NYT asks Geologist and Moonwalker Dr. Harrison Schmitt about UN IPCC report:
The New York Times’ Nicholas St. Fleur: “…as one of the leading climate change deniers, when there was a huge report that just came out last week [talking about] the risk and what is going to happen … as soon as 2040. I’d love to know if you see any irony in your views on people who denied man walking on the moon vs. your views on climate change.”
Schmitt:
“I see no irony at all. I’m a geologist. I know the Earth is not nearly as fragile as we tend to think it is. It has gone through climate change, it is going through climate change at the present time. The only question is, is there any evidence that human beings are causing that change? Right now, in my profession, there is no evidence.”
“The observations that we make as geologists, and observational climatologists, do not show any evidence that human beings are causing this. Now, there is a whole bunch of unknowns…”
“I, as a scientist, expect to have people question orthodoxy. And we always used to do that. Now, unfortunately, funding by governments, particularly the U.S. government, is biasing science toward what the government wants to hear. That’s a very dangerous thing that’s happening in science today, and it’s not just in climate. I see it in my own lunar research.”…
“If NASA’s interested in a particular conclusion, then that’s the way the proposals come in for funding. So it’s a very, very serious issue, and I hope the science writers in this room will start to dig deeply into whether or not science has been corrupted by the source of funds that are now driving what people are doing in research, and what their conclusions are.”
I had the pleasure of having a few drinks and talking with Jack Schmitt once. He made the greatest statement to start a story I’d ever heard.
He said:
As some folks know, I’ve got a few stories myself … but that opening is one I’ll never top.
He’s a brilliant man, folks should pay attention to what he says.
w.
That’s a topper that probably can’t be topped for sure.
Schmitt should replace Schmidt at NASA GISS. The lunar scientist is far better than the climate scientist.
Dr. Schmitt would take all of the climate, earth and environmental science programs out of NASA and return the space agency to its original mission: space operations.
I also have had the good fortune to meet Dr. Schmitt on a couple of occasions, most recently at the 2011 AAPG convention in Houston. He, Scott Carpenter and my old friend Jim Reilly were the keynote speakers at one of the luncheons. Dr. Schmitt’s talk was about how he would restructure NASA. It was very interesting. He has some very good essays on the subject here.
David,
Did you read recently that someone from NASA JPL was involved in research on metamorphosed Greenland sediments, in a dispute about whether structures were that of stromatolites or just compressive structures? It seems to me that if any agency should be involved in Greenland geology, it should be the USGS, not the Jet Propulsion Laboratory! NASA is out of control with their fingers in everything, and no longer the premier agency that their charter gives them responsibility for.
Astrobiology and ET “geology” give them an entering wedge into just about everything.
John Tillman,
Yes, I suppose those are the rationalizations for a lot of NASA snipe hunts. However, the original charter did NOT include astrobiology or SETI endeavors. There was a definite engineering flavor with a bit of basic research in what NASA’s responsibilities were to be. But, again, it is a little more difficult to rationalize the Jet Propulsion Lab’ working on exobiology than some other NASA lab or the USGS.
Clyde,
I agree that GISS should be shut down. But NASA is not the only agency with mission creep. NOAA is just as bad as GISS, but at least weather is its mission.
I also support sending Gavin and all his partners in crime to the North Pole to gather observations. Since we can’t fire them, the GIGO computer modeling miscreants could at least do something useful.
Wouldn’t be long before they’d resign.
“to the North Pole”
With or without boat?
The “space agency” came out of the National Advisory Council for Aeronautics – NACA. (Some of us still have pretty good memories.) NASA stands for the National Aeronautics and Space Agency. Let’s return NASA to its original missions – aeronautics and space. And let’s get NASA back into basic research in aeronautics and space, and leave operational space to the private sector.
I was looking at a large mountain one time — turned out to be an ant hill!
I “moon-ed” a girl
sitting on a large boulder
one time.
Does that count
as Moderator Bait?
Gotta love that opener! But…Aldrin has him beat…
Well, that’s unequivocal.
No doubt he’ll be written off by the alarmists as just another crank who didn’t walk on the Moon.
The science is settled, as are the politics, the money, the corruption, the damage, and the socialist intentions of the UN for global governance.
Oh! And 120,000,000 dead by 2050 (32 years away) in developing countries from inhaling smoke from burning animal faeces and wood because they are not allowed cheap electricity (WHO numbers). But I guess they can walk on the Moon for all the alarmists care about them.
Why don’t we stop wasting money on dubious research and send it to the ‘poor’ nations, along with the windmills and solar generators we are building in the developed world, so that they can have the benefits of green energy?
Lots of green jobs, they can use the animal faeces as fertiliser and keeping the trees will help improve the local microclimates. Benefits all round!
It would save the expenditure of trillions of dollars that is being proposed, much of which would be taken up in administration or go into the black hole of corruption.
quit waving your we we around, eh?
you send your trillions.
The King of Siam once used to give away white elephants as a gift to those he wanted to ruin. These elephants were not allowed to work and had to be fed and taken care of by their new owners, who were not allowed to give away such a generous royal gift.
Do you really want to ruin the third world by such subtle gifts like useless and costly -elephants-, solar generators and windmills? Hôni soit qui mal y pense.
Bad example. Solar generators and windmills do produce WAAAAAAAY more than their cost of operation. Their inefficiencies come when you also take into account the fabrication and installation costs. But if that is given to you as a present, never say no.
Nylo
How about when you need electric power
on a wind-less night?
What to do then?
How about cost of deinstallation?
Richard, I think what Nylo is suggesting is that wind and/or solar cost very little in day to day terms to run.
Once they are installed you pretty much ignore them… until they break… then you dissolve your company and pretend it is not remotely your responsibility and removal at end of service was never part of the contact.
A more conventional power system would have operational costs. A coal plant at the very least requires coal, as well as the wages to oversee and maintain.
So if we ignore the fact that wind and/or solar very very rarely pay for themselves and the fact they will never be competitive baseload, then yes, from a day to day point of view they are quite cheap to run.
You forgot the /sarc tag. It’s also not a black hole of corruption, but a green hole of corruption.
/sarc
Done!
What green jobs are you thinking will be given to them, installation of the solar panels and wind turbines? that’s more like “giving them fish” instead of “teaching them to how to fish.”
They need cheap energy from locally available fossil fuels, so the best way that we can spend our time and money on them is to try and help replace the corrupt leaders, so that private enterprise can construct clean-burning power plants and proper grid infrastructure. with sufficient power available 24-7, water treatment and sewage processing become practical. Jobs are created en masse for the locals building infrastructure and later manufacturing products from local raw materials. As affluence builds, population growth levels out and eventually begins to decline.
The solution lies in planting seeds political reform and convincing the population to remove tyrants from power. Allowing them to benefit from fossil fuels the same way the west did before them will grow stable economies and hasten the beginning of population decline. These are things the UN is too myopic to focus on.
We only exacerbate third-world problems by sending trinkets of a dead-end technology whose devices produce intermittent power insufficient over their lifetimes to even replace themselves.
Pop Piasa
Undoubtedly the best thing for these nations is to resurrect Colonisation. Mugabe kicked the white farmers out of Zimbabwe (nicknamed the bread basket of Africa) who operated their businesses along colonial lines, sans the slavery etc.
The place has since turned to dust and it’s estimated it would take 100 years of hard work to get agriculture up and running again.
But of course the SJW’s baulk at the term ‘colonisation’ despite living proof in Zimbabwe that it worked well when the unsavoury practises were abandoned.
Funnily enough, the USA has done rather well as a colonised nation.
It certainly has something to do with ancestry and where they came from. Survival of the fittest?
South Africa is going to become the next poor tribal entity it once was. Farms taken over- no compensation. Watch for the exodus. Lovely vineyards – gone. We will
Here’s a journal article that supports your statements about colonialism. The accompanying Note shows that academic attempts to suppress the article are very consistent with what we see with “climate science.”
https://www.nas.org/articles/the_case_for_colonialism
Ralf I wrote my last school exam in Rhodesia/Zimbabwe on the day Ian Smith declared UDI. In those days it was more civilised that the UK is now. But don’t worry colonisation is now coming back! But it’s not British, it’s Chinese.
Michael,
True, and not just Zimbabwe.
China intends to turn the Indian Ocean into a Chinese lake, in cahoots with Pakistan. Even if that requires divvying India up into its states.
Ralph Dave Westfall
Thank you for that link. I downloaded the original paper on it’s release but couldn’t find it again, for obvious reasons.
To my mind, colonialism was an experiment that had it’s bad side, which was far outweighed by it’s good side.
The social justice warriors have, of course, make a meal of slavery etc. and deliberately ignore the benefits colonialism brought.
Consider the 21st Century equivalent; land purchase instead of land grab, employment instead of slavery; investment instead of subsistence, prosperity instead of poverty. All accomplished on the shoulders of commercial organisations with no risk to governments or taxation on the population.
If you’re interested, read Daniel Hannan’s book ‘How We Invented Freedom & Why It Matters’. Then consider the role of the ‘western world’ in colonialism and the difference between the British version and the ‘European’ version.
Let’s just stop interfering in the developing world’s economic decisions. Petroleum and coal products are cheaper and cleaner than windmill and solar panel production. Let the ‘poor’ nations use the new technology THEY want to use, rather than imposing “green” choices on them via global organizations.
Agreed. The U.S. should for its part stop any and all contributions to the “World Bank” until and unless it stops pushing its NO (spelled “Green”) Energy agenda.
In fairness, it’s not just the source of funds that biases communities. It’s also peer pressure.
There is a need to publish papers to survive in academia. To publish you need to be original… but not too original.
If your paper reduces the value of every other paper ever written by your peer reviewers it will not get an easy passage. If all your peer reviewers say “this a rubbish paper” then it takes a brave journal editor to publish it anyway.
Group Think is in-built into academia. It’s how the system works. The idea of a paradigm shift seems reasonable (it seemed to happen over plate tectonics) but institutions are resistant to such upheavals. They are designed to survive and protect their reputations. Devaluing the achievements of their members is not welcome.
How many paradigm shifts occurred int he last 100 years? Can anyone think of more than three?
I taught part time in my field at an engineering school for about 15 years. At one stage my ‘boss’, one of the professors, who had heard I had been using some new CFD softeware they had acquired as well as their test facilities for my private practice, asked what I had been working on. When I gave him a summary he said ‘oh great, there would be at least two LPU’s in there!’
What is an LPU I asked? Least Publishable Unit he answered and all was revealed as to what was the driver of academic strategy. It was the direct funding coming from getting a paper published (a ‘fee’ plus travel costs etc to any conference basically) and the LPU was basically the quantitative unit used, like a sack of grain, a tun of olive oil or a barrel of oil. Like the KPI’s used to reward management via bonus systems, the LPU is part of academia’s KPI system and has sweet FA to do with genuine scientific advancement.
There is a wonderful talk by Neil Turok, the head of the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics. The topic is the need for innovation but, if you listen carefully, he mentions the problems with science as it is now practiced.
One of the big problems is that challenging the orthodoxy is a career killer. He also points out that physics has not had an important finding confirmed by experiment in the last thirty five years. The talk is worth a careful listen.
We depend on science to produce the breakthroughs that become new technology. That’s what lets us do more and more with less and less. It’s the reason Malthus and the Club of Rome are wrong. The proper functioning of science is an existential problem for us. Civilization will collapse if the technology tap gets turned off. Turok’s voice is quiet and easy to ignore. His message, on the other hand, should be shouted from the roof tops.
The proper funding of Science, noting of course Ike’s famous warning, is critical. A Manhattan Project for Fusion is the only thing that will work ,as then. That means activating the Constitutional Credit Clause, this time fully, not just FDR’s great RFC. That’s the American System Trump refers to. Sure, WallStreet and London will stop at nothing to prevent that, possibly even triggering a huge crash deliberately right in the middle of the midterms.
This the the only way to show Malthus, Club of Rome, Dr. Schellnhuber CBE, IPCC to be the existential threat to billions that they are.
And if it can’t be made to work?
There is no catastrophic event happening so why do we need to gamble?.
There is a catastrophic shortage workwide of about 6000 GW power generation . It is a catastrophy that all of Africa has 84,000 tractors while Germany alone 2 million. The entire CO2 scam is meant to hide this very inconvenient truth. Prince Philip (WWF) and Dr. Schellnhuber CBE (and others) say reduce to 1 billion lives worth living and go after coal.
It a catastrophic failure that fusion has been de-funded for decades. Fusion is not anti-coal of anti CO2, rather pro energy intensive growth.
Instead of national investment in fusion the gambling casino took over with 2 bailouts since 1999. Now IPCC wants to gamble trillions – WallStreet’s and London’s favorite game.
Fusion will never work
Alan Tomalty,
Don’t tell the sun that! I might just retire.
Dogma in, Dogma out.
If you travel too far you’ll fall off the earth
people will never fly
man will never walk on the moon
Buy a horse.
(or did you forget the sarc tag?)
“He also points out that physics has not had an important finding confirmed by experiment in the last thirty five years.”
Turok is one of the better physicists today but I disagree with his assessment. There have been important discoveries in the last 35 years that won the Nobel Prize in physics. Dates of award:
2011 – Dark energy or accelerating expansion of universe
2013 – Higgs boson
2015 – Neutrino oscillations
2016 – Topological phase transitions
2017 – Gravitational waves
I agree with his assessment on innovation and challenging orthodoxy. In theoretical physics, the orthodoxies are string theory, multiverse, SUSY, Copenhagen interpretation, inflation
I dont know about Neutrino oscillations nor Topological phase transitions but Dark energy is a hoax and the Higgs boson discovery was a fraud as well as gravitational waves were also a fraud.
“Civilization will collapse if the technology tap gets turned off. Turok’s voice is quiet and easy to ignore.”
That’s the idea, keep the knowledge out of the hands of the Jaffa. Go’uald magic (scientific and engineering) is forbidden knowledge.
Well, there’s quantum mechanics, relativity theory, and the discovery of DNA for three. The discovery of galactic red-shift for four. Bragg diffraction theory giving us diffraction images to molecular resolution.
There’s also plate tectonic theory, the discovery of the membrane bilayer of cells and the kinetic molecular theory of membrane transport that combined to really open up cell biology.
I’d also call quantum electronics a paradigm shift, though some may just dismiss it as technology. However, QE changed the way people look at materials and gave us LEDs, transistors, and lasers.
String Theory doesn’t make it, but Inflationary Cosmology does.
Then, of course, there’s the negative paradigm shift that the Stefan-Boltzmann equation is a fully valid theory of climate. That one breakthrough antidea seems well on its way to negating all the others.
Pat, I disagree with one of your discovery points. Latest research is that Hubble was wrong (Inflationary Cosmology) and that there is not any inflation of the galaxies.
https://www.nature.com/articles/srep35596
That means that dark energy and dark matter don’t exist. If you discount the Big Bang, then cosmic background radiation also doesn’t exist . (Dr Pierre Robitaille says the researchers mistook CMB for IR from our oceans).
Hubble did not predict inflation. Hubble is right, Hubble constant has been measured accurately. Inflation occurred in big bang. No inflation of galaxies was ever proposed. Dark matter has different evidence (galactic dynamics) than dark energy. The existence of CMB is beyond doubt. CMB has been measured and analyzed by hundreds of physicists. SN evidence supports acceleration of expansion. Stronger contrary evidence can overturn it.
>>
Hubble constant has been measured accurately.
<<
There sure are a lot of measurements of the Hubble constant. The following image shows just the measurements between 1995 and 2010. The error bars are not for accuracy but for precision; otherwise they would all overlap.
What’s the accurate value of Hubble’s constant?
Jim
There are two precise values for Hubble constant. 67 km/s/Mpc from CMB and 73 km/s/Mpc from SN. Astrophysicists think it’s a big problem and they should converge to one value. I told Prof. Riess, the Nobel laureate who co-discovered dark energy, that the discrepancy is expected (he is involved in the SN measurement)
The CMB measurement goes farther back in time than the SN measurement. I expect the SN value to be higher because of the acceleration of expansion (which he co-discovered). Therefore, the discrepancy is not a problem but a confirmation of his discovery.
>>
There are two precise values for Hubble constant.
<<
First you say accurate. Now you say precise. Those two terms are not interchangeable. Your precise values have more significant figures than you are stating; plus they have error terms.
All galaxies have two linear motions: one due to their local motion called the peculiar motion, and the other due to the expansion of the Universe or the Hubble flow. With nearby galaxies, the peculiar motion completely swamps the motion due to the Hubble flow. For example, M-31 is blue shifted. Its peculiar motion has it moving towards us (relatively), and it completely overshadows the motion due to the expansion.
To observe the Hubble expansion motion, you must observe galaxies that are far enough away where the peculiar motion is completely swamped by the expansion motion. Unfortunately, it’s difficult to observe standard candles like Cepheid variables at those distances.
Type Ia SNs may prove to be standard candles, and they can be observed at greater distances.
Even so, if the Hubble constant varies with distance, then a single “accurate value” is nonsense. It would have a whole range of “accurate values,” assuming you could measure it accurately.
The units of Hubble’s constant are kilometers per second per megaparsec. That is a length per time per length or basically one over time. The inverse of the Hubble’s constant gives us the age of the Universe. If we use 31,556,952 seconds per year and 3.0875 x 10^19 kilometers per megaparsec, then for 70 (km/s)/MPc we get 13.97 gigayears and for 67 (km/s)/Mpc we get 14.59 gigayears. If we knew the exact age of the Universe, then we would know the exact “average value” of Hubble’s constant.
Jim
Oops, my mistake. The inverse of Hubble’s constant gives us Hubble’s time and not exactly the age of the Universe. Hubble’s time is if the expansion of the Universe was constant–which it isn’t. So Hubble’s time is slightly larger than the age of the Universe.
Ignore my last paragraph above.
Jim
Pat Frank. I agree with your points.
But if I had said the last 50 years that list would have looked a lot shorter.
Perhaps, from a societal perspective, I should have said “since the start of the Cold War” or “since the End of WW2”.
Thanks for the link, Alan. The whole dark energy business seems still undecided. Inflationary Theory doesn’t require dark energy. It just explains the flatness.
Cosmic background IR has been measured from space. From what I’ve read, Penzias and Wilson killed themselves accounting for all the spurious IR. I’d be surprised if they neglected local sources.
M Courtney, I agree with you, of course. Cutting the time to 20 years would make the list even shorter. 🙂
It took about 200 years to go from Newton to Einstein, 200 years to go from van Leeuwenhoek’s microscope and the discovery of bacteria to the germ theory of disease, and 60-70 years to go from James Maxwell to Quantum Mechanics.
So, I’m not too worried about the current pace of scientific advancement. All these things take their own time. We just have a compressed view of the past from here, and have been a bit spoiled by the enormous rate of change in technology.
In my defence I don;t just cut the time down, I put the start point at the time of the big increase in funding of Academia.
Which is the relevant point for my argument.
Yes, science seems to have speeded up its progress. But is that due to the sheer numbers of people now involved in the subject?
Proportionately the progress made by The Royal Society in the age of Hooke and Newton seems far more efficient than our current setup.
Pat, from theoretical view inflation is more doubtful than dark energy. The cosmological constant in general relativity is consistent with dark energy. Inflation requires the inflaton field that is not part of the Standard Model. Worse, eternal inflation leads to a multiverse which in principle is unobservable. Skeptical physicists think it’s metaphysics.
Inflation is jumping on an avalanche-prone ski slope from a helicopter. (Steinhardt et al, Pop Goes The Universe)
No inflation means the flatness of the universe is left unexplained. Thanks for the update, Dr. S. I haven’t followed inflation since reading Alan Guth’s book.
According to NASA, “Inflation Theory links important ideas in modern physics, such as symmetry breaking and phase transitions, to cosmology.”
Guess we’ll have to wait and see. The way it is with all science. 🙂
I don’t know who wrote that NASA promotional info but I’m sure Paul Steinhardt knows a lot more than the writer. He is one of the founders of inflation theory (mentioned in the NASA info) and the same guy I referenced who now rejects the theory he co-founded. BTW symmetry breaking and phase transitions do not depend on inflation.
Put coffee, sugar, milk and water in a cup. You have an inhomogeneous mixture. Stir to homogenize it. Stirring is analogous to inflation. A process to homogenize matter. Ice latte in Starbucks is pre-mixed and ready to drink. You don’t have to stir. IMO the big bang is pre-mixed coffee.
An initial condition is not a solution to a differential equation. They trying to derive the initial condition from the solution. To do that, they have to change the equation so much so it describes other things that are not observed or impossible to observe. Skeptics question if they are doing physics or metaphysics.
What about the discovery of Teletubbies? Explain THAT mister Smarty Pants!!
There were more than 3, but many happened more quickly than plate tectonics. Examples are mechanical to digital watches; the switch from costly mainframe computers to inexpensive personal computers; the iPhone; digital cameras; Linus Pauling’s chemical bonding theory; and others.
In my opinion, a badly needed paradigm shift is to focus NASA on a space based goal like man walking on Mars.
Thank you Dr. Harrison Schmitt for speaking the truth.
BTW, no more government research funding for you! You broke the ONE RULE – always support global warming and climate change falsehoods! Always! No exceptions!
Eisenhower’s farewell address:-
“Akin to, and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our industrial-military posture, has been the technological revolution during recent decades.
In this revolution, research has become central, it also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government.
Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers.
The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present – and is gravely to be regarded.”
SimonJ
People will often willingly budget more money for watching pro sports and supporting their favorite team than they will for their children’s education. That’s why they think the government should fund education and research, so they can enjoy more bread and circuses.
You see more of your friends at the game than at the library any day.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/06/110605132433.htm
“Carbon release to atmosphere 10 times faster than in the past, geologists find”
Date:
June 6, 2011
Source:
Penn State
Summary:
The rate of release of carbon into the atmosphere today is nearly 10 times as fast as during the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), 55.9 million years ago, the best analog we have for current global warming, according to an international team of geologists. Rate matters and this current rapid change may not allow sufficient time for the biological environment to adjust.
How did they measure that back then? What are the error bars?
“However, the researchers note in the current issue of Nature Geoscience, that the source of the carbon, the rate of emission and the total amount of carbon involved in this event during the PETM are poorly characterized.”
“Using the data collected from the cores, the researchers forced a computer model to in essence run backward. They set up the models to find the proper amounts of greenhouse gases and atmospheric temperature that would have resulted in the carbon isotope ratios observed in the cores.”
Never mind
Lee – October 18, 2018 at 1:39 am
Lee, all you need to know about that claim of …. ““Carbon release to atmosphere 10 times faster than in the past, geologists find”” …… is this: Source: Penn State
They used the Mayan Calender.
I don’t think we need to worry– at least about CO2. It has a logarithmic absorption rate and the primary feedback, an increase in atmospheric water vapor, hasn’t materialized. In any case the oceans and the water cycle moderate the earth’s temperature and the atmosphere would have to warm 100 degrees to warm the oceans one degree (but what the alarmists like to say: it takes only 0.001 degree to raise the temperature of the atmosphere one degree! True, but misses the point: the atmosphere can’t warm the oceans significantly.)
Schmitt echoes Harold Lewis’ resignation letter from the APS. https://www.heartland.org/publications-resources/publications/hal-lewis-resignation-letter-from-the-american-physical-society
Don132
Stunning letter. That was 10.06.2010 – with Obama.
Now with Trump, Schmitt has better cards, giving POTUS guidance.
I think the climate scientists have missed the boat on water, water vapor and clouds. The atmosphere pretty obviously recycles water vapor into rain in the range of minutes to hours. Excess water vapour, the model prediction, doesn’t occur because the models don’t model- everything.
So you have bad models, or shall we say poorly conceptualized models, predicting increased warming and “hot spots” in the troposphere that aren’t there.
Dr. Harrison Schmitt us 100% correct.
How much climate would a climate model model if a climate model could model climate?
“Research Honor Society Calls for Support of Climate Scientists and Investments in Research to Reduce Climate Change ” Not the society but the Board of Directors, late to the game.
“Whereas human civilization and activity has occurred during a period of what we now know has been a tolerable and relatively stable climate, the scale and efficiency with which we are extracting and burning carbon-rich fuel sources have created conditions outside the range of modern human experience…….
The escalating urgency of responding to anthropogenic climate change underscores the critical need to support:
Climate scientists as they monitor and warn us of an ever-more unstable climate regime and to plan for the extreme consequences that will inevitably follow on the present path
Global cooperation and collaboration on research and education to collectively reduce carbon emissions through technology and behavioral choices
Policies and investments that enable technological solutions to be developed and deployed”
The rest can be read here–
https://www.sigmaxi.org/programs/critical-issues-in-science/statement-on-climate-change
“…during a period of what we now know has been a tolerable and relatively stable climate…”
Sure sounds like they still believe in Mann’s Hockey Stick. I wonder what rock they’ve been hiding under for the past several years? :<)
Which is why I didn’t renew my membership. But they continue to send me E-Mails as if were still a member.
No-one who has the qualifications to call themselves a ‘scientist’ would ever be so sloppy as to release a report about ‘carbon’ being released to atmosphere. In and of itself the statement is not true. Scientists are all about precision, if nothing else.
And the evidence clearly shows that there are more roosters crowing at dawn than there were during the PETM, which of course explains current sunrise patterns.
(Explaining my /sarc: As usual, you just presume that there is a causal relationship from CO2 to temperature, and you have causality reversed. In the past, CO2 emissions were driven by temperature changes. Now, the two are acting independently because of forcing by fossil fuel burning. In neither case is the primary cause of warming an increase in CO2–not to deny some modest secondary feedback effects).
Since the biological environment is growing, I would like to thank you for demonstrating yet another example of an alarmist false concern.
Did you stop and consider that CO2 us the major requirement for the biological environment and does not become harmful until levels about 10x higher than the present?
“Source: Penn State”
This isn’t…….
http://sci-hub.tw/10.1038/ngeo1179
“The quantities of carbon added during the PETM span the
estimates of current fossil-fuel resources, suggesting that the PETM
could serve as a good analogue for future warming. However, the
peak rates of PETM carbon addition in these simulations (also see
refs 9, 15 and 25), and in complementary simulations based on other
published isotope records, are a small fraction of the present rate
of fossil-fuel burning. Thus, although the current overall capacity
for society to perturb the carbon cycle is comparable to that of the
PETM, the rate at which we are imposing the current perturbation
on the Earth system may be unprecedented.”
There’s a huge difference between “*may* be unprecedented” and “*is* unprecedented”.
No proxy data for CO2, temperature or any other climate-related time series has sufficient resolution to draw any definitive conclusions about rates of modern changes versus past changes.
From the paper you cited…
According to their age model, there was 17 m of core from 55.785 to 55.829 Ma. With a 30 cm sample rate, the time interval between samples was almost 800 years. Assuming that their CIE reconstruction actually had a resolution of 800 years (it probably didn’t), the entire instrumental CO2 would be a single data point. The highest resolution Antarctic ice core, Law Dome DE08, would be two data points.
There is a fundamental relationship between frequency and amplitude. If you apply a low pass filter or smoothing average to a time series, you attenuate the amplitude response:
Note the reduction in amplitude due to filtering and/or smoothing. (Wood for Trees – http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/sine:10/plot/sine:10/fourier/low-pass:10/inverse-fourier/plot/sine:10/mean:100/every:10)
This is a composite ice core CO2 record (0-800 kyr BP) from Bereiter et al. (2014):
It is a composite of the following ice cores:
These ice cores are of vastly different resolutions. Petit et al., 1999 indicate that the CO2 resolution for Vostok is 1,500 years. Lüthi et al., 2008 suggest a CO2 resolution of about 500 years for Dome C. It appears that the high resolution Law Dome DE08 core was just spliced on to the lower frequency older ice cores.
If I apply smoothing filters to the DE08 ice core in order to match the resolution of the lower resolution ice cores, I get a considerably different picture. If I use a 500-yr smoothing filter, the Hockey Stick loses its blade completely:
The instrumental record would be a single data point at the same resolution as the Vostok and EPICA Dome C ice cores.
It’s an open system. Isotopes are dubious data.
The interpretation of carbon isotope excursions is definitely very subjective..
Anthony,
Some 120 ppm CO2 enrichment since c. AD 1850 doesn’t strike me as all that much more vital plant food in the air, even though it has significantly greened the planet.
This Nature Geoscience paper from 2015 found that PETM release rates where comparable to recent carbon enrichment, not ten times as much. And, of course, the Paleocene was already much balmier than now. Despite that fact, no catastrophic results ensued from the alleged carbon spike.
Two massive, rapid releases of carbon during the onset of the Palaeocene–Eocene thermal maximum
https://www.nature.com/articles/ngeo2316
The Earth’s climate abruptly warmed by 5–8 °C during the Palaeocene–Eocene thermal maximum (PETM), about 55.5 million years ago1,2. This warming was associated with a massive addition of carbon to the ocean–atmosphere system, but estimates of the Earth system response to this perturbation are complicated by widely varying estimates of the duration of carbon release, which range from less than a year to tens of thousands of years. In addition the source of the carbon, and whether it was released as a single injection or in several pulses, remains the subject of debate2,3,4. Here we present a new high-resolution carbon isotope record from terrestrial deposits in the Bighorn Basin (Wyoming, USA) spanning the PETM, and interpret the record using a carbon-cycle box model of the ocean–atmosphere–biosphere system. Our record shows that the beginning of the PETM is characterized by not one but two distinct carbon release events, separated by a recovery to background values. To reproduce this pattern, our model requires two discrete pulses of carbon released directly to the atmosphere, at average rates exceeding 0.9 Pg C yr−1, with the first pulse lasting fewer than 2,000 years. We thus conclude that the PETM involved one or more reservoirs capable of repeated, catastrophic carbon release, and that rates of carbon release during the PETM were more similar to those associated with modern anthropogenic emissions5 than previously suggested3,4.
Six of the authors (count ’em, six) are from “Department of Geosciences, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania 16802, USA”. How can you say “[T]his isn’t …”?
I see no “CO2 driver” for the PETM (or for any other warming of the Earth over hundreds of millions of years), so try again.
I would agree that there is a lot of bad AGW science (especially paleo) and I think it has turned into a political cult. I think their ideas on energy are generally idiotic and I would probably agree with all of Harrison Schmitt’s proposals for NASA.
But, …
I do find their case for CO2 over geologic time and the PETM to be extremely well argued, even elegant, with all the rock weathering, volcanic CO2 releases and, especially, the increase in solar output. Potholer describes it very well in the first ten minutes of one of his latest videos:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBF6F4Bi6Sg
I don’t always agree with Potholer, but he makes a very strong case here and I don’t see the critics of the CO2 control knob theory addressing his points. Of course, this doesn’t prove it to be correct and maybe someday this beautiful theory will be destroyed by an ugly fact.
The ugly fact is that co2 follows temperature.
That actually applies to the shorter scales of thousands of years. Over millions of years, the theory of aerosols, CO2 and solar irradiance are pretty elegant and convincing.
Canman,
CO2, not so much.
In the end Ordovician, when CO2 was over ten times current level, with the sun at most four percent weaker, Earth suffered a terrible ice age.
Anthony Banton,
You quoted, “Carbon release to atmosphere 10 times faster than in the past, geologists find”
One of the fundamental principles of geology/paleontology is that the temporal resolution is inversely proportional to the age of the rocks. So, I’d take that claim with a grain of Permian salt. Without the ability to resolve time as precisely as today, and having to contend with using proxies with wide error margins, your quoted claim is of questionable accuracy. It may have been an order of magnitude higher, during the PETM, but considering the proposed mechanism, it is my professional opinion that it may well have been the opposite.
C’mon, you’d have to believe Obama and Gore over that guy.
Wow. Talk about a, “So, when did you stop beating your wife,” question!
So, what are Mr St. Fleur’s qualifications to be questioning such a renowned, celebrated and high achieving man?
Well, very little, it would appear:
“So, what are Mr St. Fleur’s qualifications to be questioning such a renowned, celebrated and high achieving man?”
Strawman. Facts are what matter, not qualifications.
Those Apollo astronauts must be a great disappointment to the current honchos who spent billions building a giant space station and don’t even have their own transport to pay it a visit. But, hey, what do scientists like Schmitt know about climate? I leave it to Mark Steyn to provide the official view on another noted “denier”. “Clearly this Buzz Aldrin kook is just some wackjob who believes the moon landings were filmed in Nevada”.
Please note, and possibly alter the words used in response, that when alarmists use the word ‘carbon’, they are not referring to what the normal scientific/engineering community know as carbon. You didn’t realise? Well, what they are referring to is not that horrible black stuff that used to coat everything back in the days of open fires but the much less frightning-sounding, odourless, colourless gas correctly referred to as Carbon Dioxide, or CO2. No, really, it is!
Now to fight back. If you know a bit of science, you will realise that CO2 comprises 1 carbon atom and 2 oxygen atoms, so carbon only comprises 1/3 of the molecule, with the remaining 2/3 being oxygen. Furthermore, if you know even more science, you would know that atomic masses of those atoms are not the same, with Carbon being ~12, and Oxygen being ~18, so of the complete molecular weight of 48, fully 36, or 75% (3/4) is oxygen!
So, if you insist in reducing it to one word, the word you use should be ‘Oxygen’.
(Please consider your oxygen footprint before printing this page)
SimonJ
Nice one, Simon!
That might well be a good way to open youngsters’ eyes re. so-called ‘carbon’ when they are trying to scare all the gullibles, assuming that you can get a word in edgeways.
I didn’t put that very well. They, meaning the warmists, have tried to scream us down, not wanting to hear about anything that might contradict their beliefs and allow youngsters to learn something real.
As was tried here in Aus…CO2 is black balloons!!!
Obviously don’t give a damn about plastic pollution.
What a disgusting bit of deception…but par for the course of the climate hypestere.
The real truth of the video is:
If you like these modern machines and technologies than you need cheap, robust, and reliable energy. Which currently ONLY comes from Fossil Fuels or Nuclear. So be prepared to give up all these machines in the video and your house.
—– OT—–
A few years ago was in a college town in Oregon installing and calibrating some analytical instrumentation(TOC and LC-MS). I took a break and found a sandwich shop across the street.
There was a college student sitting at the next plastic table, on a plastic chair, texting with her smart phone, freshening up her make-up, wearing all kinds of synthetic clothing, and manipulating her food with plastic utensils who uttered, “We as a society and species should give all forms of Carbon based fuels and materials.”
I choked, then laughed and said, “WOW! Talk about no situational awareness. Pardon me ma’am but everything you are currently doing and enjoying is because of Carbon based fuels and materials. And the food you are eating is also carbon based are we to give that up as well?”
I would have given you a standing ovation for that comeback!
You could have also pointed out that she herself was a carbon based life form. But you probably were already getting that “deer in the headlights” look from her.
CO2 is part of the Carbon Cycle. Hydrocarbons and other carbon compounds are also parts of the Carbon Cycle.
It’s not entirely wrong to refer to carbon emissions; although carbon compound emissions would be more accurate.
The biggest problem, as you noted, is that carbon and CO2 are often used as if they were interchangeable, leading to huge math errors.
Yes, but really everyone should know that it is carbon dioxide that is the combustion product and “emission” that is the subject of the theory. Yes, it is useful to explore the carbon cycle and to use that terminology when appropriate. Most use of the word “carbon” for emissions by alarmists is simply obfuscation.
“Yes, but really everyone should know that it is carbon dioxide that is the combustion product and “emission” that is the subject of the
theoryhypothesis.”Fixed it for ya!
Was having a chat with someone some years ago about CO2 and the conversations moved on to Venus and then methane, CH4. The person I was having a chat with stated CH4 had “…four carbons…” Yes! Really, he did say that!
16 Simon, not 18. I do a lot of work on decarboxylation of compounds, so that one set off my alarm bells.
Many of the alarmists also engage in decarboxylation experiments, by either cigarettes or baking brownies.
There is also O18 .
philincalifornia,
Hey, whats a couple of neutrons between friends? Right?
Not positive.
A neutron walks into a bar, and asks the bartender “How much for a drink?”
Bartender says, “For you? No charge.”
An electron walks into a bar, and asks the bartender “How much for a drink?”
Bartender says, “Are you sure? Why do you want one?”
The Electron replied to both questions at once: “I’m positive.”
“How much for a drink?”
A tachyon walks into a bar.
Two blondes walk into a bar. You’d think they would have seen it.
Thanks, Simonj, it’s nuggets like these that keeps us laymen reading the comments.
In the corn and soybean fields of Indiana, where I took high-school science, they told us oxygen’s atomic weight was only 16–and I never thought to question it.
SimonJ,
I suspect that some alarmists do NOT know what they are referring to, when using the word, “carbon”.
Or, in their minds (what little they might have), they are picturing the black stuff, while, in their words, they mean the magical gas molecule. It’s like when they illustrate CO2 emissions, using photographs of stacks spewing steam. There’s a constant confusion of visualization with logic that perpetuates the irrational emotional responses we see.
SimonJ,
There is a good reason to use carbon and not CO2: it is the carbon cycle, not the CO2 cycle which is describing where all that carbon is residing, in whatever form that is. It is CO2 only in the atmosphere, 1% CO2, 90% bicarbonate ion and 9% carbonate ion in seawater and it is a fraction of a second CO2 in plants and after that a host of carbohydrates (sugar, starch, cellulose,…) and other stuff.
In agriculture one speaks about the phosphor cycle, the nitrogen cycle, the potassium cycle,… for the simple reason that it makes calculations of fluxes easier, even if none of these elements is present as element, only in many forms…
Wow, there is just a whole lot of truth and wisdom in this thread:
– “If NASA’s interested in a particular conclusion, then that’s the way the proposals come in for funding. So it’s a very, very serious issue, and I hope the science writers in this room will start to dig deeply into whether or not science has been corrupted by the source of funds that are now driving what people are doing in research, and what their conclusions are.”
– In fairness, it’s not just the source of funds that biases communities. It’s also peer pressure.
– The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present – and is gravely to be regarded.”
He who has ears, let him hear.
To add to that list there is also the university ‘Grants and Awards’ department (or whatever a particular institution may call it). That department will decide which of the funding requests will be put forward for funding and will also amend the request to match what is thought as ‘more likely to succeed’. Any scientific/engineering research grant request may be sent back by the university ‘grants and awards’ department to have particular words and phrases added or the direction of the research ‘tuned’. After all the university requires research funding and working on research requests that are less likely to be supported by sponsors is not worthwhile. So are you sure you cannot add something about climate change into the bid?
I was told that money is not a corrupting influence on scientists because, well, they’re scientists who are only interested in doing good science.
Also, studies funded by anyone with a connection to fossil fuels need to be discounted because scientists are easily corrupted by money.
LOL. I’d like to ask the idiot reporter who asked the stupid question that Dr. Schmitt answered so well about whether he sees the irony in the fact that Eco-Nazis like himself can see the corrupting influence of small amounts of fossil fuel funding but fails to see the corrupting influence of orders of magnitude MORE government funding.
AGW is not Science,
To paraphrase Lord Acton, “Corruption is proportional to power,” and money is power.
Yes, that’s vaxxer logic:
– verdicts against vaccine distributors mentioning a normal healthy life destroyed by vaccines have no value, the judicial process IS NOT a scientific determination process – that’s axiomatic!
– verdicts against parents for “shaken baby syndrome” are proof that the syndrome is caused by shaking a baby (and not another disease or the side effects of a vaccine), the judicial process is based on sound science, as evaluated by medical experts who rely on consensus of medical experts (and of other verdicts?), the judicial process is evidence based and science based!
” I’d love to know if you see any irony in your views on people who denied man walking on the moon vs. your views on climate change.”
No. The irony is, not being able to recognise the difference between reality and fantasy. This failure to understand their own question, betrays their ignorance.
Eamon.
The inability of Mr. St Fleur to understand a distinction between the verifible past-historical event and a future unverifiable event is typical of a weak mind. Weak minds are easily held by propaganda and so-called “brain washing” techniques the Left uses to secure loyalty to a ideology-based cause.
Dr. Harrison Schmitt, thank you for your service to our country. As another geologist I find his remarks right on, both as regards climate change and research project funding.
Somewhat off-topic perhaps , but October 22-28 is “open Access week ” during which some organisations and publishers open their , normally pay walled, publications .
Of particular interest to the people here, I thought , might be the inclusion of the Electrochemical Society in this event since its archives contain a wealth of information on the development and probable future of battery and alternative power sources- a topic frequently discussed here with often contrary conclusions.
“ECS is once again celebrating International Open Access Week by giving the world a preview of what complete open access to peer-reviewed scientific research will look like. ECS is taking down its paywall October 22-28 for the entire ECS Digital Library, making over 141,000 scientific articles and abstracts free and accessible to everyone”.
Just google ecs and take it from there.
The writer dared call Harrison Schmitt a “denier”.
And Al Gore equates climate deniers with flat-Earthers. Of all the people on Earth, the Apollo astronauts are the least likely to be flat-Earthers.
Gore also called them moon landing deniers, which is even more ironic.
No link to an actual article?
Qestion for Nicholas St. Fleur:
As a low-life, know-nothing, pea-for-brains manmade climate Believer, we wonder if you see the irony in your working for a propaganda rag basically calling a man who knows a thousand times more than you, and who is as honest as they come questions which basically are a platform for insults, and his honest, straightforward answer which completely ignores the insults?
Just a question.
In 2013, Schmitt wrote for WSJ – “he claimed that increasing levels of carbon would actually benefit humanity,” says the incredulous reporter for Live Science, titled that Schmitt is “Mistaken About Climate Change…).
Yesterday with AP, Trump said the climate goes “in cycles,” replying to the assertion that scientists “say this is nearing a point where this can’t be reversed,” he noted that there are scientists “on both sides of the issue…Some say that and some say differently…I have a natural instinct for science, and I will say that you have scientists on both sides of the picture.” While he emphasized that he is a “real environmentalist” and wants the cleanest air and water on the planet, “I’m not willing to …sacrifice the economic wellbeing of the country for something that nobody really knows.”
Although a bit erratic occasionally, I fully second DJT what he does for the economy and, equally important, emphasises his interest in clean air an water.
I wish people would call out the “journalists” who use the denier label on them. Refuse to continue the interview until they understand the slur and apologize for it. Ask them “do you know how stupid using that label makes you sound?” The only way they will stop is when it becomes painful for them to use it. Ignoring or countering with the fact that “I don’t deny climate change” is not working.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZDYhQ4UAnA
Confounds the Science.
Oh the irony!
Too fracking funny…
There’s no such thing as “scientifically proven aspects of climate change.” Science doesn’t prove things. Ms. Weisberger then goes on to babble about the Geological Society of London’s idiotic position statement.
How in the hell could a science writer be this stupid?
According to LinkedIn, Ms. Weisberger has a BA in English and an MFA in Film from Columbia University.
Dr. Schellnhuber’s CBE scientific credentials give a flak jacket to anyone with a mike and a camera – they hide behind the commanders qualified grin, smirḱ.
Treason?
Schelmgruber’s credentials? Where are they? He is as credible as all these homogenized, sterilized, pasteurized, poo-fertilized datasets and so are his credentials.
It is endlessly fascinating that the most bigoted fanatics supporting the most extreme versions of the climate consensus are typically those with the least understanding if hard science.
The journalist who authored this pathetic hit, like Lewandowsky, are great examples of this.
David,
David, you asked, “How in the hell could a science writer be this stupid?”
It is simple! Those who are not bright enough to have done Schmitt’s job have to do something to ‘earn’ a living. Even if it entails criticizing those who are her superior. I wonder if she knows Mosher?
David,
“”How in the hell could a science writer be this stupid?
According to LinkedIn, Ms. Weisberger has a BA in English and an MFA in Film from Columbia University.”
You kind of answered you own question there. Lack of any real educaion and/or lack of enough smarts to get a real education. Plus someone stupid enough to hire a Science writer with no real science education.
They can’t hire people with hard science degrees and still be able to produce climate propaganda for the pennies they probably pay Ms Mindy with a useless MFA degree.
“According to LinkedIn, Ms. Weisberger has a BA in English and an MFA in Film from Columbia University.”
So, smarter than Mosher, then.
At least better educated to a higher level, with an MFA.
“The New York Times’ Nicholas St. Fleur: “…as one of the leading climate change deniers,…”
Why is this not slanderous? If I started an interview with Nicholas St. Fleur and said: “Well, Nicholas, as one of the pedophiles of New York City, how do you feel about the latest UN report on…”, I am sure that Mr. St. Fleur would have me in court before the ink was dry! Yet, Mr. St. Fleur calls Dr. Harrison Schmitt the derogatory name ‘climate change denier’ with emphasis! Again…why is this not slanderous?
Dr. Harrison Schmitt has called himself a true “denier” of human-caused global warming before:
Part of being a “climate change denier” is rejecting the scientific evidence that the global warming we’re seeing now is driven by humans, which he does. So how is this slanderous if Dr. Schmitt has already described himself as such?
Valsin,
Intent is part of the equation. One can make light of themselves. but when someone else says the same thing, it can be considered an intended insult.
Because the phrases “denying climate change” and “denying that it is principally caused by humans” are not the same.
If one cannot see the difference between two obviously different strings of text, how can one sustain a coherent conversation?
Simply brilliant! We need more scientists speaking out against the establishment of corruption in the field. How can so many sit back and accept “settled science”, “97%” etc., etc. without speaking out against the cabal?
I’m no scientist but the BS and corruption are very clear for all to see and the damage being done to the profession is profound.
>Reporter Nicholas St. Fleur’s opening: “…as one of the leading climate change deniers, …”
>from Schmidt’s reply; “It has gone through climate change, it is going through climate change at the present time.”
What are the odds the reporter or the editors or the readers of the NYT catch the dichotomy between the reporters labeling of the interviewee and the interviewee’s actual view?
Sedimentary rocks and ice are open systems. It requires other cross-cutting evidence to verify the isotope signature. I doubt that light isotopes would hang around during diagenesis to reflect a true story. Calibrating to the modern is a mug’s game.
“The only question is, is there any evidence that human beings are causing that change?”
— I have to disagree. It’s not even relevant whether mankind is causing some of the climate change, all of the climate change, or none of it. IF future climate change carries with it catastrophic changes for us, AND IF we can do something about it, AND IF the expected benefits of proposed action exceed the expected costs, then we should take action. It matters not a whit if mankind is the proximate cause or if it’s all natural.
The core question is what are the costs and the benefits of various courses of action.
In any model of decision-making under uncertainty, the do-nothing scenario is ALWAYS one of the primary options. You’ll notice that it’s never even considered by the church of CAGW. Their decision tree analysis is even worse than their underlying science.
While taking action for the wrong reasons may produce a positive outcome, it will also promote corruption of methods, institutions, and people.
“You’ll notice that it’s never even considered by the church of CAGW”
Or the Church of Germophobia (of which Donald “Germophobe” Trump isn’t a member). The vaxxers always want to impose more vaccines, more “prevention”, more cancer screening, etc.
The idea of doing nothing against future possible “pandemic” diseases and possible future cancer isn’t even considered.
Simple,
Do you have objections to the germ theory of disease?
Do you, like Green Meanies, want billions to die?
The parents of a Catalan boy who died of diphtheria because they listened to anti-human anti-vaxxers have tragically been awakened to biomedical reality:
https://elpais.com/elpais/2015/06/29/inenglish/1435559306_461811.html?rel=mas
The boy died because he was not treated in a timely manner.
1) Why wasn’t diagnostic done before?
The vaccine skeptic phobia and corresponding hate speech makes parents of non-“sufficiently” vaccinated children to avoid (fascistic) doctors. (Professional medical organisations cheer when vaccine skeptic parents are jailed. This qualifies as medical fascism.)
2) Why are doctors so poor at diagnosing previously common diseases? Because of vaccines. The vaccines made the diseases uncommon. Medical doctors are also badly trained, they were made into hysterical drug dealers.
SJW look sane when compared to modern vaxxers.
3) Why wasn’t the treatment available in the country?
This is lack of preparation. That kind of irresponsible behavior is typical of vaxxism.
Vaxxism is a mental disorder. Vaxxers are dangerous fascistic people. They cannot be allowed in society.
Simple,
The treatment wasn’t available because Spain had had no need of it for about 30 years.
The boys parents didn’t recognize the disease because it is practically nonexistent in countries which had vaccination programs in the 20th century.
We used to have people trained to recognize diseases.
We used to call them “doctors”.
Now the “doctors” are dealers-cops in charge of verifying that everyone got useless and dangerous drugs, and their professional associations are cheering when a real old-style doctor is deprived of his livelihood because he has some weak reservations about some mandatory drugging, and so-called conservatives (except a few like Rand Paul) are cheering and want even more mandatory drugging.
And when a mother is jailed for refusing a useless treatment for her child, they have an orgasm.
I wonder how much of tolerance for abuses of children is caused by the desacralization of the body by “evidence based (please don’t laugh) medicine” and their conservative cheerleaders.
Simple,
The boy died because he wasn’t vaccinated. Dozens of other kids were infected in the same outbreak, but they survived because their parents had wisely had them vaccinated.
Dread diseases once virtually eradicated from Europe are now once again stalking the continent because of whackos like you.
So you now admit that modern Western medicine cannot be expected to cure illnesses that can be cured elsewhere, because of vaccines.
Thank you. You have demonstrated how phony modern “evidence based” medicine is.
Not even the harshest medicine skeptic would be as harsh against modern medicine.
This is the final nail on modern medicine.
Nice OT re-direction. NOT.
Jefff, it’s just more os Simple-t’s thread hijacking with his anti-vaxxer nonsense.
simple-t in his own words: I’m NOT a vaccine expert. Or health expert. I know nothing about that subject.
says it all really.
Really, it’s getting boring; you worship “doctors” and “experts”. We GET IT. You love drugging people. We GET IT. You love products you don’t anything about; we GET IT.
If you worship experts so much, do you also believe that access to medical isotopes used for diagnostic will be impossible after BREXIT and leaving EURATOM?
Organisations representing medical professionals clearly imply it will be. (They also strongly suggest that medical isotopes are regulated pretty much like fissile products.)
Yes, your anti-vaxxer nonsense is boring, it’s been boring the dozen of other times you’ve hijacked threads to go on and on with your favorite off-topic bugbear and it will be boring the next time you try to hijack a thread.
And there’s plenty of strawmen on display in your post there simple-t. But then when you’ve got nothing, which is all you anti-vaxxer loons have, then strawmanning your opponents isn’t surprising. what isn’t a strawman in your own words:
I’m NOT a vaccine expert. Or health expert. I know nothing about that subject.
says it all really.
If you want “experts”, why are you even reading WUWT? Go dance with the “experts”, have fun with all the deniers of the pain of victims of Big Scientism.
You have been badly humiliated in every one of these discussions. I can’t believe you are still here.
Ignoring the thread hijacking by the ignorant and getting back to the point Steve O brings up:
“The only question is, is there any evidence that human beings are causing that change?”
— I have to disagree. It’s not even relevant whether mankind is causing some of the climate change, all of the climate change, or none of it. IF future climate change carries with it catastrophic changes for us, AND IF we can do something about it, AND IF the expected benefits of proposed action exceed the expected costs, then we should take action. It matters not a whit if mankind is the proximate cause or if it’s all natural.
It’s very relevant and matters greatly because it determine the answers to your other IFs:
1) if man is the cause then man *can* do something about (stop doing whatever it is that’s causing it) and then we can assess whether or not the proposed actions would be cost-effective
2) whereas if it’s mostly/entirely natural then man *can’t* do a darn thing about it and any proposed actions would not be cost-effective by definition as they would cost $$ for no benefit.
The core question is what are the costs and the benefits of various courses of action
no, that’s the secondary question. The core question is can man effectively do anything about it and that depends on if man’s actions are causing it or if nature is doing it on it’s own.
In any model of decision-making under uncertainty, the do-nothing scenario is ALWAYS one of the primary options. You’ll notice that it’s never even considered by the church of CAGW. Their decision tree analysis is even worse than their underlying science.
on that, we can agree
John Endicott,
With respect to your points, 1) If Man is the cause then Man MAY be able to do something about it. If you jump out of an airplane without a parachute, you are the proximate cause of your predicament, but there is probably nothing you can do to prevent a very hard landing; 2) you are claiming that Man can do nothing to prevent climate change, without evidence. Considering that the history of mankind is one of subduing nature with technology, I think you are flat wrong. The problem is really how not to overdue it since we understand the system dynamics so poorly. Now, the economics are an entirely other issue. However, I have rarely heard of a rich man tell a physician, “I don’t heal me if it is going to cost a lot of money.” It’s like war time, when the cost of synthesizing tank fuel from coal is exorbitant.
) If Man is the cause then Man MAY be able to do something about it.
only in the sense that Man may not want to stop doing whatever it is they did to cause the problem. Other than that, If man did it than man an undo it. (though, as point 2 points out, it’s hubris to think man did it)
you are claiming that Man can do nothing to prevent climate change, without evidence
not without evidence, without hubris. It is utter hurbris to think man controls the temperature of this planet. period.
With other notable figures like Nature who are also in denial, he is in good company.
“the U.S. government, is biasing science toward what the government wants to hear. That’s a very dangerous thing that’s happening in science today, and it’s not just in climate. I see it in my own lunar research.”…
I fully agree, Jack.
Equating moon landing denial with “climate change” “denial”, as the NYT “reporter” does, is ludicrous.
NASA’s trips to the moon are facts. “Climate change”, ie dangerous, man-made global warming, extreming or wierding, is an unsupported hypothesis, repeatedly shown false.
Dr. Schmitt is hardly alone among his NASA colleagues.
https://www.businessinsider.com.au/NASA-SCIENTISTS-DISPUTE-CLIMATE-CHANGE-2012-4
A position also supported by renowned aerospace engineer Burt Rutan (2011 version):
http://rps3.com/Files/AGW/EngrCritique.AGW-Science.v4.3.pdf
A BIO of this fellow from the NYT.
https://www.nytimes.com/times-journeys/expert/nicholas-st-fleur/
“Before joining the Times, St. Fleur was an assistant editor at The Atlantic covering science, health and technology. He has also worked for Science Magazine, NPR and Scientific American. St. Fleur completed the Science Communication Program at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and received his undergraduate degree from Cornell University, where he studied biology and was the science editor of The Cornell Daily Sun.”
“St. Fleur completed the Science Communication Program at the University of California, Santa Cruz…”
A Science Communication Program and then goes on to insult a real scientist and explorer. What a fool!
Sad that in the second decade of the 21st century, “science communicators” presume to pass judgement on real scientists.
We live in debased times.
It’s worse than I thought;
https://scicom.ucsc.edu/about/index.html
Really? And he thinks he can take on the likes of Dr. Schmitt with those scientific credentials?
To paraphrase The Honeymooners, “To the moon, St. Fleur!”
Talking of moons, look what the Chinese plant to do in the next couple of years;
https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/techandscience/china-plans-to-launch-artificial-moon-bright-enough-to-replace-citys-streetlights-by-2020/ar-BBOxyvY?li=AAgfYrC&ocid=mailsignout
LOL, I was just reading that article a few moments ago. My first thought was “That’s no moon, it’s a space station”.