited. If someone either isn’t an authority at all, or isn’t an authority on the subject about which they’re speaking, then that undermines the value of their testimony.
=====================================================
https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/appeal-to-authority
It’s important to note that this fallacy should not be used to dismiss the claims of experts, or scientific consensus. Appeals to authority are not valid arguments, but nor is it reasonable to disregard the claims of experts who have a demonstrated depth of knowledge unless one has a similar level of understanding and/or access to empirical evidence.
======================================================
Some people disregard the expert opinions of about 30,000 climate scientists and the Royal Society, National Academy of Sciences, American Association for the Advancement of Science etc etc etc, arguing it’s an “Appeal to Authority” fallacy, but then tout the opinions of a mere handful of people none of whom are experts. Giaever, Dyson, Happer are abysmally ignorant about climate science. Curry waves her hands around saying “We don’t know”. Spencer and Christy have been trying to get the data to show no warming for years, and failing, Lindzen has been debunked more often than a sailor’s squeeze.
It’s all unbelievable. Totally and abundantly irrational.
Science advances one funeral at a time — Max Planck.
Appeal to Authority IS NOT a formal fallacy. Indeed it is an informal fallacy if and only if the “authority” is not an expert.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority
Fallacious forms
When misused, the argument typically forms an informal fallacy.[23] This form of the argument occurs when the presumed authority appealed to is compromised in some way; such as being an expert in the wrong subject or is giving views from one side of an active controversy.[22] Some examples of this are citing a popular astrophysicist for claims about molecular biology; an Olympic athlete’s endorsement of a product they do not use;[24][25] or a long retired professor’s claims about a current debate in their field. This forms an informal fallacy because the first proposition is untrue.[22]
Valid forms
The valid form of argument is one in which a recognized and knowledgeable authority on the relevant subject is appealed to by citing a statement by that authority. This is a form of inductive reasoning in that the conclusion is not logically certain, but likely.[22] Examples include following the treatments prescribed by a medical doctor, or citing a respected author to establish claims of fact in a written work.[22]
====================================================
http://www.logicalfallacies.info/relevance/appeals/appeal-to-authority/
An appeal to authority is an argument from the fact that a person judged to be an authority affirms a proposition to the claim that the proposition is true.
Appeals to authority are always deductively fallacious; even a legitimate authority speaking on his area of expertise may affirm a falsehood, so no testimony of any authority is guaranteed to be true.
However, the informal fallacy occurs only when the authority cited either (a) is not an authority, or (b) is not an authority on the subject on which he is being cited. If someone either isn’t an authority at all, or isn’t an authority on the subject about which they’re speaking, then that undermines the value of their testimony.
=====================================================
https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/appeal-to-authority
It’s important to note that this fallacy should not be used to dismiss the claims of experts, or scientific consensus. Appeals to authority are not valid arguments, but nor is it reasonable to disregard the claims of experts who have a demonstrated depth of knowledge unless one has a similar level of understanding and/or access to empirical evidence.
“Indeed it is an informal fallacy if and only if the “authority” is not an expert.”
And yet, despite your acknowledgment above, you keep insisting on deferring to the authority of people who have yet to objectively demonstrate any expertise in climate science. You instead try to bootstrap the “expertise” of scientists whose opinion you like by asserting that their opinions are part of a “consensus” and those who dissent are not part of the “consensus.” So while we’re talking about logical fallacies, look up “cherry picking” and “circular reasoning.”
Whatever science is and whatever the scientific method entails, some work scientists do leads to scientific knowledge.
Scientific knowledge is derived by experts considering all available evidence and arriving at a consensus view.
Numerous studies, and the names Cook and Oreskes spring to mind, have shown that, amongst publishing climate scientists, more than 97% accept human activity is causing global warming and climate destabilisation, and we ought to address this by reducing CO2 emissions immediately.
This is the view of the Royal Society, National Academy if Sciences, American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Physical Society, American Chemical Society … and every scientific institution and society on the planet.
The science is described incontrovertible, or at least overwhelming; the evidence unambiguous.
Anyone who wants to challenge that view of reality needs to produce some pretty exceptional evidence.
Where is yours? Apart from the fact you don’t like the facts you don’t seem to have any.
Stephanie:
I take it that, since you’ve avoided my point entirely, you have nothing substantive to contribute to this discussion. I asked for some objective evidence that the climate scientists you think are experts are in fact experts. You respond, not by showing any tangible accomplishments of these so-called experts, but instead nonsensical gibberish that has no critical thought behind it. Let’s take this piece by piece:
1. “Whatever science is and whatever the scientific method entails, some work scientists do leads to scientific knowledge.”
Sure, I can agree to this completely trivial and irrelevant assertion. Newton’s efforts led to our understanding of the relationship between force and acceleration, for example. So what?
2. “Scientific knowledge is derived by experts considering all available evidence and arriving at a consensus view.”
If you really believe this, then you’re a fool. The process you describe is how politicians and juries operate – not scientists. Do you really think, for example, that a bunch of scientists gathered around a table and hashed out among themselves the “scientific knowledge” that the acceleration of gravity at the Earth’s surface is 9.8 m/s^2? Scientific knowledge is derived by experimentation followed by application. I don’t need a consensus to confirm that we can get vast amounts of energy by splitting a uranium atom. That knowledge was demonstrated by several great big explosions, first over a U.S. desert and then over Japan. I don’t need a consensus to tell me that light impinging on silicon produces a current – we produce solar cells that use this phenomenon to generate electricity. Scientific knowledge is demonstrated by results, not consensus; the former being real and the latter merely representing opinion, which honest scientists understand to be a corrupting influence on the scientific process (hence the use of double blind studies, for example).
You’re making the logical mistake in believing that, because a consensus forms around things that have otherwise been scientifically demonstrated to be true, scientific truths can be established by consensus. They can’t. If you have to argue the existence of some “consensus” to convince someone that something has been scientifically proven, it most likely hasn’t been.
3. “Numerous studies, and the names Cook and Oreskes spring to mind, have shown that, amongst publishing climate scientists, more than 97% accept human activity is causing global warming and climate destabilisation, and we ought to address this by reducing CO2 emissions immediately.”
Again, and setting aside the obvious “Who cares” response, this is utter nonsense. You either haven’t read these studies or you don’t understand them. Cooke et al., for example, purportedly showed that among those published papers whose abstracts expressed a view on global warming, 97% supported the view that CO2 causes surface temperatures to rise. Without even addressing the plethora of methodological mistakes in that paper, it said nothing about the amount of that warming, or that such warming was destabilizing. In fact, Cook’s “consensus” was so broad as to encompass the views of the very scientists you deride in earlier posts (Christy, Spencer, etc.) And if you would have actually read the data file that they uploaded separately, after the study was released, you might have learned that only about 42% of the Abstracts of the relevant papers indicated that anthropogenic CO2 was the main cause of observed warming, with the remainder either saying that less than half of observed warming was man-made, or that it was “uncertain.” The fact that Cook et al. tried to hide this little nugget tells you a lot about their integrity, doesn’t it?
That’s the danger of babbling about a “consensus” – you wind up projecting your own opinions into this mythical “consensus” instead of critically examining it to see whether the “consensus” is a meaningful one or whether it’s just some overly broad mush that says nothing useful.
4. “This is the view of the Royal Society, National Academy if Sciences, American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Physical Society, American Chemical Society … and every scientific institution and society on the planet.”
What is it with you and opinions? It just doesn’t matter what these societies think, or what their “position” is. The difference between you and me is that I’m not satisfied letting other people do my thinking for me. If I’m going to rely on the opinion of someone else as an expert, I have two preconditions; first I have to have some reason to believe that it’s possible to attain expertise in that subject matter, and next I have to have some demonstration that this person is actually an expert.
With respect to the first of these criteria, science is essentially a procedure, and thus to the extent scientists have expertise, it’s in the scientific method. There is nothing inherent about being a scientist that gives them special insight into the things they study beyond what those procedures are capable of showing . When it comes to quantifying the effect of CO2 on climate, those scientific procedures are useless. You can’t conduct a controlled experiment on the Earth’s climate, turning a CO2 input knob and measuring its response. There aren’t 500 Earths out in the galaxy with rising CO2 concentrations and 500 control Earths with stable CO2 concentrations to do any kind of statistical analysis. These are the only two scientific methods I know of to reliably quantify the effect that rising A has on system B. Are you aware of any others?
With respect to the second of these criteria, no scientist has correctly predicted the inflection points of both rising and falling temperatures. No scientist has correctly predicted the geographical boundaries around, and the timing and severity of droughts, floods, etc. All the forecasts of increasing hurricanes. tornadoes,. fires, etc. have yet to come to pass. The scientists whose opinions you genuflect to have, in fact, been forced to grudgingly concede that the scientific data, to date, does not support the proposition that global warming is a serious problem. Instead, their opinion of dire catastrophe is based on computer models, which by definition can only implement their hypotheses – not test test them.
5. “The science is described incontrovertible, or at least overwhelming; the evidence unambiguous.”
Um, you haven’t described any science or evidence. You’ve deferred to someone’s opinion and just presumed that the science/evidence must support their opinions because, gosh, so many people use the word “consensus” in conjunction with their opinions.
6. “Anyone who wants to challenge that view of reality needs to produce some pretty exceptional evidence.
Where is yours? Apart from the fact you don’t like the facts you don’t seem to have any.”
Once again, you completely reverse what a rational analysis would entail. Many people even in the United States can’t afford a higher electricity bill without sacrificing other important needs, such as health insurance premiums, retirement, or a college savings fund. In other countries the need for cheap, reliable electricity is even more dire, with both adults and children dying of respiratory diseases that could be avoided by using fossil fuels like coal fired power plants or gas heating, instead of wood, animal dung etc. to heat their houses. Economic growth, and the health and standard of living improvements that go with it require copious energy usage.
Before anyone should be required to pay a penny more on their electricity rates, before anyone should tell a developing country not to install a coal power plant or use natural gas for heat, before any tax dollars are spent on speculative alternative energy investments that seem to go bankrupt in droves, there needs to be “some pretty exceptional evidence” that burning fossil fuels causes more harm than the vast and undeniable good that it provides.
As for “facts” – reread my last paragraph of item 4, above, No one can claim to be an expert on any system if its behavior cannot be reliably predicted. The facts above are all I need to support my view that climate scientists have no demonstrable expertise.