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.
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.
…
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”
….
LOL @ Frank
…
CMIP5 is a model.
…
Tell all of us that are actually reading your BS that a MODEL has systematic error!!!!!!!
…
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
Where’s the moment when your grandchildren of old age.
This fits the alarmists so well!
“Climate change isn’t real” – is literally what we got with the hockey stick graphs which said that known periods of climate change in the past didn’t happen.
“Climate change is real, but we’re not convinced it’s caused by humans” is still the position of most people and particularly academics who ignore the cooling effect of large scale pollution that reached its peak in the 1970s – and probably was the cause of the global cooling scare. And if you clean up pollution that is cooling large chunks of the world – why is anyone surprised we got warming during that clean up (~1970 to ~2000)
“oops” – that’ll be the point when several things happen:
1. Alarmists realise that the necessary feedbacks to make their CO2 scare work just aren’t present
2. Alarmists finally realise that a whole range of other things can and do change the climate, from human caused cooling pollution to solar.
3. The money runs out.
[SNIP] will be the point that everyone has to admit that we just can’t predict future climate with any certainty. And that far from knowing it will warm (or as some sceptics now believe … it will cool), the reality is that we know so little about how the climate works that we have no idea what it will do.
And far from seeing all these pathetic dishonest money grabbing academics kicked out of their positions as many of us would like, far from cutting the grants as will happen to start with … we actually have to spend a lot more money measuring our present climate in order to have any hope of trying to predict the future climate and have some hope of preparing for remote but possible scenarios (like sudden cooling) that make the dire predictions of alarmists look like a day at the fun fair.
It’s all right, they’re only memeing. Let them have fun. I don’t think this is belittling. And it is easily answered in a hundred ways. Here’s my reply for instance:
CLIMATE CHANGE: A TIMELINE
t<A
WE HAVE UNTIL YEAR A TO SAVE THE WORLD!
A<t<B
WE HAVE UNTIL YEAR B TO SAVE THE WORLD!
B<t<C
WE HAVE UNTIL YEAR C TO SAVE THE WORLD!
C<t<D
SHUT UP! SHUT UP! SHUT UP!
You can intersperse warnings such as “All the glaciers are melting… never mind.” The Statue of Liberty will be drowned… never mind. The coral reefs are dying… never mind. Corn will stop growing… never mind.
Maybe you can also add: “Al Gore makes another $50 million” in a few places.
And, “Invest in Solyndra… write off investment in Solyndra.”
“Our children just won’t know what beer is … … … “
The PP is bet illustrated by the Dutch. They know that they have a problem in their low lying land, so even if not threatened at the moment they are building even better defenses
against what history clearly tells them is coming.
MJE
Michael
The Dutch building sea defences is hardly the same as the futile, grossly expensive waste of time and money spent on renewable energy.
wonder if those defenses will stand an icewall incoming?
An ice wall would be easy – the seas will be 10s to 100s of miles away from the defenses then due to sea level fall, and glaciers move slowly enough that even the old and feeble should be able to shuffle off ahead!
Michael November 29, 2018 at 1:49 am
Where the Dutch the first to put free energy to good use ?? No fossil fuels or electricity in the fourteenth century.
https://www.holland.com/global/tourism/discover-holland/traditional/functions-of-windmills-in-holland.htm
The real question is: What portion of current climate change is caused by humanity?
‘Despite research costing billions, science cannot answer this question.”
huh
Of course science can answer this and has.
you might not like the answer
you might disagree with the methods
you might find that there is some uncertainty
but science has answered this question.
Sorry Steven. Too simplistic. Science has answered some of the questions; but has failed miserably to answer the CO2 bit.
Authors claim
“The real question is: What portion of current climate change is caused by humanity?
‘Despite research costing billions, science cannot answer this question.”
This claim is wrong. Science has answered this question.
Stick to the argument.
Your argument
” but has failed miserably to answer the CO2 bit.”
This is an assertion, not an argument. A false assertion to boot
Really Steven, do you “cross your heart and hope to die”; I doubt it.
I don’t like the answer and I don’t agree with your methods and you certainly have “answered” the question uncertainly!
How does your averaging scheme actually work?* What assumptions do you make about correlation decay between station data points? I honestly believe you could make your datasets say anything you like if you ignore or rather, assume the coherence of climate variables.
*I have tried to duplicate your methods but it is not at all clear what you have actually done. I’m open to be shown otherwise. How do you average spatial data, are you using a decay constant and do you assume that the covariance of temperature is isotropic? And if you are averaging point data directly, how do you do that and keep a straight face?
“How does your averaging scheme actually work?* What assumptions do you make about correlation decay between station data points? I honestly believe you could make your datasets say anything you like if you ignore or rather, assume the coherence of climate variables.”
*I have tried to duplicate your methods but it is not at all clear what you have actually done. I’m open to be shown otherwise. How do you average spatial data, are you using a decay constant and do you assume that the covariance of temperature is isotropic? And if you are averaging point data directly, how do you do that and keep a straight face?”
1. the code is available, has been for 8 years. I note no recent access to the site to get the source code.
2. Kriging with drift.
3. See page 17 and 18
4. Not averaging directly. I guess you dondt read
Nice try in avoiding the issue I raised.
http://berkeleyearth.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/Methods-Appendix-GIGS-13-103a.pdf
“Of course science can answer this and has.”
Says Steven without providing any evidence. Argument by assertion. That’s all we ever get around here from Alarmists.
Next thing you know, Steven will be posting a Hockey Stick chart as “evidence”. And that ought to just about empty out his quiver.
That’s if you are lucky. He isn’t known as Drive-by mosh for nothing.
Yea, get out the shovels, Steve’s BS is getting deep !
The Author makes an assertion with no evidence, that science CANNOT answer this.
Strangely you did not see fit to label this an argument by assertion.
It seems fitting to counter an argument by assertion with a counter argument by assertion.
However, Providing evidence is easy.
1. The claim ‘SCIENCE cannot answer this” Now this is a strange claim to make about
science in general that it cannot provide an anwser. Its ALSO strange because skeptics
are found of saying that man CANNOT be the cause of warming or that man has only
contributed slightly. This of course is odd from a logical standpoint, because if science
CANNOT answer the question of how much warming man has caused, how does a skeptic
argue that man has caused none or the warming or at most a little bit. Hmm must
be telepathy.
2. Science can of course answer this question its called attribution.
http://www.physics.mcgill.ca/~gang/eprints/eprintLovejoy/neweprint/Anth
Some Q and A
http://www.physics.mcgill.ca/~gang/eprints/eprintLovejoy/esubmissions/Questions.Answers.17.4.14.pdf
And this question has been covered multiple times
start with the TAR
https://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/tar/wg1/pdf/TAR-12.PDF
Then the 4th
https://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch1s1-3-3.html
And you could go look at AR5
No the science definately CAN and definately HAS answered this question
Even silly skeptics think they can answer this question by arguing humans have zero effect.
Your next step will be to argue that this is not science, or that the answers are not what you like
Be careful as that would include folks who argue that man has no effect or a small effect.
attribution without evidence is not an answer it’s an assertion. One not based in reality.
So since you insist science has answered the question why have you still failed to provide that answer. I repeat what I said before which I notice you did not reply to:
Great than you should have no problem providing the exact percentage number of the current climate change that is caused by humanity and the proof that that number is valid.
Your word salad above dances around the question but does not provide the answer. No one here is surprised.
It’s called the null hypothesis. It’s natural (IE *not* man’s doing) until proven otherwise. It has never been proven otherwise (despite all the money wasted claiming it is so), certainly not to the degree that one can put man in control of the climate. You are smart enough to know that. judging by your posts , however, you are not honest enough to admit it.
Sure enough, it looks like Steven *did* use the bogus, bastardized Hockey Stick chart as his “evidence” of human-caused Global Warming/Climate Change. His quiver of evidence is now empty.
http://www.physics.mcgill.ca/~gang/eprints/eprintLovejoy/esubmissions/Questions.Answers.17.4.14.pdf
An excerpt from the above link:
“This figure visually shows the strong linear relation between the radiative forcing and the global temperature responses.
end excerpt
So Steven wants us to believe that the similarity between the CO2 levels and a bogus, bastardized Hockey Stick chart is evidece that CO2 is causing the Earth’s atmosphere to heat up. Btw, your first link is dead.
Steven wrote: “The Author makes an assertion with no evidence, that science CANNOT answer this. Strangely you did not see fit to label this an argument by assertion.”
I don’t see anywhere in the article where the author says science cannot answer the question. He says the question of CO2’s effects on the Earth’s atmosphere has not been answered satisfactorily to date. That would be correct.
After rereading the article a third time I see the author *did* write: “The real question is: What portion of current climate change is caused by humanity?
Despite research costing billions, science cannot answer this question.”
I don’t interpret this as the author saying it is impossible to know the answer, but rather that the alarmist cannot answer this question at the present time.
Indeed, the author is claiming that science (at this moment in time) cannot answer the question after spending all those billions trying to show it’s man’s fault. All it has managed to do is continue to assert without evidence that its mostly all man’s fault (and it only manages to do that by ignoring the null hypothesis). the authors statement says nothing about what science might be able to do in the future.
Great than you should have no problem providing the exact percentage number of the current climate change that is caused by humanity and the proof that that number is valid.
Several days later and I see Steven still hasn’t provided the exact percentage number of the current climate change that is caused by humanity or any proof that that number is valid. Could it be because science has not come up with the answer (contrary to his baseless assertion that it has).
“You might not like the answer”
There is no *the* answer, even when reduced to the question of CO2 alone. IPCC reports have the range of ECS to doubling between 1.5C and 4.5C and hasn’t reduced that range in decades. That’s a factor of three between the low value and the high value, even if we assumed the boundaries of the range were hard limits (Lewis & Curry’s approach certainly allows the possibility of ECS being below 1.5C).
Science has “answered the question” of whether we would expect warming from increased CO2 atmospheric concentration — we would. It hasn’t “answered the question” of *how much* warming will happen in a manner suitable for policy purposes, and given the wide ECS range (and failure to reduce it), it’s clear that the true answer is not known and may never be known.
If physicists claimed the average gravitational pull on earth was somewhere between 10 and 30 meters per second squared, and had failed to reduce that range in decades of research, would you claim science has “answered this question”? (To complete the analogy, we could have some physicists condemn anyone believing an observational estimate below 10 as anti-science deniers.)
“you might not like the answer” – I don’t like non-scientific gibberish such as appeals to authority and assertions of things not in evidence.
“you might disagree with the methods” – I definitely don’t agree with non-scientific methods. computer games that have zero ability to predict are not scientific (science is predictive).
“you might find that there is some uncertainty” – That’s the understatement of the year
“but science has answered this question.” – No it has not. If the methods can not be agreed upon and the uncertainty is too large than it’s not really an answer unless you are claiming the answer is “there is no answer because it’s the uncertainty is too great”.
John Endicott
Yes, I think that Mosher would have been more accurate had he said that scientists have looked at the problem, and have attempted to provide answers. However, they have not been satisfactory because of issues such as unstated uncertainty or uncertainty that is too large (e.g. 1 SD 10-70%), unstated assumptions, cherry picking, ‘novel’ mathematics/statistics that are wrong, and a host of other problems that open the ‘answers’ to easy criticism. One doesn’t even have to be a specialist to find things that are wrong with most of the climatology research — or work on temperature databases for that matter!
I should have remarked that among the other problems with science answering The Question, there is a perfect example of the fable about the King’s New Clothes. The Media and other alarmist scientists were congratulating Hansen on the 30th anniversary of his 1988 predictions. They fawned over him as being prescient. Yet, I demonstrated that a simple naive linear extrapolation performed better than his predictions. And, had it not been for him assuming a volcanic eruption in 2014, which didn’t happen, his predictions would have been even worse, thus, being ‘right’ for the wrong reason. In reality, about the most generous thing that one could say about Hansen’s predictions was that he got the sign of the slopes correct. Therefore, one cannot really have much faith in the ‘answers’ for the ‘science’ of climatology, when the practitioners are afraid to tell the ‘king’ when he is naked.
Steven
Science is not a disembodied god what answers questions. Science has answered nothing. People try to do so.
“There is some uncertainty”? Some? There is zero certainty, literally, because their uncertainty band includes zero. All they have is some guesses, and bad guesses made using bath math, and yet they attribute things. Who? Scientists do. Attribution is an exercise that can be done without even a sliver of correlation. You just declare it to be so. Science by declaration. That is less logical than religion by Revelation.
AGW is still in the realm of attribution. There is nearly no correlation and absence of correlation is proof of a lack of causation. However even a total lack of correlation is not a proof of a lack of attribution, because attribution is arbitrary.
“Science” is a method and a vocabulary and an agreed analytical process. Scientists using it well or improperly are making an attribution about AG CO2 in which they can have no confidence because the AG contribution to the rise or fall of the global average temperature is indeterminate. “Opinion” is not “confidence”.
I think they are hoping to see more correlation, eventually, and are holding thumbs it will show up sooner than later. In the meantime they want the rest of us to accept their attribution and vague correlation as maybe “the truth”. Bah, humbug.
Simple common sense says we should use the only climate model that seems to work, and run it forward a few decades.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1134%2FS000143381004002X
We should under no circumstances base any actions on climate models that have a) not been validated, or b) been invalidated. We do not have to roll with a punch that turns out to be one stroke with a wet noodle.
Models are not and never will be “science”.
If science has answered the question, why is the range on Climate Sensitivity the same today as it was 30 years ago?
As always Steve, you say what whatever you need to say in order to protect your paycheck.
Steve, does this mean their modeling prediction/Projection failures can answer the question too?
Good point, the failures at prediction/projection provide the *only* real answer science has given: that they don’t know the answer and that, therefore, their assumptions/assertions/attributions are incorrect.
“…. it has never been the position of skeptics that ‘climate change isn’t real.’ That is a fundamental misrepresentation.”
Actually from my experience of discussing ‘Climate Change’ with family, friends and colleagues rather than a ‘fundamental misrepresentation’ it is simply a semantic or interpretive error. When discussing climate change skeptical people do not interpret the words ‘Climate Change’ literally, what they actually hear is ‘catastrophic climate change’ or ‘human caused catastrophic climate change’ or similar. Often you will hear responses to “What do you think of Climate Change?” such as, “It’s a load of rubbish, it doesn’t exist, the climate is changing all the time anyway, it’s natural ……” There is a huge difference between ‘climate change’ and ‘Climate Change’ to ordinary folk that don’t have any personal skin in the game as it were and when they see official or news reports of ‘climate change’ they respond to ‘Climate Change’. They are not denying climate changes, only that those changes are most likely natural, cyclical and while humans do have an effect on climate, it is most likely minor and transient.
History tends to repeat itself. These CAGW enthusiasts are merely selling “Indulgencies” as per the Catholic Church in days of yore. And very successful they are at the moment; particularly when you consider the darker side of their methods. Fortunately these methods tend to be economic rather than outright brutality these days.
Mind you I must admit to bias here as I was brought up in the protestant persuasion. Heretics then and heretics now it seems.
“The real question is: What portion of current climate change is caused by humanity?”
No the real question is whether any of the climate change we are seeing is BAD whether its man caused or not. Is there really a catastrophic scenario? The answer is most assuredly NO, so in fact it doesn’t matter what amount of it is man made and what amount is natural. This is what drives me nuts about the IPCC apologist Nick Stokes and Steven Mosher who both spend their time defending and explaining the climate craziness, whether or not they both actually believe the data both of them absolutely know that there is no Catastrophic scenario, but neither of them will ever cop to it because both of them swim in circles that would eat them alive if they did. Same with most of the casual supporters, yet both will stand by and watch people’s lives get destroyed by the zealots. This is why I have lost all respect for both of them. Mosher most of all because he claims to be a Libertarian which I share with him, but no Libertarian would stand by and watch the mob take control of the state ever.
This is the real nub of it. The original 2C of warming threshold was pulled out of a politician (posing as a scientist)’s nether regions as a scare goal. The science has never shown a biological threshold event on temperature and historical and migratory data would suggest it doesn’t exist. To support this idea, some scientists have perverted the definition of “extinction” to include the movement of plants and animals out of margin environments to more conducive locales for survival. Local extinction is a meaningless term used to reinforce the disaster porn meme.
Geology tells us the world has been 15K or more higher in temperature, and paleontology tells us there was a large diversity of life in that temperature range. The 2C (now 1.5C since evidence indicated we may not reach 2C) limit is a farce!
Okay, so the meme IS a bit funny. And it makes its point. What is needed is a counter meme. Perhaps someone with access to Microsoft Paint can draw up a timeline a “We have 5 years left to save the planet.”
yeah, one with
1980,1985,1990, and so on, on the left side of the x-axisFrom the article: “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.”
That’s the long and short of it. The Alarmists should come back and ask for money *after* they answer this question.
Come on, now. Answer it right here, right now, and then we can all move on to other things.
For those new to this subject, there won’t be any answer from the Alarmists because they don’t have the answer. Just ask them. Like I’m doing now.
“The real question is: What portion of current climate change is caused by humanity?”
— Actually, the real question is whether or not any plan of action we can take can be expected to result in a net benefit. If warming is dangerous or expensive AND we can do something about such that the expected benefits exceed the expected costs, then we should take action. It doesn’t matter if the warming is caused my mankind or is natural.
The only reason to distinguish between the two sources of warming is that it strikes people as incomprehensibly dumb that humans can effectively and economically override the natural global climate cycle. It’s blatantly obvious that we can’t mitigate that warming. It’s not quite as obvious that we also have only a limited ability to mitigate our own contribution to warming.
People have images of campers leaving trash behind at a campsite and we’re used to seeing mankind’s impact on nature as negative. Mankind’s impact on climate bad. Nature impact on climate good.
I have to slightly disagree here. It matters if the warming is caused by man or is natural because there’s nothing man can do if it is natural (and it is futile for man to try). Man does not control nature, man can only, at best, mitigate the effects of nature.
I have to disagree that “good people … kind people” have supported this insulting picture of a false premise. Good and kind people are aware of the tyrannical tendency in humans, and of thoughts and actions that express it.
“doesn’t change anyone’s mind. It doesn’t promote mutual respect. Instead it wounds, it insults, it polarizes.”
“it polarizes” That is exactly what the image is meant to do. It is meant to divide us. It is a ploy progressives socialist have always use to get votes. It’s not aimed to change anyone’s mind it’s aimed to keep the politicians they vote for inline.
My response cartoon.
https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6461242545627369472
Simple but logical…Awesome..
Wait – we aren’t supposed to have sex until the climate changes dramatically!
Yikes!
Is this another attempt at population control?
They never define “climate change”
“That is a fundamental misrepresentation.”
Well, not all of us. Some of are still true to science and won’t be browbeaten or peer pressured into silence.
Referring to the Dutton/Brune Penn State METEO 300 chapter 7.2: These two professors quite clearly assume/state that the earth’s current 0.3 albedo would remain even if the atmosphere were gone or if the atmosphere were 100 % nitrogen and at an average power flux& temperature of 240 W/m^2 & 255 K.
That is just flat ridiculous.
Without the atmosphere or with 100% nitrogen there would be no liquid water or water vapor, no vegetation, no clouds, no snow, no ice, no oceans and no longer a 0.3 albedo.
The sans atmosphere albedo would be similar to the moon’s as listed in NASA’s planetary data lists, a lunarific 0.14, 390 K on the lit side, 100 K on the dark.
And the naked, barren, zero water w/o atmosphere earth would receive 25% to 40% more kJ/h of solar energy and as a result would be 20 to 30 C hotter not 33 C colder, a direct refutation of the greenhouse effect theory and most certainly NOT a near absolute zero frozen ball of ice.
Nick S.
https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6466699347852611584
https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6457980707988922368
I’m not sure if it makes any sense to comment o/t, but I think the Moon is rather cold on average, isn’t it?
Hugs,
OK, I’ll plow this ground again as have others.
Averages don’t mean squat and can be misleading – and for a used car salesman – confusion is the point.
Suppose the lit side’s high temp. is 308 K, 35 C, 95 F and the dark side’s low temp is 268 K, -20 C, -4 F. The average is 288 K, 15 C, 59 F, the range 40 C. Habitable.
Suppose the lit side’s high temp. is 388 K, 115 C, 239 F and the dark side’s low temp is 188 K, -85 C, -121 F. The average is the same 288 K, 15 C, 59 F, but the range is 200 C. Not habitable.
Identical averages, entirely different worlds.
Without an atmosphere the earth would get baked for twelve hours by a 394 K, 121 C, 250 F solar wind. Nothing is surviving that. That it drops to 100 K on the dark side is irrelevant or that the “average” is below zero. It’s a barren rock, no water, ice, clouds or 0.3 albedo.
NOAA says the earth would be frozen ice ball at -436 F, 24 Rankine. Complete crap!!! https://sos.noaa.gov/Education/script_docs/SCRIPTWhat-makes-Earth-habitable.pdf
1) 288 K – 255 K = 33C warmer is rubbish. 288 K is a WAG by WMO. 255 K is a S-B calculation based on an average ToA of 240 W/m^2 that assumes the albedo remains 0.3 without an atmosphere. The two numbers aren’t even in the same galaxy and there is not legitimate reason to subtract one for them other.
2) The up/down/”back” LWIR GHG energy loop is a thermodynamic travesty.
3) BB radiation of 396 W/m^2 from the surface that powers 1& 2 is a theoretical “what if” S-B calculation with zero physical reality.
1 + 2 + 3 = zero RGHE
“Instead it wounds, it insults, it polarizes.”… That is its design. It is deliberate.
….as for the science. Their hypothesis is Anthropogenic Global Warming caused by Human sources of CO2… Not Climate Change. Climate Change is OUR hypothesis. Climate Change is natural and any anthropogenic signal is lost in the noise of natural variation….
This is just the beginning of a new full court press to pass a Carbon Tax in Congress. The new carbon tax proposals include everything from weaponizing the IRS to estimate individual and corporate carbon output, to taxes on the number of children parents bear. Always follow the money.
I can’t wait to see Josh’s version of that cartoon…I bet it will be priceless..
Get with the program. It’s extreme weather doom nowadays-
https://www.adelaidenow.com.au/technology/why-our-weather-events-will-only-get-worse/news-story/9f1d563c0226afa5d9fc7830eec0601f
‘Jim McLennan is a bushfire safety researcher and adjunct professor at La Trobe University and he’s seriously worried.
He said to date the worst Queensland bushfire, in terms of fatalities, took place on October 30, 1918, on a cattle station at Saltern Creek, when five male employees died when a wind change trapped them as they attempted to extinguish a blaze.’
Oops Fcuk!
It’s a real struggle Down Under folks-
“Our research shows that many Australians struggle to understand that we live in a country where natural perils exist and that the actions required to increase our safety are sometimes inconvenient and threaten the very things we value.”
Although a 15 year old schoolgirl got it over a hundred years ago-
http://www.dorotheamackellar.com.au/archive/mycountry.htm
” it polarizes.”
I’m pretty sure that’s a feature, not a bug.
Alternative climate change timeline:
“This global warming is caused by human CO2, stop cars, industry and electricity, join our cause”
“Climate change in general is caused by human CO2, stop cars, industry and electricity, join our cause”
“Flood or drought, more or less hurricanes, wetter or dryer, it’s all us, so let’s make electricity unreliable and expensive”
“It’s colder where you live maybe but still warming at the poles and in the oceans”
“It’s only fake ice that’s increasing – the earth is still warming according to our models…”
“All those millions unemployed and homeless due to electricity grid collapse are just indigent deniers, have only themselves to blame …”
“Get your hands off me!” You have the right to remain silent, anything you say can be used as evidence against you …
Climate Believers have this self-delusional fantasy about skeptics/climate realists, that we are coming around to their fantasy way of thinking about climate, and when we do eventually realize how “wrong” we were, we will be like, shocked and dismayed. Dream on, snowflakes, dream on. The reality, of course, is just the opposite.
Indeed. I’d say it’s the believers who are more likely to switch to skepticism (once exposed to the facts) than it is for skeptics to become believers (when exposed to messaging that is packaged in the “right’ way). Anecdotally, I can think of several prominent skeptics who were former believers whereas I can’t think of a single prominent believer who was a former skeptic. Does anyone here know of any?
“…Instead it wounds, it insults, it polarizes…”
Aha! Mission successful, then!
“The real question is: What portion of current climate change is caused by humanity?”
The real question should be, Will the result of anthropogenic climate change be of greater cost than the benefits gained from the anthropogenic behaviour causing it?
My answer is No. All that may be damaged by climate change was created as a result of anthropogenic behaviour. I’d like a Climate catastrophist to explain, what has to happen for the destruction caused by anthropogenic climate change to be greater than the benefits from anthropogenic activity?
They missed the end of the chart. SCAM EXPOSED. COMPENSATION CLAIMS.
A major enabler of the progressive left mantra, “the ends justify the means,” is United Nations Principle 15. At the Earth Summit in Rio in 1992, the United Nations produced the Rio Declaration. That document includes Principle 15: “Where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to prevent environmental degradation.” This has become known as the Precautionary Principle.
The EPA interprets the Principle to mean that, if one can hypothesize a small possibility of an environmental threat, measures to respond to the perceived threat are justified. Compelling scientific evidence of a threat of serious damage becomes a moot point. The adoption of this premise was the beginning of “agenda-driven science.”
It was a small step for the EPA and their contractors to resort to falsified reports to advance political agendas and to achieve personal financial goals. I submit that the aggressive implementation of the Principle by the EPA has been a major contributor to “The Crisis of Integrity-Deficient Science” in the U.S. Rejecting the Precautionary Principle as a guide for environmental policy and returning to a rational environmental policy would go a long way toward restoring scientific integrity.