Foreword by Anthony Watts.
This essay is written by a student at the University of Wyoming, who finds herself in the middle of a set of circumstances that are pushing her further into the realm of being a climate skeptic. It is an eye-opening read. I have verified the identity of the student, but per her request (due to the backlash she fears) I am allowing her to write under the pen name of “Clair Masters”
Guest essay by Clair Masters
The class was languid, most kids were on their phones, or surfing Facebook on their laptops. I sat with my notebook open in front of me, empty except for the lecture title at the top of the page. The professor put a slide up on the projector showing a chart relating CO2 and temperature over the course of a few million years, the one we’ve all seen by now. The CO2 curve lags after the Temperature one, and anyone’s first reading of the chart would probably be that temperature is driving the CO2 changes, not the other way around, if there is any trend at all. I perked up slightly, it was new for a professor to show alternate data, and looked around expectantly at other students, waiting for some kind of reaction—confusion, frowns, anything to show they’re seeing something that fights what we’ve been told since elementary school. I saw a few yawns, dull stares, people on their phones, though one loud girl who was a religious global warming fanatic was glaring at the slide, slouching in her seat so her hand could pet her (dubiously trained) service dog.
Besides her, no one cared, and certainly I was the only one who glanced up in surprise when our professor began to talk about the chart as if it didn’t matter, something like “This trend suggests the opposite of what we know to be true” before moving on. I looked down at my notebook—friends and family tell me my face does not hide emotions well, and I didn’t want my professor to know I was annoyed. I don’t know why he even included it in the lecture, but that’s what happens in these courses. It was incredible to me at the time, but my professors would often include evidence contrary to the anthropogenic climate change theory before quickly sweeping it aside with some short remark. It doesn’t matter this data exists, it doesn’t matter that there is debate in the climate science community—not here. This is a University, after all.
College wasn’t when I first started questioning the “acceptable” views of climate change. As far back as middle school I was a tough case for teachers trying to push global warming. It was fashionable back in 2008 to rabidly teach the “polar bears are drowning” narrative after those photographs from 2007 that showed the bear standing on a single hunk of ice. Tragic! A picture like that was all it took to have most of my classmates nodding solemnly along while our teachers taught us about our carbon footprint—about how we were contributing to the plight of the poor polar bears with our gluttonous use of electricity, by our parents having more than one car.
An animal fanatic, I spent hours paging through my Zoobooks and animal encyclopedia collections, reading all about polar bears. A number stood out to me; 60 miles. Polar bears often swim for 60 miles to get from one body of solid ground to the next. Proud of myself, I brought it up to my science teacher, and instead of getting the glowing pat on the head I was used to when I did outside research for classes, I was chastised.
“You’re wrong,” she said, looking surprisingly angry, “polar bears can’t swim that far. Global warming is melting their home, and they’re dying off.”
At the time, I thought of myself as a teacher’s pet, the good student, so her tone took me completely by surprise. I wasn’t trying to say global warming wasn’t killing the bears, as far as I knew it was. My teachers told me so, so it must be true. Her denial about the swimming capabilities of the bears is what threw me off, and for the first time I was faced with doubting a teacher. Who do I trust, the books I’ve read or this teacher? Something changed in me around that time, and that seed of doubt she unknowingly planted ended up making me who I am today—a skeptic. Not just for climate change and the like, but for everything. I abruptly stopped believing everything my teachers told me, it was a hard wake up call to the real world as I realized that adults had agendas.
This idea was reinforced when one of the books in a beloved young adult series by James Patterson abandoned the original plot and conflict to go fight against global warming—essentially like rewriting the X-Men as Captain Planet. Horrified and disgusted that the characters would rather go protect those (at this point, goddamn) polar bears than stop the original mad scientist threat, I recognized the real propaganda element of this whole global warming deal. I started fighting back in small ways, mostly in the form of asking questions; “Don’t we breathe out CO2?”, “Warmer weather will help some animals, won’t it?”. I was not popular with my seventh-grade teachers. My friends were oblivious to my small insurrection; I was always the kid who raised her hand in class anyway.
It wasn’t until my senior year of high school that I finally got the scientific background to really combat the ideas that were being pushed on me. I took a high level environmental science class that pushed me to dig deep and question what I thought I knew about the way our climate works. I loved that class, and for once I had a teacher who didn’t try to shut me up. She acknowledged and engaged me, didn’t brush away my questions, and every year since my graduation from high school I’ve given a short presentation over Skype to her class about Petroleum engineering, petroleum geology, a little paleontology, and college life.
I distinctly remember two specific moments in that class that were “a-ha” moments for me. The first is when we watched that required documentary: Gasland. Some of the claims made in that documentary were beyond absurd, and like the skeptical jerk I am, I fact checked while watching it in class. On the school-administered iPad, I googled every single thing Josh Fox presented that got my spider-sense tingling. Antelope in Wyoming are going extinct? Not even close. Fracking fluid is in people’s water, letting them light it on fire? Try naturally occurring methane. At this point, I was already toying with the idea of going into some kind of geological science, and I was intrigued by the idea of fracking technology. We did a short lab in that class where we tried to get oil out of sand, and I thought it was cool. It was my love of all fields of science, not to mention the thrill of being involved in such a villainous industry, that helped me decide on Petroleum Engineering.
The other moment was when we were focusing on alternative energy, including a lengthy discussion about Hydrogen powered cars. I raised my hand quickly.
“If we’re worried about CO2 causing global warming, wouldn’t it be much worse if we were all driving cars that had water vapor as their exhaust?”
She paused, thinking it over. “I think you might be right, that’s a very interesting observation.” She said, before re-explaining to the class what I was talking about, how water vapor captures much more heat than carbon dioxide. I felt good about being able to apply what I learned about climate and our atmosphere to challenging popular “green” narratives. The best part was that my teacher was so supportive, and was willing to admit when something our textbook claimed wasn’t entirely true.
It has been a very different ride in college. Exhausting, as now I’m surrounded by professors and students who promote anthropogenic climate change predictions with such intensity, it makes the most zealous cultist fanatics look calm and reasonable. Again and again I’m surprised by the reactions of my peers to my skepticism, sometimes I even prompt truly angry reactions from people. One crunchy granola geology guy engaged me in a conversation about alternative energy, he tried to argue that hemp oil would soon overtake our need for fossil fuels. Right. Somehow the conversation got to land use, and I expressed an opinion that the states probably could deal with their environmental problems and land use better than federal agencies—he quoted something about the Koch Brothers, and I left him for class. Maybe a week later, he handed me a piece of notebook paper with “research” written up on it—mostly a series of bullet points about the American Lands Council which he somehow connected to white supremacy, right wing fanaticism, and most bizarrely of all the Kim Davis controversy. I couldn’t believe that someone who was a “scientific” person felt the need to use the guilt by association trap, the screeching leftist “Racist! Sexist! Homophobe!” nonsense in a discussion about land use. I gave up my favorite study spot after that, opting to avoid him instead of giving him the what-for I’d so like to. I don’t have time for that—I have school to worry about.
There have been plenty of times that I wondered if it’s my perspective that is wrong, I’ve done some soul searching on the topics I’m passionate about. College has challenged my views, while it seems to only confirm the ideas that the “warmists” hold. Some of my previously held beliefs have changed, like much of what I understood (or thought I understood) about climate, but I’ve still yet to be presented solid evidence for primary anthropogenic climate change that isn’t either refuted by another study, or backed with accusations like the ones crunchy granola guy lobbed my way. I’ve stopped being shocked by the way my professors obediently tow the party line—as I learned a few years ago that at least here, federal funding is dependent on a certain amount of global warming acceptance. I’m thankful for the engineering courses I’m taking, because if my geology and earth sciences were not balanced out by the dry technical calculations of engineering, I’d probably lose my mind. (Just imagine how bad it would be if I were in sociology or women’s studies!) I am disappointed by the quality of the “science” taught at University though—when theory is presented as fact, and computer models are regarded as gospel despite their infamous unreliability, it’s not actual science.
It’s propaganda—dogmatic as any religion.
It’s my 5th year since heading west for my engineering degree. This year I’m taking a handful of great little petroleum classes, and finishing off my geology minor. Of course, it’s my geology class that is giving me a headache. A mineral resource course sounds pretty straightforward… except of course our professor managed to turn it into a climate change/ humans are killing everything/ we’re all going to die class. We even have a section of the class towards the end of the semester dedicated to social justice, because that’s why I’m getting a science degree. In retrospect, I should have known what I was getting into when I looked around and saw several students with either half shaved heads or hair colors that in nature scream “I’m toxic”.
It’s gonna be a fun semester, and I’ll try to keep you updated.
It is the same in the U.K. We have a “Sustainability” dept. – packed with ecofascists. The problem is, thanks to Government grants it is the most profitable dept. In the University, so untouchable.
I have been formally warned not to attend their seminars.
Why?
I asked awkward questions and presented data that challenged the orthodoxy.
You should ask for that warning in writing. It would make a great talking point in interviews when looking for a job in the real world.
So teaching biochemistry and molecular biology is not a real job?
It’s a real job. Not sure if it’s in the real world, though.
The major news purveyor in my city, the Christchurch Press has published several front pae stories on sea level rise.
Check this one out :- http://www.stuff.co.nz/the-press/news/5669034/Rising-sea-level-threat-to-Christchurch
Sad that he mentions melting in Antarctica. Last I read the ice was accreting.
Cheers
Roger
http://www.thedemiseofchristchurch.com
Same here in Auckland, where the NZ Herald persists in printing the most outrageous articles in support of CAGW. Where are all those young ambitious investigative journalists who could make a name for themselves by following up on these distorted “facts”? I suppose that would probably kill off any career prospects, and who would print anything they produced. After all, it’s not the Washington Post of old!
Why would you be surprised? I was raised by Australians who viewed journalists as manipulative gossips that perpetuated the tall poppy syndrome, and who print what they think will sell, what is exciting (to them) and toes to the party line (that they usually learned in some socialist echo-chamber). They would say if you wanted to know what was really going on, and you read the banner articles, you had to read the whole article through to the end and then do follow-up research to verify what was stated, as the headline and first couple of paragraphs almost never reflected what the actual information revealed. Also, when they are caught out, journalists don’t mea culpa but print a retraction deep inside the paper.
Personally I read a lot and find most of the media here in Canada quite one-sided, but at least there is the National Post to offset the Star and Globe (though the Post has been allowing some virtue signalling lately)
The Expulsive,
Readership and subscription to newspapers in the USA has been in decline for a number of years. They aren’t doing themselves, or their bottom line, any favors by displaying an advocacy position. People seem to be increasingly understanding that papers like the NYT, WaPo, and Huffpost can predictably be expected to present the supposed consensus position on virtually all liberal positions. Any thinking person then wonders why there are never any contradictory facts, or even nuances, presented, and asks themselves the obvious, “Is this propaganda?” In the long term, the liberal MSM may end up being their own worst enemy.
Journalists have degrees in Journalism. Not science, engineering, medicine, engineering, business or economics. If push came to shove, a journalist might be qualified to grade english papers in a high school but they are not remotely qualified to write a story outside of their expertise; journalism.
Without having the required background in the subject they are writing about they bring in their biases. When the price of petrol goes up at the pump and they have to fill up their own cars tank, they complain and tell the world that oil companies are evil. They never have the necessary skills to understand why the price of petrol went up. Oil companies become a constant target and are vilified in the press.
The young lady getting her petroleum engineering degree could write a more accurate story about the price of petrol at the pump, but she is not a journalist. Funny that. She is the one qualifed but the journalist will not ask her to explain why the price is going up. Though she is the most qualified.
The journalist will go to the the crackpot eco-fascist, pop smoking, save the polar bear fanatic to get his angle on why petrol prices are going up.
Journalists feed their biases. They do not seek the truth.
Hi Roger
I see that the speaker at the seminar at the University in Ch.Ch. was none other than Jim Salinger. You know of course that he was part of the’team’ at CRU and gets a mention in ‘Climategate’. Bloody Hell! Nuf sed.
Journalism lost its way when all this “Speaking Truth to Power” tosh became popular. It turned subsequent generations of reporters into political activists.
“Journalists have degrees in Journalism. ”
I read an article about ten years ago about he changes occurring in journalism schools.
The primary goal of journalism students a few decades ago was to “give their readers enough facts to understand events and issues and make informed decisions for themselves.”
Now (or rather when the article was written) the primary goal had mophed to “change the world”.
I’ve never really understood the joining of Sustainability and Climate Change.
All those bio-fuels that send out that “deadly” CO2 just seem to be out of place.
Neo, Post Modernism claims “logic” and “consistency” are “oppressive constructs of the patriarchy”. It will never make sense to objective, rational Modernists. Don’t try to make sense of the insensible. Just make sure the Post Modernists don’t hold power over you.
I was asked by an editor to modify a journal article on how policy preferences distort medical research ethics discuss similar cases in non-medical research. This was around the time of the ClimateGate revelations, and I mentioned, in passing, that the authors were accused of trying to intimidate editors into rejecting work that contradicted their own work or their policy prescriptions. After the paper was published, the Vice Chancellor of the University of East Anglia, at the center of the scandal, wrote the editor and tried to intimidate him into withdrawing the paper for mentioning the accusations – the exact behavior they were accused of.
If it is not in writing it never happened if you have a legal dispute. Get it in writing. They will just lie.
It is funny how the warmists so violently attack fossil fuels such as coal, oil and gas – after all, they are all stored solar energy. It is nature’s gift to humanity and are there for a purpose – for us to use.
“I have been formally warned not to attend their seminars.
Why?
I asked awkward questions and presented data that challenged the orthodoxy.”
I have a neighbor like that. Whenever he contributes to a conversation about anything important, he immediately intrudes ‘facts’ that nobody else can counter because they’re so off the planet. His wife shuts him off completely when he broaches such stuff – telling him to save it for the pub. We only allow him the occasional venting there. When he’s not there, we can discuss interesting stuff, when he is there, we just talk sport.
He’s a pain – but he thinks he’s a philosopher.
I completed my Geology degree in 1989 just as “global warming” took off. Most of the lecturers/students probably realized like me that it was a complete load of bollocks but some of them jumped on the gravy train and are now part of the climate establishment.
Jimmy,
I completed my geology degree a few years before you and I’m delighted to say that the few that I am still in touch with from that degree are as deeply skeptical as I am. It’s a no-brainer really – geologists have no excuse for not knowing that the climate has always changed and always will – it’s perfectly natural. The only person from my era in that college who I know is not a skeptic is the embarrassing Naomi Oreskes. We never got on and I am damn sure we wouldn’t now!
I was a decade earlier (1980) and my current skepticism is firmly grounded in what I learned in my geology and other Earth Science courses at Southern Connecticut State University (“that fine oil school”/sarc). Don Easterbrook was the author of my geomorphology text book and Reid Bryson the lead author of my physical geography text book. The greenhouse effect managed, at best, half-a-dozen references in all of my combined text books and as of the mid 1970’s, the Earth was not doing anything it hadn’t already been doing throughout the Holocene.
I haven’t visited my alma mater since 1989… I would bet the Earth Science department has changed a bit (deviated from reality) over the past 28 years.
David, My son graduated form Penn State 5 years ago with a Petroleum Engineering degree. He spent the first 2 years at the Scranton campus and as that campus did not have some of the courses he needed, 3 years at State College.After his first year and a 4.0 average, he was given a 30K, 4 year free ride.He and a friend rented a house at both locations which let them isolate themselves for the zoo. Four months after leaving school, he got a job in The Woodlands with a very good medium sized service company. After 8 months they kicked him up a notch or 2 and he is now in Midland. He gets tom see all aspects of E&P. I would think that after the magic 5 year mark, he may want to move on. He is bright, well spoken and good looking. I believe the interview process would be easy for him. He has an advantage over others as he can think outside the box. There are 2 mid-sized E&P companies we both like.One company is Dallas based. I figure a good plan over the next 9- 12 months will be of great help. So I appeal to your good nature and ask if you would be free for some advise . That could be voice or face time. If you agree, I ask the mods to give you my email address so we could set something up. He has no idea I am doing this. Thanks.
I’m not sure how much help I can be… But I would certainly be happy to provide whatever useful advice I can. It’s been a long time (20 years) since I went through a real interview.
David,
And I lead you by about a decade. It has long been my impression that geoscientists are among the best represented in the skeptic camp. However, I have no studies to cite to back that up. On the other hand, I have found that among some of the younger geologists, some of whom could have been my former students, there are some radical alarmists. Once indoctrinated, it takes an exceptional individual to break free from what they have ‘learned.’
In the 2008 Doran-Zimmerman survey, whence came the “97%” mantra, based upon 79 cherry-picked “actively publishing climate scientists” out of over 3000 respondents (all in government or academe, not the private sector), the group with the lowest rate of answering both questions “Yes”, was “economic geologists”, at 47%.
The first question was, “Has it warmed since c. AD 1850?”, and the second, “If so, is human activity significantly to blame for this warming?”
A push-poll from start to finish.
Clyde, and I lead your graduation by another decade or more and I agree that the few contacts remaining among my former classmates are, to a person, skeptical of the the cliSci orthodoxy. Not only geologists, though. Learning was dominantly apolitical. This was even before social sciences got corrupted into worthlessness (‘the plight of the poor is to be laid at the feet of capitalist – free enterprise…’ and that sort of thing).
The first question was, “Has it warmed since c. AD 1850?”, and the second, “If so, is human activity significantly to BLAME for this warming?”
I wonder what the responses would be if the second question was: “If so, should human activity be significantly CREDITED for this warming?”
Interesting date 1989. The beginning of the end of the USSR and the Cold War. Also the fear arose in the world of climate science that the government money dumped into the system since WWII was going to dry up or at least be dramatically reduced. The UK and the USA spent ever more money from WWII until 1990 on climate, oceanographic and weather science because of its strategic importance, most especially when nuclear submarines became one leg of our nuclear triad. To hide a nuclear sub you must understand the thermal structure of the world’s oceans.
There is hope for us yet, when young people retain the ability to question and think for themselves. Clair rocks! (geologist pun intended)
Fracturing the established sediments? Gneiss one.
Schist
My sediments too!
Our elder son when about 3/4 years old would ask why when told anything and then ask why again when given an answer this could get a bit wearing after a time but did mean he grew up questioning things that were presented as facts. My mother in law gave him an encyclopedia for his 7th birthday which he read cover to cover and then asked his mum and I many and various questions not always giving us a context for the question which brought about many chances for what some call teaching moments!
James Bull
Science includes skepticism. If it doesn’t include skepticism, it’s not science.
Talking at nine months. Smart kid.
(An even smarter kid will be listening. From 2 months to 22 years. And the smartest will be thinking. All of its life. .mod]
James: I presume the 3/4 meant three to four and not 0.75.
Just as encouraging is to read something by a college kid that has literate sentences and grammatical paragraphs. There is, indeed, hope for us all.
It was a thing of beauty. Plus, a relief that there is at least one thinking human coming out of that generation.
There’s hope for us all.
All we need are a few more kids who can think for themselves!
I was one of those critical thinking kids back in the day of global cooling. Although my grade school science didn’t bring it up, it was still a big enough fad that one of my classmates did in a discussion among just us, and when asked if I feared the advancement of ice sheets all the way down to where we lived in the southwest, I said I wasn’t worried because I was pretty sure I could outrun a glacier.
We see exactly the same in the UK.
Very good essay but a bit long winded, next time use the precis pen.
Illegitimi non carborundum (:>))
Thought the length was fine.
+1
I hear that a lot.
I concur. Good advice.
I respectfully disagree. Claire is describing the journey not merely justifying the destination. The world is full of process oriented and results oriented thinkers. It takes a greater effort to carry both along through a story.
” I should have known what I was getting into when I looked around and saw several students with either half shaved heads or hair colors that in nature scream “I’m toxic”.”
You know back in the 80s-90s it was considered cool — I don’t remember when it became a political statement? But apparently it is one now…
I love that “hair colors that in nature scream I’m toxic”—what a great observation!
Nowadays it is skin markings that nature never intended.
texasjimbrock,
And breaching a perfectly good epidermis that was intended as a barrier to the environment and its denizens, like bacteria and viruses
This article gives me hope that some students are actually making it through the Marxist morass and retaining their critical thought and ability to analyze.
The pity is that they are the rare pearls in the muck. We’d be so much better off if Claire’s story were too common to tell.
I agree. For the past 20 years I have lived in a state university town, for the past 30 years had to deal with the “science” departments of most of our state’s universities private and public. The Claires of the world are a rare and possibly endangered species. Three Christmas ago at a party I was debating a far left guy about a lot of different issue, global warming came up. The guy’s two college age kids were also there listening. When they began to ask me questions the guy went nuts, yelled at them, took them and left. Of course it was all my fault.
Unfortunately common sense isn’t all that common.
+1000
Edwin, you planted a seed. Bravo!
Proper science:
Every sentence I utter must be understood not as an affirmation but as a question.
[A caution he gives his students, to be wary of dogmatism.]
— Niels Bohr
In Bill Becker, ‘Pioneer of the Atom’, New York Times Sunday Magazine (20 Oct 1957)
Not so good science:
CO2 is a greenhouse gas, all polar bears will die, water vapour condenses.
No science at all: UN panel on climate chnage fifth assessment report summary for policy makers. .
Richard Feynman said that any theory that had no potential way of being disproved was religion and not science.
Where is the next Feynman when we need him.
Re: Where is the next Feynman when we need him.
You may have just read her essay
“Richard Feynman said that any theory that had no potential way of being disproved was religion and not science.”
That’s the sort of unquestioned dogma I was exposed to back in the day . . though I could only barely sense something was very wrong with it, and a wide array of other dogmatic concepts being pawned off as great unquestionable truths.
Religion does not mean stuff that has no way of being disproved, obviously, I now can see, and a great many things in a great many religions have been “disproved”. So, what exactly was he on about ? . . one asks in a place where questioning him and his iconic remark is verboten, as questioning the CAGW theory is now at school . .
It didn’t start with “climate change”, this cult like form of “straw-man” defeating science, I am convinced. It started with Evolution (in the grand origins story sense), and I suspect that’s what Mr. Feynman was really on about . . blabbering nonsense in a poorly perceived battle with a poorly perceived opponent . .
Theories need to be proved… not disproved
The burden of proof lies with Chicken Little
Having to read and pass exams on subjects that include lot of stuff you know is plainly wrong is good for your intellectual development.
As an engineering undergraduate I had exams in Marxist-Leninist philosophy, socialism and economy, practical military training (with the theory of political indoctrination) etc. For the most of the students it was counter-productive, but passing the exams was imperative.
A few of my Russian speaking peers had to do that to get out of the academy, and then they emigrated.
Interesting account but nothing surprising.
“It’s gonna be a fun semester, and I’ll try to keep you updated.”
I would not recommend that. You have probably already given enough info to identify yourself and in view of the mindset of you professors you may put your degree in jeopardy. At least wait until you have graduated. 😉
Good luck with course. I was always the one asking difficult questions in my courses and being questioning definitely is the key to understanding. Some just lean to parrot the right stuff since that is all you need to get the piece of paper and go for a job.
If you want to understand you need to question everything. Realising the enormous amount of garbage that highschool teachers come out with was a shock to me too.
There was a time when I thought that your advice to exercise caution might indicate a tendency to hyperbole, or worse.
The recent glimpses we’ve had of academia have rid me of such notions.
Keep moving and keep a low profile.
I agree: graduate first, describe situation second.
There is hardly anything the warmunists can do to prevent her graduating with even a Masters if Claire were so inclined. If she were working on PhD I might agree that a little more caution would be in order. I for one an cheered by her fearlessness. You go, girl!
D.J.
You only need 1 C or D to screw up your chances at Honours. Many written papers are graded subjectively and not objectively.
@Alex;
I’m not sure of your point. Clair is following an engineering track and it’s tough for someone to muck about with those course grades, although I take your point for any humanities electives. You don’t need to graduate with Honors to land a good job. I was a ChemE and managed only a solid C. I still wound up with one of the top 5 job offers, salary-wise. More important was that I had a summer job with the company that made that offer and they apparently liked what they saw.
It can be worse than that. I was once flunked on a sophomore physics exam because I didn’t work one of 10 problems the way it had been worked in the text book the professor had memorized but I got the correct answer. It took me half a class to prove his text book wrong but he still wouldn’t change the grade. I finally just walked out of class after telling him to stuff his exam where the sun don’t shine. Took me two more semesters before I could repeat the course under a different professor. But, you are right. It probably would have been better just to accept the grade and keep quiet. Since then I have never been able to tolerate incompetence.
Joe Crawford,
I had a similar experience in a geophysics class where the professor requested that we “give a proof” on a midterm. I provided an alternative to the derivation he had demonstrated on the chalkboard and he didn’t even give me partial credit because it wasn’t the one he wanted. We had a ‘discussion’ about it and after that I wouldn’t say hello or even acknowledge him when I saw him in the halls. His guilt apparently got the better of him eventually because, when I graduated, he volunteered to be a reference for me.
Reminds me of the time way back in 1952 when the professor was putting a derivation of a thermodynamic equation on the board. About fifteen steps, as I recall. In the third step, I noticed that the last quantity should have had a minus sign instead of a plus, and called that to his attention.
He responded, without turning his head (he knew me well): “My wife was right four times before breakfast. This time I am going to be right. Leave it as is.” (But I was right!)
Salutes to my favorite ChE professor: Prof Wingard.
Jim B
The University of New South Wales in OZ are showing students how to bloc dissenting views and news in a post from jonova.
Here’s the link:
http://joannenova.com.au/2017/09/uni-nsw-journalism-lecturer-gives-advice-on-how-to-cleanse-your-news-sources/
I’m so impressed by you. Smart, dilligent and honest, there aren’t many like you about and it will make life tough. Stick with engineers. Most I meet are climate sceptics and those that aren’t are sceptical of renewables. We’re a nice bunch.
The irony is if those that fully support CAGW weren’t so vehement in rejecting inconvenient facts, many of us wouldn’t be sceptics. On paper I’m a luke warmer but I have no problem with being called the D word because I deny all sorts of things, specifically I deny them the right to ignore those inconvenient realities. I deny them the insanity that tells us renewables can supply our societies the energy we need to subsist, let alone flourish. I deny the right to do my thinking for me. It sounds like you feel the same way 🙂
Thank you Claire for the belief in our youth you encourage.
I’m recently of the opinion that there will be an intellectual backlash when the schoolchildren and college students of now, are faced with the cold reality of climate change.
And cold it may be as there are a couple of credible studies suggesting that the climate is at, or about a turning point before the planet starts to cool again, quite naturally.
If that begins to happen and the AGW meme is put back in it”s box, there will be an enormous sense of betrayal from our (now) youth.
Science and politics will suffer as the young professional class wake up and react.
Good luck Claire, you are in the vanguard and will reap the benefits of your natural, and correct scepticism of everything.
I’m reading Atlas Shrugged at the moment. I never got round to reading it having read other books like 1984 and Brave New World. It is amazing how relevant the ideas in that book are, even with it being a more idealistic and romantic novel.
But most people understand why: Cultural Marxism.
We are living in the time of the Theorists with no grounding in reality. Yet they still want their cars and food to be safe. If only we could harness the power of Cognitive Dissonance.
It’s not cognitive dissonance. It’s double think.
There are many tales of Bishops refusing to look through Galileo’s telescope becuase they knew what was to be seen, by faith.
It always struck me as anti-religious propaganda by those making a category error.
However, the Green’s refusal to put cause and effect the right way round does indicate that the Renaissance parables may actually be literally true.
From science’s point of view, the climate skeptics are the Bishops…
From the article:
How does that square with “science’s point of view”? Assuming the poetic license of according a point of view to science.
That quote is a statement of faith. A faith that over-rides observational evidence.
From science’s point of view, the sceptics are the only scientists
Griff,
You have demonstrated over and over that you have no idea what Science is.
From science’s point of view, Griff is the one looking through the telescope with the lens cap on.
…and the word DOOM written on the inside of the cap.
Models aren’t science.
Science is a process. It doesn’t have a point of view.
@Griff: You have your understanding of what is going on in climate science horribly and ignorantly bass ackwards. it isn’t the skeptics with the belief system, it is the alarmists.
With their CAGW belief system, the alarmists are the clerics, the clergy. Skeptics are applying science to the alarmists belief system with their questions and refuting evidence. The job of the skeptics is to determine the robustness of the CAGW theory, and they are finding it wanting.
You are in dire need of reading a good book that talks about how scientific discourse is supposed to work. You also are in dire need of understanding how science has a long history of being quite fallible and getting things wrong, as they initially did with the status of the (now dwarf planet) Pluto decades ago. Your ignorance is an abomination at a science website like this one.
I can tell you all of this and I’m not even a scientist.
Hi Griff, since it appears I am now a Bishop, please explain to me how a radiative gas molecule in the atmosphere traps heat. Convince me and I will hand in my Mitre.
Richard111: Let me tell you how, and I am probably a class 1 denier. Gas molecules are agitated by an input of energy, as in sunlight of certain frequencies. They stay agitated, thus trapping the heat. That is why the earth is warm and Mars (with a very thin atmosphere) is not.
You are a complete upside down moron.
Griff,
It has been my experience that, at places like The Conversation, it is the ‘true believers’ that routinely engage in ad hominem attacks rather than refute my claims. Just who are the ‘bishops?’
I strongly disagree with your implication that skeptics are anti-science. The very essence of the Scientific Method is to consider alternative working hypotheses, question claims, attempt to replicate experiments, and even to continue to do so for a hundred years, as is the case with Einstein’s work. Those who are not inherently skeptics are not truly scientists; they are little better than technicians who have accumulated some area-specific knowledge, and defend it against all heretics.
I borrowed this from a reader comment at Jo Nova’s blog because it fits so well in so many places: “Not all faith-driven people are weird. But this lot are. Very weird.”
“texasjimbrock
September 7, 2017 at 9:40 am Edit
Richard111: Let me tell you how, and I am probably a class 1 denier. Gas molecules are agitated by an input of energy, as in sunlight of certain frequencies. They stay agitated, thus trapping the heat. That is why the earth is warm and Mars (with a very thin atmosphere) is not.”
I wonder why people say the silly things like what Texas man writes.
He think CO2 “traps heat”,when actually the CO2 molecule only absorbs and emit light, not heat. The earth is warm because of the OCEANS/Solar/Clouds effect. CO2 comes in way down the list of postulated warm forcing effect.
SST, texasjimbrock’s first statement is quite correct. CO2 gas molecules can absorb certain frequencies of sunlight and become more agitated. Problem is the agitated molecules now smack into adjacent air molecules and increase their kinetic energy. These collisions cause molecules to move apart slightly, they have been warmed, and that little volume of warm molecules starts to rise. The sunlight energy, photons, have warmed up a bit of the air but that sunlight never reached the ground. Thanks to the CO2 molecules absorbing some sunlight the ground beneath doesn’t get as hot as it could. No trapped heat there.
I’m keeping my mitre.
This sounds very similar to “scientific communism” and other political classes in the former Soviet Union, except that nobody was really enthusiastic about communism in the Soviet Union.
“nobody was really enthusiastic about communism in the Soviet Union”
There were quite a few enthusiasts in the early days. Most ended up six feet under in the thirties though.
Actually there probably never were any real communists in the Soviet Union. If you want to find real communists you need to look in hippie communes in California or kibbutzes in Israel, where the concept of communal possession of everything was the rule. “From each according to their capabilities, to each according to their needs”. The Soviet Union was simply a massively centralized state where a relatively few bureaucrats and security types lorded it over everyone else. Whatever kind of political philosophy this might have been, communism it was not.
Roger might be right when he says there were no real communists in the Soviet Union but he should not confuse the stages of socialism and communism. The CPSU never claimed to have achieved communism. It only ever talked about building towards it.
I just finished reading Robert Gellately’s “Stalin’s Curse.” That book, and others, make it very clear that the people who founded and ran the Soviet Union were Communists through-and-through. They believed and developed the theory, and they applied it as hard as they could do.
Communism is an abject failure. It’s a utopian fantasy that foundered on the rocks of economic reality and the reef of human nature.
There are die-hard people who say Communism has never been tried. They are just sure that if they could only get the chance, they’d make it work this next time. These people are delusionals who are unable and unwilling to learn from history.
Communism has been tried, and tried many times. It has failed every single time, always bringing its widespread poverty, its mass murders, its ruined lives, its political prisons, its show trials and its thought crimes.
Communism is by far, by far, the worst political/economic/social system ever invented.
I’m not sure about the kibbutzes in Israel but as far as I know most, if not all of the communes in California and elsewhere eventually failed. Pure communism just will not work because, as Pat Frank says above: “It’s a utopian fantasy that foundered on the rocks of economic reality and the reef of human nature.”
If we only could redo communism with real communists so we could progress on the inevident path to socialism and environmental protection by fighting social injustice and gender gap debilitating average lifetime of third and fourth sex.
I’m starting to sound like Oreskes.
As will a large number of the current enablers if they ever get the marxists dystopia they want.
It is one of the greatest ironies in history that just as the political left, in all its forms, have committed to man made global warming, is the same moment that the sun enters a spectacular cooling phase that is producing record low temperatures all over the planet.
And this is just the beginning.
There has been a group of perfectly respectable, highly competent scientist who have for some years warned of the coming cold. The MSM ignore them, the alarmists rubbish them.
But in the end none of this matters. Nothing will stop what is going to develop in the next 10 years or so. No graphs. No adjusted temperatures, No media propaganda. No dumb Al Gore movies. We are going into a new Maunder Minimum or perhaps worse, and the consequences will be immeasurable. The destruction of crops is already happening in all parts of the planet which I had not expect to happen for some years.
You need to become an expert on what foods last the longest and you don’t have a lot of time. Storing food will do you no harm, nor will joining your local gun club.
I’m of the Left but I’m less certain about the future that you are.
Hello Michael,
I am not of the Left or Right – I prefer being Correct, which tends to preclude membership in any camp.
I am not as pessimistic as Chris Norman but I am also concerned about imminent natural global cooling, which I (we) first predicted in writing in an article published in 2002. I then that wrote that (moderate) global cooling would commence by 2020-2030, and now think it will commence sooner, by ~2020 or even 2017. I’m expecting more of a Dalton Minimum than a Maunder – we will see.
However, this is still very serious. Global cooling kills many more people than global warming.
Reference: https://friendsofsciencecalgary.files.wordpress.com/2015/09/cold-weather-kills-macrae-daleo-4sept2015-final.pdf
I am concerned that the electrical systems in the Western world have been compromised by foolish grid-connected wind and solar power generation systems that drive up costs and reduce grid reliability. If global cooling coincides with compromised electrical systems, our politicians may have brewed the “perfect storm”.
Regarding food shortages, it may be possible to re-allocate the huge USA corn ethanol crop to food use, although this may take time. The excess drawdown of the Ogalalla Aquifer is also a concern for long-term food production. Further re-allocation of other biofuel cropland in the tropics to food production will take even longer.
These are real environmental issues, not the scary fairy tales of global warming fanatics.
The radical-left greens have taken over the environmental movement and have clearly done far more harm than good to the environment, and to societies all over the world.
The only remaining question is whether this was their intention all along – that is, to cull the human species – or whether this was the result of their naive reliance on cargo cult science. In other words, are the leaders of the global warming alarmist movement scoundrels, or are they imbeciles
Hello Allan Macrae.
My name is not Michael but as I’m semi-psudonymous it is good that that’s not known. Contracts are harder to come by for climate sceptics.
Politically, one’s views may be more correct on the left or on the right but they won’t affect the climate – unless you’re very theocratic and fortuitously correct.
Seriously, the Green agenda has been damaging to the Left and the global poor. As has Identity Politics been damaging to equality and the Left.
It seems unlikely that anyone has planned these outcomes. And if the unlikely were true, I would suspect the security services trying to fight the Cold War by infiltration.
You are clearly right that Cold is more risky than Warmth. Our policies should reflect that.
But to be so confident that Cold will occur is foolish in the extreme. We should prepare to adapt for all outcomes.
Allan
Then let me reassure you that Germany, with 35% renewable electricity, has one of the world’s most reliable electricity grids….
https://spectrum.ieee.org/energywise/energy/the-smarter-grid/germanys-superstable-solarsoaked-grid
From the article Griff linked:
So apparently, it’s the buried power lines that are responsible for the grid reliability (which makes sense) and not anything to do with the percentage of renewables on the grid. Germany also has some of the highest energy prices among developed nations, paying approximately 67% more per kilowatt-hour than the US.
That’s a lot of money to pay for zero effect on the climate.
Griff, what your linked advert for solar actually highlights, is Germany’s use of more reliable underground grid transmission systems. That is nothing to do with reliability of the generators. The advert also stops short of mentioning that Germany is fortunate to sit at the center of a larger European grid which adds security of supply from other countries.
What Germany is really doing is exporting the unreliability of wind and solar. Some of those countries are now taking steps to limit the harm Germany can cause to their grids in this manner. Germany is also reaching the limit of the amount of wind and solar that can safely be foisted upon traditional generators, who still remain the ultimate guarantors of supply when the wind doesn’t blow and at night. That is why new coal generating plants are being built in Germany and their CO2 emissions are not changing much.The grand scheme has nearly run it’s course. The free money and laws supporting growth of the unreliables industry are no longer enough, and the recipients are worried that the gravy train is running into the sand.
On the other hand, upping the renewables percentage to 35% didn’t alter that reliability, did it?
Renewables likely to cause blackouts and brownouts is a pretty common theme in these comments isn’t it? and yet the evidence is, it doesn’t.
One constant with Griff, he never tires of repeating old lies.
The only reason why Germany’s grid is stable is because it’s part of the larger European grid.
Trying to pretend that Germany has an isolated, independent grid is what liars do.
Germany also relies on it’s neighbors to soak up it’s excess solar power as well as provide for the shortfalls when there is not enough solar generation (like in the evenings when demand is high, but solar produces almost no power).
You can’t produce reliable outputs with unreliable and non schedule-able inputs.
Griff, you have it backwards. The surplus capacity of the grid allows Germany to cope with the peaks and valleys of output that go with such a large installation of renewables.
Griff,
One common definition of insanity is to continue doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different outcome. On the other hand, it may just be a learning disability.
In your case, I have seen time after time when you state, or post a link to, something that comes right out of the secret Saturday morning liberal catechism classes, and you receive several replies demonstrating why you are wrong. However, you continue to post such poorly supported claims without even showing the slightest embarrassment or apologizing (Susan Crockford?)! To what do YOU attribute your behavior?
And I repeat, because you don’t seem very good at reading, whatever the real percentage achieved on certain optimal days by so called “renewables”, it is not them that is tasked with ensuring security of supply. That burden falls on fossil-fueled and nuclear generators, plus other nations that use those technologies for secure generation capacity.
There is a very, very, basic problem of insecure supply with “renewables”. There is still currently still no escape from this problem, whatever is claimed.
Griff
Does load-shedding in Germany 🇩🇪 count as load-shedding when it’s the poor who are being cut off?
https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.thelocal.de/20170302/over-300000-poverty-hit-german-homes-have-power-cut-off-each-year/amp
Hello M Courtney – are you Richard S’s son?
I just tried to contact to inquire about his health, and the email bounced back.
I hope he is still OK – he is one of the most intelligent and informed contributors to this site.
BTW, and I am not THAT confident about imminent global cooling, but I believe it is more probable that more global warming in the decade 2020-2030.
I (we) first made this prediction in an article published in 2002, before it was clear that SC24 (and probably SC25) would be very weak.
ALLAN MACRAE, Yes I am Richard S Courtney’s son. He is very ill at the moment. He has the sort of cancer that they give chemo for but don’t expect remission.
It’s spread to the bones and he has other complications. Email and internet are not things he can concentrate on because of the pain relief.
But he’s still around.
Thank you M Courtney,
Please give Richard my very best regards,
Allan
M Courtney. All the best to your father. From our family to yours.
Sorry, any decline in agricultural yields will of course be blamed on “global warming” with shrieks of “we told you so” even if summer sea ice starts to disrupt Atlantic shipping around the same time. As Clive James recently warned us, this is the “theory that no fact doesn’t fit”, i.e. unscientific dogma.
Given the continuing low levels of arctic sea ice – even this year, with a cold central arctic – it is not at all likely that Atlantic shipping is going to find it a problem… unless I suppose even more of the thinning ice gets exported.
The Russian Northern Sea route is now open for longer than ever before (even without the new ice breakers to extend its use beyond the summer)
I won’t, no! I won’t show the truth and smash the troll… the troll knows the truth.
I won’t feed the troll.
“The theory that fits all” is a more apt name for it.
Griff
WHEN, take the bet! Or have even you realized that you have been wrong every single time with your predictions.
Griff: Just can’t imagine the sea ice thinning is no big deal, can you? Just can’t imagine it melted in the past and not everything on the planet died. Even if presented with hard evidence, I seriously doubt you’d pay any attention to facts. You have incredible faith, just not facts.
@Griff:
Another fact about German electricity is that the installed capacity of renewables is at nearly 100% of peak electricity demand yet those renewables provide only 35% of the total energy consumed. In addition, in some weeks as little as about 5% of total electricity comes from those renewables (see energy market statistics by the Fraunhofer Institute). So, while you are correct that a certain amount of renewable energy does not necessarily make for an unreliable grid, it makes for an expensive one. As others have stated, the job of ensuring reliability falls on nuclear or fossil-fueled generators, not on the renewables, which tend to pirate the revenues of those reliable generators. Add in the more expensive transmission required because wind energy is often found far from where we like to live, and the cost of renewables is staggering. Purveyors of green energy generally ignore all green-energy costs beyond the plant gate.
Coles Notes for “Clair Masters”
Reference:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/06/13/presentation-of-evidence-suggesting-temperature-drives-atmospheric-co2-more-than-co2-drives-temperature/
Observations and Conclusions:
1. Temperature, among other factors, drives atmospheric CO2 much more than CO2 drives temperature. The rate of change dCO2/dt is closely correlated with temperature and thus atmospheric CO2 LAGS temperature by ~9 months in the modern data record. [published on icecap.us in January 2008]
2. CO2 also lags temperature by ~~800 years in the ice core record, on a longer time scale.
3. Atmospheric CO2 lags temperature at all measured time scales.
4. CO2 is the feedstock for carbon-based life on Earth, and Earth’s atmosphere and oceans are clearly CO2-deficient. CO2 abatement and sequestration schemes are nonsense.
5. Based on the evidence, Earth’s climate is insensitive to increased atmospheric CO2 – there is no global warming crisis.
6. Recent global warming was natural and irregularly cyclical – the next climate phase following the ~20 year pause will probably be global cooling, starting by ~2020 or sooner.
7. Adaptation is clearly the best approach to deal with the moderate global warming and cooling experienced in recent centuries.
8. Cool and cold weather kills many more people than warm or hot weather, even in warm climates. There are about 100,000 Excess Winter Deaths every year in the USA and about 10,000 in Canada.
9. Green energy schemes have needlessly driven up energy costs, reduced electrical grid reliability and contributed to increased winter mortality, which especially targets the elderly and the poor.
10. Cheap, abundant, reliable energy is the lifeblood of modern society. When politicians fool with energy systems, real people suffer and die. That is the tragic legacy of false global warming alarmism.
Allan MacRae, P.Eng. Calgary, June 12, 2015
“CO2 also lags temperature by ~~800 years in the ice core record, on a longer time scale”
That is only at the end of an ice-age, at the beginning of an ice-age the lag is more like 5,000 years.
Please use caution with the ‘excess winter deaths’ figure… this is NOT a measure of people killed by cold/cold homes…
Most excess winter deaths are from flu, not exacerbated by cold… that’s why (for example) UK figures vary according to how effective the year’s flu vaccine was…
But any deaths during heat waves are due to AGW?
You are so full of shite it is a wonder you Have any brain at all to run your autonomic system.
Actually you sound as thoughtless and shallow as the ignorant fanatics the author of this essay is surrounded by.
A leading English doctor (who could only say this to a newspaper after he retired), stated that at best, flu vaccines have a 1% effectiveness rate.
I can’t remember his name, but he was adamant about it.
Griff.
(SNIPPED the overt personal attack) MOD
Cold air is drier air, particularly when it is warmed in winter homes, which dries mucous membranes and makes one more susceptible to infection from both bacteria and viruses.
A long running experiment a relative and I have been conducting concerning flu vaccines: (she believes dearly in them) For the last 10 years, I have refused to get any flu vaccines. I have gotten the flu in two of those years, 8 years I have not.
She has gotten the flu vaccine every year. 7 years she had no flu, 3 years she got the flu within a week of taking the vaccine. (it certainly appears as if the vaccine gave her the flu) She still believes that the vaccine “protected” her in those 7 good years. I believe that wearing a clove or two of garlic on a necklace would have done the same thing (ie nothing at all) and that when you only have a 20% chance of contracting the illness, getting it 30% of the time is a problem.
My personal opinion is at best the vaccine is a placebo concocted to allow drug manufacturers to rake in huge government sanctioned profits for doing nothing, and at worst it is a catastrophic bit of malpractice that actually kills more old people than it protects.
hunter,
there are certainly deaths in heatwaves directly caused by heat
The excess winter deaths figure is not though deaths directly caused by cold – it is a seasonal difference figure and the deaths included are mostly down to flu
Flu increases in winter because people stay indoors during the winter.
So yes, cold plays a role in flu deaths.
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/bulletins/excesswintermortalityinenglandandwales/201415provisionaland201314final
Please see section 5, final paragraph on influenza vaccines
Griff
You are totally ridiculous and a perfect example of a fake person. Cold is far more dangerous than heat for life in general, every warming period has come with expansion of civilization and population growth, heck civilization only exists because we are in the midst of a brief warming period. Or said so you can understand, Warm good, Cold bad.
Many viruses are inhibited by higher temperatures. (although not rabies). Exactly, why all the nonsense statements about milder winters being “extreme” and warming being bad are so one-sided.
Grant: Perhaps some years that’s true. It’s a shot in the dark when formulating flu shots. Hit the correct strains, high success. Have one new strain show up and spread, low success. Vaccines are not 100% effective—some of the latest ones are around 60% or aimed at a very specific group. That’s not to say they are worthless. Some are very effective, some are not.
Griff,
Are you suggesting that Summer is the flu season? /sarc Whether it is cold itself, or things that come about as a result of the cold — such as carbon monoxide poisoning, road accidents attributable to ice, or seasonal illnesses — clearly, cold weather is directly and indirectly responsible for more excess deaths than the opposite weather. You are very good at using sophistries and straw men to try to appear to be right. You have no shame! If you aren’t already a lawyer, you might want to consider a career change.
wws,
I have another suggestion: wear a dead albatross around your neck. Nobody will come near you, and that should reduce your exposure to risk from people coughing and sneezing.
People, have a little more tact than just responding with personal insults…
The Exorcist,
Alright, I apologize for suggesting that Griff has the obvious talents for being a lawyer.
Non responsive answer, Griff.
I swear you act just like the Moonies that used to infest my town when I was a kid.
Always deceptive and misleading, no honest answers or discussion.
The data has proven time and time again that cold kills. Heat does not kill, it advances the death of people who are dying anyway. The stats show an increase in deaths during a heat wave but then a drop afterwards below the average rate, before it returns to average.
Re my point 8 above, excerpted as follows:
“8. Cool and cold weather kills many more people than warm or hot weather, even in warm climates.”
Reference:
“Cold Weather Kills 20 Times as Many People as Hot Weather”, September 4, 2015
by Joseph D’Aleo and Allan MacRae
https://friendsofsciencecalgary.files.wordpress.com/2015/09/cold-weather-kills-macrae-daleo-4sept2015-final.pdf
Point 8 is correct, based on the evidence. The causes for Excess Winter Mortality are many, and include seasonal influenza, high energy costs, and poor adaptation to winter climates.
The Excess Winter Mortality Rate in the United Kingdom is much higher than that in Canada. We have similar populations and similar health care systems. Canada tends to be colder but mostly drier than the UK. However, Canada generally has much lower energy costs and better-insulated housing and probably better central heating, on average. This suggest that adaptation to winter and low energy costs are significant drivers of lower Winter Mortality rates.
Even in warmer climates, Excess Winter Mortality rates are often higher than in Canada. Again, high energy costs and poorer quality housing appear to be key factors.
Cheap, abundant reliable energy is the lifeblood of society – it IS that simple.
When politicians fool with energy systems, real people suffer and die.
Regards, Allan
Clarification:
I wrote “We (Canada and Britain) have similar populations and similar health care systems.”
I mean similar populations genetically. Canada has a population of about 35 million and Britain about 65 million, but Excess Winter Mortality in Canada is about 5000 to 10,000 per year, and in Britain it is 25,000 to 50,000 per year.
Imagine IF Britain had competent politicians in the past several decades instead of warmist imbeciles. Instead of spending billions on green energy debacles, they could have spent the funds on improving home insulation and central heating, and encouraged fracking of shales to reduce natural gas prices., and a whole lot of grannies and grandpa’s would still be alive for their grandchildren.
Best, Allan
Hi Alan, ‘Coles’ Notes, preferably written as Cole’s Notes. Beside the some odd subjects as engineering undergrad (see my comment above), I did Latin at the grammar school. One of the pupils wrote ‘coles’ on the black board and left it there, a minute later teacher came in, upon seeing the word she went nuts (pardon the pun), of course we had to find out what it meant.
I see Aussies have Coles chain of supermarkets, which made me chuckle, no further comment.
Hi Vuk,
Thank you for your posts, which are always interesting.
Coles Notes (in the USA Cliff’s Notes) were an alternative to actually reading the books on the subject. Teachers hated them and students valued them – as a wonderful time-saver. Pre-internet, these books enjoyed a lively second-hand trade, as tattered copies were passed down from generation to generation. With the right Coles booklet, you could bang off a credible book report in an hour or so, rather than slogging through the actual text for days.
I actually enjoyed reading as a kid, and still collect books, but Coles was invaluable when faced with an incredibly boring and over-rated reading assignment.
Best, Allan
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coles_Notes
Coles Notes are student guides to literature, published in Canada. The Coles bookstore first published Coles Notes in 1948. The first title published was on the French novella Colomba by Prosper Mérimée.
In 1958, Jack Cole and Carl Cole, founders of Coles, sold the U.S. rights to Coles Notes to Cliff Hillegass who then published the books under CliffsNotes.
By 1960, Coles notes sales had peaked. They had over 120 titles, mostly on English novels; however, they covered other subjects including math, science and foreign languages. Coles Notes is currently owned by Indigo Books in Canada.
And, after all, this really is still planet Earth where mankind was created because the universal powers-that-are decided that a too-serious Universe needed some comic relief.
Well done, Clair. Never waver in your skepticism, and always keep in mind the motto of the Royal Society: Nullius in verba.
Which motto the Royal Society has now comprehensively betrayed. See for full details:
https://www.thegwpf.org/andrew-montford-nullius-in-verba-the-royal-society-and-climate-change-2/
One of the “gang of 43” known to me personally says he looked into the specialities of the rebellious 43 and found that almost all were engineers. Clair is in good company.
Nullius in verba, nisi argentum.
PDF downloaded. Thanks for the link.
Well said Clair
Test ALL things
Uphold the high standard of scientific integrity laid out by Nobel Laureate Richard Feynman in his commencement address “Cargo Cult Science” to Caltech 1974 http://bit.ly/2eO5JKO
For the rest of the story see Don Easterbrook “Evidence based Climate Science”
https://www.amazon.com/Evidence-Based-Climate-Science-Second-Emissions/dp/0128045884
In a way it is disconcerting to read this. As a geology graduate from 30 or so years ago, it troubles me to read that the earth sciences department at her university are so rife with alarmist tripe. It used to be that engineering and geology were the two reliably skeptical science departments. Now, of course, the earth sciences have been overwhelmed by the environmental “sciences”, and with their attendant SJW mindsets. It truly is about grant money. But for young Clair Masters I would say: Don’t turn back, your future is assured because so many others have turned their backs on reality and embraced the propaganda. Your expertise will be needed in the coming years.
When an intelligent – a truly intelligent – person sees people who appear to be intelligent, it is tempting to believe that they are.,
You are, after all at a university, maybe an extremely prestigious one. You feel that people are there because they are damned smart.
Until something happens and you catch someone – a fellow student or a lecturer perhaps – laying down ‘facts’ instead of showing you how to think.
And you realise that the world and university in particular is full of second and third rate minds, and the way those minds work is to absorb the received wisdom of people whom they consider, or whom they are told are, better minds than they are, and then seek to assert their status by an obscene process of regurgitation.
You may use a handy tool to spot these people. When they say ‘I think…’ it becomes clear that in fact that haven’t. The have heard, they have read, they have seen it in TV, but what they haven’t done is thought, and certainly not from first principles.
In the intelligence stakes these people are frauds. And they know it. Deep down they know that despite being professors or having degrees, they are not first rate minds. And this fundamental insecurity means they are suckers for consensus. As well as academic bovine excrement.* They dont have the courage to dissent. They teach what is perceived to be the received wisdom of the day, and they regurgitate what they have been taught.
*For those who enjoy philosophy and good BS, here is an extract from Roger Scruton’s – known as a ‘philosopher of the right’ – book on the New Left philosophers (Fools Frauds and Firebrands). Those are the people who more or less wrote the bible of political correctness. It’s just one instance at random, but it shows the magnificent outpourings of total excrement of which the New Left mind is capable. This is a critique of Althusser…
…”But by admitting that political transformations have political causes (‘relative autonomy’) and that economic structures may be generated by political choice (‘reciprocal action’) he allows human thought and intention to be prime causes of historical change. In which case, what remains of historical materialism?”
[what Scruton is doing here is examining a core inconsistency of Marxist thought, which seeks first to establish that we are all defined by material reality, and then propose a solution in which individual free choices by men not so bound, works.]
“Only a strong dose of scientific method could rescue Althusser from this impasse, but nothing in his writings suggests he has ever seriously considered what scientific method consists in”
[And I think here Roger senses a key point, that the rigours and disciplines of the scientific method are all that prevents it from becoming mere intellectual flatulence, the postulating of hypotheses with no limits placed upon the nonsense that may result]
“Rather than examine just what ‘determination of the last instance’ might mean, Althusser prefers to wrap the phrase in nonsense, thereby shielding it from interrogation. This habit was inherited by his most famous student Alain Badiou, ….Here is Badiou’s way of contributing to the debate concerning ‘determination in the last instance’.
‘If no instance can determine the whole it is by contrast possible that a practice, thought in the structure that is proper to it, which is thus a structure that is so to speak dislocated (décalée) with regard to the one that articulates this practice as an instance of the whole, plays the determining rôle with regard to a whole in which it figures in a decentered manner'”
Scruton admits total defeat in attempting to find any meaning in the above, and that is his point, and mine too.
Second and third rate minds are vulnerable to the ‘Emperors New Clothes’ syndrome. Unable to think and especially unable to go back to first principles, and desperately insecure, they cannot admit that a load of unadulterated wombat turds like the above is what it is. Pompous pseudo-intellectual nonsense. Since they can’t understand it (who can?) and they can’t admit that they can’t understand it, they are forced to go along with its conclusions!
And that is how almost intelligent people are more stupid that your average barely educated blue collar worker, who if he could read that at all, would instantly spot that it was beautifully crafted nonsense of the first order.
The New Left is in fact all Emperor New Clothes, and Climate change is perhaps its underpants. People believe in it because it makes them look smarter than they are, and people see through it because they actually are smarter than they thought they were.
And the natural allies of the really smart are not the over educated urban ‘liberals’ but the blue collar workers, who respect education and intelligence but have no time for BS.
Wonderful L.Smith Esq
+100
Had an argument in the common room today. I’m the only one who has troubled to read any IPCC report. I’m the only one who has actually read the code of any GCM (I have two on the laptop I’m typing this on and a third on my desktop). To the best of my knowledge I’m the only one who knows what an autoregressive time series is and why it matters that climate records are autoregressive. I’m the only one who knew that the ice was increasing around the Antarctic. I’m the only one who has actually read any of the climate science papers. I’m the only one who has actually bothered to analyse any climate data myself. But apparently *I* am the science denier for not believing in the consensus because it’s a consensus (and I am an ignoramus for thinking that science is supposed to be based on data, not consensus). A mad world, my masters.
One of the comments that I get in such conversations is that since I only have a BS, and that in engineering with a focus on Electromagnetics, I am not qualified to have an opinion on Climate Science. The logic is that only the high priests of science, the experts in any particular subject, can speak, and the rest of us must take their statements as holy writ. This is insane to me.
Mike: I figure it follows then that psychics are the only ones who can comment on psychic phenomena, homeopaths are the only ones that can address homeopathy, etc. Which is clearly not true.
That’s the most irritating thing Richard.
I got mobbed by misanthropes on a game I play (Clash of Clans) spouting every MSM talking point.
No one knew who Michael Man was, what IPCC was, what the EM spectrum CO2 absorbs, didn’t know Harvey was the first Cat 3+ in 12 years to landfall on the U.S. (someone “argued” a Cat5 hit last year), nor that corals bleaching was due to pollution & sea level falling, what land subsidence was…
… but the consesus was I didn’t know the facts.
Richard, you’re clearly an idiot. /s
I know. I try to refrain from posting about climate science on Facebook, but sometimes my darker angels lure me in. The last time, I posted this:
Please answer these three questions if you wish to debate climate science:
1. What are the data sources that measure global temperature? How many are there, and where are they situated? How many independent data sets are there that measure global temperature?
2. How often have these data sets been revised, modified, or cleansed, and by whom?
3. What is the net effect of these revisions/modifications/cleansing?
I’ve never found any takers, but I do get a lot of hot air and bluster. I finally had to say to the last guy, “If you aren’t willing to answer those questions, you’re accepting dogma on faith. Have a great time at church, and say a prayer for me please!”
I’m an engineer by training, a coder by profession (early in my career) and a technology researcher today. My grasp of statistics is rusty but serviceable, and I’ve read the ClimateGate files. Why does all this invalidate my skepticism?
“The herd of independent minds.”
“That’s (snip)ing hilarious, Morty”
-Rick Sanches
Sanchez. You know what I (snip)ing meant.
A superb critique of where it all goes wrong in the educational world, and why the more people you send to university, the more collectively idiotic they appear to become.
The truth of your final paragraph has been amply demonstrated by the current divide in the UK between those who voted to Leave the European Union – a mix of those who are truly bright and do their own research, and the blue collar working class – and the diminishing number of brainwashed idealist Leftists who want to Remain in the EU. They are terrified of stepping out of line, not understanding how Establishment and unthinking they have become.
In Chapter XVIII of “The Prince” Niccolò Machiavelli wrote “Men judge generally more by the eye than by the hand, because it belongs to everybody to see you, too few to come in touch with you. Everyone sees what you appear to be, few really know what you are, and those few dare not oppose themselves to the opinion of the many, who have the majesty of the state to defend them; and in the actions of all men, and especially of princes, which it is not prudent to challenge, one judges by the result.
Some would summarize this comment as “The ends justify the means.” the holy mantra of the New Left. The New Left have no interest in debate or reason. Discussion of issues is a complete waste of time. The New Left must be removed from power through the electoral process and left to wither on the vine. To achieve this result requires unrelenting efforts to overcome the current moral vacuum of the mass media.
If it’s not too late to do so without penalty, drop the class. There’s too much danger that you will ‘get across’ the teacher and get a crappy mark. If you want to go on to higher degrees, that can matter a lot.
Social justice is another meaningless term invented by the Left to capture the moral high ground.
I have never met a lefty who can tell me what it actually means.
But all agree its terribly important and if we don’t frame our whole lives by its precepts, we are beyond the moral pale.
Meaningless twaddle. What is ‘just and fair’? What is ‘society’ . What are ‘explicit and tacit terms for the distribution of wealth’ and WTF is a ‘social privilege’?
We are all born different, and unequal. Some by sheer happenstance manage to remain ignorant and blissful and confront death in the sure end certain knowledge of a resurrection, others by sheer happenstance live miserable lives handicapped by diseases, psychological baggage from childhood or just being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
We don’t have the power to change that. If we try by bureaucratic means we end up with a set of rules ripe for exploitation by those who will – as the 3rd world beggar who cuts his legs off – manage to define themselves as victims in terms of those rules.
For every idealistic projection of what and how we think things ought, or should be – and that very term implies a debt – we can see that the very means by which it is supposed it might be achieved, are self contradictory.
Every piece of positive discrimination is simply discrimination in its own right. We have Black Lawyers associations, Black Police associations that are inherently and deeply racist to their cores. What we find is that as soon as we view the world in terms of ‘social justice’, we are creating the view that leads to creating social injustice. The favouring of one group over another in an attempt to achieve an idealistic equality that is only in the mind of the Marxist, never in the real world.
And that is the game. To justify the abstraction of wealth from those who create it, on the excuse that it will be given to those who ‘through no fault of their own’ do not have it, by a bunch of people who extract something like a 40% commission for doing it. Which they trouser.
And of course what is ‘fair and equal’ is what they also define. Socialism is institutionalised racketeering.
And ‘social justice’ is an effective a weapon of extortion as a Thomson sub machine gun.
I’m on all sides of this at the same time … somewhere between Tommy Douglas and Ron Paul. 🙂
The thing that disturbs me is that there is way too much talk about privilege and victimhood, and way too little about hard work and initiative. Thomas Sowell points out that we no longer celebrate people who overcome adversity to make something of themselves. link It’s bad in so many ways.
Putting “social” in front of any noun is the logical equivalent of putting “not” in front of that same noun.
social justice = not justice
social science = not science
and so on.
A few deliberate spelling errors and the real meaning becomes all too clear–
SoCal JustUs
The EPA adopted the wholly meaningless “climate justice” meme under Obama-era administrators and used it to spend millions of dollars paying off friendly special interests that had nothing to do with the EPA’s core mission.
Fortunately it is now being dismantled under Scott Pruitt for the rubbish that it is.
I despise Wikipedia. I routinely audit articles. Every-single-one has missing citations, erroneous citations (Huff post is not a science journal ffs), or statements made not even found in the citations!
You want pseudo-intellectual technobabble, check out the article on https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_NeuroGenderings_Network
Created and administrated by, “The Vintage Feminist”.
Leo Smith,
You said, “I have never met a lefty who can tell me what it actually means.” Actually, those lefties are in good company. Socrates wrestled with an acceptable definition of justice. 😉
Petroleum Engineering. That’s an evil profession. [/sarc]
““This trend suggests the opposite of what we know to be true” before moving on. ”
No, the trend shows exactly what is predicted. The climate warms when the forcings increase.
If the forcings are solar, then after the planet warms the oceans will outgas c02, which will increase the warming.
yes, increased C02 is both a Cause of warming and a reaction to warming.
No contradiction, in fact Hansen predicted the lag before it was found.
the lag is AGW 101
Culling the pool of received wisdom again, Steve?
A moments thought….never mind.
Steve,
Have you been hijacked by aliens?
“yes, increased C02 is both a Cause of warming and a reaction to warming”.
Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight.
And warming causes cooling. And cooling no doubt causes more CO2.
You can run, but you can’t hide from CO2, up down or sideways, its coming at ya.
Whatever happens, its AGW101, we knew about it, it’s settled, may I have more research money please.
Steve,
By the way, Hansen has are many predictions about where clinate would be at this point based on the emissions scenario we care living out in reality.
Those predictions have failed.
Steve,
I guess the question is what is the difference between what you claim Hansen predicted and a perpetual motion machine?
followed by
How does the climate system tell the difference between Anthro CO2 and good natural CO2?
Unless “negative feedbacks dominate” is climate 102 then we would be living on New Venus, were that true.
Unfortunately we can’t say that because you are just guessing.
The heat on Venus is not caused by the greenhouse effect. It is caused by atmospheric pressure that is 90 times that of earfh’s.
“the lag is AGW 101”
Yeah, it’s straight from the Old Climate Testament. Plenty of mention in the Climate hymnals too.
No. AGW 50.5.
Sounds like a one-way trip to me. With this model, how do you get back to an ice age?
Masher:
If warming (from any cause) led to oceans releasing CO2,
and CO2 was a major cause of global warming,
then we would have had runaway global warming billions of years ago
… and the good news is none of us would be here to read your silly posts.
You have just provided evidence that CO2 is a minor variable for climate change, obviously overwhelmed by other causes of climate change, because there has never been runaway warming with CO2 levels up to 20x higher than today for most of the past 4.5 billion years.
Thank you for helping the skeptics explain why CO2 does NOT control the climate.
Climate blog for non-scientists
And you would certainly qualify, Masher:
http://www.elOnionBloggle.Blogspot.com
Richard, positive feedback cause runaway effect only if the loop feedback is above 1.0. When the feedback is between 0 and 1 there is only an amplifying effect, no runaway.
/Jan
RichardGreene: Nobody claims that any warming of oceans causes them to release CO2. Instead, oceans constantly are emitting CO2 to the atmosphere and absorbing it from the atmosphere. The balance of those two directions of flow depends on the temperatures, the partial pressure of CO2 in the atmosphere, and the “amount of CO2” in the ocean (I put the latter in quotes because it’s really the complex ocean chemistry that affects CO2 in and out of air). Oceans can continue to net absorb CO2 from the atmosphere despite increasing temperature, if the CO2 in the atmosphere increases fast enough from non-oceanic sources, as is happening now.
Steve, if what you wish to was actually true, then the warming should have accelerated once CO2 started increasing. Unless you wish to postulate that somehow, magically, all other forcings stopped the minute CO2 started increasing.
Otherwise you have to admit that CO2 is a minor forcing, at best.
Steve, do you have a link to Hansen’s prediction of the lag? Was it before the Vostok data was published or after?
Just wondering.
Thank you for bringing some sanity to the debate Steven
The lag is AGW 101 as you say, and reason why water vapour in the exhaust from hydrogen cars is no problem at all is even more basic. It is disappointing that the teacher could not answer that.
Jan
Thank you for bringing some sockpuppetry to the debate Jan
By opposite she meant two things. One, opposite to how Gore presented it and how it is often presented. ( first the warmth, then the CO2 increase.) ( DUH like you did not know that)
As to your conjecture that the positive feedbacks dominate with additional CO2, well the earth itself is offering lots of contrary evidence. However as you denigrate your scientific betters ( PHD NIPCC scientist)
you are unlikely to be educated.
Belief in catastrophic climate change is akin to belief in magic and voodoo rituals to calm volcanoes.
Steven – You say
Standard warmist dogma, I’ve read it before on warmist websites. But just think – so far, you are talking about natural phenomena without human effects. Then what, in your view, caused the start of cooling at the end of previous no-fossil-fuel interglacials? Or previous no-fossil-fuel interstadials during the current interglacial?
From what I’ve seen, you are too well informed to use the tactics of denying the existence of interstadials and ignoring interglacials. So what natural phenomenon is powerful enough to override the CO2-amplified warming and start a cool cycle?
If you say solar/orbital/ocean circulation, you are opening the door to the concept that CO2 may not be the primary driver of climate.
Be careful how far you follow these lines of reasoning Steve, you might turn into a sceptic. Or even a skeptic
Your friends may disown you. You may be cast into the outer darkness.
Steve,
the IPCC per decade warming trend prediction/projection has been failing for the 27 years it began making them.
Why persist in your delusion?
Steven Mosher
September 7, 2017 at 2:57 am
Very good and well thought comments and replies here.
A lot of them to mention individually….
But the best and the only one that I my self will stand by at 100% as per this blog post is one of the Mosher..:)
Beautiful one…… Great and extraordinary, In all counts as far as I am concerned…. tough and great.
Thanks Treasure …:)
cheers
There we have it. Natural forcings that are strong enough to change the current climate. We might call them “natural climate variations”. And those forcings are strong enough to change the current trend into a new trend, which requires a large quantity of energy to overcome the stability of the thermal mass. And these natural forcings sustain that energy until the oceans “outgas C02” a process that can take several hundred years.
But now the dilemma of what happens to the natural forcings once the levels of CO2 increase? Do they hand off the baton to CO2 and go back to dormancy? Or is it possible that they continue to do what they have been doing, and CO2 is a minor player that contributes little, compared to natural forcings, and water vapor? If you are a logical person, the answer is difficult to avoid.
It is a remarkable feat of human intellectual flexibility that so many can successfully avoid an obvious answer! We may subconsciously still be trying to claim we are the “Center of The Universe” (or at least able to control our little slice of it).
Hansen!
“AGW 101” and proven predictions (sorry, projections):
James Hansen: Global average temperatures will rise by 0.5-1.0 Farenheit 1990-2000 and then another 2.0-4.0 Fahrenheit 2000-2010 (quoted in New York Times interview 1986) – are we 5.0 F hotter than 1986?
Bill McKibben: “A few more decades of ungoverned fossil fuel use and we burn up … straight to a place with a similar temperature to [hell]” (his 1989 End of Nature book) – Imprecise, scaremongering, unscientific bull****
John Holden: “Carbon-dioxide climate-induced famines could kill as many as a billion people before the year 2020” (1986, quoted by Paul Ehrlich) – CO2 emissions accelerated, population went from 4.9bn to 7.4bn, malnutrition fell dramatically. So not just wrong, the exact opposite happened.
Amory Lovins: “[W]e don’t need any more big electric generating stations. We already have about twice as much electricity we can use to advantage” (Nov 1977) – Computers, smartphones, yeah don’t need those….
There has been no disavowel of these predictions, no introspection about why they were horrifically wrong, and instead of being humble before proposing the same policies again, they are arrogant and treat the public like idiots.
It is good to ask questions. We ask so that we may understand, and give someone an opportunity to explain. Children have a great sense of inquisition and will rarely let something go if the explanation doesn’t make sense to them. Listening to stories of Professors/ teachers admonishing students for questioning them about Climate change, can only mean one thing. They are unable to satisfactorily explain it. I am more impressed with a simple admit of this than to have someone digging in with indignation and dismissal. When a child asks awkward questions about Santa, an adult will rely on the ”but he’s magic” answer, and for a while that will do. Well, we know how often CO2 has been given magical properties by those unable to answer the awkward questions about Climate change and every event that occurs being attributed to the Human factor.
Eamon.
Truth fears no question. If you’re not getting a straight answer, or at least an honest “I don’t know,” what are they so afraid of?
Nice 5 AM read. A random thought comes to mind. At an elevation of about 7100 feet, the U of Wyo may well be the “highest” campus in the US.
Thanks for this interestinf and disturbing insight.
It sounds like you are in a very hostile social scene
Best wishes.
Hang tough.
Be careful.
.
Reads like fiction.
But truth is frequently stranger than fiction.
I like to think that truth is stronger than fiction.
Truth is stranger than fiction, because fiction has to make sense.
In the words of John Dufresne, fiction is the lie that tells a truth.
I wondered about that too. Because I’m over 65, I could audit classes at the local University to see what is really going on, but that would really take a lot of effort.
Read David Horowitz’s ” Discover the Professors)
Or alternately spend thousands helpING your 160 plus IQ daughter go to Oxford and come back a SJW, indoctrinated into Marxism supporting BLM and ANTIFA.
Every time the IPCC shows a graph of predicted future temperature they falsify their own theory.
“If we’re worried about CO2 causing global warming, wouldn’t it be much worse if we were all driving cars that had water vapor as their exhaust?”
————
Weird or what?
Burning hydrocarbons also produces water! She did not know this?
Water vapour requires warmth to remain vapour there is a vast resource of warm water all producing vapour-the sea, the land, lakes etc – the difference between fossil and ectric would make a minimal differenc. But if not warm enough the value falls as some form of precipitation and is out of the warming equation. All climate scientists could explain this to her.
Close to reality.
-You have correclty identified that Water Vapour dwarfs the effects other trace gasses in abundance and in activity.
-You have correclty identified that Water Vapour reacts to the local temperature adn precipuitates or forms clouds of ice and changes the local albedo.
-But you missed the fact that this debunks AGW.
The author of the piece was describing how – as a child – she could see that the argument beinfg presented was silly. That she also realised that a photon doesn’t care if CO2 or H20 is excited shows far more wit than someone who believes CO2 has special, demonic powers.
Your argument is that CO2 lasts so long in the atmosphere that it ovewrwhelms the effect of water vapour. This may be true on a snowball Earth but not on a planet with liquid water oceans.
Which this is.
It’s more a matter of wavelength of energy that the H2O molecules block due to their shape, isn’t it? That H2O fills in a different part of the “gaps” than CO2?
I took a Remote Sensing course last year, my vocab isn’t quite up to par anymore.
I’ll admit I was probably wrong overall in regards to water vapor from those H cars (I’m also a big fan of the tech— if it can be proven viable) those years ago. Once you add enough to the atmosphere, would it no longer add to the “insulation” because all the gaps water molecules can fill already have been filled?
Clair Masters,
Yes, “all the gaps water molecules can fill already have been filled”. Almost. But the important thing is that the gaps in the spectrum that water molecules fill are also the very same gaps that CO2 molecules can flll.
This should not be a surprise.
H2O is a bent molecule (because it has pairs of lone electrons on the C repelling the electrons on the C=O bonds) and so it has more potential ways to bend than a linear molecule like CO2. It has more potential ways to absorb a photon. And molecules like H2O and CO2 do not shuffle along politely to queue for space on the electromagnetic spectrum. They aren’t sentient. If any photon of the right energy hits them they will absorb it and delay its escape back out of the atmoshere to space.
Of course, there are other, rarer vibration modes that do not overlap. But these are negligably small (a trillion pool balls cueing off will lead to some landing and resting on top of the 8-Ball but don’t practice your break for that occurence).
If AGW relies on those cases to be newsworthy then CO2 is insignificant.
Finally remember that these effects are logarithmic. And not in the ‘getting bigger’ way.
If you keep throwing stickers labelled “CO2” or “H2O” at a window you will block the light from getting inside. But when half the window is stickered, half of the next volley will double up. It is half as darkening as the first volley.
And when three quarters of the window is covered up, the next volley will then be half as darkening again.
You can’t ignore the H2O even if you think that it will precipitate out from the atmosphere at some point. It is always in a great abundance relative to ithe impact of any addition.
Clair Masters: No, the reason adding water vapor directly to the atmosphere does not force increased warming, is because the vapor condenses out of the atmosphere quickly–10 days as a global average. Water vapor on Earth can act only as a feedback to warming from other causes, because of the Earth’s range of temperatures and pressures, and because of the vast pools of liquid water. See my explanations and links in my other comments here.
“CO2 also lags temperature by ~~800 years in the ice core record, on a longer time scale”
That is only at the end of an ice-age, at the beginning of an ice-age the lag is more like 5,000 years.
——–
ALLAN MACRAE September 7, 2017 at 2:00 am
Coles Notes for “Clair Masters”
Reference:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/06/13/presentation-of-evidence-suggesting-temperature-drives-atmospheric-co2-more-than-co2-drives-temperature/
Observations and Conclusions:
1. Temperature, among other factors, drives atmospheric CO2 much more than CO2 drives temperature. The rate of change dCO2/dt is closely correlated with temperature and thus atmospheric CO2 LAGS temperature by ~9 months in the modern data record. [published on icecap.us in January 2008]
2. CO2 also lags temperature by ~~800 years in the ice core record, on a longer time scale.
3. Atmospheric CO2 lags temperature at all measured time scales.
—-_————-
Are you all joking?
Cowlags temperature by 9 months to 5000 years, it cannot be all -please chose an approximate range. You just look silly choosing millennia. Or is this the accuracy of your science
Ice cores do not have the resolution to detect the 9 month lag. It takes about half a century for them to settle and trap the atmosphere.
You are not comparing the same thing.
It’s like saying
“The best team wins the League and Leicester won the league. Therefore Leicester are the greatest team of all time… But Real Madrid have won most European Cups? That can’t be true – it must be Leicester”.
Stick around and you might notice that a lot of people with expertise write here.
You may learnt a thing or two.
So you are suggesting that the pay is 9 months? Or what.?
If you would care to check co2 and O2in atmosphere I think you will find that increasing co2 equates to decreasing O2. I.e. you are not looking at water absorption of co2 you are looking at oxidation of carbon. There is little delay in this process.
Also where are your spikes and dips corresponding to lia.mwp.rwp. etc.
Stick around and you might notice that a lot of people with expertise write here.
You may learnt a thing or two.
_—————-
Once maybe but not now. Check out the comments. It’s all about calling people communist, ignorant,sub-normal. This site lost all respect in the treatment of solar expert Leif svalgaard.
So you judge a site solely based on how it treats your sensei. Nice.
halfrunt,
You obviously do not have a clue about — ice core resolution — or what it means. Consequently you assertion “Once maybe but not now” is meaningless. I am also dubious of your claim since it means you are also a world renowned expert on climate capable of judging the contributions here as worthless.
Some collected what wisdom from this thread alone
Sam The First says: September 7, 2017 at 6:44 am
… and the diminishing number of brainwashed idealist Leftists who want to Remain in the EU. They are terrified of stepping out of line, not understanding how Establishment and unthinking they have become.
Ziiex Zeburz says: September 7, 2017 at 4:06 am
Griff.
Do you also SH&T in you bed ??
It is obvious that you eat upside down, your breath stinks!
hunter says: September 7, 2017 at 3:55 am
But any deaths during heat waves are due to AGW?
You are so full of shite it is a wonder you Have any brain at all to run your autonomic system.
Actually you sound as thoughtless and shallow as the ignorant fanatics the author of this essay is surrounded by.
CD in Wisconsin says: September 7, 2017 at 7:47 am
@Griff: You have your understanding of what is going on in climate science horribly and ignorantly bass ackwards. it isn’t the skeptics with the belief system, it is the alarmists.
With their CAGW belief system, the alarmists are the clerics, the clergy. Skeptics are applying science to the alarmists belief system with their questions and refuting evidence. The job of the skeptics is to determine the robustness of the CAGW theory, and they are finding it wanting.
MarkW says:
September 7, 2017 at 6:26 am
Models aren’t science.
Clair Masters, … I should have known what I was getting into when I looked around and saw several students with either half shaved heads or hair colors that in nature scream “I’m toxic”.
D P Laurable says: September 7, 2017 at 6:09 am
I have put 4 children through college. Substitute “gender theory” or “Marxism” for “climate change” and there you have it, a college education.
Monckton of Brenchley says: September 7, 2017 at 7:06 am
… that on climate change, as on a growing number of other subjects, the totalitarians who ruthlessly control academe are no longer willing to be challenged. They demand obedience, where my professors demanded to be challenged, and delighted in the awakening of young minds.
Ghalfrunt, a lot of the writers here are partisan. Many here hate and fear me as a Socialist.
But I do not hate and fear them.
I do not hate and fear them because I am not a coward and I do not think political beliefs control the climate.
Why do you?
Ghalfrunt, I can assure you there is more science and fewer personal attacks on WUWT than on any alarmist site. This post, by its very nature, will elicit more subjective comments than most (it’s more about the experience than the science). But, this site isn’t for the faint of heart – commenters often tear into fellow skeptics if they don’t get the science right (or the spelling, or the punctuation, or …)
I noticed that most of the comments in your list are directed at institutions rather than people. Do you disagree with them? I would love to see you go to any college campus and pretend to be a skeptic, a capitalist, or a Trump supporter. I think you’d find that most of the comments here are true. I’m sure you would never do that though, because you know that you would be putting your career, and possibly your life, at risk. Beware the peaceful protesters!
Off topic, but this the first challenge to my understanding to date that green energy is a disaster suppirted by hot air and subsidy.
https://cleantechnica.com/page/3/
The article challenges the IEA and claims tgat green energy production is much greater than predicted.
This seems counter factual, to say the least.
I would appreciate any serious critical analysis.
I see more than a few dubious pints, but would like others to pick at this.
Clair, you have a beautiful mind. Hold on to it! Thank you for this essay.
We have hope. This woman is the proof.
I must admit, I was joyed by one of her remarks – as a big fan of H fuel for vehicles I never thought of the problem she raised about excess water vapor. I don’t know why but it made me happy to find problems with my views.
Really saw myself in her description of things in college.
Keep it up!
Water vapor is a condensing gas in Earths’ range of temperature, pressure, and abundant liquid water sources. More vapor than the air can hold at a given temperature falls out again as liquid water. That’s why warm summer air has more water vapor than cold winter air. That’s why your local weather reports mention both relative and absolute humidities. Globally on average, water vapor in excess of the carrying capacity of the air falls out in about 10 days. Therefore water vapor is a feedback from warming, not a forcing of warming. The water vapor created by hydrogen engines therefore does not cause warming.
I’ve never lived in a place where relative humidity was 100%, year round. Many places that I have lived the relative humidity often gets down below 20%.
Your belief that all water vapor from such engines quickly leaves the atmosphere is not supported by the evidence.
MarkW, I did not assert that relative humidity always is 100% year round. I specifically said the opposite. Read what I wrote. Then explain how rain can exist if, as you believe, water vapor permanently remains in air. Also explain how oceans can exist despite their liquid water constantly evaporating to become vapor. Then take a second grade science class: https://www.education.com/science-fair/article/the-dew-point/
Tom Dayton,
Try taking a sauna,,, and ” thimk”
Eyal:
“I don’t know why but it made me happy to find problems with my views.”
Truth is a thing; a worthy pursuit in and of itself, for it’s own purpose. It sets people free. It is the key to universe, so to speak.
Or so it seems to me.
err a “[beautiful] thing”, that is.
I have put 4 children through college. Substitute “gender theory” or “Marxism” for “climate change” and there you have it, a college education. What I have noticed in recent graduates I have hired is a complete absence of critical intellectual faculties outside of the leftist cant. They cannot analyze and come to a conculsion. They wait for it to be fed to them, which is what the system conditions them to do. Most will eventually climb out of this hole, but by then they will have wasted half their productive lives. I am past anger now, only sad.
Clair, if you want to be truly red-pilled, start doing some research into some of the billionaires, like the Rockefellers and their history.
All of their many various philanthropic organisations are behind this anti-fossil-fuel and divestment movement.
Rockefeller Family Fund
Rockefeller Brothers Fund
Growald Foundation
Etc
For example, the following report reveals how they use these “philanthropic” organisations to prosecute their agenda:
https://www.epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/2014/7/post-53280dcb-9f2c-2e3a-7092-10cf6d8d08df
And the full report can be found here:
http://leftexposed.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/2014-Senate-Billionaire-Club-Report.pdf
If you keep going back in history, you can learn about how these people and others like them (Carnegie) founded the original eugenics movement in the US (now Planned Parenthood), founded the Kaiser Wilhelm Eugenics Institute in Germany in the late 1930s, gave Nazi Germany the means to fight WW2 (coal to liquids and tetra-ethyl lead) and financed and transferred technology to the Soviets.
There is an excellent book by Anthony Sutton available online which details these treasonous activities.
They are pure evil.
Here is the why and how:
http://thesavagelifestyle.com/hegelian-dialectic-sexes/
Gosh, I didn’t fully read my last link. Please do not approve that comment, mods.
There is a post on my blog regarding the Rockefellers Bros website.
There is a great search engine there as well. Never guess some of the names that pop up. Ever hear of Green Peace or the Sierra Club?
Check out https://thedemiseofchristchurch.com/2015/08/15/the-rockefellers-who-they-fund-from-their-web-site/
Cheers
Roger
Well done Clair, it is extremely brave to put up your views in this forum where they can be, and have been subject to critical appraisal. My geology degree was in 1969 at Exeter, uk and we were excited by the first debates on plate tectonics. We must have had good teachers as we were always asked to consider both sides of any argument and to criticize any papers that did not provide sound logic or strong evidence. There were no holy cows and we learned to be solidly skeptical as all good scientists should. In my final year I studied palaeo – climates as part of my course and so developed an understanding of the huge range of natural variation, so have been profoundly disturbed by the huge ignorance of the current crop of academics and politicians on this issue, and even among my environmental science colleagues who accept the concensus without question. I am also distressed at the deterioration in standards at what was a great university that now drives a lot of the myths on climate change, such as the recent failed expedition by boat to the north pole led by an academic from Exeter. You have the makings of a good scientist but watch your back. This journey (war?) We are on has many years to run yet. Don’t let it drive you away from geology. We will need you when we are all dead and buried and the world turns cold.
Pedantic copy editor here: the headline is a bust. I expected a story about an undergraduate “climate science” course that had the opposite effect on the author as was intended by the prof. Properly the hed should read, ‘The making of a climate skeptic — in middle school’.
Most interesting that this has even penetrated U of WY. WY isn’t exactly known to be a center of liberalism. I an only image how bad it must be at notoriously liberal institutions.
I am always fascinated by Wyoming trying to destroy the only industries that make them money—oil and gas and coal. The University teaches them that people here who work in fossil fuels are wrong to do so, but that’s what pays the teacher’s salary. Same for putting in the super computer to study climate change. Why try to destroy your state? (I admit that has been the pattern the entire 35 years I’ve lived here. Luckily, Wyoming is pretty slow at self-destruction. I suspect they’ll get there, however.)
If oil and gas go, the professor can kiss his tenured position goodbye, as can the rest of the University staff. It’s completely suicidal thinking.
Claire,
When you use your science to explore for resources, do keep in mind that you seek an actual target, one that further testing can allow description in detail.
Conversely, if you get sidetracked into doing say climate change modelling you will find that the target is often undefinable, usually meaning that you cannot know if you are right or wrong.
That is a sort of scientific accountability that makes it a requirement that you never adjust or fudge scientific data. Fudging will never help you find that next resource – but fudging in soft sciences can be covered up removing the goal posts and so on.
So do stick with your direction of hard science or hard engineering. Not only are the physical rewards greater, so are the intellectual rewards. When you get past retirement, you will find it comforting that you have given Society, through your skills, far more than you have taken. It is hard to make that claim, to feel that satisfaction, if all your Life has done is playing with numbers and social engineering and propaganda.
You can’t wish a new resource into being by fudging the figures; but you can tell some really exciting scientific stories in global warming if you are prepared to prostitute your science.
Finally, do avoid getting old and cranky like I am here. Geoff – geochemist of old.
If one does not get old and cranky, one is not paying attention to what is going on.
The head posting is a rare and wonderful contribution from a courageous student who has begun to ask questions and has discovered, to her horror, that on climate change, as on a growing number of other subjects, the totalitarians who ruthlessly control academe are no longer willing to be challenged. They demand obedience, where my professors demanded to be challenged, and delighted in the awakening of young minds. Congratulations to this brave student. I hope that she continues to have the courage to ask questions of both sides. As al-Haytham used to say, “The road to the truth is long and hard, but that is the road we must follow.”
This student will never get a Nobel Prize. Alarmists control the Committee.
An alarmist motto: It would be nice to have Mother Nature on our side, but we will do without Her. Now let’s not mention Her.