Guest Opinion: Dr. Tim Ball
I get many emails from people asking for tips on how to explain to others, including their friends and family, what is actually going on with the global warming issue. I also hear from many people about how they lost family and friends because of being a global warming skeptic. It is harsh, but it appears that the English Philosopher, Herbert Spencer’s (1820-1903) observation, is the situation today. He said,
“The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly is to fill the world with fools.”
Uninformed is a better word than “fools,” but the challenge remains the same. This is not a new problem but seems more virulent in today’s so-called information age. Michael Crichton was correct when he more accurately called it the age of misinformation. As Bertrand Russell said,
“The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.”
Voltaire suggested a place to start.
“If you wish to converse with me, define your terms.”
I would add if you wish to converse with me have a modicum of understanding of the facts. During a recent interview, I became exasperated with the interviewer who kept saying I was wrong and a liar, so I finally challenged him to explain the greenhouse effect for the audience. He couldn’t! He did not even know that the greenhouse theory could result in a colder world. This misconception is a result of the words used. The public associate a greenhouse, and therefore the word, with higher temperatures. The concept automatically infers warming. It is why the analogy was chosen for the political agenda and deception of anthropogenic warming. Several other analogies, most implying energy balance, such as the filling and draining of a bathtub, were suggested over the years but did not replace it. The same misdirection of using a word or catchphrase to create a mental image was used in the ozone deception. There it was the phrase “holes in the ozone.” There are no holes, only an area of thinning, but the phrase implies something is leaking or broken.
Because of this deliberate use of words to mislead, it is incredible how many people hold intractable views on global warming without even a basic understanding. It creates the unsolvable dilemma of trying to have logical discussions about illogical things.
Then, there is the added problem of technical jargon. It is estimated the average English-speaking person has a vocabulary of about 9000 words and about 100 of those words they use repeatedly. Most don’t believe these numbers, as evidenced by the fact that they think they need to learn every word in a foreign language to be conversant in that language. I understand Shakespeare used 24,000 words in his plays and sonnets and introduced 1700 new words into the language. I jokingly told my students that this was about right, 9000 to 24,000, because most people understand about one-third of Shakespeare. The Oxford English Dictionary lists 171,476 words but acknowledges this does not include many areas such as scientific and academic jargon. However, they conclude,
“This suggests that there are, at the very least, a quarter of a million distinct English words, excluding inflections, and words from technical and regional vocabulary not covered by the OED, or words not yet added to the published dictionary, of which perhaps 20 percent are no longer in current use. If distinct senses were counted, the total would probably approach three quarters of a million.”
A university professor has, on average, a vocabulary of 40,000 words, but a majority of them are jargon. The first thing a student learns in a first-year course in any subject is the ‘language’ of the discipline. Some of this is done because the area of study requires unique words, but often a different meaning to a common word is used and creates confusion. The best example appeared early in the anthropogenic global warming (AGW) debate when those scientists, who correctly challenged the theory using the scientific method, were called skeptics. Michael Shermer explained.
“Scientists are skeptics. It’s unfortunate that the word ‘skeptic’ has taken on other connotations in the culture involving nihilism and cynicism. Really, in its pure and original meaning, it’s just thoughtful inquiry.”
All this came into focus again this week because I was involved in discussions with a group who want to arrange a debate. I am totally in support of debate and free expression of ideas and opinions, but here is the problem. If you have a debate between two scientists on the subject, most of the public would not understand because they don’t know the jargon and have different meanings for some of the words. If the debate is between a scientist and an environmentalist, or even an ordinary citizen, it quickly devolves into an emotional, fact-free argument.
The shameful truth is the courts will not entertain a scientific case because they don’t understand the jargon at even the most basic level. My challenge in finding a defense lawyer was to get one who could follow the basic science. I did it by using knowledge gained from former students who went to law school. They told me most lawyers are Arts students and the biggest failure percentage was in a Taxation course, usually in the second year. I obtained a list of defamation lawyers and asked them how they did in Taxation. The one who said he was top of the class and very proud of his 84% became my lawyer. So far it is working.
The problem with illiteracy about numbers extends to the public at large. Figure 1 shows the number of 15-year-old students with science skills.
Figure 1
The highest level is Finland with approximately 18 %, which means that 82% lack science skills. The average for the countries identified is about 10%. It is reasonable to assume that this reflects the percentages in society, so, 90% are incapable of understanding the Summary for Policymakers designed explicitly for the general public, let alone the Science Reports of Working Group I of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
Despite that inability they are imbued with the absolutism, perfection, and immutability of numbers. This evolved from a movement in the 1920s called logical positivism defined as,
…characterized by the view that scientific knowledge is the only kind of factual knowledge and that all traditional metaphysical doctrines are to be rejected as meaningless.
In response to this, mathematician and philosopher A. N. Whitehead (1861-1947), wrote,
There is no more common error than to assume that because prolonged and accurate mathematical calculations have been made, the application of the result to some fact of nature is absolutely certain.
People are so imbued with logical positivism that they can’t believe there are different types of numbers and therefore data. I learned early in my career when doing a study of energy inputs into the formation of a beach for my Masters’ degree that they can be discrete or continuous. In many statistical applications, the difference is critical to the validity of your results. Most people don’t even know that there are imaginary numbers used in some parts of mathematics.
At the same time as logical positivism was emerging, statistics were being applied to society and especially humans and human behavior. I wrote about this in a previous article “Standard Deviation, The Overlooked But Essential Climate Statistic.” Climate, the average of the weather, was studied and understood by the Greeks but slipped into history until the first part of the 20th century. In response to demands from pilots in WWI for forecasts, meteorology became what everybody knew in relation to weather. It is still true today, but few people know that meteorology is restricted to the study of physics of the atmosphere. Climate only occurred in national weather offices because somebody, often a person tired of forecasting, had to compile daily, weekly, and monthly averages. This is why it was and remains the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). After 1947, the list of its duties was still dictated by the needs of aviation weather, so weather stations continued mostly at airports and the only reference of obligations directed to all the agencies under the umbrella of the WMO was “climatological statistics.”
All this began to change when Reid Bryson (1920-2008) and Hubert Lamb (1913-1997 began studying climatology seriously. Bryson set up the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s meteorology department and Center for Climatic Research in 1948. Lamb established the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) in 1972 but need for reconstructing climate data and long-term records from the past germinated long before then. Lamb’s obituary in the Independent explains.
At around the same time (1950), Lamb – and climatology – experienced a huge slice of luck. He was posted to the Meteorological Office’s moribund climatology department, where he was able to indulge his fascination, with little interruption, in what was probably the most complete, and unstudied, meteorological archive in the world. He set about reconstructing monthly atmospheric circulations over the North Atlantic and Europe back to the 1750s, confirming his growing conviction of the reality of climate change on time-scales of significance to modern humankind. He also started to make the first connections between sea-surface temperatures and the atmospheric circulation.
It is ironic that there is a major effort today to understand such connections, because of the significance of links between ocean circulations and the overlying atmosphere, much of it with the computer techniques Lamb felt were used in an uncritical way right to the end of his life.
Lamb was correct about the computers and their use, but he was also correct about the problems inherent in researching a generalist subject in which there were so many sub-disciplines. This is why climatology was traditionally taught in the original integrative discipline (chorology) of Physical Geography.
“This modern field of study is regarded as a branch of the atmospheric sciences and a subfield of physical geography, which is one of the Earth sciences.”
Many try to put me down as obtaining my Ph.D., in Geography. It was one of the lines trotted out by the interviewer who called me a liar. The only climatology options outside Physical Geography at the time were Bryson or Lamb’s programs. I communicated with Wisconsin but could not afford to attend. Instead, I did my degree through Queen Mary College at the University of London, where my supervisor, Dr. Bruce Atkinson, specialized in Urban Heat Island studies. He arranged several visits for me with Professor Lamb at East Anglia. There I witnessed even then the disgraceful way those, under the control of Tom Wigley and Phil Jones, who later dominated the CRU and the IPCC, spoke about and treated him. Fortunately, their actions and behaviours were disclosed in the emails leaked in November of 2009.
A few disciplines, such as people studying systems analysis understand the fundamental problem at the centre of the AGW issue. Figure 2 is a simple systems diagram of the atmosphere produced by Kellogg and Schneider in 1974. The so-called Climate Scientists don’t understand. The more arrogant among them believe, because they have degrees in mathematics or physics, they are superior and understand, while the rest of us trying to put even the major pieces of the system in place are stupid. It is the inevitable extension of logical positivism.
Figure 2
The arrogant few who bully the rest of us don’t even realize the difference between generalization and specialization. They don’t know that for every area on the diagram there is a different specialist, each using different jargon. Just ask them if they know the meaning of the word yazoo used by experts who study the overland flow of “precipitation” on the diagram.
Now you know why there is a Glossary with every IPCC Report, including the Summary for Policymakers (SPM). Here is their definition of sequestration.
The uptake (i.e., the addition of a substance of concern to a reservoir) of carbon containing substances, in particular carbon dioxide (CO2), in terrestrial or marine reservoirs. Biological sequestration includes direct removal of CO2 from the atmosphere through land-use change (LUC), afforestation, reforestation, revegetation, carbon storage in landfills and practices that enhance soil carbon in agriculture (cropland management, grazing land management). In parts of the literature, but not in this report, (carbon) sequestration is used to refer to Carbon Dioxide Capture and Storage (CCS). {WGIII}
There, now you know. The trouble is that it is not the most common use among the public. The Oxford English Dictionary provides the following definition;
· The action of sequestrating or taking legal possession of assets.
‘if such court injunctions are ignored, sequestration of trade union assets will follow’
1. 1.1 The action of taking forcible possession of something; confiscation.
‘he demanded the sequestration of the incriminating correspondence’
M1.2 The action of declaring someone bankrupt.
‘in Scotland there were 1,908 sequestrations of individuals’
M2 The action of chemically sequestering a substance.
So, most of the public is no better informed and another specialization, lawyers, understand something very different.
The task is to produce a few simple points of challenge to AGW, in the most common and widely understood English available. Of course, you have to overcome a classic. the numerically and linguistically inaccurate claim that, “The consensus is that 97% of all scientists agree.” Good luck.
I am about to teach a certificate course on how to dialogue in an age of political tribalism.
what can I use to reflect this article above?
Thanks
Mary Graves 707 480-2492
“… how to dialogue “?
I’m thinkin’ maybe dialogue is when we talk at each other, communication is when we talk with each other. I’m guessin’ that maybe understanding is a degree course.
Enlightenment please. (umm, would that be postgraduate?)
Hunt,
I think dialogue is the appropriate term. Communication can include all sorts of things – gestures, body language, eye contact. One can communicate without saying a word.
The key element missing these days, whether one says “dialogue” or “communication” is the “listening” element. For politically-charged topics, people have learned to apply a “political filter” to avoid listening to ideas that seem to be coming from “the political opposition.” For many professional scientists, political filters are essential in order to stay employed or achieve tenure.
My response is to simply point people to the raw data (Nullius in Verba). (I think I learned this from Anthony, who maintains links to raw data as part of this blog). Some have said “what are the chances that I, a non-scientist, can correctly interpret the raw data? My answer is “the raw data is actually quite simple to interpret – you can plot it in Excel and see for example that in most cases, the sea level is not changing very fast at all, and has not accelerated since the 1600s. The temperature has been changing slowly and steadily since record-keeping began in the late 1800s. This raw data is much easier to interpret than the squabbling voices of scientists and pseudo scientists (ahem Bill Nye).” Of course the difficulty is that non-scientists may find “doctored” data, and draw poor conclusions, so when possible I provide links to the raw data.
The other important part of communication is that we skeptics must listen.
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it”
– Upton Sinclair
Boffin77,
I agree, listening is a problem. It’s especially hard to listen when one is feeling defensive.
There are a couple problems with simply plugging data into Excel. One is that without knowledge of the assumptions behind a statistical test, it’s possible to draw false conclusions. Another is that climate is complex, and the variables are affected by multiple factors. Looking for a correlation between temperature and CO2 levels, for example, is not going to get one anywhere because no one is saying that CO2 is the only thing driving temperature. There is so much variance in the data that is due to other influences that the true relationship between CO2 and temperature is masked. This is why climate models are constructed.
Another factor is which dataset you use. For example, some sea level rise data have been statistically treated to remove the seasonal variation, which makes it easier to look at trends and test for significance.
“…sea level is not changing very fast at all, and has not accelerated since the 1600s” I am not aware of any data set that reliably records sea level change since the 1600s, and find this hard to believe. Please enlighten me, and also take a look at this page https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/climate-change-global-sea-level.
A few mm a year adds up over the course of decades. This is already having an effect, with “nuisance flooding” (that which is not associated with a big storm) is becoming more common. Even nuisance flooding can be damaging and costly. …But the page talks about it in more detail.
I agree that listening to scientists squabble is not very enlightening. I think this is one reason few scientists are eager to engage in public debates. But scientists must squabble, it’s healthy – as long as they do it professionally. Going to the media or a blog and complaining about someone’s research is not professional.
Nice post. I like the tone of it. Good for discussion.
‘illiteracy about numbers’ is called innumeracy , calling it illiteracy is … illiteracy.
The result of illiteracy and innumeracy, is penury, not just a pecuniary concern.
I think Trump’s imposition of penury on the EPA, Paris purses, actiually did communicate very well to innumerate voters and the illiterate entitled establishment. And it is not just Twitter!
Kristi –> “There is so much variance in the data that is due to other influences that the true relationship between CO2 and temperature is masked. This is why climate models are constructed.
Your statement contradicts itself. If the true relationship is masked, then just how are models constructed that reliably handle all of the variables correctly? If there are 10 variables that all interact between themselves, just how am I going to know my model has the correct programming of their interaction? In fact, if other variables can mask the relationship between CO2 and temperature, just how important is CO2 to begin with?
Jim Gorman said:
“Your statement contradicts itself. If the true relationship is masked, then just how are models constructed that reliably handle all of the variables correctly?”
Because there are multiple factors involved we can’t know anything useful about the relationship between temperature and CO2 levels? It’s hard so therefore can’t be done in any useful manner?
“If there are 10 variables that all interact between themselves, just how am I going to know my model has the correct programming of their interaction?”
Test against observations. For all the crap Hansen cops, he was pretty close with a basic model, especially given the relatively limited data he had at the time.
“In fact, if other variables can mask the relationship between CO2 and temperature, just how important is CO2 to begin with?”
Again, that is just an unexplained assertion. How does the fact that other variables can mask the relationship between CO2 and temperature show that CO2 isn’t that important? That’s like saying that the rate water flows into a reservoir is not that important to the level of the water because varying rates of water usage can mask it’s effects.
Jim,
“If there are 10 variables that all interact between themselves, just how am I going to know my model has the correct programming of their interaction?”
That’s what statistics are for.
In an episode of The Wire, an HBO TV series, (I think it was the third one) Mcnutty and
his partner are investigating a murder scene and they are using the F word in its different forms. This goes on for some time as they measure trajectories and eventually find the bullet. They use only that word with different tones of voice and are effectively communicating to each other the different aspects of the puzzle and figuring out what happened. It was kind of like two lionesses grunting and growling as they look at a distant antelope and test wind direction, figure distance, and assess depth of grass, as one gets set to wait in ambush and the other set to go wide and come up on the sneak.
Communication has a lot more to do with involvement and caring than form If one doesn’t want to know, angels with trumpets and celestial phenomena couldn’t get through.
“to dialogue” and “dialoguing” and “speak to topic x” are leftisms going back at least 6 decades. To many “argue”, “debate”, etc. imply hostility they wish to ignore and avoid without considering evidence or logical trains of argument. To others, using terms & phrases like “society as a whole”, “peoples” (instead of “this group of people defined or differentiated this way, that group of people defined/differentiated that way, these groups of people”), “society chooses”, even “yes, that evidence is interesting, but I feeeeel y instead” are irritants hostile to living, breathing, thinking, free individual human beings.
I thought TB’s article might also specifically address the many acronyms & abbreviations (GISS, CRU, UAH, GFDI, AGU, IPCC…) which are part of the common jargon IN weather & climate-related discussions, debates, etc.
Such communications difficulties also arise in discussions of STEM job markets (where “purple squirrels”,”domestic bodyshoppers”, “cross-border bodyshoppers”, “desi contractors”, “vendors”, “end clients”, “temp”, “contingent”, “gig”, “house nerd”… either facilitate or block communication). And in different schools of object-oriented programming (e.g. methods vs. receivers vs. class functions, instance vs. class variables).
In the end, anyone who wants to understand needs to do some research into the jargon, and then the available evidence…every time it is debated/discussed.
Mib,
The real scientific method relies on others eager and waiting to savage whatever you propose to defend. No safe spaces and dehostilized language. Like the PC purveyors who insist on “trouble soothers” rather than “trouble shooters”, yet such softness is out the window when the Left is challenged, as so graphically demonstrated by the (of all things “journalism”) prof in MO who called for “muscle” to rid her group of a reporter filming their activities. And CA profs who join anti-Trump demonstrations armed with bike chains.
No free speech for those with whom you disagree.
Should apply in other disciplines as well.
Virtue signalling violently.
Saw it in college, where spoiled rich kids who drove their daddy’s Cadillacs broke campus windows worth hundreds of 1969 dollars, raising costs for other students, in order to fancy themselves “radicals”.
The Regressive Left continually uses misleading linguistics to try and control the narrative.
Illegal aliens become undocumented migrants.
Hardcore drugs dealers are re-branded as non-violent criminals.
People who question the Chicken Little, doomsday climate predictions are called “deniers”.
If you are not completely, wholeheartedly with the modern radical Left, you are against them; you are (without any need of proof) a Nazi, White Supremacist.
Populism now has a negative connotation.
Reg,
The exact same thing could be said of the far right. “Aliens,” for instance, has its own connotations.
“If you are not completely, wholeheartedly with the modern radical Left, you are against them; you are (without any need of proof) a Nazi, White Supremacist.” This is an example of your own complaint.
“Illegal alien” is the description used in the written law. It wasn’t invented by the “far” right.
Tom we don’t need your facts 🙂
Tom – OK, fair point.
The next time someone whines to me that people can’t be “illegal”, I’ll say “OK you’re right. the proper term is criminal aliens.”
Tom – more than just a fair point.
And obvious to anyone that hasn’t dialogued for the last 10 years with blinders on and fingers firmly stuck in their ears.
The use of the term alien to describe those who aren’t citizens goes back 100’s of years.
Once again Kristi, what you have been taught to believe has no basis in reality.
Mark,
Correct. “Alien”, meaning “foreigner, citizen of a foreign land,” dates from the early 14th century, from the adjective “alien” or from use of the adjective as a noun in French and Latin.
By contrast, “space alien” is of recent vintage. Its use in the sci-fi sense of “being from another planet” first occurred only in 1953.
No Kristi, alien is an outsider of a country or a planet. Figuratively, too. Alienating oneself by behavior ‘alien’ to the company you are in. It used to be on immigration documents for tourists, etc and was only made a pejorative term by guilt-ridden шнуте lefty folk who invented the diversity silliness which they didn’t recognize as a not very subtle form of real гасisм from the ‘elite’ space they occupy. It’s a ‘These -lesser-helpless-folk-need us шнутээz to-shield them- sort of thing. It robs them of dignity that you know best.
Gary,
Compassion is not the same as guilt.
Diversity was not invented by the left.
There are many forms of racism. Racism is a normal human trait, one that must be acknowledged to combat in oneself and in society. Humans have always been tribal, and complexity comes when we live in communities that are far bigger than those we evolved in.
I am responding, but will not debate this. It’s off-topic. I recognize my folly in using the example of “alien.”
Racism is not a human trait. Placing ones family above others is a human trait. We innately want to to keep the circle of people we care about as small as possible so that, with our meagre resources, we can actually care for real. Those wanting to save 6 billion tend to not put any real effort into it. The virtue signalling is so useless that it must be guilt overriding the realisation.
As societies grow, we develop tiers of people we care about and easily identifying them is important. Colours, football teams, flags when there is little in physical appearance of the person to go on. Its why taking a knee was so stupid. It pushes people to go back to skin colour.
It’s not compassion when you are giving away other people’s stuff.
Robert,
Yes, racism is a human trait. There have been psychological studies performed on babies that support this. Even babies that have been raised by those of a different race will respond differently (“better”) to face of that race than to their own.
It’s even been demonstrated in rats!
There is an online group of tests, known as Implicit Association Tests. You can test your own degree of bias about several things. Millions of people have taken them, so the sample size is pretty good. https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/
No, it is not an example of symmetry.
You are driving the point that “progressives” depend on deception.
Then Kristi, you need to remind those on the “modern radical left”, when being called a Nazi, that the Nazis were the National SOCIALIST Workers Party of Germany!
the fact the hard left support a lot of this nonsense clouds peoples judgement.it is easy to create a “cause celebre” that various groups will champion. it is those creating it for their own purposes ,not the useful idiots supporting it,that are the issue.
who are they ? the usual suspects, follow the money. there has been no transfer of meaningful wealth anywhere outside of the transfer of taxes from members of the public to the crony capitalists that bought and paid for the politicians that sanction it. no need to create lefty or righty conspiracies.
Mary,
When I worked at BP my manager regularly called multi-disciplinary meetings at which each expert was expected to explain to the other members of the team the progress they were making on the project in hand. He never challenged any of the technical jargon being used by the speaker, after all we were all experts and expected to use obscure technical terms.
However, if during the course of the meeting he noticed that you, as member of the audience, were not following the speaker’s jargon then he would challenge you as the listener to explain the meaning of the term being used.
If you could not explain the meaning of the term then you were in serious trouble, not because you did not know the meaning of the jargon being used but because you had not interrupted the speaker and asked for clarification.
Often we have meeting where so much “acronese” is used we often spend more time straightening out the gobbley-gook. Somebody will raise the TMA flag… (Too Many Acronyms) to get clarification.
I was at one of those “acronese” meetings once, back in my working life, and decided to fight back. I deliberately used an acronym from a field that the others were unfamiliar with. On being asked “what’s that?” I said it was a CUA. And then of course I had to spell that out for them too: Commonly Used Acronym. The conversation improved after that.
Nothing worse than an over load of TLAs. (Three letter acronyms)
IBM was full of them!
It should be noted that TLA is also a TLA.
Jim
@Jim
A perfect example of recursion.
If I had $1 for every word and acronym I didn’t understand during meetings with drilling & completion engineers (plumbers), I wouldn’t have to find oil & gas for a living… 😎
Shout louder.
This is a test, nothing but a test because I had to reset some stuff so WordPress would allow me to get comments.
Sorry, Dave
I’m sorry Dave, but I can’t let you do that.
ROTFL………Sorry, had to be done.
Wonderful Keir Dullea reference!
God help your students, after such a disjointed comment.
Only a Septic could transform the noun ‘dialogue’ into a verb in such an ugly fashion.
If you want a verb, use ‘debate’, ‘converse’ or ‘discuss’. Or say ‘have/conduct/enter into’ a dialogue (or discussion, debate or conversation).
Oh, and while I am at it, ‘going forward’ is simply another invention designed to make those that use it look and feel superior to those that do not.
In future, please do not use it.
Remember Occam. Entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity. There is no need to invent new words where perfectly good ones exist.
Such conscious obfuscation is the mark of those who want to keep the fact of the paucity of their comprehension hidden from those who cannot be expected to understand the language that they use.
🙂
Leo Smith
“There is no need to invent new words where perfectly good ones exist.”
Isn’t that how the English language evolves?
I believe it’s the most complicated yet expressive language on earth, predating on other languages to find new means of expression.
President Macron of France is proposing forcing the French language be adopted globally as the official language of business in the run up to Brexit in March. Yet I believe there is a kind of French language police in France to ensure the purity of the language. I also note the French refer to Brexit with some scorn, but they still use the term.
So much for language purity.
France (and Germany) has an Academy for the language. Problem is would Schiller or Velery even be invited to that Academy today? Not to mention English and Shapespeare where today even the subjunctive is banned.
Actually Frexit is the word added recently to French.
Spare me the German please .Only language that can take a 15 english phrase and turn it into a single 80 letter word Donaudampfschifffahrtselektrizitätenhauptbetriebswerkb meaning”Association for Subordinate Officials of the Head Office Management of the Danube Steamboat Electrical Services”
“There is no need to invent new words where perfectly good ones exist.”
Isn’t that how the English language evolves?
No.
It evolves by inventing new words for NEW concepts, not for old ones
The later is merely ‘progress for its own sake’
I will accept the verb to ‘google’ because it identifies a common but new concept – the act of using a (specific) search engine to research internet content.
Likewise my mother used to ‘hoover’ the carpets – again the term to ‘vacuum (clean)’ was then not in common usage.
But to say ‘going forward’ as simply a term to replace the perfectly adequate ‘in future’ shows those that adopt it to be mere intellectual signallers.
It is also illustrative that in English, the noun ‘burglar’ precedes the verb. English English created the efficient short and pithy and musing verb to ‘burgle’.
American English with its desire to impress and be needlessly verbose, invented ‘to burglarize’ instead.
English is good because it dopesn’t obfuscate. Here in Ye Olde European Unione, instruction manuals typically come in ten or more languages, as do product leaflets. I once spent an idle morning counting the words in such a leaflet. English was by far and away the most concise.
A short example suffices.
I used to be involved designing guitar amplifiers. Its a long story. Some of these are built into the box with the loudspeaker. In general these – first ‘combination amplifiers’, became ‘combo amps’ or just ‘combo’ as in ‘Marshall 50W Combo’
In German such a device is called a ‘Kofferverstärker’ 16 letters against th 5 in ‘combo’ .
What does it all mean. Well Koffer is in fact a coffer or box or cabinet. Ver is Germanic for of ‘for’. And Stärk is a verb meaning to stiffen or starch or make stronger. I.e. Stärker is ‘an amplifier’
So what we have is literally, realising that in German the order of words, reversed, always is. ‘for amplifying, in a box’.
When it comes to making everything concrete, the Krauts are yer men!
The Romance languages are even worse. German creates long winded nouns, where English abbreviates, but the Romance languages cant even do that.
I cannot now recall the exact wording which in English is rendered as ‘no user serviceable parts inside’ but in German it became something like ‘access to the interior for the purposes of service or repair is forbidden’ and in Spanish, French, Portugese and Italian it got even more elliptical with a sort of ‘please don’t poke around inside if you dont know what you are doing as we cannot guarantee your safety’ sort of verbiage.
William of Occam was English.
Even though in Latin he said entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem (entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity) his viewpoint was English, we should only invent what we must.
Invention for its own sake is showing off. And is much to be disparaged. Not Cricket
Yes , Ockham, that medieval radical empiricist, the proto-positivist .
Just imagine letting such an irrationalist at one of Shakespeare’s sonnets.Rather like Salieri wailing Mozart’s music had too many notes.
“When it comes to making everything concrete, the Krauts are yer men!”
The German language is precise when stating the obvious.
We once bought a German made tractor and the operating manual had obviously been translated from German. There were many stern warnings such as:
Attention: The driving of tractor across sharp obstructions can result in puncture of the tires.
Burglar verses Burgle.
I don’t know: Sandy Burgle just doesn’t have the same ring to it that “Sandy Burglar” does.
Sandy Berger was an aid to former President and sex offender Bill Clinton and when Sandy stuffed classified material in his clothes and smuggled them out on one occasion, he was referred to thereafter as: Sandy Burglar.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandy_Berger
Leo,
“Ver” does not mean “for.” It’s a prefix that is widely applied, and it’s meaning is variable, more or less one of three ideas: wrong, away, or change. “For” is “fuer” (u umlaut).
“what can I use to reflect this article above?”
Beginning a sentence with a capital letter is a good start.
ON THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD
Hi Mary,
On scientific and technical matters, I suggest this video:
Richard Feynman on The Scientific Method (1964)
https://youtu.be/0KmimDq4cSU
at 0:39/9:58: ”If it disagrees with experiment, it’s wrong.”
At 4:01/9:58: “You can always prove any definite theory wrong.”
At 6:09/9:58: “By having a vague theory, it’s possible to get either result.”
and
The writings of Karl Popper, for example
“The Logic of Scientific Discovery”
“The Open Society and Its Enemies”
If you are pursuing global warming and climate change alarmism:
THIS IS THE “CLIMATE CHANGE” ALARMISTS’ DECEITFUL STRATEGY:
“By having a vague theory, it’s possible to get either result.” – Richard Feynman
“A theory that is not refutable by any conceivable event is non-scientific.” – Karl Popper.
The “Climate Change” hypothesis is so vague, and changes so often, that it is not falsifiable and not scientific. It should be rejected as unscientific nonsense.
The “Manmade Runaway Global Warming” hypothesis is at least falsifiable, and IT HAS BEEN ADEQUATELY FALSIFIED:
1. By the ~37-year global cooling period from ~1940 to 1977, even as fossil fule combustion and atmospheric CO2 strongly increased;
2. By “the Pause”, when temperature did not significantly increase for almost two decades, despite increasing atmospheric CO2 concentrations;
3. By the absence of runaway global warming over geologic time, despite much higher CO2 concentrations;
4. By the fact that equatorial Pacific sea surface temperatures have not increased significantly since ~1982, and corresponding air temperatures increased largely due to the dissipation of the cooling impact of two century-scale volcanoes – El Chichon in 1982 and Pinatubo in 1991+;
5. By the fact that CO2 trends lags temperature trends by ~9 months in the modern data record, and by ~~800 years in the ice core record, and the undeniable reality that the future cannot cause the past.
I suggest that global warming and climate change alarmism, in a few decades at most, will be regarded as a mass delusion, and its leaders and its followers will be widely regarded as scoundrels and imbeciles.
In summary, there is no real dangerous global warming or wilder weather crisis. In fact, increasing atmospheric CO2 certainly improves plant and crop yields, and may cause some mild global warming, which will be net-beneficial to humanity and the environment.
Regards, Allan
ALLAN
Would being unable to empirically demonstrate the planetary warming effect of atmospheric CO2 be included there?
Isn’t that the ultimate test of any theory? Being able to demonstrate it works in the real world.
Good morning HotScot,
Not sure if this adequately answers your question – it does not prove NO warming from CO2, but it puts an upper bound limit on CO2-driven warming, and that amount of warming is certainly not dangerous. Climate sensitivity to increasing atmospheric CO2 is probably between approx. 0.0C and 1.0C/(2*CO2). The global warming crisis is a fiction and a fraud.
Best, Allan
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/09/09/empirical-evidence-shows-temperature-increases-before-co2-increase-in-all-records/#comment-2452626
[excerpt]
The IPCC’s estimates of climate sensitivity are wildly and deliberately exaggerated, to produce a very-scary false result.
Global warming alarmism is a deliberate fraud, in fact it is the greatest fraud, in dollar terms, in the history of humanity.
Properly deployed, the tens of trillions of dollars squandered on global warming alarmism could have:
– put clean water and sanitation systems into every village in the world, saving the lives of about 2 million under-five kids PER YEAR;
– reduced or even eradicated malaria – also a killer of millions of infants and children;
– gone a long way to eliminating world hunger.
Notes and References:
Climate sensitivity to increasing atmospheric CO2 is low – probably less than 1C/(2xCO2).
Christy and McNider (2017) estimate climate sensitivity at 1.1C/doubling for UAH Lower Tropospheric (LT) temperatures.
Lewis and Curry (2018) estimate climate sensitivity at 1.6C/doubling for ECS and 1.3C/doubling for TCR, using Hatcrut4 surface temperatures (ST). These surface temperatures probably have a significant warming bias due to poor siting of measurements, UHI effects, other land use changes, etc.
Both analyses are “full-earth-scale”, which have the least room for errors.
Both are “UPPER BOUND” estimates of sensitivity, derived by assuming that ~ALL* warming is due to increasing atmospheric CO2. It is possible, in fact probable, that less of the warming is driven by CO2, and most of it is natural variation.
(*Note – Christy and McNider make allowance for major volcanoes El Chichon in 1982 and Pinatubo in 1991+)
The slightly higher sensitivity values in Curry and Lewis are due to the higher warming estimates of Hadcrut4 surface temperatures versus UAH LT temperatures.
Practically speaking, however, these maximum sensitivity estimates are similar, about 1C/doubling, and are far too low to support any runaway or catastrophic manmade global warming.
Higher estimates of climate sensitivity have no credibility. There is no real global warming crisis.
Increased atmospheric CO2, from whatever cause will at most drive minor, net-beneficial global warming, and significantly increased plant and crop yields.
Conclusion:
The total impact if increasing atmospheric CO2 is hugely beneficial to humanity and the environment. Any scientist or politician who contradicts this statement is destructive, acting against the well-being of humanity and the environment.
“Both are “UPPER BOUND” estimates of sensitivity, derived by assuming that ~ALL* warming is due to increasing atmospheric CO2. It is possible, in fact probable, that less of the warming is driven by CO2, and most of it is natural variation.”
I think this can’t be emphasized enough. What this means is that the “upper limit” of climate sensitvity is calculated assuming that ALL the warming is from CO2. If any of the warming is in fact natural, then even these low sensitivity measurements of 1.6C or less would be even lower.
I don’t think there is any way that CO2 can be responsible for 100 percent of the current warming, considering we had an equal amount of warming from 1910 to 1940, with much lower CO2 content in the atmosphere at that time, and the highs of the 1930’s were higher than any subsequent year including 2016. So we are not in unprecedented terrritoy and it’s a good bet that a substantial portion of the warming we are experiencing now is from natural causes.
There is certainly NO evidence that CO2 produces any percentage of the warming we are experiencing currently, much less that CO2 produces 100 percent of the warming. These are just estimates used in computer models and do not relate to the real world in any provable way.
Tom wrote:
“These are just estimates used in computer models and do not relate to the real world in any provable way.”
Actually Tom, computer models used much higher estimates of climate sensitivity, typically two, three or more times the Upper Bound numbers that I cited.
If the computer models used a sensitivity of about 1C/doubling, they would not project a dangerous level of global warming – climate crisis cancelled.
A few more comments for Mary:
Claims of consensus have no credibility in science. BTW, the 97% climate consensus is false – fabricated lies.
Appeals to authority have no credibility in science, especially appeals to the IPCC, who are utterly corrupted. Some people and groups have credibility, but many do not.
In climate science, you can’t tell the players without a program. Here is mine:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/09/12/global-warming-skepticism-for-busy-people/#comment-2455588
Tribalism is an ancient disease in society, the killer of millions or innocents, which has found new destructive life in today’s world.
The use, especially by the extreme left, of Alinsky’s “Rules for Radicals” has caused a destructive polarization/tribalism in politics. The USA is a prime example, where political issues are resolved by a street fight, that soon descends into the gutter or the sewer.
Unfortunately, the left is winning, especially in the developing world, where over 100 countries are pseudo-Marxist dictatorships, based on their leftist phony rhetoric, but are actually just military dictatorships, run for the ruling elite and their armed thugs.
The left takes political power by promising imbeciles lots of free stuff. Then they destroy the economy, create widespread poverty and live like kings atop a ruined state – because you can’t be a king without lots of peasants – see Zimbabwe and Venezuela.
“5. By the fact that CO2 trends lags temperature trends by ~9 months in the modern data record, and by ~~800 years in the ice core record, and the undeniable reality that the future cannot cause the past.”
LOL! 9 months or 800 years. Now that makes sense!
‘Dialogue’ is a noun. What is the matter with ‘conduct a dialogue’? It’s been good enough for all of my lifetime; why does it need replacing now. Inadvertently no doubt you prove Dr Ball’s point!
Quite right. Back to reading Orwell on Politics and the English Language.
Newminster September 24, 2018 at 7:47 am
Newminster, the English language is always evolving in the direction of simplicity. If there are a two-syllable word and a five-syllable word that mean the same thing, the longer word will very likely drop out of favor.
In the same way, “dialog” (three syllables) as a verb will very likely replace “conduct a dialog” (six syllables) for the same reason—it is simpler.
It is a slow process, so indeed a word might be good enough for a lifetime, perhaps even two, and then be replaced.
For an example of this process, the verb “interact” has only been around since 1805, the noun “interaction” since 1812, and the adjective “interactive” since 1832 … and you can bet someone at the time complained about turning a verb into a noun.
Now, you can argue against that … but it will be about as productive as arguing against gravity.
w.
PS—Before you accuse me of being a “grammar Nazi”, be aware that the politically correct modern term for that is “alt-write” … the language evolves.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yazoo_stream
You got me with that one
Heh, yeah. Googling “Yazoo” give lots of links about a British synthpop act followed by links aboutYazoo City, MS. took a bit of refining of search terms to find that one.
John,
You’re right, I tried a lot of minus filters to no avail before I went back and read the clue that Tim gave us.
“study the overland flow of “precipitation”.”
Yazoo Hydrology hits the bull’s eye.
Definitely one up for Dr Ball.
p.s. That’s with http://www.duckduckgo.com
Haven’t used Google search for years now, (only Google Scholar).
This is one of Dr. Ball’s best essays, clearly explaining the great divide.
When an amorphous fear of mostly weather-related disasters is encouraged and then combined with the communication problem, the public doesn’t stand a chance at deciding what is true and what is false. So they either accept the hype at face value or ignore it.
Gary,
…or they call it a conspiracy, or they say that “mainstream” climate scientists are frauds, liars and idiots and say that all the evidence in support of GH theory is not credible or the result of natural variation.
Kristi,
Ever seen a hurricane spaghetti graph? Only a few DAYS out and they are literally all over the map. The computer generated future temperature curves look similar but claim to be accurate (on average???) for decades into the future. Beats me how anyone can look at the temp prediction curves and still keep a straight face. PS the most accurate of these, relative to satellite/balloon data, appears to be a Russian plotted curve that uses fewer fudge factors (I’ll let you Google it if you are ‘seriously” interested).
BFL,
“Predicting” the climate is much different from predicting the weather. There is a lot of chaos in weather that gets averaged out in climate (although there are some chaotic factors there, too). Climate is also about regions, not where a storm will hit land. It is about long-term averages, rather than daily temperatures. The models are very different.
“…or they call it a conspiracy”
Just calling a spade a spade. People should read the Climategate emails. The conspiracy is real. The Keepers of the Temperature Data decided to change the data in order to promote the CAGW narrative.
With any luck, people will get to read even more pertinent emails in the near future.
Of course, Alarmists deny there is a conspriracy to change the temperature record. That wouldn’t fit their narrative.
There is no evidence that the warming we have seen over the last 150 years is not the result of natural cycles.
And no, climate models are not evidence.
Anyone who conspires to hide the raw data, is by definition a fraud.
“…or they call it a conspiracy, or they say that “mainstream” climate scientists are frauds, liars and idiots”
“Your “they” should be “some.” Most of us contrarians blame it on cany careerism and/or a bias of those who chose to enter the field against Man’s intrusion on Ma Nature and/or against our current political / economic system which desrves to be disrupted, and/or against the disproportionate wealth of the West. A survey of alarmists’ reading and viewing habits, and of their political allegences and voting records, should be done to test my conjecture.
Roger,
That a conspiracy exists is a fact, already known before the Climategate emails, which removed all basis for doubt.
One can speculate as to the motives of the conspirators, but that they are such is blatant.
roger is a typical statist that relies on an unfounded faith in government and misplaced naivety regarding the abilities of humans to self-deceive. Examining his posts is glaringly obvious that he regularly deceives himself. The term is “Stockholm Syndrome”. He is in love with his captors. He has too much emotional stock invested in the system to think critically enough to recognize how it actually works.
IGNORE-ance at it’s finest. I have nothing but disdain for such weak minded folk.
Kristi wrote:
“…or they call it a conspiracy, or they say that “mainstream” climate scientists are frauds, liars and idiots and say that all the evidence in support of GH theory is not credible or the result of natural variation.”
Well said Kristi – I’ll agree with most of that statement, based on my two engineering degrees and a diligent study of this subject that dates back to 1985.
I do find your following terms a bit harsh: “mainstream climate scientists are frauds, liars and idiots”. I prefer the gentler term “scoundrels and imbeciles”.
In summary, there is no real dangerous global warming or wilder weather crisis. In fact, increasing atmospheric CO2 certainly improves plant and crop yields, and may cause some mild global warming, which will be net-beneficial to humanity and the environment.
Regards, Allan 🙂
“…or they call it a conspiracy, or they say that “mainstream” climate scientists are frauds, liars and idiots and say that all the evidence in support of GH theory is not credible or the result of natural variation.”
I think that is a quite close description.
In reality its less a planned conspiracy, tho bits of it are, and more a colossal bandwagon that everyone found to their advantage to climb on, not because it was true, but because its suited their purposes. Remember this is the post truth world now. Truth is, to most of the Left, whatever people[ can be induced to ] believe it to be.
Everyone has profited from ‘Climate Change™’ except the poor benighted average world citizen who has seen his energy bills rise, his tax dollars frittered away in ‘renewable’ projects that don’t work, in research that leads nowhere, being based on false premises, his freedoms curtailed and the rise of unpleasant shouty people, who claim the moral high ground by sneering and shouting down anyone who disagrees with them.
Even Anthony gets a slender income from trying to tell the truth about climate change.
Just stop and ask yourself, if you have an ounce of integrity in your body, what it would mean to the trillion dollar global industry whose existence depends on people believing in Climate Change, if it was generally accepted that it was in fact finally shown to be a crock.
Its the end of Phil Jones, of Michael Mann, of Dong Energy of thousands of researchers, propagandists, and charitable ‘green organisations’ whose livelihood depends on a drip feed of paranoia into the global media, who themselves would need to be downsized severely if all that was happening was in fact simply YARW (Yet another Royal Wedding) .
Climate change is a trillion dollar business that provides employment to millions at the expense of the average consumer.
It’s not going down without a fight is it?
Who honestly cares of its true or not? Certainly not its protagonists or those aboard the gravy train, What matters to the cash flow is what people believe.
But you know this already of course. That’s why you are here. Protecting the myth.
Can you imagine the impact, the utter FURY that would erupt from #TheyAllKnew #AlGoreKnew #GreenpeaceKnew #MichaelMannKnew that in fact AGW was a complete load of bovine excrement, and worse #ObamaDidntKnow, when his bloody business WAS to know, that it was what it was…
And they all did NOTHING.
You Kristi, are hoping against hope that AGW is too big to be allowed to fail. You had better keep on hoping, because if it does come crashing down, it will take with it the whole establishment that perpetrated it, and I suspect that includes you, Ms Concern Troll…
In order for mankind/civilisation on this planet to progress the AGW con HAS TO come crashing down. You just cannot get any further up the tree while it sits there as a huge falsehood.
How long this will take is open to wide speculation, it might be over a hundred years BUT if it were a small number of years, if it were within the lifetimes of most of us, would it not be great if you, YES YOU DEAR READER, played some useful part in making it happen.
Several of us are working at it, some in teams attacking particular bits in a concentrated effort, some as individuals having a go at another bit. You see several of them talking about it on WUWT.
But what I don’t understand is why some of you are fighting amongst yourselves about which bit to attack and why. You waste time and effort arguing about why Doug’s atmospheric theory 27b is a load of BS compared to Willard’s CORRECT theory of 27b II.
Are you mad?
You are supposed to destroy Godzilla FIRST before laying out plans to rebuild the city. THIS is where you went wrong, and could be why we are still waiting for its death. WUWT is in the number 1 slot here. We want more ATTACKS of every type and persuasion and therefore WE NEED MORE TROOPS, and more weapons and more strategies.
You need to WIDEN it out. You need to forge links with ALL the alternative anti-CAGW groups. Embrace the others, THEY ARE NOT THE ENEMY. Maybe their theories are reall stupid, maybe some of yours are, who knows, who cares, surely all we SHOULD care about is killing the CAGW BEAST.
I want it chopped into tiny pieces and burnt on a fossil fuelled pyre. AFTER the party you can have a nice discussion about Gravity and Loschmidt if you are in the mood.
Can we get on with this now please. Your great grandchildren are getting impatient (and poorer).
Leo,
“Truth is, to most of the Left, whatever people[ can be induced to ] believe it to be.”
“Who honestly cares of its true or not? Certainly not its protagonists or those aboard the gravy train, What matters to the cash flow is what people believe.”
“You Kristi, are hoping against hope that AGW is too big to be allowed to fail. ”
You, Leo, show you are incapable of reason by making the assumptions you do.
or they say that “mainstream” climate scientists are frauds, liars and idiots
hiding data is fraud, committing identity theft to steal documents and then manufacturing a “smoking gun” document to go along with them is fraud. offering up “scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have” is fraud. adjusting the data to fit the theory is fraud. inventing data where there is none is fraud. etc now either that fraud was deliberate (in which case the fraudsters are liars) or was it not (in which case the fraudsters are idiots). or a little bit of both.
John
Are you suggesting climate scientists as a whole are guilty of fraud for the reasons you list? By this reasoning the whole skeptic community is also guilty of fraud.
Hiding data is not fraud, although it is unprofessional – but so is posting faulty research on blogs because one can’t get it past peer review. “offering up “scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have” is fraud” is not fraud. I don’t know what you are referring to when you talk about identity theft. There is no adjustment of data to fit a theory or inventing data; you apparently don’t know much about science.
Something there is that doesn’t love a lie.
What’s so hard about it? The whole concept can be explained standing in the insulation aisle at Home Depot. The atmosphere is a second year ME HVAC problem: Q = 1/R A (surface T – ToA T). No different from the insulation that makes your house warm in the winter, cool in the summer.
As to RGHE it’s easy as 1, 2, 3.
Radiative Green House Effect theory (TFK_bams09):
1) 288 K – 255 K = 33 C warmer with atmosphere, RGHE’s only reason to even exist – rubbish. (simple observation & Nikolov & Kramm)
But how, exactly is that supposed to work?
2) There is a 333 W/m^2 up/down/”back” energy loop consisting of the 0.04% GHG’s that traps/re-emits per QED simultaneously warming BOTH the atmosphere and the surface. – Good trick, too bad it’s not real, thermodynamic nonsense.
And where does this magical perpetual GHG energy loop first get that energy?
3) From the 16 C/289 K/396 W/m^2 S-B 1.0 ε ideal theoretical BB radiation upwelling from the surface. – which due to the non-radiative heat transfer participation of the atmospheric molecules is simply not possible. A mechanic puts a box fan on that hot engine to cool it off rapidly – because non-radiative natural convection and radiation (Cannot be BB!) aren’t fast enough.
No BB upwelling & no GHG energy loop & no 33 C warmer means no RGHE theory & no CO2 warming & no man caused climate change.
So how many people on the street do you think have knowledge enough to tackle a “second year ME HVAC problem?” My guess would be about two or three percent, tops. And that’s if you are in a university town.
Nicholas Schroeder
Sorry, I didn’t understand a word of that, I’m a layman. So is, probably, well over 90% of the Earth’s population.
Much of the reason, in my opinion, the subject of climate change was politicised. Whilst one needs a scientific qualification to be considered credible to comment on the science, politics demands no qualification, we are all allowed a political opinion.
“The atmosphere is a second year ME HVAC problem”
which is fine if you are discussing it with second year ME HVAC student. Not so fine if you are trying to discuss it with the average man on the street who only has (at best) a high school diploma (or equivalent).
One example of deliberately deceptive language is “pollution”, which is nearly used in the religious sense, of “made ritually unclean”. So CO2, an essential trace gas, is regarded as something unholy.
That sort of use of language is a deliberate attempt to avoid debate.
Their language is deliberately emotive. They don’t aim for deception, since they believe their nonsense. Deception is an inevitable by-product of non-science. Most of these emotive terms are invented by political hacks and arts graduates. Monbiot claims we invented ‘denier’ (‘we’ = whatever green group he was in at the time). I realize he has a zoology degree but he’s a political hack too.
Climate scientists avoiding debate is a separate issue. Until 2 years ago they thought they had a snug relationship with politicians. They did. So why would they debate?
Mark,
You are doing the exact thing that you accuse others of doing.
“Alarmist” is no worse than “denier.” There are true alarmists and true deniers (those that deny all evidence supporting AGW theory) in both camps. Generalizing and making assumptions is not confined to either side.
Denier is chosen to evoke Holocaust deniers, which is a deliberate attempt to conflate doubt with neo-fascists.
Tom,
I don’t agree. I think it is simply an alternative to “skeptic,” which isn’t always suitable. Though I’m aware that a few have associated skeptics with deniers of the Holocaust, I don’t thing that’s the prevalent idea. There isn’t a very good term. Maybe “doubter.”
Assuming anything but malevolence by the True Believers is not at all safe.
Kristi,
Your assertion about “denier” ignores the written statements of those who popularized the use of “denier”.
You are proving the point that “progressives” depend on deception.
Kristi, I will give you the benefit of the doubt, and not call you out on a palpable lie.
The first time I heard the term ‘climate denier ‘was absolutely in the context of comparing those that were sceptical about AGW with those who denied the reality of the Holocaust.
As if questioning the validity of a scientific theory equated questioning the actual recorded FACTS of history.
That was when I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that not only was AGW theory broken, but its protagonists knew it was broken, or they had no need to use tactics like that.
And indeed that was when I realised that the so called ‘science’; was nothing more than a distraction; political commercial and personal interests had taken over a bandwagon to drive it irrespective of its truth content, to extract the most cash, power and acclaim that they could.
To say that I have been disgusted by this is the understatement on the millennial.
@Kristi
You are quite mistaken. The phrase was first used by Pulitzer prize-winner Ellen Goodman in 2007, and she made the connection quite clear: “Let’s just say that global warming deniers are now on a par with Holocaust deniers, though one denies the past and the other denies the present and future.”
Kristi, you clearly are in denial about the use of the term denier.
“The terminology emerged in the 1990s. Even though all scientists adhere to scientific skepticism as an inherent part of the process, by mid November 1995 the word “skeptic” was being used specifically for the minority who publicised views contrary to the scientific consensus. This small group of scientists presented their views in public statements and the media, rather than to the scientific community.[41][42] This usage continued.[43] In his December 1995 article The Heat is On: The warming of the world’s climate sparks a blaze of denial , Ross Gelbspan said industry had engaged “a small band of skeptics” to confuse public opinion in a “persistent and well-funded campaign of denial”.[44] His 1997 book The Heat is On may have been the first to concentrate specifically on the topic.[45] In it, Gelbspan discussed a “pervasive denial of global warming” in a “persistent campaign of denial and suppression” involving “undisclosed funding of these ‘greenhouse skeptics’ ” with “the climate skeptics” confusing the public and influencing decision makers.[46]
A November 2006 CBC Television documentary on the campaign was titled “The Denial Machine”
..Terms related to denialism have been criticised for introducing a moralistic tone, and potentially implying a link with Holocaust denial.[7][55] There have been claims that this link is intentional, which academics have strongly disputed.[56] The usage of “denial” long predates the Holocaust, and is commonly applied in other areas such as HIV/AIDS denialism: the claim is described by John Timmer of Ars Technica as itself being a form of denial.[57]”
(Wikipedia)
I said I knew that some have associated it with the Holocaust. But assuming that all do that who use the term is looking for an excuse to play the victim, and hate others in response.
“Assuming anything but malevolence by the True Believers is not at all safe.”
That is the problem: assumptions. If you are going to assume things like that, Tom, you will spend your life angry and defensive, and that means you can’t be rational.
“You are proving the point that “progressives” depend on deception.” Hunter, this sounds like you are calling me a liar. That’s BS. You don’t know me, and have no right to insult me in such a despicable way.
If there is nothing alarming about what CO2 is doing, then there is no reason to do anything about it.
Alarmist is an accurate description of those who demand that we drastically curtail fossil fuel usage.
Tom,
While I think calling CO2, “pollution” is inappropriate, your interpretation is downright weird. Why should it have religious connotations? You are willfully misinterpreting the meaning of a word, and that is a problem when it comes to rational discussion.
i think it is more a matter of you not having sufficient experience in the uses for the word “pollution”. It is definitely used in a religious sense that you are unaware of, and the green blob is an example of how mass movements become quasi-religious. It is not the actual effect, but that a certain thing is “unclean”, as in violating their code of conduct.
Kristi,
I have re-read Tom’s remarks and I don’t see any reference to religion. His association is to “neo-fascists,” which is political.
The term “denier” is commonly used by anyone criticizing ‘skeptics,’ and it is typically used without modifiers except sometimes as “climate denier.” Nobody has denied that climate exists or that climate changes. Therefore, it isn’t all that “weird” to assume that the use of the word “denier” is intended to evoke an emotional response, not unlike the 2lst century introduction of the term “ocean acidification.”
The term “denier” is less accurate than “alarmist” because “denier” is so ambiguous about just what it is that is being denied. Also, “alarmist” doesn’t carry the pejorative baggage associated with “Holocaust Denier.”
Clyde, Kristi was responding to an earlier comment of mine, not the second on “d eniers”. It was on the quasi-religious use of “pollution” by the green blob.
Clyde,
Tom: “One example of deliberately deceptive language is ‘pollution’, which is nearly used in the religious sense, of ‘”made ritually unclean’. So CO2, an essential trace gas, is regarded as something unholy.”
“Therefore, it isn’t all that ‘weird’ to assume that the use of the word ‘denier’ is intended to evoke an emotional response, not unlike the 2lst century introduction of the term ‘ocean acidification.'”
Ocean acidification is a perfectly acceptable scientific term. It’s happening, and there’s nothing emotional about it.
“Skeptic” is just as ambiguous as “denier.”
Kristi, when the oceans are currently, and have always been, alkaline, “acidification” is misleading. De nier was a slur, skeptic is fairly neutral.
Kristi, “ocean acidification” is a good example of the use of a technical term too suggest a problem where there isn’t one. A pH of 7 is neutral. Lower numbers are acidic. The ocean is typically somewhere around an 8, or mildly basic. If that value decreases to 7.9, one can argue that it has changed in the direction of becoming acidic, but it is incorrect to think that the ocean is acidic. It is true that on the surface of subsea volcanoes one can find seawater that is acidic. But those are very unique environments, and pH isn’t the only departure from normal conditions. That reminds me, I need to change the water in my fish tanks, their pH is about 6 which isn’t optimal for my guppies.
Kristi, Tom was too much of a gentleman to expand on “pollution” being originally very much a religious word. It was used by the Catholic Church, as a synonym for masterbation, “casting your seed upon the ground”, self abuse, commiting an uncleanly act. The idea was that one should not circumvent the baby making act by contraception or any other means of diverting the seed from the possibility of conception. Links? I’m 80yrs old and it was a well known word before it came to be applied to the modern usage which really was not a concept at the time. That it was considered an unclean, unGodly, dirty act was certainly the emotive reason for using it in the modern sense.
Kristi, you are an young intelligent person, but you have grossly neglected your broader education and I would say it is your duty to aquire the personally enriching knowkedge that a modern woefully inadequate education has deliberately sidelined 9ver the past 3 generations. A smart person has to transcend the designer-brained widget making education that is on tap.
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
Hamlet Act 1, scene 5, 159–167
Actually I was deriving the religious usage of the term from a formerly Hasidic woman I knew in college, on violating the various and sundry rules of her former faith. i have also seen the usage in various bits of historical fiction, again in violating various tenets of faith. I am 62, and the Catholics stopped using that terminology sometime before my education.
Kristi,
How do you know that “ocean acidifacation” is “Happening?”
pH records from the oceans are laughably incomplete, particularly since there were not even any accurate instruments until the 1970’s. The chemistry of the oceans is beyond complex. Do you know that vast reserves of carbonates in the oceans Buffer any change in pH? Do you know what a Buffer is?
The oceans have never been acidic, and never will be. When the price of oysters increases worldwide because the oceans have become inhospitable to shellfish, then and only then should we begin to worry.
When a solution is referenced to a neutral 7.0 pH – values above are alkaline/basic and become more or less alkaline/basic, values below are acidic and become more or less acidic.
The ocean’s pH is about 8.1. That’s alkaline. Variations are more or less alkaline, not more or less acidic. The obvious reason for incorrectly using the term “ocean acidification” is a propaganda gambit to scare the gullible and uninformed who associate acid with bad, like alien blood and spit.
Highly alkaline compounds such as caustic soda can be just as dangerous as acidic compounds, e.g. concentrated bleach, sodium hypochlorite, pH 9 to 13. On the other hand: rain has a pH of 4.5, lemon juice has a pH of 2.0, tomatoes a pH of 4.5, and vinegar a pH of 2.2. If they get on your hands the flesh doesn’t melt and they don’t burn a hole in the kitchen counter. (Might etch that granite, though.)
A solution goes from pH 0.0, dangerous acidity, to pH 7.0, neutral/safe, to pH 14.0, dangerous alkalinity. pH is chemical shorthand for the negative logarithm of H+ ion concentration.
pH = -log[H+] (1)
A pH of 9 represents 10^-9 or 1 part per billion H+ ions. A pH of 8 represents 10^-8 or 10 parts per billion H+ ions. A change from pH 8.2 (6.31 ppb M/l) to pH 8.1 (7.49 ppb M/l) is a (-1.18 ppb M/l) change in the direction of lower alkalinity, not more acidity. -1.18/7.49 = -16%. ((8.1-8.2)/8.2 = -.1/8.2 = 1.2%)
With a log function every whole number change is by a power of 10, a factor of 10. A change in pH from 9 to 8 means the H+ concentration increases by a power/factor of 10 or 1,000%!!!!!!! Makes the -16% look pretty trivial – which anything in ppb is. 0 pH to 14 pH is 14,000 %!!!!
Applying percentages to a logarithmic scale/function is very dicey, but that’s what you get when food and life style editors write science articles.
So, pH 8.1 is moving a YUGE 1 ppb in the direction of slightly more neutrality from pH 8.2 which is not much to begin with.
Improperly using the term ocean “acidification” to scare the public over bogus CAGW is a disgrace to science. Spit out the Kool-Aid and grow a backbone.
Kristi,
I was mistakenly responding to Tom’s remark that appeared immediately above your response. It was obviously a non sequitur on my part.
You said, “Ocean acidification is a perfectly acceptable scientific term.” It was unknown in the scientific literature before about 14 years ago. It is only acceptable in a small segment of disciplines. For criticism at greater length, please see the following:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/09/15/are-the-oceans-becoming-more-acidic/
Gary,
“Kristi, you are an young intelligent person, but you have grossly neglected your broader education and I would say it is your duty to aquire the personally enriching knowkedge that a modern woefully inadequate education has deliberately sidelined 9ver the past 3 generations.”
You have no idea what my education has been, either in school or after. Did you think I wasn’t aware of that meaning of pollution? Really bad assumption.
I’m 48. I’ve have plenty of experience in life, and have read widely. I regularly discuss religion and philosophy. But “pollution”? Doesn’t everyone know it has multiple meanings? Geez. I knew that in high school.
Ocean acidification:
” The obvious reason for incorrectly using the term “ocean acidification” is a propaganda gambit to scare the gullible and uninformed who associate acid with bad, like alien blood and spit.”
Nonsense. Acidification simply means lowering the pH. Period. It’s used in the same sense in reference to soils and freshwater, too. What term would you all prefer? De-alkalinization would have the same connotation. Ocean lowering-the-pH?
Why does everything have to be “propaganda”? You people are making all kinds of false assumptions about the way others think. It reflect irrational bias. An excuse to despise others and play the victim.
Believe it or not, many people are actually genuinely concerned about climate change based on theory and evidence. It’s not a conspiracy to enable the left the destroy the economy or spread socialism or kill those in the developing world. It shouldn’t be political at all, although it is a policy question. In my opinion, the political divide on the issue is an artifact of 1) conservatives being less well-represent in academia (which is big problem!), 2) the difference in ideology when it comes to regulation, 3) the fact that greens are usually liberals, and 4) the fossil fuel industry targeted the right with their propaganda through think tanks, front organizations and the media – before then the two sides were much less politically divided. Targeting one side was a brilliant maneuver.
Kristi Silber September 25, 2018 at 3:46 pm Edit
What term would I prefer? We already have a perfectly satisfactory term that describes this exact situation.
Do you remember “titration” from chemistry class? You either add an acid to a basic solution, or a base to an acidic solution, to move the solution toward neutral.
This is exactly what is happening in the ocean, adding an acid to a basic solution … and just as it was in my high school chemistry class, the process is correctly called “neutralization”.
However, “ocean neutralization” isn’t at all scary, while “ocean acidification” is, which is why it is used by climate alarmists trying to scare us into taking action against the eeeevil CO2 …
You’re welcome,
w.
Willis,
While I see the rationale behind “neutralization,” the term is used to either raise or lower pH. While obviously in the context of oceanic pH, it means a decrease, it’s still not as precise as “acidification.” “Neutralization” is vague could refer to other things – a Google search of “ocean neutralization” turns up articles about neutralizing oceanic CO2 in the context of ocean acidification. Neutralization is also used in the context of dealing with pollutants.
I don’t see why “acidification” is so inherently scary. By now everyone who has any interest in the topic knows that the oceans aren’t in danger of dropping below pH 7. I think it’s just another excuse to accuse scientists of propaganda.
Kristi Silber September 26, 2018 at 5:19 pm
Say what? Name a word that couldn’t “refer to other things”. Almost all words have more than one meaning … so what?
The problem is not the knowledgeable people, Kristi. As a number of people have pointed out to you, it is the millions of people who read newspapers and know nothing of the subject. To them “ocean acidification” means that the ocean is turning acid, and that’s scary.
But you knew that … you’re just not willing to admit it.
Regards,
w.
https://medical-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/acidification
acidification
Also found in: Dictionary, Thesaurus, Legal, Encyclopedia, Wikipedia.
acidify (ă-sid′ĭ-fī″) [ acid + -ify]
1. To make a substance acid.
2. To become acid.
So alarmists misuse thechemical term “acidification”. However, “neutralize” usually means to make less acid or base until a solution is neutral. So I’d opt for “dealkelization”.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dealkalization_of_water
You misunderstand. The AGW crowd is using the term in its religious meaning, mostly due to the fact that anthropogenic climate change is an article of the post-modern, secular humanism religion.
Paul,
No, they are using it in the sense of air pollution, the same way we’d talk about smog. Does smog have religious connotations? Mercury in the water?
No, they are using it in the sense of something religiously unclean. Thus, atrocities like Prop 65 in California, enshrining the Linear No Threshold model for all risks. What matters with CO2 is levels, not the mere presence at any level, so using “carbon pollution” is evoking black carbon, soot, not a trace gas.
I love teh smell of proof by assertion in the morning.
Don’t be so disingenuous that its so obvious kristi. ‘Pollution’ is of course a legal term that allows the EPA to act by taxing emissions.
It is also emotive – a pejorative term that implies negativity that mere ’emissions’ do not.
You have exactly done the same thing by classing CO2 emissions with hazardous emissions of smog, mercury etc.
Whilst denying that that is what you are doing
Double think in this one, strong, is.
“Why should it [“pollution”] have religious connotations?”
Pollution connotes impurity, and purity connotes salvation, in some (Christian, mostly) religious terminology.
Roger, and I do wonder which use of the word pollution came first. I would assume the religious sense.
@Tom re: Prop 65.
Your comment made me chuckle.
I ordered a steel plate once that came with a prop 65 warning.
1″ thick x 4″ wide x 36″ long.
It weighed roughly 40lbs.
There were no warnings about the far more likely event of dropping it on ones foot.
It’s even funnier when ads on TV in Australia depict “carbon pollution” as black balloons floating up in to the sky when electrical appliances are turned on. Like this;
Simply put, Political Correctness is disseminated by the media ,academia and government so the Left can and will politicize EVERYTHING. Social Credit Scores are already here, we just don’t know it.
“Never in the history of the world have the under-informed educate themselves without listening to the other side of a good argument.”
Anonymous Heins
Dr. Ball: Any attorney seeking to practice patent law must have a BS in science or engineering. I personally know of three who have Ph.D’s. Patent law certainly tends to deplete the remaining portion of the legal profession of those with scientific training, but you certainly can find a scientifically competent attorney from among those practicing patent law.
I don’t think Dr Ball was looking for a patent attorney.
If you ever go to court, you want a lawyer that specializes in the type of law that is at issue. Someone specializing in patent law isn’t the type of lawyer that Dr Ball was in need of.
I grump haughtily at the author’s failure to provide a citation for fig. 1 — https://www.conferenceboard.ca/hcp/Details/education/student-high-level-science-skills.aspx
I also grump pedantically at the author’s possible conflation of “students with science skills” with the graph-reported “students with [*] high level [*] science skills”.
Good point, Thurston. The Conference Board of Canada is a club of bidness executives with a vested interest in having a ready (“infinite” one of their USA brethren insists) supply of cheap, young, pliant labor with flexible ethics.
But it comes down to the PISA standardized test, which has some selection biases. In some countries, no one takes it, in others only high academic achievers take it, in others only those attending certain schools take it (similar to early biases in SAT & ACT). “High science skills” may not mean a high level of skill in applying the scientific method, and most likely is biased a bit in favor of memorized “scientifical facts”, instead.
Have Australian academics and scientists become mentally unhinged, because of global warming?
I could not believe what I read, in an article called, “The divisive issue Australia can no longer ignore”.
https://www.news.com.au/technology/environment/climate-change/the-divisive-issue-australia-can-no-longer-ignore/news-story/1915f694320e540444c03aff3ccd3a41
~ ~ ~ begin quote ~ ~ ~
But Professor Greg Skilbeck’s words were even more sharp.
The academic from the University of Technology, Sydney, said if we believed in science as part of the function of our everyday lives, we should believe in climate change.
“You cannot pick and choose — if you don’t accept climate change, you should not be given penicillin or painkillers or even visit a doctor,” he said.
“You should not be allowed to fly or drive a car either. But I guess that as most climate deniers also pick and choose the bits of the Bible they subscribe to as well, I should not be surprised.”
~ ~ ~ end quote ~ ~ ~
Professor Greg Skilbeck wants to deny people their fundamental human rights, if they don’t believe in the global warming religion.
He wants “heretics” to get no medical treatment, including penicillin and painkillers.
He wants “heretics” to be stopped from going to the doctor.
What will happen to “heretics” children, and babies?
==========
I would like to suggest to the University of Technology, Sydney, that Professor Greg Skilbeck should be dismissed from his position.
If the University of Technology, Sydney, is unwilling to do that, then I suggest that the Australian government should cut funding to the University of Technology, Sydney.
We can not allow unreasonable people to set the agenda, for dealing with global warming. Professor Greg Skilbeck’s words will make the climate change situation even worse than it is already.
Professor Greg Skilbeck appears to believe that he owns science, and can stop other people from using it. This is an arrogant and stupid belief. I have no confidence that Professor Greg Skilbeck can contribute positively to the global warming debate.
Interview would have ended 2nd time he called me a liar, he wouldn’t have been in any state to continue, i would have asked to not do it again after the first time, these people ”think” they can say anything they want.
I suggest that we start by avoiding the term 400ppm. I have on occasion found that 1/25 % of the atmosphere to be an argument killer.
Yes, 400 of something sounds like much more than a small fraction of a percent 🙂 🙂
This occurs in all branches of thought that I have encountered. From legal VS lawful systems, computer languages, metaphysical thought, and especially economics. ie. I have yet to meet any person that can correctly define the word “money”. Every economist I have read or heard, has a different definition. This is why the idiots still think that J M Keynes was correct.
It’s impossible because of the lies, lies, lies. They use lies couched within lies, couched within more lies. They particularly love the 97% lie. Because if 97% of scientists agree, then who are we to disagree? But the 97% argument is itself a lie within a lie. They also follow the rule of Stalin: a lie repeated often enough becomes the Truth.
“Ignorance is strength,”* and the left is very strong.
And the right is only a bit weaker, but is much more polite and willing to listen.
BTW, imaginary numbers are routinely used in electrical engineering.
* from 1984.
BTW, imaginary numbers are routinely used in electrical engineering.
But that only means that they exist in a dimension orthogonal to ordinary ones, which is simply a way of describing and manipulating vectors.
the imaginary numbers of climate change exist in a rather different dimension, but the problem is that they are represented as real numbers.
Here in the UK we have bastion of the left Diane Abbott, demonstrating the politically correct way to Do Sums now known popularly as Abbottonomics
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=2&v=3zUUY8Zz380
Watch and weep…
Thanks for the post, Tim. You say:
Say what? You’ll have to explain that one. It’s equivalent to saying that adding insulation to a house could result in a colder house … I’m not seeing how your claim is possible.
w.
Have you ever been in a warm country? In old natural stone houses thicker walls keep the heat out in summer and keep the heat in in winter. Solar radiation can only penetrade a few millimeters.
Or the beach (small rocks) where only the first few millimeters get hot.
“Greenhouse theory” only explains why the Earth’s average atmospheric temperature isn’t much colder. In and of itself it doesn’t specify a particular temperature.
I suspect that Dr Ball was referencing that ‘greenhouse gases’ can also cause radiative cooling, such as been suggested to cause cooling of the atmosphere above the Antarctic plateau.
Yes, Michael, but, also, if the greenhouse effect can cause warming by adding more gases, it can also cause cool by reducing the presence of those gases. As Budyko correctly identified, it is a matter of energy balance, that is why I referenced the alternative idea of a bathtub with input and outflow. Vary either of those and the tub fills (add gases) or empties (reduces gases) thus changing the level of the water (the temperature).
Tim,
While I agree that the theory means adding or removing gases can raise or lower temperature, the term “greenhouse” and its effect was originally used to describe what happens when gases are added. That is how it has been understood since. I’ve never heard or read anyone talk about the greenhouse effect when discussing a decrease in GHG. To say that the greenhouse effect can cool the planet is not only confusing, it implies that you believe there is some mechanism by which adding GHG will decrease temperature.
I believe the theory depends on how frequently with which a molecule of CO2 gains and loses energy from both collisions with other molecules and radiation.
When the atmosphere is thick, when it gains energy by absorbing a photon, the chances are it will lose that energy through a collision before it can have a chance to lose it through re-radiation. Hence, it heats the atmosphere.
When the atmosphere is thin, when a molecule of CO2 gains energy through a colllision, the odds are it will lose that energy through re-radiation before it has a chance to pass that energy on through another collision, hence it cools the atmosphere.
–Willis Eschenbach September 23, 2018 at 2:58 pm
Thanks for the post, Tim. You say:
“He did not even know that the greenhouse theory could result in a colder world.”
Say what? You’ll have to explain that one.–
I was also going to ask that this be explained.
According evidence and according to theories in broad topic of climate, global climate does cool. For example, the Milankovitch cycles.
But I don’t of greenhouse theory [greenhouse effect theory] as including the Milankovitch cycles.
So, maybe I actually need the greenhouse theory explained also.
In a different way, the green house gas CO2 when sequestered by the “greening” also sequesters energy from the sun since photosynthesis is an endothermic reaction. Of course it is no longer a greenhouse gas at this point, but it did 8n a small way ‘cool’ the planet.
Oh that’s easy. Just turn off the heating as well.
And if all the heat is coming from the outside of the house would it not be colder?
==>Willis Eschenbach
“Say what? You’ll have to explain that one. It’s equivalent to saying that adding insulation to a house could result in a colder house … I’m not seeing how your claim is possible.” – W.E.
Where I come from – Australia – adding insulation to anything (House, stubbie* or esky***) results in colder beer! 😉
My stone cottage in Tasmania is a veritable meat locker, always colder than daytime air, unless I have the fire going! Perhaps you should rephrase your question or perhaps the issue has revealed the heart of the problem, which is that insulation is all about slowing heating and slowing cooling (Upwelling LW in the greenhouse case). Perhaps the “insulation” of the Earth’s surface explains the missing atmospheric hotspot! 😉
*A stubbie** holder, is an insulated sleeve into which a small beer bottle may be inserted to be kept cool.
**Stubbie: A glass beer bottle, typically containing 375mL of delicious, cold, frosty amber fluid.
***Esky: Australian vernacular for insulated box, generically refers to portable coolers or ice boxes in place of words like “cooler” or “cooler box”. The term derives from the word Eskimo.
“It’s equivalent to saying that adding insulation to a house could result in a colder house…”
I live in a metal building with a metal roof. If I had no insulation underneath both that metal roof as well as the surrounding outside sheets, the inside of the home would be unlivable in the summer and/or my utility bill would be astronomical.
Adding insulation to a house can absolutely result in a colder house.
I worked in an uninsulated tin roofed factory in Johannesburg. And lived in an uninsulated tin roofed annex.
Sleep was only possible well after sunset.
One day I reported to my German boss.
‘What is the problem?’
‘I can’t do my work’
‘Why is that?’
The sweat is dripping off my forehead and making the ink run on the drawing I am trying to do”
A temperature gauge on a heatsink in my lab in the sun was registering over 100C WITHOUT the equipment even being switched on.
‘Ach then’ he said ‘this afternoon we just drink beer’ and going to the refrigerator in his office and withdrawing two cold ones, that is exactly what we did.
” It’s equivalent to saying that adding insulation to a house could result in a colder house ”
Willis, you are a very bright fellow, so think about what you are talking about. What is the purpose of insulation? While the unthinking might consider it being there to merely make the house warmer in winter, that’s not the whole story. It for slowing the transfer of heat from where it’s warmer to where it’s colder. In winter, when the interior of the house is warmer than the exterior, it slows that heat from being transferred to the colder outside – resulting in the house being warmer than it would otherwise be (thus requiring less energy running the heating system to keep warm). However, in Summer, where the exterior is hotter than the interior, it slows the heat coming from outside into the cooler inside – resulting in the house being *COLDER* than it would otherwise be (thus requiring less energy running the AC system to keep cool). so yes, Willis, adding insulation to a house could result in a colder house depending on what season it is.
The concept of ‘climate change’ was stolen, plagiarized and modified in 1992. Climatologist Wladimir Köppen first proposed his system of climate classification in 1884 and it has been revised by its followers in later years. Sometimes it is called the Köppen–Geiger climate classification system. A video shows climate change throughout this time period. Because it is objective, it’s the preferred textbook in high school. Climate has changed throughout geologic time. The concepts ‘greenhouse effect’ and of ‘global temperature’ violates Laws of Thermodynamics, whereas climate zones do not. in 1992, Al Gore and Maurice Strong organized the Rio Conference under extreme alarmist propaganda leading to the UN FCCC and Agenda 21, a plan to depopulate Earth. Carl Sagan worked during the space race. He wrote from the Radiation lab in Cornell. His 1972 work displayed no knowledge of thermodynamics. Hot air rises. In spite of this he penned some equations that I found intellectually offensive in 1972. False theory and bad arithmetic is the foundation of beliefs expressed in the Kyoto Protocol, works of the IPCC and the Paris Accord. Two degrees is equal to a walk up hill of 600 ft. Trump would never notice. Where I live, I am promoting Köppen–Geiger in high school and simple experiments that demonstrate concepts in thermodynamics and principles of heat flow. Any student who understands how a Dewar flask (thermos bottle) works would never believe Green Propaganda. We all should be aware of “Propaganda” by Edward L. Bernays, 1928.
David,
Many of the same usual suspects perpetrated the Nuclear Winter fraud before the Global Warming hoax, including the astronomical Dr. Sagan.
David,
“The concepts ‘greenhouse effect’ and of ‘global temperature’ violates Laws of Thermodynamics, whereas climate zones do not.”
What do climate zones have to do with the laws of thermodynamics?
How does the greenhouse effect violate these laws?
What, in Dr. Michael Mann’s education (physics), would lead us to believe that he knows anything about trees?
What’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. Also, why hasn’t his debunked first hockey stick paper been retracted?
CommieBob,
“Also, why hasn’t his debunked first hockey stick paper been retracted?”
Maybe because the papers refuting it were found to be flawed, and the original results (with minor variations) have been replicated several times.
There were minor statistical errors in the original, but they had little impact on the results. It’s not enough for a retraction.
The fact that so many people still think the hockey stick was totally wrong suggests they aren’t very informed about the whole story. For instance, why isn’t it discussed in relationship to the very flawed paper by Soon and Baliunas, who tried to refute the hockey stick, but which resulted in a peer review abuse scandal at Climate Review that ended with four of the ten editors resigning for the journal in protest? And a statement by the editor in chief that the review process had failed? Or that this was what so many skeptics believe was suppression of skeptic research by CRU scientists, when in fact they had uncovered unprofessional practices? It just goes to show how misleading some interpretations of the Climategate emails have been – thanks to Dr. Ball, among others. (That said, I am aware, too, of the lack of professionalism apparently in some of the emails.)
The completely unbalanced perception by so many skeptics of the whole controversy shows either a lack of information or a complete inability to see the incident for what it was. Both suggest that skeptics need to be better aware of other ways of seeing things – just as many alarmists do.
When asked to explain what he did that deserved the Nobel Prize, Richard Feynman said:
“Hell, if I could explain it to the average person, it wouldn’t have been worth the Nobel prize.”
When it comes to climate change, in all its complexity, too many think they understand it when they do not, but try to explain it anyway.
Here’s a communications strategy–address the following request to true believers in CAGW:
Please identify all the headline-grabbing climate change predictions–ones that were supposed to happen by now–that have actually come to pass. When they can’t provide answer, suggest that they do some research.
Good post Tim, and timely. You quoted Voltaire (who can always be relied on to produce a handy aphorism) and then wrote
Further back than I really wish to remember I was taught (in one of those interminable business and management courses we were all subjected to) that to have a valid debate it was necessary to ensure that your “opponent” understood exactly what you said, because
If it hasn’t been done, perhaps a good place to start would be to pull apart the BBC’s latest ‘climate crib sheet’.
But will it help? We live in ridiculous times. Everyone calls news they don’t agree with ‘fake’, so partisan websites appear to ‘fact check’ it, then alternative leaning websites appear to fact check the fact checkers…………..
It all leaves ‘the public’ none the wiser.
Bless this bastion of logical positivism. May we always follow the Optimist creed.
“He did not even know that the greenhouse theory could result in a colder world.”
This is an illogical statement. A theory can’t result in a colder world (or a warmer one). Besides, the greenhouse theory (developed in the late 19th C, refined by Nils Eckolm) does not predict a colder world due to increase in atmospheric CO2, it predicts a warmer one.
While I agree with his general thesis that it is often difficult to communicate in detail about climate to the layman, it seems to me Dr. Ball is the last one who should lambaste others for using misleading statements.
” Tom Wigley and Phil Jones, who later dominated the CRU and the IPCC…” How did they “dominate” the IPCC? Serious question.
“The so-called Climate Scientists don’t understand. The more arrogant among them believe, because they have degrees in mathematics or physics, they are superior and understand, while the rest of us trying to put even the major pieces of the system in place are stupid. It is the inevitable extension of logical positivism.”
What does that have to do with logical positivism? As long as someone is working with empirical data, there is nothing in logical positivism that says people are stupid just because they don’t have a PhD in a given field. It would be different if someone said, “My soul tells me that climate change is not anthropogenic.”
“The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.” Nice quote, although I would add that doubts can be a hindrance to decision-making, so in the real world we must use working hypotheses if we are to do anything at all. For example, if we are crossing a street, being filled with doubt as to the safety of doing so will either make us continually anxious or totally unable to cross. Doubt should be applied to those subjects where it is reasonable to doubt; where there is evidence about something, doubt should change to skepticism, and where there is ample evidence for something (especially when it supports underlying theoretical grounds), we should accept it provisionally as a working hypothesis (or a “theory,” in the case of science), so that we can make informed decisions. If there are no cars coming and you have a green light, cross the street.
“Scientists are skeptics. It’s unfortunate that the word ‘skeptic’ has taken on other connotations in the culture involving nihilism and cynicism. Really, in its pure and original meaning, it’s just thoughtful inquiry.” Not entirely true. Skepticism was originally more than just “thoughtful inquiry,” it is the idea that we can never know the absolute Truth with certainty (there are variations of this in classical philosophy, but this is a decent approximation). This is a fundamental tenet of scientific methodology.
Professor Silber just wrote:
“Doubt should be applied to those subjects where it is reasonable to doubt; where there is evidence about something, doubt should change to skepticism, and where there is ample evidence for something (especially when it supports underlying theoretical grounds), we should accept it provisionally as a working hypothesis (or a “theory,” in the case of science), so that we can make informed decisions. If there are no cars coming and you have a green light, cross the street.”
Does this statement somehow refute the honest scepticism shown by well educated folks commenting on this blog?
Please clarify.
Just for you young lady, I am posting Dr. Sagan’s Baloney detector- please learn this:
1. Wherever possible there must be independent confirmation of the “facts.”
2. Encourage substantive debate on the evidence by knowledgeable proponents of all points of view.
3. Arguments from authority carry little weight — “authorities” have made mistakes in the past. They will do so again in the future. Perhaps a better way to say it is that in science there are no authorities; at most, there are experts.
4. Spin more than one hypothesis. If there’s something to be explained, think of all the different ways in which it could be explained. Then think of tests by which you might systematically disprove each of the alternatives. What survives, the hypothesis that resists disproof in this Darwinian selection among “multiple working hypotheses,” has a much better chance of being the right answer than if you had simply run with the first idea that caught your fancy.
5. Try not to get overly attached to a hypothesis just because it’s yours. It’s only a way station in the pursuit of knowledge. Ask yourself why you like the idea. Compare it fairly with the alternatives. See if you can find reasons for rejecting it. If you don’t, others will.
6. Quantify. If whatever it is you’re explaining has some measure, some numerical quantity attached to it, you’ll be much better able to discriminate among competing hypotheses. What is vague and qualitative is open to many explanations. Of course there are truths to be sought in the many qualitative issues we are obliged to confront, but finding them is more challenging.
7. If there’s a chain of argument, every link in the chain must work (including the premise) — not just most of them.
8. Occam’s Razor. This convenient rule-of-thumb urges us when faced with two hypotheses that explain the dataequally well to choose the simpler.
9. Always ask whether the hypothesis can be, at least in principle, falsified. Propositions that are untestable, unfalsifiable are not worth much. Consider the grand idea that our Universe and everything in it is just an elementary particle — an electron, say — in a much bigger Cosmos. But if we can never acquire information from outside our Universe, is not the idea incapable of disproof? You must be able to check assertions out. Inveterate skeptics must be given the chance to follow your reasoning, to duplicate your experiments and see if they get the same result.
1. ad hominem — Latin for “to the man,” attacking the arguer and not the argument (e.g., The Reverend Dr. Smith is a known Biblical fundamentalist, so her objections to evolution need not be taken seriously)
2. argument from authority (e.g., President Richard Nixon should be re-elected because he has a secret plan to end the war in Southeast Asia — but because it was secret, there was no way for the electorate to evaluate it on its merits; the argument amounted to trusting him because he was President: a mistake, as it turned out)
3. argument from adverse consequences (e.g., A God meting out punishment and reward must exist, because if He didn’t, society would be much more lawless and dangerous — perhaps even ungovernable. Or: The defendant in a widely publicized murder trial must be found guilty; otherwise, it will be an encouragement for other men to murder their wives)
4. appeal to ignorance — the claim that whatever has not been proved false must be true, and vice versa (e.g.,There is no compelling evidence that UFOs are not visiting the Earth; therefore UFOs exist — and there is intelligent life elsewhere in the Universe. Or: There may be seventy kazillion other worlds, but not one is known to have the moral advancement of the Earth, so we’re still central to the Universe.) This impatience with ambiguity can be criticized in the phrase: absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
5. special pleading, often to rescue a proposition in deep rhetorical trouble (e.g., How can a merciful God condemn future generations to torment because, against orders, one woman induced one man to eat an apple? Special plead: you don’t understand the subtle Doctrine of Free Will. Or: How can there be an equally godlike Father, Son, and Holy Ghost in the same Person? Special plead: You don’t understand the Divine Mystery of the Trinity.Or: How could God permit the followers of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam — each in their own way enjoined to heroic measures of loving kindness and compassion — to have perpetrated so much cruelty for so long? Special plead: You don’t understand Free Will again. And anyway, God moves in mysterious ways.)
6. begging the question, also called assuming the answer(e.g., We must institute the death penalty to discourage violent crime. But does the violent crime rate in fact fall when the death penalty is imposed? Or: The stock market fell yesterday because of a technical adjustment and profit-taking by investors — but is there any independent evidence for the causal role of “adjustment” and profit-taking; have we learned anything at all from this purported explanation?)
7. observational selection, also called the enumeration of favorable circumstances, or as the philosopher Francis Bacon described it, counting the hits and forgetting the misses (e.g., A state boasts of the Presidents it has produced, but is silent on its serial killers)
8. statistics of small numbers — a close relative of observational selection (e.g., “They say 1 out of every 5 people is Chinese. How is this possible? I know hundreds of people, and none of them is Chinese. Yours truly.” Or:“I’ve thrown three sevens in a row. Tonight I can’t lose.”)
9. misunderstanding of the nature of statistics (e.g.,President Dwight Eisenhower expressing astonishment and alarm on discovering that fully half of all Americans have below average intelligence);
10. inconsistency (e.g., Prudently plan for the worst of which a potential military adversary is capable, but thriftily ignore scientific projections on environmental dangers because they’re not “proved.” Or: Attribute the declining life expectancy in the former Soviet Union to the failures of communism many years ago, but never attribute the high infant mortality rate in the United States (now highest of the major industrial nations) to the failures of capitalism. Or: Consider it reasonable for the Universe to continue to exist forever into the future, but judge absurd the possibility that it has infinite duration into the past);
11. non sequitur — Latin for “It doesn’t follow” (e.g., Our nation will prevail because God is great. But nearly every nation pretends this to be true; the German formulation was “Gott mit uns”). Often those falling into the non sequitur fallacy have simply failed to recognize alternative possibilities;
12. post hoc, ergo propter hoc — Latin for “It happened after, so it was caused by” (e.g., Jaime Cardinal Sin, Archbishop of Manila: “I know of … a 26-year-old who looks 60 because she takes [contraceptive] pills.” Or:Before women got the vote, there were no nuclear weapons)
13. meaningless question (e.g., What happens when an irresistible force meets an immovable object? But if there is such a thing as an irresistible force there can be no immovable objects, and vice versa)
14. excluded middle, or false dichotomy — considering only the two extremes in a continuum of intermediate possibilities (e.g., “Sure, take his side; my husband’s perfect; I’m always wrong.” Or: “Either you love your country or you hate it.” Or: “If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem”)
15. short-term vs. long-term — a subset of the excluded middle, but so important I’ve pulled it out for special attention (e.g., We can’t afford programs to feed malnourished children and educate pre-school kids. We need to urgently deal with crime on the streets. Or: Why explore space or pursue fundamental science when we have so huge a budget deficit?);
16. slippery slope, related to excluded middle (e.g., If we allow abortion in the first weeks of pregnancy, it will be impossible to prevent the killing of a full-term infant. Or, conversely: If the state prohibits abortion even in the ninth month, it will soon be telling us what to do with our bodies around the time of conception);
17. confusion of correlation and causation (e.g., A survey shows that more college graduates are homosexual than those with lesser education; therefore education makes people gay. Or: Andean earthquakes are correlated with closest approaches of the planet Uranus; therefore — despite the absence of any such correlation for the nearer, more massive planet Jupiter — the latter causes the former)
18. straw man — caricaturing a position to make it easier to attack (e.g., Scientists suppose that living things simply fell together by chance — a formulation that willfully ignores the central Darwinian insight, that Nature ratchets up by saving what works and discarding what doesn’t. Or — this is also a short-term/long-term fallacy — environmentalists care more for snail darters and spotted owls than they do for people)
19. suppressed evidence, or half-truths (e.g., An amazingly accurate and widely quoted “prophecy” of the assassination attempt on President Reagan is shown on television; but — an important detail — was it recorded before or after the event? Or: These government abuses demand revolution, even if you can’t make an omelette without breaking some eggs. Yes, but is this likely to be a revolution in which far more people are killed than under the previous regime? What does the experience of other revolutions suggest? Are all revolutions against oppressive regimes desirable and in the interests of the people?)
20. weasel words (e.g., The separation of powers of the U.S. Constitution specifies that the United States may not conduct a war without a declaration by Congress. On the other hand, Presidents are given control of foreign policy and the conduct of wars, which are potentially powerful tools for getting themselves re-elected. Presidents of either political party may therefore be tempted to arrange wars while waving the flag and calling the wars something else — “police actions,” “armed incursions,” “protective reaction strikes,” “pacification,” “safeguarding American interests,” and a wide variety of “operations,” such as “Operation Just Cause.” Euphemisms for war are one of a broad class of reinventions of language for political purposes. Talleyrand said, “An important art of politicians is to find new names for institutions which under old names have become odious to the public”)
Sagan’s baloney detector? Sagan was author of much baloney, including ‘greenhouse effect. His diatribes against pseudoscience were used to deflect from his own pseudoscience. He knew no biology and subscribed to the theory of spontaneous generation, disproven by Louis Pasteur. That way he promoted his own science fiction in book and movie “Contact”. Anything from Sagan is to viewed as science fiction. I say this even after subscribing to The Planetary Society and its support of SETI, one more failed Sagan project. Any life in our Solar system is microbial like the Archaean life found near black smoker. Sagan died too early for him to gain any real enlightenment.
“Sagan died too early for him to gain any real enlightenment.”
Yes, to me that is quite ironic. I believe he would have either been a valuable sceptic, or would have sold out to the Hollywood meme. Had he sold out his own words would eventually discredit him.
Sorry, “a valuable skeptic” that should have read.
Pop,
Good post!
I think the Baloney Detector
gives baloney a bad name
— I worked in a deli for
three summers and sold
a lot of baloney — people
liked it.
The detector
should be renamed in honor
of the great Irish people, as
The Malarkey Detector,
.
.
… or perhaps renamed for the great
people of Brooklyn New York,
where I lived with old relatives
for three semesters
while earning an MBA in Manhattan,
and heard some wild sayings,
most of which I still don’t get:
The Banana Earl Detector
I personally would use
BS Detector, or to be polite,
Farm Animal Digestive Waste
Products Detector.
You are a poster child for this article by Tim Ball, ma’m. You think in a different paradigm from ours.
Are you sure thought is actually involved?
Rather than mental regurgitation?
Pop,
There is nothing wrong with “honest skepticism,” no matter who has it. But when people say there is no evidence for AGW, that is not just honest skepticism.
You are mocking me with the “Professor Silber.”
You are showing condescension in calling me “young lady,” and posting that list “just for me.” I’m 48, and what you posted I agree with, it’s nothing new to me. (The part about “authority” shows me why people misunderstood my use of the word before.) The first part is basic scientific methodology. The second part concerns rational argument, which I advocate, although none of us is always rational.
I will not give you my time if you continue to insult me.
-Pop,
There is nothing wrong with “honest skepticism,” no matter who has it. But when people say there is no evidence for AGW, that is not just honest skepticism.-
How much warming has been caused by humans.
I assume one effect is from CO2, so much from that.
And include any warming effects from human- say land use or whatever and how much increase in global temperature.
And has humans caused any cooling effects, if so, how much
The catchword here is Global (as in global government, global socialism, and global control of resources).
What humans heat up is the area around ourselves, with our practices and structures.
If you have empirical evidence of global weather (climate in the long term) effects from our agriculture and infrastructure, please post it.
I see the illusion of climate control as being 3% science and 97% politics.
gbaikie,
It’s very difficult to quantify exactly how much warming is due to humans, but there is substantial evidence from a variety of studies that at least half is anthropogenic.
Likewise, quantification of cooling is tough, but there’s good evidence that we have done that through emissions of aerosols. This is one hypothesis for the cooler period around the 70s, when pollution was high.
I suspect that we also have had a cooling effect through burning off of forest, and subsequent conversion to pasture and crops with a higher albedo. At the same time, this may have decreased the carbon sink capacity of the land, which may have offset the cooling. It’s all very complex. The resolution and difficulty of measurement makes land use one of the parameters that must be estimated in models, but this is changing as satellites are being developed that have the capacity to measure vegetation change – even growth of trees.
Pop Piasa,
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Pieter_Beck/publication/230720042_Estimated_Carbon_Dioxide_Emissions_from_Tropical_Deforestation_Improved_by_Carbon-density_Maps/links/552cc47a0cf21acb0920e8a5.pdf
http://stephenschneider.stanford.edu/Publications/PDF_Papers/PielkeEtAl2002.pdf
“Our paper documents that land-use change impacts regional and global climate
through the surface-energy budget, as well as through the carbon cycle”
There are just a couple. Searching for agricultural impacts on climate change is more difficult, as most papers are about climate change impacts on agriculture.
Infrastructure – making concrete is a major source of GHG. Coal dust has been hypothesized to reduce albedo of ice. You can look up your own evidence.
“I see the illusion of climate control as being 3% science and 97% politics.”
Well, this is a major problem, isn’t it? You are seeing the science through politics, when science has to be evaluated on its own merits. How I wish everybody, regardless of their political persuasion, could start doing this!
Ms Silber,
It seems to me this thread is about the language used to explain and discuss “Global Warming.” I have been following this thread a bit and quite agree with statements you and others have made about the unnecessary use of relatively pejorative language toward people engaged in the discussion.
However, elsewhere in this thread I posted a thought I have had recently about a fundamental difference between the paradigm of basic sciences such as physics, chemistry, and biology and the paradigm appropriate to climate science (as well as astrophysics, cosmology, evolution of life and planets, etc.). A fundamental difference as I see it as that the former disciplines rely on the paradigm of prediction of experimental outcomes, comparison of theoretical prediction to outcomes, and judging the “wrong-ness” (in Feynman’s sense) of theories by the level of agreement, whereas the latter disciplines are fundamentally explanatory, not predictive with respect to observations. More is necessary to clarify what I mean be that, but that’s not the point I want to make here.
The point here is that the simple use of certain terms to describe climate science might confound meanings, or imply scientific underpinnings which do not exist or are not intended, or are interpreted differently by different participants in the discussion. Further, this confounds the explanatory clarity of the theory.
An example of this is the term “global warming” or simply “warming.”
Often it seems “warming” is taken to be occurring prima facie based on the apparent behavior of the various global/regional indexes of temperature, such as GISTEMP, HADCRUT, etc. Kip Hansen has a nice essay posted on WUWT recently that very nicely explores the nuances of accumulation of numbers into global temperature anomaly indexes. An underlying current in that essay is that the behavior of such indexes is closely tied to the manner with which they are computed. He discusses things like differences between means of medians, means of means, uncertainties, and the like. The upshot is that global temperature anomaly indexes are far more representative of the nuances of statistical manipulation than underlying physics. It is not at all clear that movement of such an index down or up over some time interval represents any thermodynamic quantities at all, but instead is simply a reflection of changing statistical details. In other words, the notion of “warming” as used in discussions of climate science, i.e. that it is evidenced by an upward trend in the index, lacks a solid quantitative link to thermodynamics.
From that perspective, talking about “how much warming is due to humans” begs the question of whether we actually know thermodynamic “warming” is occurring and in what quantity. It is not too hard to do some back of (largish) envelope calculations comparing the behavior of the average of the temperatures of a collection of somewhat coupled thermodynamic systems to the temperature of the collection of systems calculated from their actual thermodynamic ensemble. In other words comparing the average of dUi/dSi to d(sumU)/d(sumS). For many assumptions on the systems, the average turns out to be fairly chaotic compared to the actual system and coupled with the statistical quirks with which the average is actually computed. It is unclear that the global temperature indexes can reliably say anything quantitative about “warming” or “cooling” in the thermodynamic sense. Not that they might be unaffected, rather that they may not be very robust indicators of the actual thermodynamics of the global system. The key word here is quantitative.
What all this means is that even starting a conversation asking to what the “warming” is attributable begs the question of what do we mean by “warming.” It gets even more tenuous, since, if climate science is essentially explanatory and not predictive, then a vagueness in the quantities to be explained makes the prospect of rigorous physics and mathematics explaining the “warming” or “cooling” even less hopeful.
This issue is also present in discussions of the ice melting, turbulent event strengths and frequencies and the like. Coupled with the wide spatial and temporal variations about the globe, it seems to me it would improve the discussion a great deal to call variables what they are and not use words suggestive of something they are not. For example, “warming” should more rightly be called “a correlation in the global temperature anomaly index” or some such language. Also, the global mean temperatures should be called something like global T statistics. It strikes me the behavior of such things would reduce a bit of the heated (pun intended) discussion about warming and who or what is to blame.
Feynman’s little talk on the nature of science has a nice section on the difficulty of applying science (he really means physics) to quantities that are somewhat ill-defined.
“Likewise, quantification of cooling is tough, but there’s good evidence that we have done that through emissions of aerosols. This is one hypothesis for the cooler period around the 70s, when pollution was high.”
In US pollution was higher and perhaps around 1970s. Or many have claimed pollution levels in US have lowered in comparison in the 21 century.
If you worried about leaded gasoline effects [lead in atmosphere] it’s rather dramatic reduction- but lead in atmosphere has little to do with climate.
In terms global surface area, US is very insignificant.
The soviets polluted their lands by very significant amount. It would interesting if even allow listing of something like US “superfund sites”?
So: “Does Russia have a program (or programs) similar to the EPA’s Superfund? If so, what is it called and what are its major cleanup projects?”
https://www.quora.com/Does-Russia-have-a-program-or-programs-similar-to-the-EPAs-Superfund-If-so-what-is-it-called-and-what-are-its-major-cleanup-projects
Apparently, not. But anyhow, check global aerosol:
“Abstract
Our understanding of the global aerosol change is rather limited, although it is well known that aerosol forcing could affect the global radiative budget, hydrological processes, carbon, nitrogen and sulfur cycles, as well as climate change. To understand the wide range effects of aerosols, it is key to obtain aerosol characteristics at high spatio-temporal resolutions. In this study, we try to map the global variations of the aerosol optical depth (AOD) using two aerosol products retrieved from MODIS (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) satellite instrument. It is found that the global average AOD is 0.126 over the last decade (2003–2012). The highest and the lowest AOD occurred in 2007 and 2010, respectively. AOD variations between land and ocean, north and south hemispheres, among seven continents and four oceans were also explored. It is interesting to find that high concentrations of aerosols are mainly distributed in regions where developing countries are located (Asia and Africa), and an increasing trend could also be observed…”
Of course I heard about such claims- of it affecting climate models. And no doubt it’s monitored in places like North America and Europe- but even such regions are quite small and it’s rather recent that we are monitoring it via satellites on global basis. My wild guess it largely about US temperature, And US has a lot monitoring sites for temperature [and comparison it’s very thin elsewhere over most of Earth surface] , and it’s more about affecting the measured global temperature, rather actual affect global temperature.
My guess is manmade global pollution is higher now, than in 1970’s- and I don’t think wind mills and solar panels are reducing pollution- nor are the electric cars.
Going back to:
“It’s very difficult to quantify exactly how much warming is due to humans, but there is substantial evidence from a variety of studies that at least half is anthropogenic.”
Maybe it is. Or maybe since 1950s at least half is anthropogenic.
Or maybe not.
But it seems humans have had little to do with 7″ rise in sea level over the last 100 hundred years. Of course, there models indicating that human will have an effect upon sea levels. Though I am forgetting that some say, pumping water from underground has added maybe 1″ or more to sea level rise.
Kristi Silber
“I will not give you my time if you continue to insult me.”
That’ll be someone else struck off your list because they “insult” you.
Yet you fail to understand you are nothing but just another poster on a blog site. You have no standing or status. You could be 48 (In which case you are a young lady to me) or you could be 480; you might have a scientific qualification, but then you might not. You might be a female, but then you might not.
On the one hand I think this blog would be a poorer place without you as occasionally you demonstrate uncommon sense, as in some of your comments following Tim Ball’s essay. On the other hand I find your sense of self entitlement offensive in itself.
This is not a bastion of political correctness, striking people off your little list is simply indicative of the alarmist inclination to refuse to debate on the slightest pretext. Continuing to strike people off your list will pretty rapidly mean you’ll have no reason to visit WUWT. What it doesn’t do is strike fear or a sense of loss into anyone here, indeed I’m sure it emboldens people to push you further.
Personally, I find your supercilious attitude e.g. “I will not give you my time…..”, offensive, rude and insulting but then I accept this is a blog and you may not be what you say you are, nor perhaps am I. If you imagine you are granting us your time, then you need a large dose of humility.
But I’m not sure any of this has occurred to you.
If you fail to treat Kristi with the deference that she believes is her due, she will refuse to talk with you anymore.
The funny thing is that she seems to believe that she is harming us by this refusal to dialog with us.
“This is not a bastion of political correctness, striking people off your little list is simply indicative of the alarmist inclination to refuse to debate on the slightest pretext. ”
Staggering obtuseness.
What Kristi alludes to – and this is common to anyone trying to counter the “ignorance worn as a badge” “not with my tax dollars you warmunist” psychology on display here – is the uselessness of trying to converse on here.
Answer a post and it will get the reflexive ad hom from some, the sky-dragon slayer “physics” from others or the “it’s a fraud” from the rest. And all combinations thereof.
There is no “debating” here LOL – we know that full well.
It’s a wonder anyone bothers.
(Why do so you may ask )- well there may always be some science sentient being who doesn’t think in those combinations but who does not post – stranger things have happened.
Because denizens aren’t here for that. It’s a dog-whistle answering echo-chamber in which any voice trying to say otherwise receives said responses.
It’s only the likes of Nick and Leif (notably) that drags threads from echoing ignorance.
That you say otherwise is merely the product of the echo-chamber of the angry, “warmunist” hating, ideologically driven that inhabit the place.
Oh, and “personally” I find your attitude to someone who calls out nasty responses politely as Kristi rightly does to be “supercilious” likewise my Scottish friend.
Feel free to reciprocate … it’s entirely expected.
Markw:
“The funny thing is that she seems to believe that she is harming us by this refusal to dialog with us”.
Dont be silly.
You lot are impervious. After all you will always “win” with superiority of numbers on here…. and truly think it a “win” as though to shout loudly and often demonstrates such.
Like I said – there’s no dialog …. just the QED of my above as you and Scott demonstrate.
HotScot,
Not sure why you keep addressing me.
I’m not 480, of that I can assure you.
And I don’t lie.
““I will not give you my time…..”, offensive, rude and insulting ” How ironic.
I even warned you! Why should I interact with those who habitually insult me?
“when people say there is no evidence for AGW, that is not just honest skepticism.”
No, its actually just the truth.
In fact its not merely that there is no evidence for it, the evidence is actually against it.
Any theory that predicts a linear relationship between temperature rise and CO2 rises in totally invalidated by a steady CO2 rise that cannot be correlated with a sharp temperature rise followed by 20 years of essentially NO temperature rise at all.
A non linear relationship is possible, but that is not what the AGW theory says.
Or you can ‘save’ the AGW theory by downgrading the sensitivity to the point where CO2 is almost irrelevant and introducing Something Else that has stopped global warming dead in its tracks for the last 20 years, but that of course in not what AGW says either, It claims that most if not all late 20th century warming is down to CO2.
The Pause and the lack of tropical hotspots are the elephants in the room. They utterly refute AGW as it is currently couched.
All competent scientists who have seen this accept AGW is intellectually dead, but none are willing to risk their careers by saying so.
And the businesses thatare based on the back of the faux proposition aren’t going to roll over either,. Too much money and too many careers are at stake., At best we will see AGW quietly fade into obscurity as grants are wound down, and the whole Green Blob industry fades out,. Its begun already. There are less eco journalists earning less money than there used to be. No one wants to subsidise renewables any more, and the weaselling begins.
Even your (Kristi’s) presence here is symptomatic – a last ditch attempt to sabotage what is seen as a centre of intelligent opposition to the AGW meme. I mean, are we THAT important?
Or is it that its beginning to dawn on you that after all the truth does matter, that it is not simply a question of what people can be induced to think, but there is in some sense no matter how ill defined and misunderstood, an objective truth out there which cannot be denied or resisted and is in fact completely impervious to propaganda?
Leo,
“Any theory that predicts a linear relationship between temperature rise and CO2”
But it doesn’t! You really don’t have any idea of the science, do you?
“All competent scientists who have seen this accept AGW is intellectually dead, but none are willing to risk their careers by saying so.”
Nonsense. Do you seriously believe you know enough to judge? Your comments suggest otherwise, I’m afraid.
‘Even your (Kristi’s) presence here is symptomatic – a last ditch attempt to sabotage what is seen as a centre of intelligent opposition to the AGW meme. I mean, are we THAT important?”
Sabotage? Are you kidding? Do you think I have any illusions about my power here? NO! I do it because it is intellectually stimulating. I learn from it. I like to interact with people who think differently from me.
As always Kristi assumes that if it’s warming, that’s proof that it’s AGW.
I’m still waiting for Kristi’s evidence that any, much less all of the warming that we are currently enjoying is caused by man.
MarkW,
No, I don’t deal in “proof.”
‘I’m still waiting for Kristi’s evidence that any, much less all of the warming that we are currently enjoying is caused by man”
I owe you nothing, Mark. Look it up yourself.
I too apologize for assuming you were younger.
In an earlier article, when you spent so much time bragging about your degrees, I assumed you were a recent graduate.
In my experience by the time one reaches middle age, you have plenty of acheivements in your life. So when bragging, those are what you concentrate on.
To have reached the age of 48 without achieving any professional highlights that can compete with your college graduation is truly sad.
MarkW,
I wasn’t bragging. I was simply pointing out that I have a solid background in science. It makes a difference.
“To have reached the age of 48 without achieving any professional highlights that can compete with your college graduation is truly sad.”
I agree. I had a lot of potential. And health problems that made me unable to fulfill them. It was devastating to lose my career. I loved what I did, and I was good at it. That’s not bragging, that’s revealing something about myself. You don’t really deserve it, the way you’ve treated me, but you are human and hopefully not just a crotchety old man.
“Greenhouse theory” predicts that if more greenhouse gases are added to the atmosphere, the atmosphere will warm.
It logically follows that if greenhouse gases are taken out of the atmosphere, then it will cool.
Greenhouse theory predicts either warming or cooling, depending on the circumstance.
Say Earth atmosphere had 20 atmospheric masses of N2 added , 10 atm mass of O2 added and 1 atm mass of CO2 added giving Earth 3 % CO2.
So Earth has surface atmospheric pressure of 32 atm.
Would the massive increase in CO2 warm Earth? And how much?
I would just add 30 atm of CO2- but that would kill life- animals and plants need enough O2 to live- and adding a lot O2 would burn the place down- but 1 atm of CO2 should be regarded as adding a lot of CO2 compared to the 0.004 Atm of CO2 we have now [or .04% vs 3% or terms of doubling 800, 1600, 3200, 6400, 1280, 2560, 5120, 10240, 20480, and less than 40840 ppm- doubled 9+ times].
It seems to me if we had 32 atm, we would have a dimly lit surface.
Or you can witness the sun going thru about 10 atm, daily- whenever sun is low at horizon. And the sun is fairly dim. And if had 32 atm, when sun is low at horizon, it be like sun going thru 300 atm- or it would extremely dim.
And in peak solar hours- 3 hours before and after noon with 32 atm the sun is not warming the surface- instead somewhere around 1000 watts per square meter, it less than 200 watts per square meter or ground is not warmed above freezing by sunlight- anywhere on Earth.
And of course clouds would make it dimmer.
The idea of “Greenhouse Theory” may have begun in the 1800s (with Tyndell’s experiment on CO2 absorbing IR), but it has been a long development and refinement, proceeding through quantum understanding of how molecular bonds selectively absorb IR, through experimental determination of details of IR absorption spectra, through concepts of emission heights for IR emission, up to the use of satellites to examine IR emission from the “wings” of a CO2 or H2O absorption band (which generates the log CO2 effect) to take advantage of emission height to monitor different atmospheric depths.
‘Greenhouse’ gases also cause cooling by increasing the efficiency of convection cooling. The greenhouse gas absorbs radiation and then via collision transfers that energy to non greenhouse gases before it emit a photon.
Roughly 80% of the cooling in the lower atmosphere is due to convection cooling.
Higher in the atmosphere there are greater and greater amounts of free ions and free electrons which radiate due to motion. At high elevations the atmosphere is more like a plasma.
This explains why the greenhouse mechanism saturates.
Observational evidence to support that assertion is the fact that There are periods of millions of years in the paleo record when atmospheric CO2 was high and the planet was cold and periods when atmospheric CO2 was low and the planet was warm.
“If there are no cars coming and you have a green light, cross the street.”
Unfortunately Kristi life isn’t that simple. You step out and get run over by a cyclist who is jumping the red light. I am reminded of the driver who only overtook when when he was approaching a blind bend. When ask why he did this he explained that he had been taught never to overtake when you can see something coming the other way.
It is impossible to construct a set of rules that will cover every possible eventuality, will apply in all conceivable circumstances and will always be applied correctly and it is foolish to try and do so. Biology has not made us as automatons, we are not pre-programmed robots and our laws, such as they are, have to be based around the concept of total individual freedom, except for that which is proscribed. The alternative method of no freedoms except that which you are allowed to do by law, does not work.
“Nice quote, although I would add that doubts can be a hindrance to decision-making”
Why doing nothing may sometimes be the best action of all
Philip,
Well, okay, add in cyclists, scooters, Segues, St. Bernards… But you have to cross the street to get to the other side.
In Catholic theology there is freedom, and there is license. License means following only one’s own desires, while freedom means considering what is right – what will not inflict harm on others. While I’m not a Catholic, I think this is a useful concept.
We are a society. We must live together. Right now America is becoming so divided that relationships are being destroyed by political differences. If we keep heading in the same direction, with each side becoming more and more extreme and hateful toward one another, it could lead to either civil war or an authoritarian society. We can no longer discuss things rationally, and that means we can’t compromise.
Living together in peace means compromise. I want to live in peace. I don’t want to hate or despise anyone unless they deserve it, and I don’t think any group deserves it. My best friend is very conservative. We fight, but I love him dearly. I see the value in a lot of conservative ideals through him and the reading I’ve done – and I see a lot of faults in liberal handling of things.
I can also understand skepticism. I understand the problems with the way the CO2 issue has been addressed. But I believe doing nothing is very wrong. We must take responsibility. To tell the rest of the world that we don’t care what happens to anyone but ourselves is sending the message that everyone should be able to do the same. Why should we then condemn China for stealing our intellectual property? What right do we have to condemn them for their CO2 emissions, as so many skeptics do? What would give us the right to interfere in others’ conflicts, or convince them to end their nuclear weapons programs? We can’t be a world leader and think only of ourselves. Pulling out of the Paris Agreement sent that message. Deregulating the fossil fuel industry is sending that message. America is leading only America.
I’m a patriot. I believe in American values, and I think we should be a role model for the rest of the world, not a nation that is considered untrustworthy and selfish.
“Living together in peace means compromise. I want to live in peace. I don’t want to hate or despise anyone unless they deserve it, and I don’t think any group deserves it. My best friend is very conservative. We fight, but I love him dearly. I see the value in a lot of conservative ideals through him and the reading I’ve done – and I see a lot of faults in liberal handling of things.”
Like, Ten Conservative Principles:
https://kirkcenter.org/conservatism/ten-conservative-principles/
Reasonable ideals, though I am not conservative. Though Republican are suppose to have “big tent” which I assume includes libertarian- when do the political tests, that where they put me.
“I can also understand skepticism. I understand the problems with the way the CO2 issue has been addressed. But I believe doing nothing is very wrong. We must take responsibility.”
You seem to ignore the benefits of elevated CO2 levels.
As far as Earth history in last 1/2 billion years, we have been at low levels of CO2.
Most of life evolved in environment with much higher levels of CO2 and have near starvation levels for couple million years- it’s due to geological processes, and we in an Ice Age.
With brings us to other issue, Earth is not presently too warm. And through most of human history, warmer has always been regarded as better than colder- because it is.
The guy who proposed that CO2 would increase global temperature, regarded this as good news. And he was right about that.
If global temperature lower by .5 C, everyone knows this would be big problem- because it would be- it would reduce crop production- food prices would rise- resulting the poorest not getting enough food.
Lefties were predicting we would have already starved to death decades ago, and very small part of why this failed to materialized was the warming world and increased CO2 levels- though capitalism was major reason- and, plus development of better crops and generally better farming technology. And roughly the same sort of thing regarding the Peak Oil scare.
“To tell the rest of the world that we don’t care what happens to anyone but ourselves is sending the message that everyone should be able to do the same. Why should we then condemn China for stealing our intellectual property? What right do we have to condemn them for their CO2 emissions, as so many skeptics do? What would give us the right to interfere in others’ conflicts, or convince them to end their nuclear weapons programs? We can’t be a world leader and think only of ourselves. Pulling out of the Paris Agreement sent that message. Deregulating the fossil fuel industry is sending that message. America is leading only America.”
America was leading the world, before WWII, and after which US emerging as sole Superpower [though part of dual superpower if you count a large number of nuclear weapons as a determining factor].
I have no problem with China emitting twice as much CO2 as US- but China should do something about air pollution and other kinds of pollution. IF China fracks, they can then emit less CO2 with same amount electrical energy and have less air pollution.
And it should be noted that US is lowering it’s emission and countries spending lots of money doing something about “global warming” [such as Germany] are not reducing their CO2 emissions.
Or if want to lower CO2- follow the US example.
Yep, try explaining the concept of “NULL” to a non-programmer.
ZERO chance!
It’s notable how many people here accuse others of things they do themselves.
If we are going to discuss climate change rationally, we ALL need to stop using insulting language and making generalizations and assumptions about what the Other thinks and does.
The stress on debate is wrong. Debate is trying to support one’s own views and dispute others’. Debate doesn’t result in learning, it results in becoming more certain of one’s own beliefs regardless of their merit.
What would really be a good learning exercise is to have a debate in which the sides were swapped: skeptics would argue for CAGW, and alarmists for skepticism. Research and preparation for the debate would necessitate learning the merits of the other side of the argument. Then we might come closer to understanding each other, and eventually to developing policies that are a compromise. It makes no sense for policy to be radically changed with each new administration.
So… The debate is over- in your view? Anyone who disagrees with the “consensus” is projecting their personal biases through egocentricity?
Kristi, do you really think that we haven’t researched your side of the debate? Folks like myself started out as believers until we really investigated the entire story behind this politically spawned detour of legitimacy in science.
Pop,
Your interpretation of what I say is just weird.
You have insulted me enough that I’m not interested in discussing anything with you.
Kristi Silber
“You have insulted me enough…….”
But describing Pop’s interpretation of your comments as “weird” isn’t insulting?
Guess I got her goat, Scot. I was unusually cross with the good woman, I admit. I’m normally a better follower of the Optimist creed. We shouldn’t bash each other here just because we have different conceptions of reality.
I regret hurting anyone’s feelings and give myself 5 demerits.
Pop, that was a nice comment. I appreciate it.
You consider that an insult????
You have lived a sheltered life.
Kristi writes:
“Pop,
Your interpretation of what I say is just weird.
You have insulted me enough that I’m not interested
in discussing anything with you.”
How can I get on the Kristi
non-discussion list?
Can I just volunteer,
or do I have to be a bad boy?
If it will help me
to get on that highly desirable list:
I have read your comments here and
my first, second, and last thought, was:
DING DING DING
bat.
and she’s 48!
FORTY EIGHT!!!!!!
Seriously?! I thought she was fresh out of college considering her perfect regurgitation of Marxist propaganda talking points. sheesh.
no quarter for such liars (she is a self-deceiver, the worst type of liar)
Richard,
DING DING DING! Congratulations! You made it! You won the booby prize!
Honest Liberty,
You are such a fool. I’m no Marxist, I’m a capitalist. It’s absolutely absurd to think my views are Marxist. What a dumb@ss.
“What would really be a good learning exercise is to have a debate in which the sides were swapped: skeptics would argue for CAGW, and alarmists for skepticism.”
One of the best comments I have seen you make here Kristi. In my own mind, I do so all the time and the best I can come up with is 7.4 billion humans adding a lot of thermal heat (espeically in the NH) of all kinds to the climate system which made for UHI making for recording higher temps in the historical urban record although I agree the world has warmed .8 degree C in the last 150 years. Probably half of which or more was just natural variation coming out of the LIA when it was much cooler than the bulk of the Holocene. Which is why I don’t only believe the small additional warming is a bad thing, but the fact that the world now supports 7.4 billion, is why it does and is net beneficial. Except for the day it turns real cold and stays cold…and then we are really toast.
Why don’t you write up a post (you are a good writer, even if I don’t completely agree with your methods or results) and give it your best to be a skeptic? And ask everyone who is a skeptic to have a go at really trying their best to logically be a alarmist. I am sure it would get published here if you made a real good honest attempt. Maybe we will all learn something new. I will participate and do my best to honestly argue the alarmist position.
And I won’t stomp my feet, wave my arms, or call anyone a deni@r like alarmists do, or what is now called a Denialist. Definition of which is: defines as “an ideological position whereby one systematically reacts by refusing reality and truth”. I find that word just as offensive, maybe even more so, because it summarily can dismiss anyone who questions someone else’s reality and truth when just acting as a skeptic when that is the definition of a practising scientist, at least until a theory is confirmed.
With the complexities of weather and climate so vast, it is just amazing to me why a real and proper debate and discussion isn’t advocated, especially by academia and media. If we persist down the alarmist rabbit hole, then we are assured of being mislead because the first rule of science is repeatable results. We can’t have a lot of warming from CO2 alone, especially if we agree there are other forms of warming such as Land Use Change and UHI, then obviously ‘carbon’ can’t be responsible for all of man made warming or climate change. So CO2 has to be subtracted from that column, unless ‘carbon’ has just become a metaphor for everything related to human kind. Maybe the rest of 7.4 billion human actives has something to do with it, which reducing ‘carbon’ will make no tangible result to any future warming.
I tried being polite Kristi, and didn’t even get a peep out of you. Unlike the rest of some who you said were being rude to you was why you won’t even discuss anything with them. Put the shoe on the other foot, and tell us what you think, as a skeptic, what your main points would be. That would tell all of us, you included, what you really think about the skeptic position. We, (you), might learn something new. That’s why we are all here, which is hopefully just not an echo chamber to hear ourselves talk and agree with each other.
Earthling2 ,
I’m very sorry, I just didn’t get to you (sometimes I start at the top, sometimes from the bottom). And unfortunately, I don’t have time now to address your comments in detail.
I don’t think a debate here swapping sides would be very successful. It’s really quite difficult for one to debate many others at once in a thoughtful manner, with literature to back up one’s claims. From the comments I’ve gotten, others think it’s a rotten idea, anyway. And then the question is, what kind of arguments would be allowed? Would I use Climategate in an effort to show that all scientists are corrupt, since that is one argument used by some skeptics? How about policy, and the claim that trillions of dollars are being wasted? In other words, would I use the common claims of skeptics or only the scientific research that rejects the theory? Would I be arguing against AGW, or CAGW?
Despite the fact that I know most of the arguments skeptics make, it would be difficult to put together a sound argument based purely on quality science. There is reason for skepticism (primarily due to uncertainties), but not a lot of reason for rejection of the consensus, which is what most skeptics seem to argue – or at least they argue that AGW is benign.
The other problem is that I don’t have a good enough understanding of climate science to do it justice. I know arguments from years of discussing the issue with skeptics, but I don’t consider myself well-versed enough in the immense field of climate science to attempt a purely scientific debate. That would take years of study.
So, I appreciate your willingness to engage in such a debate, but I don’t think I can oblige – not in a WUWT post, anyway. I didn’t actually mean it should be done here.
…………………………………….
“We can’t have a lot of warming from CO2 alone, especially if we agree there are other forms of warming such as Land Use Change and UHI, then obviously ‘carbon’ can’t be responsible for all of man made warming or climate change.”
The effects of UHI are on measurement, not actual global temperatures – that would be negligible.
Land use is not directly a factor in global warming, but through its impact on CO2, both as a source and sink. Well, it may be through the contribution to aerosols from burning, but those are transient (although perhaps not negligible; I have long suspected that clearing and burning of forest has an impact).
……………………………….
“Probably half of which or more was just natural variation coming out of the LIA when it was much cooler than the bulk of the Holocene. ”
The problem with this idea is that natural variation, too, has to be explained. Some of it can be explained by solar variation, but it can’t explain all the patterns. For example, “There is considerable evidence for solar influence on the Earth’s pre-industrial climate and the Sun may well have been a factor in post-industrial climate change in the first half of the last century. Here we show that over the past 20 years, all the trends in the Sun that could have had an influence on the Earth’s climate have been in the opposite direction to that required to explain the observed rise in global mean temperatures.”
http://rspa.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/463/2086/2447.short
Climate is so complex that it’s very difficult to factor in all the variables in a way that we can understand without the aid of models. I can’t understand why people don’t see the value of models. They aren’t perfect, but they’ve been tested in a wide variety of ways against observational data, and have been shown to be skillful. They are not precisely accurate, but offer good estimations of at least some parameters of climate. They are meant to simulate climate over the long term, not annual variability.
Anyway, I really need to go to bed. Thanks very much for your comments! You are now on my “pay close attention to and engage with” list.
“skeptics would argue for CAGW”…..LOL “how to fake adjustments 101”
This from the woman who routinely declares that those who disagree with her are in the pay of “big oil”?
“This from the woman who routinely declares that those who disagree with her are in the pay of “big oil”?”
Another lie from MarkW.
Kristi Silber:
“The stress on debate is wrong. Debate is trying to support one’s own views and dispute others’. Debate doesn’t result in learning, it results in becoming more certain of one’s own beliefs regardless of their merit.”
You seem to think we are all discussing whether “neither” should be pronounced nee-ther or ni-ther, or whether a soft-boiled egg should be opened at the big end or the little end. In such discussions compromise and/or concession instead of bickering is indeed a worthy goal.
However, warmists propose billions of dollars should be spent to make 1st world nations’ electricity grids as unreliable as those of 3rd world nations or else the world will fry, while skeptics counter that it is OK to allow 3rd world nations to have the same level of electricity availability as 1st world nations because every warmist claim has failed to materialize.
Skeptics are trying to argue the merits, warmists are not.
SR
Steve,
Policy is an entirely different matter. It should not influence science. Science should influence policy.
“Warmists” are not trying to make electricity grids unreliable. That makes no sense. And who are warmists? Do you think that everyone who believe AGW thinks the same way about policy?
I’m so tired on generalizations and assumptions and exaggeration and blame. If all”warmists” are alike, does that mean all skeptics alike?
Why do so many skeptics judge science through the lens of policy? When I see that, it makes it very hard to give credence to someone’s ideas about the science.
I already did that exercise. I’m a PhD scientist with some graduate level training in atmospheric chemistry. I used to argue the global warming position. Now I don’t because I learned that it was BS.
“What would really be a good learning exercise is to have a debate in which the sides were swapped: skeptics would argue for CAGW, and alarmists for skepticism. ”
We don’t know how much the ocean is warming and at some point, the added CO2 might start warming the ocean a lot. Or we stupid people and never going to become spacefaring, so we will be stuck on Earth [haplessly] for thousands of years. And also people are starting to get even more stupid {see Einstein} – and in thousand of years, it’s almost certain the ocean will warm from CO2- and our a very stupid descendants will all DIE! And kill all life!
Also we need the smartest people available, who can control all the dumb people- and controlling CO2 emission is best path forward to have a smart totalitarian world government. So even if sea levels rise anyhow, the government control all stupid people from killing all life.
Of course at some point we can genetically engineer, smarter people- the world government will adequately fund such research.
gbaikie:
I hate to say it, but history shows that the smart people who aren’t on board with the totalitarian program are the first ones to be eliminated. As an example, the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia took it a step further and killed villagers simply because they wore glasses. Wearing glasses suggested they could read.
You have a mistaken impression if you believe that some compromise is needed in the CAGW debate. No compromise is needed and if there is one, it will be a bad thing. Because a few extra parts per million of CO2 in the atmosphere will do only absolute good, and there really is NO credible evidence that leads me to believe it causes any additional risk. The history of the biosphere shows this perfectly clearly. You need to believe that.
I don’t need to believe your silly notions that the 500 or 600 ppm CO2 is going to harm humanity and the environment in which humans are thriving. You need to disbelieve it. You need to stop thinking that output from virtual climate models equals valid evidence of impending doom. You need to stop respecting the idiots who say climate models equal truth, no matter how educated and credentialed they may be. If you can clear this very low hurdle, then maybe we can find some common ground on public policy issues that you might want to impose on me and the rest of the world.
If we are going to discuss climate change rationally, we ALL need to stop using insulting language and making generalizations and assumptions about what the Other thinks and does.
Yup. Now who came up with ‘Climate Deneier’ ? then.