By Donna Laframboise, from her Facebook page
This photo is making the rounds at the moment. People I love and admire have posted it. Good people. Kind people. So I’m going to try to explain why it’s counter productive.
As a journalist I have followed the climate debate closely for a decade. When I research a topic, I dig deep. I assure you, it has never been the position of skeptics that ‘climate change isn’t real.’ That is a fundamental misrepresentation.
The climate has always changed. The last Ice Age was a mere 12,000 years ago. From this perspective, the claim that climate change is ‘caused by humans’ strikes skeptics as profoundly scientifically illiterate, a case of puny humanity exaggerating its importance on a planet whose climate was doing its own thing *billions* of years before humans even appeared.
The real question is: What portion of current climate change is caused by humanity?
Despite research costing billions, science cannot answer this question. The UN’s climate body can only say it’s the *opinion* of its experts that humanity is responsible for an unspecified *majority* of change since 1950.
I’ve written 2 books about that UN climate body. Its purpose is to play midwife to UN climate treaties, therefore it would love to phrase things more concretely. It cannot. Hard evidence just isn’t there.
There is now a long history of environmental doom mongering, of dire predictions pre-dating even the 1960s and 1970s, that have *always* failed to materialize. From that perspective, climate skeptics know their history & have learned from it.
How many failed predictions of eco-apocalypse are necessary before those who approach climate change with healthy skepticism are no longer dismissed as morons?
Belittling people, distorting their position so that they look stupid, gets us nowhere. It doesn’t change anyone’s mind. It doesn’t promote mutual respect. Instead it wounds, it insults, it polarizes.
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I thought the last two sections were representative of the CAGW movement failing spectacularly because it’s just not happening
Well obviously… it isn’t? what other reading is there?
I assume the “OOPS F_CK” is a reference to such beloved excited utterances as
“What if climate change appears to be just mainly a multidecadal natural fluctuation? They’ll kill us probably …”
You know, the stuff climate scientists say when they say what they mean.
No?
Caveat: I’m probably not the best exegete of jokes, since (as HotScot, davidmhoffer et cetera have patiently pointed out) my own avoidance and dislike of humor has made it a foreign language, or at best a second language, to me. When you spend your whole life being straightforward and unironic I guess it’s only to be expected that you lose an ‘ear’ for all things facetious.
So I’d be grateful for the guidance of more lulz-inclined denizens in this matter.
Notes from an energy expert:
Fully 85% of global primary energy is fossil fuels – oil, natural gas and coal, and the rest is almost all hydro and nuclear. This 85% has not changed significantly in decades. Green energy is only about 2% and would be near-zero except for trillions of dollars in wasted subsidies and use mandates. Only a few places have enough hydro to provide their needs, and greens hate hydro. The only practical alternative is nuclear, and the greens hate nuclear too.
Eliminate fossil fuels, and most people in the developed world would freeze or starve to death within a few months. This means you and your family. That is a Precautionary Principle that you can rely on.
If anyone doubts this, try to live for ONE DAY with NO fossil fuels – that typically means no fuel for transportation, no electricity for your home, no food except what you can grow yourself, and no materials that require petroleum feedstocks (no plastics or metals) and fuel for transportation (everything). You will be sleeping under the sky in your back yard, freezing and starving. Enjoy!
We wrote in our 2002 debate with the Pembina Institute:
“The ultimate agenda of pro-Kyoto advocates is to eliminate fossil fuels, but this would result in a catastrophic shortfall in global energy supply – the wasteful, inefficient energy solutions proposed by Kyoto advocates simply cannot replace fossil fuels.”
This statement is still clearly true today – 85% fossil fuels and holding…
We also concluded in the same debate:
“Climate science does not support the theory of catastrophic human-made global warming – the alleged warming crisis does not exist.”
That statement is also true – all the observations point to a low climate sensitivity to increasing atmospheric CO2 no greater than ~1C/(2xCO2). The IPCC’s climate computer models run far too hot, as they are designed to do to create false alarm.
Global warming alarmism is promoted by scoundrels and believed in by imbeciles – it consists of highly destructive falsehoods that harm humanity and the environment.
“and believed in by imbeciles”
Not true and unnecessarily caustic. Many who are not imbeciles are just uninformed, and as with most science, will remain uninformed and thereby take on the opinion/s of their contemporaries and/or other sources of information, often for lack of interest. That is why the battle won’t necessarily be won by some miraculous unveiling of the scientific proof, or disproof. It has evolved into a social opinion, which is where the climate “scientists” and enviro-wackos want to be because it now becomes easily politicized, and messages such as the topic of this post can “go viral”.
We need a couple of rational billionaires to help build a marketing-style response to fight fire with fire. Wouldn’t take much to beat the future world vision of the Steyers and Bloombergs of the world.
I agree that we need some leadership on the fight back. So far it has been little people, excellent people for sure, but without support from the billionaire class.
Hence, imbeciles
Caustic or not it is an accurate appraisal. With all the knowledge at everyone’s fingertips, ignorance is inexcusable.
Ignorance is inexcusable. Especially when we are talking about policies for destruction of the greatest civilization ever and and of the most remarkable evonomic engine of free enterprise.
Even if the belief is we are going to be extinct or forever hungry, or suffer short painful lives in the heat or kill off all the animals, you had better educate yourself and at lesst demand evidence.
Exactly!! The left has a Bling Sociological Complex (BSC). Marketing/messaging (versus substance) is the cornerstone of this Complex and primarily interested in votes/power. The left has always excelled at it and getting better. It’s clear that they know their enemy so well they can anticipate 10 steps ahead and able to project our objections back on to us before we can even blink.
It’s obvious that conservatives still don’t get it, let alone have the ability to organize strategy around it.
We need our own BSC. It’s an uphill battle to get people to listen to substance when the bling is one-sided and blinding. We don’t need to give up our message and morals like they have. But marketing works. Think of it as a ‘foot in the door’ to allow us to even be heard in the first place.
I think it’s in the wrong language. Do they have a Chinese version?
Fixed the meme
http://orcasbay.com/images/climate-change-a-timeline-new.jpg
The erasers on my pencils always break off and become useless also. So that one will too.
I always ask the alarmists. What climate change? I never get an answer, even when they’re hard core card carrying climate change preachers.
I ask them to show me their analysis.
I always ask them to show me their evidence. They always rely on failed models and correlation.
When it comes to reversing Climate Change I ask where it should be reversed to. No real suggestions are forthcoming so I suggest the Minoan, Roman and Mediaeval warm periods in that order and say that the recent and possibly unfinished Little Ice Age isn’t really an option.
Duster November 29, 2018 at 1:57 am
Steve Borodin November 29, 2018 at 7:47 am
Most climate scientists go straight for the pocket and ask “Show me the money.”
Annotation needed: “ALL Of YOU ARE LONG DEAD BY NOW” should point to the middle of the orange segment. I.e. No one gets out alive, anyway, so “What difference, at this time, does it make?”
Bravo.
The “precautionary principle” has real costs. When you spend billions not solving a non-problem, this takes valuable and scarce resources away from more important and pressing issues.
It’s not just the lost opportunity cost of the extra money spent, it’s the opportunity costs of losing the good that comes from burning fossil fuels. When a “study” (and I use the term loosely) examines only the effect on mortality from increased severity of heat waves ostensibly caused by CO2 emissions, but fails to even account for the lives saved by using that CO2 to, say, power air conditioners during the heat waves that would otherwise occur even without man-made warming, it provides misleading information.
If the same rules and creative procedures used to estimate the harm done by CO2 from warming were also used to estimate the harm caused by forgoing the use of those fossil fuels, to provide a fair decision analysis, the harm from not using the fossil fuels would dwarf the harm from any warming that results from using them.
For those reading Kurt
It is a lost opportunity or an opportunity cost, but not a lost opportunity cost. The cost of what is being advocated is real – the lost opportunity to solve the water quality and supply problems of the poor, health and education gaps, disease elimination and so on.
Kurt, all your points are valid.
[Thanks for taking the opportunity to clarify for all of us who were lost in the various costs of this…oh…nevermind. -mod]
Yes – I should have referred to the opportunity cost of the money lost by redressing “climate change.” If we cut our fossil fuel consumption we cut our economic growth, and lose money we otherwise would have had to improve peoples lives. It’s just what happens when I post after midnight.
To paraphrase Trump. Renewables make us uncompetitive. We need to focus on the production of cheap reliable electricity. Coal is the way to go. All the skills and brainpower being wasted on making a better battery or windmill etc. should be diverted into improving coal mining methods and coal-fired power station design. Not only is all this effort being wasted in solving a non-problem (CO2) but even if it was a problem the proposed solutions are not being implemented outside western, civilised (at the moment, but they’re working on that too) nations and so would have little or no practical effect. The only logic in the global warming argument I can see lies in my first statement.
Yes, like planting native trees instead! So simple, so effective…
depending on where you are and what native trees;-)
planting NON native trees would be far wiser in Australia for example
(see our 100+ bushfires in Qld now)
I wont plant any natives bigger than a 5 to 6ft shrub on my land
its preferably evergreen anything, or fruit trees that provide some actual benefit to me apart from a bit of shade and naff all else a gumtree provides. they require the same watering when young and most survive just fine after 2 to 3 yrs with minimal to no water.
looking at abandoned farms in not so hospitable areas the fig mulberry and others like apples etc seem to survive for many decades without mans input.
You can’t use the “precautionary principle” anyhow because the outcomes are too far away in time and uncertain so you fall into a logical fallacy. The only proper use of “precautionary principle” is when you have immediate results and you have clearly defined choices.
The outcomes of reducing fossil fuel consumption are not far away in time, nor are they uncertain. Fossil fuels drive every aspect of our economy, from being used by people to go to work, buy groceries, transport needed medicines and vaccines to hospitals, heat homes during polar vortexes, and on and on and on. Reducing fossil fuel consumption by an amount necessary to have any discernible effect on global temperatures would have disastrous consequences.
It’s only the projected harms from a hypothesized amount of temperature increase due to that demonstrably beneficial use of fossil fuels that are far away in time and uncertain.
They are a long way off on the current proposals by the IPCC and all your discussion is just one of a multitude of things that could happen. I don’t buy your argument anymore than I do theirs you are both trying to justify something you believe with zero facts.
I’m just following your own reasoning: the precautionary principle is appropriate when you have immediate results and clearly defined choices.
When “John” gets up in the morning he has a clearly defined choice – he can get in his car and drive to work, burning fossil fuels in the process (even with an electric car since the energy has to come from somewhere) or he can stay at home and skip work. Each choice has immediate consequences – if he goes to work he gets paid, if he stays at home he does not get paid and risks being fired. The first choice (burning the fossil fuels) provides for his family. The second does not.
Hospitals can’t economically produce their own vaccines and medicines in-house. For vaccines and medicines like antibiotics to be available to the masses, they have to be mass produced in places like London and shipped throughout the world to save countless lives. It’s not pixie dust that provides the energy for that transportation. The first choice (producing medicines on site) makes them so prohibitively expensive that only the extremely rich could afford them. The second choice (using fossil fuels to ship them) is far more efficient and makes them readily available to most anyone.
These are facts that no sensible person could dispute. Now the climate alarmists tell us that all the fossil fuel consumption added up since the dawn of the industrial age have produced a mere 1C increase in temperature so far, and that we should prevent it from hitting 1.5C – all while simultaneously telling us of this hidden heat “in the pipeline” that has yet to manifest itself even of we were to quit cold turkey and not pump any more CO2 into the air. It stands to reason that if this 1.5C goal is to be achieved, dramatic reductions in the use of fossil fuels will be required. In fact they say exactly that: “The world’s politicians have just over a decade left to implement drastic transformations in their energy, food and transport systems that could avoid dangerous climate change, a [UN] report has revealed.”
Nobody burns fossil fuels for the simple joy of combustion, except perhaps for the trivial exercise of setting off fireworks or shooting at a target on a range. Virtually every single use of fossil has an concomitant, very real benefit such as those listed above, and it therefore follows that any “dramatic” reduction in that use sufficient to hit the caps we’re told we have to hit would mean that we have to forgo the vast benefits that the use of such dramatic amounts of fossil fuels would otherwise give us UNLESS something wishful ALSO happens such as figuring out an economic way to sequester CO2, or increase the efficiency of solar cells 10-fold, or bring fusion power on line to make up for all those fossil fuels we have to give up burning.
Given these facts, and this reasoning, are you really going to argue that the “precautionary principle” as you’ve argued it should be applied does not militate that we hold off cutting our fossil fuel consumption unless and until these magical advancements happen (in which case fossil fuels should phase out naturally) or alternatively the climate alarmists start showing some tangible proof (instead of mere words offered in the dust pages of peer reviewed books or reports by bureaucrats) that their alarmist future is something other than theory?
“Reducing fossil fuel consumption by an amount necessary to have any discernible effect on global temperatures would have disastrous consequences.”
Unless that fossil fuel consumption was replaced by nuclear powerplants. Lots of electric power and no CO2 production.
Btw, there’s no discernible CO2 effect on the Earth’s weather or temperatures.
Kurt, Actually, I take the view, especially after all the trillions spent to have renewables account for 1.5% of global energy produced, that even with everybody on side it is impossible to get rid of fossil fuels within a few lifetimes.
People are marching, writing reams, forecasting doom in the coming 100 months. Their chant, we must go to renewables in 12 years or its game over. Who are they addressing? Does the “government” know how to do it? Do the universities know? Does the UN know? Tom Steyer? South Australia? Justin Trudeau? No they don’t. And anyone who looks at the problem concludes its ain’t possible.
Well the most likely people to succeed are the technically clever, doggedly determined, disciplined Germans. They tufted the North Sea with windmills, chopped down national forests for land based windmills and solar panels. They had to throw up their hands and start digging more coal. So who is “we”
“Well the most likely people to succeed are the technically clever, doggedly determined, disciplined Germans.”
Thanks.
The “precautionary principle” makes a false binary assumption, anyway. It assumes you can believe in God, or not. But which god? Each belief system has its own set of gods. Buddhism has thousands. Only the Judaeo/Christian/Islamic triarchy think there’s just one god (but not the same god). So we don’t even know which belief system we should believe in yet. Precautionary Schminsciple!
You are incorrect regarding God, all 3 religions believe in the SAME god. I know it is wiki, but it is correct.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_in_Abrahamic_religions
Drake, (1) you are wrong, (2) never ever rely on wikipedia for anything that smacks of politics, religion or green energy.
As a Jewish friend said to me when engaged to a Catholic “Yeah, we were discussing kids and religion and it was fairly easy but then I said ‘Now what do we do about this Jesus guy?'”
The Islamics may claim that they worship the same God, but if you read the Koran and the Torah, you will find no commonality.
How convenient my honest appraisal of that vile military system hasn’t appeared.
Allah is not a good, Allah is Satan.
I’m not religious and I’ve spent the time, I’ve got no dog in the fight. Christianity, Jesus, Alina more with sun God, i.e. Sunday, The light of the world, the savior that Rose from the dead after three days, winter solstice, etc.
Allah is an ancient moon god that reflects the light and distorts the sun. It is an abomination of morality. It is a militant cult. You want to see real patriarchy and oppression… Join Islam
How dare you even suggest such a perverse idea.
I think Drake is correct that Christians, Jews and Muslims believe in the same God. There can only be one all-powerful God, so they believe in the same God. The different religions may attribute different characteristics to their version of the all-powerful God, but it’s the same all-powerful God they are talking about.
That’s just my opinion I’m not interested in starting a religious conversation beyond this.
Solving non-problems is the new economy. Non-problems are always resolved no matter how inept the solution. Real problems are harder to resolve and wise leaders avoid confronting them. Non-problems include, e.g., H1N1, zika, West Nile virus, Y2K, gyres of plastic in the ocean, household garbage, AGW, the allergy epidemic, high salt diets, and the heartbreak of psoriasis. Real problems include, e.g., the collapse of ocean fisheries, suicide rates in middle aged men, desperation leading to fascism, displacement of people from failed states, Vladimir Putin, declining i.q. (yes it is real, look it up), under challenged children and anxiety disorders caused by the journalism of despair. Every politician wants to tackle the non-problem du jour. There is money to be made and every solution is a winner.
Hey BC Bill, I’ve always wanted to see one of those ‘gyres of plastic in the ocean’…that everyone talks about. So could you post up a link to a picture to one of them…you know with the ubiquity of cell phones these days I’m sure there must be thousands of pictures of ‘the great pacific garbage patch’.
I’d love to see one.
Thanks.
They don’t exist, that is why they are a non- problem.
Chill,
Just wondering where the high carb/low fat diet fits in to this list.
Am 77 next birthday and celebrating 50 years of married bliss to the luckiest woman in the world next year (God willing)
Am now 1 stone (14 pounds for Yanks) heavier than that happy day.
For 20 years I have eaten basically anything that crawls, flies or swims so long as it is high yield protein. In other words all the good fat I can get.
What I am saying is it you want a long happy and healthy life there are three things you MUST do.
1: choose your parents very carefully.
2: do the opposite to what every (gov’t) “expert” tells you
3: marry a young woman and keep her interested.
Oh and drink a bottle ( or 2) of red wine each day!
That sounds about right. The published studies started recanting on the low fat diet in the early 90s, but the pointlessness of low fat still hasn’t registered on many. So a high fat diet is definitely a non- problem. If only people itemized the things that really present problems in their lives and compared them to the things they only think might be problems because the MSM told them they were. Non-problems outnumber real problems by a wide margin.
I restricted my salt about 40 years ago but gave that up about 20 years ago and Im still working at 80 years old. I didnt choose my parents but I did the other two on the list, except I substitute beer , whisky and cognac for some of the wine (or did I just add those on?).
As native French, I do absolutely agree about the young wife and the bottles of wine!
“Am 77 next birthday and celebrating 50 years of married bliss to the luckiest woman in the world next year (God willing)”
Congratulations there, Patrick. Fifty years of married bliss is something special. You are a lucky man.
Arguably, had it not been for the pointless diversion into wind energy we would have fusion, thorium or LENR working and fossil fuel usage would be on a natural decline by now.
Not likely, because that takes real science. It’s hard work. Much easier to become an activist “scientist” and just preach about how everyone will be damned to the fires of hell unless they obey you immediately and totally.
Nobody thought that it was an accident that the scare du jour, that the world will roast on the pyres of CO2, fits so well into people’s concept of hell, did they?
The precautionary principle does not mean that everyone must undergo chemotherapy because they might have undetected cancer. The cost of the proposed solution must be taken into account. Sometimes the precautionary principle says to do nothing: “First do no harm!”
Good point worth repeating. Do no harm. Taking energy away from the poor, raising taxes killing economy, placing efforts on useless work all cause harm and make us less able to meet the potential ‘oops’.
The Earth Day ppl have been shouting oops fuck for 50 years. Note, 50. I’ve deduced the shouting may continue still 10, maybe 20 years, then it must change direction as CO2 is not delivering doom but rather good and food.
Some important funerals are coming, since longevity is not jumping, and science advances by funerals. So do ideologies.
“Belittling people, distorting their position so that they look stupid, gets us nowhere.”
Saul Alinsky Rule 4a
Just tell them nice try but where is the evidence, stick and stone
“The UN’s climate body can only say it’s the *opinion* of its experts that humanity is responsible for an unspecified *majority* of change since 1950.”
This isn’t the full extent of the duplicity, however. The IPCC couches this mere opinion in quantitative terms to give the illusion that the numbers are somehow the result of an objective, scientific approach. For example, they adopt a scale saying “extremely likely” means greater than 95%, “highly likely” means more than 90% etc. and give a list of assessments such as “it is ‘extremely likely’ that ‘most’ of the observed warming is due to greenhouse gasses.” But you have to read somewhere else in a separate paragraph or footnote where they blandly say that these estimates represent the mere “judgment” of the experts.
In the context of formulating a mere opinion, the assertion of “95%” confidence that, say, Alabama will win the D1 college football championship is NOT a scientific assessment – and the 95% value has absolutely no objective quantitative significance.
No honest scientist would either participate in, nor condone, this kind of a tactic. Honest scientists recognize that opinions are anathema to the scientific process – that is why double blind studies are used in any circumstance where the opinions of the researchers could affect the scientific procedure or experiment. Climate “scientists,” however, wallow in their own opinions.
“Honest scientists recognize that opinions are anathema to the scientific process – that is why double blind studies are used in any circumstance where the opinions of the researchers could affect the scientific procedure or experiment. Climate “scientists,” however, wallow in their own opinions.”
A very good point, Kurt.
It’s opinions all the way down. And biased opinions at that.
Kurt, blaming it on climate scientists alone absolves the American Physical Society, the American National Academy of Sciences, the Royal Society, the American Chemical Society, the AGU, the AMS and every single other scientific society in the US and in the world that has publicly bought into and supported the nonsense that is AGW consensus climatology.
The entire scientific establishment has bought into incompetence and has given science awards to liars.
It’s all the most incredible failure of reason and integrity, ever. EV-ER.
It’s hard to believe that the doing is not conscious.
Much of the so called “scientific establishment” were never scientists in the first place. They have always been politicians. Unfortunately those in the establishment that did start with science degrees, abandoned science long ago when they found that politics was much more lucrative.
Just a note, the link to Donna’s facebook page above didn’t work for me. However it is easy to find with just an ordinary search of her name in facebook.
The ‘timeline’ is a childish deceit.
As such, it perfectly reflects the mind set of the average ‘climate change’ alarmist.
Someone (a ‘true believer’) sent this to me a few days ago. I replied with: There is no scale on the x-axis, presumably to save the ‘author’ embarassment when the ‘projections’ don’t happen.
Climate activists are innumerate – they don’t “do” numbers.
“The ‘timeline’ is a childish deceit.”
Yes, it is.
An honest timeline would go back in history millions of years. Unfortunately for the meme, there are no F’s (expletive deleted) in all of history including when CO2 levels were much, much higher than today (7,000ppm). There has been no runaway Greenhouse in history even with higher levels of CO2 in the atmosphere and there won’t be a runaway Greenhouse now with a puny 400ppm or 500ppm of CO2 in the atmosphere.
Some people need to study a little history. It comes in handy when putting things in perspective.
Not history, GEOLOGY. Most historians can’t tell you anything that happened before the written word. Archaeologists attempt to get to the human civilizational history, but having seen some of them spin stories out of whole cloth makes me less than sanguine in their veracity. (A talk I attended had the researcher waxing poetic about the prehistoric, left handed, lesbian potter that made this 2 inch shard of 3,000 year old new world broken pottery and why this was such an exciting find – rather soured me on the conclusions of the whole field.)
It is GEOLOGY that tells you the sea has been higher and lower; the continents have been in different configurations; CO2 has been higher and lower; and temperatures have been all over the thermometer. It is also the geologists who will tell you “the evidence points to this and the theory seems to well represent observed phenomenon, but we will re-evaluate as new evidence is discovered” – you know, scientific UNCERTAINTY.
It’s all three, Owen. The written and Archaeological and Geological evidence all play a part. The written and Archaeological history of the Norse in Greenland, for example, who farmed and ranched in areas where that is not possible today. Or the written accounts of a village priest casting an exorcism on the “demon” glacier that was about to destroy his village in the Alps. Or the written and artistic accounts of the ice fairs on a hard frozen River Thames, which was not possible before or since. Or the tree stump remains of towering forest monarchs that thrived at an altitude and latitude well above the current tree line during the RWP and whose remains are only now being uncovered by melting ice as the glaciers retreat and the tree line slowly advances back to where it was 2000 plus years ago before the climate got too cold.
IMHO there is ample evidence, written historical, Archaeological and Geological to totally refute any Manniacal claims that humans have devastated the climate in the last hundred years when it is quite clear that it has been both hotter and colder in both history and pre-history.
I actually agree to some extent. The problem is that written history doesn’t go back far enough to establish trends and cycles beyond one or two minor cycles and as I said archaeology and anthropology are full of frustrated fantasy writers (with a few good ones mixed in who are probably embarrassed by the fantasy writers). My original AGW “this doesn’t pass the smell test” moment came on Mann’s hockey stick. When the medieval warm period and the little ice age were mysteriously missing, I knew his stuff was bollocks. Whatever proxy he was using didn’t mean what he thought it meant. Both of those events I knew from history.
When I began looking at the data from geology though, I became an unconvinceable skeptic of the whole CAGW/CACC theory. The rocks told me that we had been far warmer and far colder in the past, that CO2 had been much higher and a little lower in the past, that sea levels had been much higher and much lower in the past, basically that the current conditions were totally unremarkable in the grand scheme of this rock’s history.
When I looked at model outputs, I knew I was looking at a misrepresentation of chaos theory – the strange attractors were missing. I also knew that there was no way on earth the chaos onset conditions were properly initialized in their models as the scale was far too large. The initial conditions of the partial differential equations were way too sparse to even begin to get a realistic answer in the output. And yet, climate advocates in white coats were claiming they could predict the temperature of the world 100 years from now. I knew from modeling chaos that there was no way their initial conditions were well enough bounded to even begin to get the answer close ten DAYS from now. I don’t buy the “averaging over blocks” answer to why they are so sure. (OK, it is why they are so sure, I just don’t think the approach is valid!)
Suzuki 1972 ( Warns of the Dangers of Anointing Scientists as new High Priests of Society )
David Suzuki on science, elitism and the apocalypse (1972)
Suzuki talks about the politics of science and the science of politics
“This is the kind of Priesthood that is evolving. The kind of Priesthood that has an impact on general society that I think is very profound”
http://www.cbc.ca/player/play/1828006140
Suzuki, himself became one of the High Priests. He has no excuse because he warned of the dangers quite cogently back in 1972.
That was before Suzuki learned what a good living was to had from being the high priest of doom.
+ 97%
A lab coat is the emperor’s new clothing.
Donna,
Facebook page not available?
The opener “climate change isn’t real” is a straw man argument, alarmism is built on a steaming putrid pile of logical fallacies intended to fool the easily fooled.
Donna’s website:- https://nofrakkingconsensus.com
Like everything else in the AGW camp, this clever little sketch goes wrong right at the start. The group of scientist and concerned professionals who are labeled as “deniers” and who post here and on other thoughtful blogs, like ClimateAudit.org, have never taken the starting position of “climate change isn’t real”. Almost universally we acknowledge that the climate changes. But this cannot be acknowledged by the cultists, because this could result in a dialogue, which would require some knowledge of climate realities. The superficial factoid that they have memorized, that CO2 molecules in the air can absorb outgoing IR and reemit some of that energy back to earth, is a start, but it only goes so far. Indeed, the guru’s of AGW, Gore and Nye, exposed their utter ignorance of the processes involved when they photoshopped their cookie jar “experiment”. As our host so ably demonstrated:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/gore-and-bill-nye-fail-at-doing-a-simple-co2-experiment/
The bottom line is that the AGW camp must construct strawmen in order to joust and have some chance of victory. To see how true this is, just review Pat Frank’s discussion of AGW with one of the cool-aid drinkers in this recent WUWT:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/11/26/a-form-of-violence/
Frank’s patience and clarity went unnoticed by his pen pal. And in the end, the AGW proponent proclaimed that his superficial understanding of the behavior of CO2 was sufficient to support all his political aims, and nothing else really mattered. He could have been a robot. Perhaps posting from a basement in Macedonia?
“Like everything else in the AGW camp, this clever little sketch goes wrong right at the start. The group of scientist and concerned professionals who are labeled as “deniers” and who post here and on other thoughtful blogs, like ClimateAudit.org, have never taken the starting position of “climate change isn’t real”.”
This is a little game the Alarmists play.
Skeptics say of course the Earth’s climate changes, it has always changed, it has never stayed exactly the same. That’s what an atmosphere does, on any planet.
What the alarmists mean by “climate change” is human-caused climate change. They are saying if you don’t believe in human-caused climate change, then you don’t believe in climate change. They are talking about two different things here.
Yes, the climate changes naturally. And no, there is no evidence human activity is having anthing to do with the changes.
I hope that clears things up. 🙂
Tom Abbott November 29, 2018 at 5:21 am
They started out calling the scam “Global Warming” but the data was pointing to it not being global .
So they changed track and went for the more regional explanation Climate Change, The Climate changes 4 times a year for the tropics Summer, Autumn, Winter and Spring in that order, which we used to call the seasons. Outside the Tropics Autumn and Spring are hard to observe so they say those areas only get 2 observable seasons Summer and winter.
IMO this is what is distorting the Data, regarding Climate Science,
“An urban heat island (UHI) is an urban area or metropolitan area that is significantly warmer than its surrounding rural areas due to human activities. The temperature difference usually is larger at night than during the day, and is most apparent when winds are weak. UHI is most noticeable during the summer and winter. The main cause of the urban heat island effect is from the modification of land surfaces.[1][2] Waste heat generated by energy usage is a secondary contributor.[3] As a population center grows, it tends to expand its area and increase its average temperature. The less-used term heat island refers to any area, populated or not, which is consistently hotter than the surrounding area.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_heat_island
““An urban heat island (UHI) is an urban area or metropolitan area that is significantly warmer than its surrounding rural areas due to human activities. The temperature difference usually is larger at night than during the day, and is most apparent when winds are weak. UHI is most noticeable during the summer and winter.”
I agree. UHI is very evident. I live in a rural area where it is always a couple of degrees cooler than a large metropolitan city 50 miles away.
Notice how the photo is taken at an angle and exaggerates the upward slope of the graph. they even lie with their hyperbole
Thank-you for the kind words Robert. I post for thoughtful people like you.
I paid for a day’s download privileges with Energy & Environment and now have a pdf of your “Negligence, Non-Science and Consensus Climatology”. I then went to Skeptic and downloaded your “A Climate of Disbelief” and the “Supporting Information” addenda. I’ve also listened to your t-shirt YouTube talk. I am enjoying reading the details that you mentioned in the lecture.
Your dialogue a couple of evenings ago was a bit like a the Monty Python skit with the dead parrot. No matter what you said, the reply was always a deflection and a twist of obvious facts. It was fascinating that as the discussion wore on, one piece after another was abandoned by the AGW proponent. In the end he simply asserted that CO2 was a greenhouse gas, and that was that, or so I concluded while reading the exchanges between you two.
Frank doesn’t understand the difference between measurement error and sampling error. Plainly obvious in his writing.
He also claims there is systemic error in temperature data without identifying what it specifically is. Typical strawman argumentation.
Ron Manley, my argument about air temperature makes use of systematic sensor measurement error, as
published by Hubbard and Lin in 2002.
Systematic measurement error arises principally from solar loading and insufficient wind speed. It is explicitly described in my paper (1 MB pdf).
Systematic measurement error has nothing whatever to do with sampling error.
Your obvious mistake obviously shows that you obviously did not read my work before criticizing it. Not very professional, that. Or ethical, really.
My argument about climate models makes use of the average annual CMIP5 long wave cloud forcing calibration error. Lauer and Hamilton published on that in 2013.
Long wave cloud forcing error is systematic, is inherent in the models themselves, enters into every step of a climate simulation, does not subtract away, and propagates forward into air temperature projections. The resulting uncertainty in air temperature after a centennial projection is about ±15 C.
CMIP5 long wave cloud forcing error has nothing whatever to do with sampling error.
You’re wrong on both counts, Ron Manley.
You have yet to give any indication that you know what you’re talking about.
The use of anomalies renders your “systematic error” argument moot. Measuring delta-T as opposed to measuring absolute T shows how global warming is occurring.
Long wave cloud forcing does not impact the measurement rendered by a thermometer, therefore your argument doesn’t impact time series data measured at ground level.
Frank, the basic problem with ALL of your arguments is that you are treating the output of climate models as data. That is a serious error on your part. You cannot under any circumstances falsify the AGW hypothesis using the output of a climate model as your input. Irrespective of the fact that you are not doing even basic science, your logic errors renders all of your work pointless.
ALL climate models are wrong. Some are more skillful than others. Trying to falsify the AGW hypothesis using climate models can’t be done. You are wasting your time.
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I suggest you go out and collect real data instead of using the output of climate models as your “data.”
Frank states: “CMIP5 long wave cloud forcing error”
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LOL @ur momisugly Frank
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CMIP5 is a model.
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Tell all of us that are actually reading your BS that a MODEL has systematic error!!!!!!!
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You are a disgrace to the profession of science.
Ron Manley, I’ve discussed systematic temperature sensor measurement error extensively here. I’m sure you’ll spend the time to understand it before critiquing, as you’re an ethical guy.
Systematic sensor error varies almost by the hour and certainly by the day. It is not constant. Therefore it does not subtract away. It is not normally distributed. Therefore it does not average away.
When taking anomalies, total uncertainty increases because the base-line average itself has an uncertainty. The uncertainty in the baseline average temperature is the root-mean-square of the uncertainties in the measured temperatures going into the average. Utterly neglected in the field (and by you).
The uncertainty in the anomaly is then sqrt[(T-uncertainty)^2+(baseline uncertainty)^2], which is always larger than T-uncertainty. Utterly neglected in the field (and by you).
When you do go through the post, you’ll notice that the field doesn’t even recognize instrumental resolution. There’s a sign of deep competence, isn’t it.
No one in the field does due diligence regarding systematic temperature measurement error or instrumental resolution. That would be the worst case of scientific negligence, ever, were it not for the complete neglgect of physical error in climate modeling, and the 100% neglect of physics itself in paleo-temperature reconstruction.
Next: long wave cloud forcing error is relevant to the assessment of climate model accuracy, Ron. If you read my post with a view to understanding it (which apparently you did not do), you’ll note the differential application. Clouds – models – projections; measurement error – sensors – air temperature. Not the same. Easy, no?
Next: “ALL” of my arguments include temperature sensor measurement error as well as climate model error. Obviously, I don’t treat sensor error as climate model data (which is your badly mistaken argument here: November 29, 2018 at 5:40 pm ).
Apart from that, the long wave cloud forcing error isn’t “data.” It’s calibration error derived from tests of model climate simulations. A different beast altogether.
Your November 29, 2018 at 5:40 pm argument doesn’t even rise to wrong, Ron. Your argument inheres a categorical misrepresentation. It’s orthogonal to the problem you claim to address, in other words.
Next: the IPCC and climate modelers, and everyone else in the field, knows that climate models are the basis of the AGW claim. How can they not be? They represent the physical theory of climate.
What else, other than a physical theory of climate, can enjoin CO2 as the warmer of the climate?
Nothing else, that’s what. And that’s a fact of scientific methodology.
Showing that climate models have no predictive value, in turn show that climate models cannot enjoin CO2 as a warmer of the climate. AGW supposition destroyed.
Yet again, you have no idea what you’re talking about, Ron Manley.
Next: climate models simulate the physically real climate, Ron Manley.
A simulation of the climate over a calibration period is compared to the observationally known physically real climate, Ron Manley.
The difference between the simulated climate and the physically real climate is model calibration error, Ron Manley.
Model calibration error is systematic model error, Ron Manley. It’s not random, and it does not subtract or average away.
You don’t know what you’re talking about, Ron Manley.
But you’ve managed to finish off with another personal attack, which probably made you feel better.
Robert, I’m honored, truly.
If you email me at pfrank_eight_three_zero_AT_earthlink_dot_net, I’ll send you reprints.
The papers on air temperature are open access. One link (pdf) is in my response to Ron Manley. The other is open access here: http://eae.sagepub.com/content/22/4/407.abstract
The best humour reflects the truth about the human condition. Because of the utter lack of truth in the alarmists’ position, their cartoons about skeptics just ain’t funny.
Climate Change: the Musical.
“O carbon, you killed our children and our children’s children,
The denialists will weep…”
Etc etc
If anything, the Precautionary Principle should error on the side of a small net warming is a beneficial perspective. Folks in the LIA would have died for a bit of beneficial warming, and there is no doubt that life was tough for those in a cooler world. A return to those conditions, even for 3-4 years of sudden cooling because of a significant forcing event like a short cluster of volcanic events would see a major disruption to life on the planet just trying to feed 7.4 billion every day.
We have barely warmed the planet .8 C since 1880, after burning a half trillion tons of carbon since the industrial revolution began. And that admission is from the AGW movement themselves. We have no real idea how much that warming is due to AGW, because we were just coming out of the LIA and it is possible that most of the current warming is completely due to natural variation. However, I am willing to split the difference and realize that nearly .4 C is not unreasonable given so much human activity and the fact that CO2 is minor bit player as a trace GHG. So less than a half degree warming from everything related to Man’s activities since 1880, including Urban Heat Island effect causing local wacky weather, (climate change) and widespread land use change causing small additional warming to things. If we accept that there is other causes to warming like UHI and land use, then CO2 has to be even less in the equation. Clearly, the sensitivity of CO2 to the climate system is not as originally thought, and the net overall slight warming we have been fortunate to acquire is clearly beneficial. Our present world we now take for granted wouldn’t work at 280 ppmv CO2 and 1 degree C colder.
At the end of the day, wouldn’t you really rather have an extra degree or two built into the climate system, just so that if natural variation takes another down turn for 30 years, or a cluster of external forcing events causes temporary reductions in suitable weather for northern hemisphere grain production, that the Earth has a chance to maintain adequate thermal inertia to bridge a cold snap? That is what the Precautionary Principle should really stand for. It is an insurance policy on staying alive. That should trump everything else. We can adapt to weather, which we should always be doing, but to willfully harm our economies by sacrificing that which has enriched us is plain wrong. This all needs a major re-think what our priorities actually are.
Not to mention the holy grail – that our use of fossil fuels actually does prevent a descent into another glaciation phase of the ice age we’re currently living in.
Kurt
Some years (thousands?) ago the planet was dribbling along with 180 ppm atmospheric CO2, 30 ppm away from certain extinction of all plant-life meaningful to existence as we know it. Miraculously, man pitched up, mastered fire and the rest is history.
Man has been given the opportunity to better the planet by helping it grow, we should forge on.
No, I’m not religious.
Kurt…I don’t think it prevents a descent into another glaciation phase, but maybe it tempers it for a 100 years or so and delays the worst cold phases while we endure another LIA and downturn into ice box conditions. There is probably nothing that can compete with the orbital dynamics of the Earth around the Sun. But the longer we delay the inevitable, the better. Warming is good.
A common tactic in all divisive situations is to accuse your opponents of the: crimes, flaws, faults etc that you yourself are guilty of.
In this case I see a clear piece of ‘projection’, namely….
everyone’s terrified of ‘climate change’….ah…climate change doesn’t seem as scary as they promised…uh….most people couldn’t give a fuck about climate change….oops!
Obtain the rate of change of CO2 in the atmosphere over time since the Mana Lua data became available, use any time increment you want. Obtain the rate of change of global temperature over the same time increments – use the data set that has been most ‘massaged’ to show the greatest warming. Divide dT/d(time) by dCO2/d(time) to get dT/dCO2, the rate of change of temperature with CO2. Plot on a graph in excel. Expect that any correlation would require points to follow some sort of line. Try any of the curve fits through the resulting array of points. Notice that the closest correlation has an R^2 of virtually zero. Try with different offsets to allow for some lag between proposed cause and effect and repeat. Note that R^2 is virtually zero. Conclude there is no primary effect of CO2 on temperature.
humans are not very good at balancing an argument, they tend to think in black and white; the middle is frequently misrepresented, or doesn’t even exist at all.
And forget about outliers, they may as well be aliens from outer space.
That was a lot of explaining for a silly meme. How about:
Fix the climate.
Fix it now or we’re doomed!
We just spent trillions to fix it and it didn’t work.
#$%!!
As usual, it is hard to disagree with Donna.
I would have written this:
“The last Ice Age was a mere 12,000 years ago. ” . . . as:
The last glacial advance transitioned to a warmer period beginning about 20,000 to 17,000 years ago. This was a major change in climates.
This isn’t real important in the context of her post, but the terms “Ice Age”, glacial advance, stadials and interstadials, and the Marine isotope stages (MIS), and others are defined and used in the research literature. We should try to use them properly.
The date of the beginning-of-the-end is variable: Wiki=> Deglaciation commenced in the Northern Hemisphere at approximately 20 ka and in Antarctica approximately at 14.5 ka, consistent with evidence for an abrupt rise in the sea level at about 14.5 ka.
CLIMATE SCIENCE – A Timeline:
——————–++++++++++++++++++0000000000000000000000>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Climate is cooling! Climate is warming Warming is NOT pausing Climate will eventually
Ice age starting rapidly – All ice will right now, but climate warm catastrophically!
soon! melt soon! Snow WAS stable before Meanwhile, snow
will stop falling! industrial era! storms will get
worse!
SR
Mod, my post at 12:22 was reformatted into chaos. Please delete it.
SR
“Mod, my post at 12:22 was reformatted into chaos. Please delete it.”
I was beginning to worry about you, Steve. 🙂
OH, leave it! I think it’s charming.
It’s kind of like that ‘All your base are belong to us!’ message from space aliens. Maybe you’ve been channeling them, Steve. I’d leave it.
Look! – a PIKA!! –
CLIMATE SCIENCE – A Timeline of Claims:
1) Climate is cooling -Glaciers will return!
2) Climate is warming rapidly! All ice will be melted soon! Snow will fall no more!
3) Warming is NOT pausing now, but climate WAS stable before the industrial revolution!
4) Climate will warm catastrophically eventually! Meanwhile, snow storms will get worse!
SR
Don’t forget the Polar bears!
Steve Reddish
I rather liked the first attempt.
It illustrates the confused mind of climate alarmists perfectly. 🙂
Steve, it snowed again last night.
Would you please come shovel that white stuff off my front steps and my sidewalk?
Also, it’s going to snow again tonight, so please stick around for that event, too. Thanks!!!
Sara,
If I was your neighbor I would gladly help with your snow shoveling (and then eat some of your soup).
But, I do not get your point. I’m not with those claiming there wouldn’t be any more snow, then claiming snow storms will get worse while the climate warms.
I hold with those who say we have short term cycles of about 30 and 60 years and long term cycles of about 800 years, all within much longer trends.
SR