Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Climate Scientist Mechanical Engineer John Abraham, writing for The Guardian, seems to think it is un-American to disagree with his views on climate change.
An Inconvenient Sequel – the science, history, and politics of climate change
Al Gore’s new film is worth watching
Wednesday 15 November 2017 22.00 AEDT
Al Gore’s new movie ‘An Inconvenient Sequel’ is, in some ways, similar to his groundbreakingInconvenient Truth project, but different in other ways. Those key differences are why I recommend you watch it.
This movie successfully accomplishes a number of interweaving tasks. First, it gives some of the science of climate change. Gore gets his science right. I remember his first movie, which I thought was more steeped in science and data than this one, so based on my recollection this new picture is somewhat abbreviated. That’s a good thing because the science is settled on climate change. That is, the science is settled that humans are causing current climatic changes and the science is settled that we are observing these changes throughout the natural world.
Readers of this column who venture into the comments below will likely find people claiming, “science is never settled.” But the people making those comments are not scientists. They don’t work in this field every day, they don’t see the data, and they don’t know what they’re talking about.
…
The election in the US was a climate disaster and it is turning out to be worse than we could have feared. The US President and Congress are doing everything they can to ensure more rapid and devastating climate change. They are doing everything they can to ensure more California wildfires, more Marias, more Harveys, and more Irmas. They are doing everything they can to bring us more California droughts and wildfires and Texas floods. They are doing everything they can to cut funding from climate science so we won’t know how bad it is. They are doing everything they can to make the USA a pariah nation. In fact, on the day I write this, the US has become the only country to reject the Paris Climate Accord. That is a stunning fact. What kind of country does this?
What they are doing is so un-American; so un-conservative.
But what these forces cannot do is turn back the tide of the economics. People are investing in clean energy because it makes economic sense. And this is the inflection point that makes the clean energy revolution unstoppable. That’s why I am optimistic. That’s why Al Gore is optimistic. That’s the threaded message in his movie. And it’s why you should be optimistic too.
What I don’t get is, if the clean energy revolution is unstoppable, why the vitriol? Surely if economics is driving the shift to renewables, the greens have already won? Do educated people like Abrahams really believe that renewables offer sufficient economic advantage to sweep the field without further help, or are they just peddling empty propaganda to their followers?
Back in the real world, claims that renewables are competitive are as wobbly as a climate projection. German Government Broadcaster ZDF reports old wind farms are closing in Germany, because the owners can’t afford to refurbish in the face of falling government subsidies.
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I’m ashamed to call myself a mechanical engineer now. I guess there are bad engineers just like there are bad doctors, lawyers, and “scientists”.
… and Bad Santa.
There are different levels of bad.
Mechanical Engineer John Abraham is to typical engineer, AS
Billy Bob Thorton (in the bad santa movie) is to the iconic/classical Santa.
I don’t think you should be ashamed, WR. Remember that Prof. Abraham is a *Professor* of Engineering, which is not the same as an Actual Engineer. You’re still good!
Those who can, do. Those who can’t, teach…
I am a mechanical engineer too. I tried to calculate the effect of CO2 concentration in the atmosphere on the total amount of energy in the atmosphere, from first principles. It is impossible.
All attempts at determination of the Climate Sensitivity are non-scientific, as the assumption must be made that: 1) We know the average temperature of the Earth, 2) We also know what it was in 1850, or 1880, and, 3) All subsequent warming is caused by increasing CO2. We do not know any of these three things to what engineers call Engineering Accuracy, which is 0.1%. We also do not know the Earth’s albedo to much precision at all.
So, any engineer who says the Science is Settled would have failed in my engineering school, the glorious U of M…
I’m also a Mechanical Engineer, and a rational skeptic. I’d venture that most Engineers likely would be, though I don’t know that to be a fact. The majority of the colleagues I’ve spoken to share a similar opinion. It’s in our nature I suppose to get down to the details, and not wade in speculation. Using computer simulations is ok, if and only if, you are feeding them with the correct information, and have a complete understanding of the principles. Any knucklehead can run a simulation. Interpreting the results correctly and comparing them to reality is a completely different animal.
I’m a Chemical Engineer, we are used to far more uncertainty than you are. You never know conditions to 0.1% in a reactor.
However, it fails several other tests on my end.
1: We don’t know the direction of effects or even the number of confounding variables in the atmospheric calculation
2: The observed relationship shows a very weak correlation of CO2 to temperature, certainly not nearly enough to properly isolate without controlled test runs, which we cannot do.
3: Biological systems that are still alive are self-regulating. Negative feedback loops aren’t considered pretty much at all.
3: The “solutions” are of the wrong order of magnitude. Far, far too low an effect compared to the gigatons of emissions annually while costing significantly more.
I’m a 65 year old white working-class man from Birmingham in England and I often muse on the fact that my culture is ridiculed and hated by the Guardian. I know this says a lot about how we yokels are viewed by the smart set in London, but it is a really spiteful and vindictive newspaper. As I haven’t looked at a copy for several years, I’m very grateful for this post for reminding me just how ludicrous and dishonest it is.
the Guardian is similar to America’s National Enquirer. The difference is everyone knows the Enquirer is a rag. Though they did break the Monica Lewinsky story so maybe they have a use.
Don’t worry, Guardinistas are a dying breed. I haven’t seen anyone buy a copy in my local shops for over a year, there is always a pile of Guardians left at the end of day.
Used to be the Manchester Guardian in the good old days. “Manchester England, England across the Atlaintic Sea … ”
‘The Manchester Guardian was founded by John Edward Taylor in 1821 and first published on 5 May of that year. The paper was intended to promote the liberal interest in the aftermath of the Peterloo Massacre, in the context of the growing anti-Corn Laws campaign flourishing in Manchester during this period.’
https://www.theguardian.com/gnm-archive/2002/jun/06/1
The Guardian website is curiously silent on the advantages of its own tax efficient structures in Cayman Islands.
People who have done real-world temperature measurement in an industrial environment know that accurately measuring the bulk average temperature of a tank of water can be devilishly difficult if it has a few leaks in and a few leaks out. That Mr. Abraham shows no evidence of knowing this makes me wonder if he actually has any real-world experience in temperature measurement.
Now expand your industrial water tank to include the whole earth with a sun shining on it, seasons changing, oceans gyrating, volcanoes blasting, rivers flowing, elements decaying, clouds reflecting, rain falling, forests burning, and every square inch of the planet emitting infrared energy into space.
When people like Mr. Abraham speak of the temperature of the earth as if it were a thing, and a thing which one could actually know in some meaningful sense, I conclude they are operating under a childlike naiveté.
“……What I don’t get is, if the clean energy revolution is unstoppable, why the vitriol? Surely if economics is driving the shift to renewables, the greens have already won?……”
The vitriol is necessary Eric when the brainwashed believers and followers of a cult and its belief system understands that they still face opposition from outside the cult. Their self-righteousness and virtuosity of the cult and its members leads them to conclude that they will only be safe when the opposition (the “evil”) has been eradicated. The cult will always feel threatened until the “evil” is gone. It is a religious holy war of good vs. evil—and never mind the economics.
Eric, here in the U.S. we have a “church” (more like a cult) called the Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints (FLDS) along the Utah/Arizona border. It is a polygamous cult where the men have multiple wives (and they sometimes marry underage children in the cult) and bear children from them. Their leader is named Warren Jeffs, and he is serving a life sentence in prison for child abuse in the cult. He has sold himself to the cult members as a great prophet or representative of God here on Earth. However, some of the reports coming out of the cult have him doing things to the minors in the cult which I cannot and will not describe here. Yet, the cult members still have complete faith in him because they believe the outside world is evil and apostate. They believe he has been persecuted by the outside world and still follow his every word.
Whenever I read pieces like this one from Mr. Abraham, I can’t help but think of Warren Jeffs and the FLDS. The characteristic similarities between the wind and solar energy cult and the FLDS are probably (in my mind anyway) not a coincidence. Blind unquestioning faith in the belief system and its leadership will always be the hallmarks of cults of all types. The brainwashing that the members have obtained make it near impossible to deprogram them such that they would see the problems with the cult’s belief system.
It is sad to see people in this world who succumb to these cults.
“It is sad to see people in this world who succumb to these cults.”
Yeah, and there are millions of them.
There are too many deluded people running around on this Earth. I don’t know if there is a cure for it.
I wasn’t thinking LDS, I was thinking the Westboro Baptist Church. They march and scream and wave signs while asking for “donations”. But close enough.
Why does he get paid to write utter bollocks ?
That’s rich. The Guardian telling Americans what’s un-American……
The Guardian doesn’t even know what it means to be British!
Barack Obama told us what was good for us but luckily 52% of us ignored him.
From the article: “Al Gore’s new movie ‘An Inconvenient Sequel’ is, in some ways, similar to his groundbreakingInconvenient Truth project,”
Does the sequel have the same number of factual errors in it that the British judge found in the first movie. The British judge said there were so many factual errors in the first movie that English school children should be made aware of these errors before watching the movie.
Catastrophic agw has shifted wind patterns in Germany away from older wind farms. That’s the science.
[??? .mod]
Abraham writes about climate change regularly in the Guardian.
That’s all you need to know.
“That is, the science is settled that humans are causing current climatic changes and the science is settled that we are observing these changes throughout the natural world.”
Sophistry.
If this was all that climate alarmists were saying it would almost be reasonable… but actually they claim much more than that. They actually claim that mankind is the PRIMARY cause of climate changes and weather calamities, that these changes are BAD and getting worse, that they can make accurate predictions about how bad the DISASTER will be for the world, and they claim the only solution is to OVERTURN the world economy by eliminating the cheap energy that has driven so much progress in the last 150 years. They claim ALL that is ALSO SETTLED, and they claim if you don’t agree you are a Denier and should literally be put in jail.
The solution is obvious.Raise the houses and have Tesla work on electric luxury speed boats.
The speed boats are here already.
http://www.torqeedo.com/en/news-and-press/news-and-press/blog-2017-07-05.html
“Readers of this column who venture into the comments below will likely find people claiming, “science is never settled.” But the people making those comments are not scientists.”
ECS in 1970 was estimated to be 1.5 to 4.5 per doubling of CO2.
ECS in 2013 was estimated to be 1.5 to 4.5 per doubling of CO2.
It is true that I am not a scientist…….
Hah! Yes! I guess, by this standard, we could claim everything is settled.
It is ironic that the value at the very heart of this settled science has the same uncertainty today as it did 40 years ago.
rip
Don’t tell me what’s unAmerican, collectivist. Bad science for political gain, that’s unAmerican. Govt playing favorites with industries and central planning, that’s unAmerican. NOT pulling ALL subsidies and letting the market sort it out, that’s unAmerican.
The author undoubtedly uses a barrel full of unAmerican ideals, values, and moral imperatives as a basis for his writing and his thinking. I’ll take him on, any day of the week.
Here, I fixed it for him:
” An Inconvenient Sequel – the science, history, and politics of climate change
Al Gore’s new film is NOT worth watching – just like the first one!
John Abraham
Wednesday 15 November 2017 22.00 AEDT
Al Gore’s new movie ‘An Inconvenient Sequel’ is, in some ways, similar to his pontificating Inconvenient Truth project, but different in other ways. Those meaningless differences are my excuse as to why I recommend you waste your time watching it.
This movie successfully accomplishes a number of interweaving tasks. First, it touts some of the highly politicized pseudo-science of “climate change.” Gore gets his propaganda right. I remember his first movie, which I thought was more steeped in politically motivated pseudo-science and horribly tortured, misrepresented and carefully cherry-picked data than this one, so based on my recollection this new picture is somewhat abbreviated. That’s a good thing because the politically motivated pseudo-science propaganda is settled on climate change, and we wouldn’t want otherwise intelligent people to actually think about it as this would quickly challenge the “belief” we want to promote. That is, the propaganda is settled that humans are causing current climatic changes and the propaganda is settled that we are observing these changes throughout the natural world.
Readers of this column who venture into the comments below will likely find people claiming, “science is never settled.” But the people making those comments are not deluded true believers as I hope all readers of this column to be. They don’t work in this insular, isolated, bubble-like community dominated by hypothetical BS, confirmation bias and group think every day, they don’t see the tortured data and BS models, and they don’t know what they’re supposed to believe according to the high priests of “climate change.”
…
The election in the US was a disaster for the “climate change” political agenda and it is turning out to be worse than we could have feared. The US President and Congress are doing everything they can to ensure that the “climate change” political agenda doesn’t get stuffed down the throats of the US. They are doing everything they can to ensure lower energy prices, more economic growth and posterity, and less money wasted on “climate change” BS. They are doing everything they can to bring the US more jobs and more abundant energy sources. They are doing everything they can to cut funding from climate science so we won’t be able to continue to push the “climate change” BS propaganda. They are doing everything they can to make the USA a nation free of the tyranny of the UN and its “climate change” agenda. In fact, on the day I write this, the US has become the only country to reject the Paris Climate Accord, which wouldn’t do a damn thing about “climate change’ even if the politicized BS “climate science” was 100% correct. That is a fact. What kind of country is stupid enough NOT to refuse to be subjected to this stupid “climate deal,” unless it is advantageous to that country?
What they are doing is so pro-American; so un-submissive.
But what these forces can still do to improve things is turn back the tide of the economics based on bone-headed government policies and subsidies. People are investing in clean energy because it makes economic sense to take advantage of government hand-outs, absent which nobody would sink 10 cents into it. And this is the inflection point that makes the sanity revolution unstoppable. I remain optimistic despite all this, since there’s lots of green bribery money yet to spread around. Al Gore is also optimistic that he can continue to profit enormously from his government-blessed insider trading on “green” BS. That’s the threaded message in his movie, that the “cause” isn’t dead yet, truth be damned! And it’s why hop other green weenies will remain optimistic too.”
Al Gore as a D student in science. I was an A student. Fat Albert doesn’t have a damn thing to “teach” me about anything. He flunked divinity school, for God’s sake! (Yes, pun intended.)
Thread winner! Homage and kudos sir.
Thanks 😀
“The election in the US was a climate gravy train disaster and it is turning out to be worse than we grifters could have feared. ”
There. Fixed it for ya’ Johnny Boy.
And any engineer or scientists who claims “climate science is settled” on the question of climate sensitivity has certainly failed to grasp something very fundamental about their chosen line of work.
Is there any British news source that is not slathered with opinion and bias on a regular basis? Just wondered. It’s a rare commodity.
The British press and media is among the most impartial in the world -it sets the standard.
Unfortunately it may be that reality does not conform to everybodys world view…
Poor griff is off in cloud cuckoo make believe land…….. yet again !!
“The British press and media is among the most impartial in the world -it sets the standard.”
Ha ha ha. That’s a good one! You forgot the ‘sarc’ tag.
Bwahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahah………Ha ha ha ha……….
No wonder you are so bad at climate discussions,you read bird cage quality journalism.
Ha ha! Good one. But you forgot the /sarc tag.
BBC and Gruniad make Pravda look right-wing !!
I’m still laughing that you believe the BBC is impartial.
Thanks for the laugh Griff. I guess you are useful. Just not the way your side wishes.
Sadly, Griff might be right.
Our most unbiased (so they claim) is NPR (National Pravda Radio).
On the 60th anniversary of VJ Day, they discussed rape allegations of American servicemen.
On Good Friday, they interviewed an atheist.
The point Griff, I would just like the news not colored by anyone’s world view.
Wow. Please keep up the great wwork, griff.
Your lying and ignorance convinces people daily.
The Economist lays it out to some degree. But who knows what the day- to- day whims are. The point, as in the case of NPR/BBC, is I don’t have time to peel back the creme applied to the facts and the story especially when it is embedded throughout ever story instead of being segregated to the bargain basement.
“We do not attach ourselves to any political party. Our public agenda is liberal in the classical sense. We have supported free trade ever since our foundation in 1843 when we opposed Britain’s corn laws, which sought to keep the price of grain high by limiting imports. We have continued to advocate bold policies in favour of individual freedoms, such as same-sex marriage and legalisation of drugs, regardless of whether they are politically popular, in the belief that the force of argument will eventually prevail.”
If that’s all you have ever been used to then I feel sorry for you.
Resourceguy: Christopher Booker is a journalist who writes for the Sunday Telegraph, His has a healthy and well-researched disdain for the CO2 scare.
Get a copy of his book ‘The Real Global Warming Disaster’ – a detailed analysis of the whole scam and a refreshing breath of reason; you won’t be disappointed.
Easy. Do they allow comments? BBC does not.
Some BBC articles do allow comments but I wouldn’t waste your time doing so.
“What I don’t get is, if the clean energy revolution is unstoppable, why the vitriol? Surely if economics is driving the shift to renewables, the greens have already won?”
The required speed of the change to limit warming/CO2 growth causing it is the motivation…
Renewables are definitely the future… but there’s a timescale if they are also to make a difference on warming.
With China increasing it’s already world leading CO2 increase without restriction (that overwhelms any decease in EU CO2), I don’t see how ‘speeding up’ EU, US (which has decreased CO2 to almost 1990 levels) CO2 decreases is going to help.
what is your ideal warming limit? AND WHY?
1600 new coal fired power stations being built around the world , griff
estimated 40%+ increase in plant-food “fundamental building block” emissions.
The CO2-hatred part of the AGW Agenda has failed miserably !
“Renewables are definitely the future”
No griff, Peak Renewables hits the second subsidies and mandates are removed. We see that happen.
The cooling trend coming will wake many people up to that fact that they have been conned.
Coal will continue to grow, with 1600 new power stations already being built, in places that need regular , reliable electricity, something that unreliables just cannot provide.
Germany now not getting out of coal as promised. Merkel dropped that bombshell at COP23 which I warned poor Griff was on cards. France and Macron are now Griffs posterboy which is pretty funny given he is a Britt.
Oh and Griff the reason we couldn’t find the Green Climate Fund money … from COP23 news
They have now spent more on the Green Fund Admin then giving the money out … oh classic.
@Griff:
“…..Renewables are definitely the future… but there’s a timescale if they are also to make a difference on warming……”.
Well Griff, for your information, the solar panel was invented 63 years ago back in 1954. Our E.I.A. here in the U.S. informs us (data as of April the last time I looked) that solar provides an incredible 0.9% of our electricity generation…..again, after 63 years.
http://energyinformative.org/the-history-of-solar-energy-timeline/.
https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=427&t=3.
So ummmm…..pray tell us Griff. What sort of a timescale are well talking about here for solar energy?
” but there’s a timescale if they are also to make a difference on warming.”
Move on, Griff, Game is over for you. Even Paris Agreement is actually a +40 % allowance on CO2 emissions, hardly a step toward any reduction. that’s another ~5ppm/year by 2030, when those signing in promised to … look at it again. Prepare for 500 ppm CO2 by 2050.
So if you believe this is doom (LOL), well, you rather brace yourself and turn survivalist, with all the doomsday cultists you know, in the best place you can find that’s suit you for this purpose. Scottish Highland seems fine, it isn’t that far, it won’t be affected by the promised flood, and will be warmer (so you think).
Griff,
Thank you again, but you slready convinced us that you are stupid.
Worse than that, dangerous. We are threatened by this locally. A huge solar energy subsidy farm that will destroy a beautiful (if bleak, think of Magwitch in Great Expectations) environment to make a few unscrupulous people rich and destroy an important transit point for migrating birds.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/nov/09/giant-solar-power-plant-uk-biggest-north-kent-coast-subsidy-free-power-station-faversham
Unstoppable as in an industrial wood chippers that reduces a log into chips in seconds for pellets to send to Drax.
The largest industrial pellet mills concentrated in Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, Florida, Georgia, and the Carolinas are on schedule to produce more than 8 million metric tons of pellets this year.
That’s twice the amount of biomass compared to 2016, and a 100 percent increase since 2009. Enviva, the world’s largest pellet producer based in Bethesda, Maryland, operates six pellet mills in the southeastern U.S. with one more under construction, where British utility Drax is expanding as well. Both companies derive timber harvest by-products for pellets from mature hardwood and pine timber stands, pine forests, as well local sawmill waste.
This map shows operating and proposed pellet mills across ten southeastern U.S. states.
CREDIT SOUTHERN ENVIRONMENTAL LAW CENTER
https://www.southernenvironment.org/uploads/maps/SELC_WoodPelletExportMap_2017_0912_map+table.pdf
Note the gyrations the believers at skeptical sconce go through to defend the projected 7 ft rise
Climate propaganda 101, courtesy of who else but the Guardian.
“…The US President and Congress are doing everything they can to ensure more rapid and devastating climate change. They are doing everything they can to ensure more California wildfires, more Marias, more Harveys, and more Irmas. They are doing everything they can to bring us more California droughts and wildfires and Texas floods…”
This guy needs to put his tinfoil hat back on. Holy Balls, Batman!
Its as though he has tried to put every piece of recent BS AGW propaganda into one sentence.
Quite bizarre !
So… where does the ‘Guardian’ get off defining what’s American?
Just pure stuck-up, arrogant conceit?
Written by an American professor.
Words fail.
Al Gore’s actions define what is “American”?
Massaging the facts (or the masseuse) to reach a personal goal or profit at the expense of decency and honor is not …. as I said, words fail.
PS Promoting the idea that the US should be subject to “Paris” because an individual named Obama circumvented the US rules of law laid out in The Constiturion, THAT is un-American.
I haven’t seen any comments on what I consider to be the funniest line in his entire article: “They are doing everything they can to cut funding from climate science so we won’t know how bad it is.”
Apparently on our own we won’t be able to observe a thing.
I saw that too, but there was just such a target rich environment.
Yes, that line deserves some attention.
Maybe we do know “how bad it is” and that’s why our green is being cut off from “climate political science”?
More British tabloid thinking…..move along
Oh no, thought crime! Not tabloid, broadsheet bible of BBC and bien pensant academics.