By Larry Kummer. From the Fabius Maximus website.
Summary: Despite thirty years of efforts by most of the elite institutions of America, US governments have done little to fight climate change. While a bout of awful weather might panic America into enacting activists’ wish list, as of today this is one of the great political failures of modern American history. It is rich with lessons for when scientists warn of the next disaster. The 21st century will give us more such challenges. Let’s try to do better.
The puzzle of the climate change crusade
Since James Hansen brought global warming to the headlines in his 1989 Senate testimony, scientists working for aggressive public policy action have had almost every advantage. They have PR agencies (e.g., the expensive propaganda video by 10:10). They have most of America’s elite institutions supporting them, including government agencies, the news media, academia, foundations, even funding from the energy companies. The majority of scientists in all fields support the program.
The other side, “skeptics”, have some funding from energy companies and conservative groups, with the heavy lifting being done by a small number of scientists and meteorologists, plus volunteer amateurs.
What the Soviet military called the correlation of forces overwhelmingly favored those wanting action. Public policy in America and the West should have gone green many years ago. But America’s governments have done little. Climate change ranks at the bottom of most surveys of what Americans’ see as our greatest challenges? (CEOs, too.) In November, Washington voters decisively defeated an ambitious proposal to fight climate change.
And not just in the USA. Climate change policy toppled Australia’s government. The Yellow Vest protests in France are the death knell for large-scale action in France. What went wrong?
The narrative gives answers
The usual answers use the information deficit model, in which the public’s skepticism about the need for radical action results from a lack of information. Thirty years of providing information at increasing volume and intensity has accomplished nothing. Pouring more water on a rock does not make it wetter.
“Insanity is repeating the same mistakes and expecting different results.”
— Ancient adage of Alcoholics Anonymous. More about that here.
Others give more complex explanations, such as “Between conflation and denial – the politics of climate expertise in Australia” by Peter Tangney in the Australian Journal of Political Science.
“This paper describes an ongoing tension between alternative uses of expert knowledge that unwittingly combines facts with values in ways that inflame polarised climate change debate. Climate politics indicates a need for experts to disentangle disputed facts from identity-defining group commitments.” {See Curry’s article for more about this paper.}
There are simpler and more powerful explanations for the campaign’s failure. Lessons giving us useful lessons for dealing with future threats.
Lesson #1: Standards are high for those sounding the alarm
“Caesar’s wife must be above suspicion.”
— A harsh but operationally accurate Roman proverb.
We have seen this played out many times in books and films since the publication of When Worlds Collide
First, the basis for the warnings must be evaluated by an interdisciplinary team of experts outside the community sounding the alarm. Climate models are the core of the warning about climate change. They have never been so examined. Perhaps we can end the climate policy wars by a test of the models. Whatever the costs of such reviews and tests, they would be trivial compared to the need to establish public confidence in these models.
Second, questions from the public must be answered. Of course, such warnings are greeted with skepticism. That is natural given the extraordinary nature of the threat and vast commitment of resources needed to fight it. Of course, many of the questions will be foolish or ignorant. Nevertheless, they all must be answered, with the supporting data made publicly available. Whatever the cost of doing so, it is trivial compared to the need.
Scientists seeking to save the world should never say things like this…
“In response to a request for supporting data, Philip Jones, a prominent researcher {U of East Anglia} said ‘We have 25 or so years invested in the work. Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it?’”
– From the testimony of Stephen McIntyre before the House Committee on Energy and Commerce (the July 2006 hearings which produced the Wegman Report). Jones has not publicly denied this.
Scientists seeking to save the world should not destroy key records, which are required to be kept and made public. They should not force people to file Freedom of Information requests to get key information. And the response to FOIs should never be like this…
“The {climategate} emails reveal repeated and systematic attempts by him and his colleagues to block FOI requests from climate sceptics who wanted access to emails, documents and data. These moves were not only contrary to the spirit of scientific openness, but according to the government body that administers the FOI act were ‘not dealt with as they should have been under the legislation.’” {The Guardian.}
Steve McIntyre has documented the defensive and self-defeating efforts of climate scientists to keep vital information secret, often violating the disclosure policies of journals, universities, and government funding agencies. To many laypeople these actions by scientists scream “something wrong”.
Yet these were common behaviors by climate scientists to requests for information by both scientists and amateurs. This kind of behavior, more than anything else, provoked skepticism. Rightly or not, this lack of transparency suggested that the scientists sounding the alarm were hiding something.
The burden of proof rests on those warning the world about a danger requiring trillions of dollars to mitigate, and perhaps drastic revisions to – or even abandoning – capitalism (as in Naomi Klein’s This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate
Lesson #2: don’t get tied to activists
Activists latch onto threats for their own purposes. They exaggerate threats, attack those asking questions, and poison the debate. Scientists who treat them as allies must remember the ancient rule that “silence means assent.” Failure to speak when activists misrepresent the science discredits both groups.
For a sad example, look at “the pause.” Starting in 2006 climate scientists noticed a slowing in the rate of atmospheric warming. By 2009 there were peer-reviewed papers about it (e.g., in GRL), and it was an active focus of research (see links to these 29 papers). In 2013 the UK Met Office published a series of papers about the pause, which shifted the frontier of climate science from discussion about the existence of the “pause” to its causes (see links to these 38 papers). Some scientists gave forecasts of its duration (see links to 17 forecasts) – since a pause is, by definition, temporary.
During this period activists wrote scores, or hundreds, of articles not only denying that there was a pause in warming – but mocking as “deniers” people citing the literature about it. For example, see Phil Plait’s articles at Slate here and here. The leaders of climate science remained silent. Even those writing papers about the pause remained silent while activists ignored their work.
While an impressive display of climate scientists’ message discipline, it blasted away their credibility for those who saw the science behind the curtain of propaganda.
Conclusions
“The time for debate has ended”
— Marcia McNutt (then editor-in-Chief of Science and now President of the NAS) in “The beyond-two-degree inferno“, an editorial in Science, 3 July 2015.
I agree with McNutt: the public policy debate has ended. A critical mass of the US public has lost confidence in climate science as an institution (i.e., rejecting its warnings). As a result, the US probably will take no substantial steps to prepare for possible future climate change, not even preparing for re-occurrence of past extreme weather. The weather will determine how policy evolves, and eventually prove which side was right.
All that remains is to discuss the lessons we can learn from this debacle so that we can do better in the future. More challenges lie ahead in which we will need scientists to evaluate risks and find the best responses. Let’s hope we do better next time.
For More Information
For more information about this vital issue see the keys to understanding climate change and these posts about ways to end the climate wars…
- Important: climate scientists can restart the climate change debate – & win.
- Thomas Kuhn tells us what we need to know about climate science.
- Daniel Davies’ insights about predictions can unlock the climate change debate.
- Karl Popper explains how to open the deadlocked climate policy debate.
- Paul Krugman talks about economics. Climate scientists can learn from his insights.
- Milton Friedman’s advice about restarting the climate policy debate.
- A candid climate scientist explains how to fix the debate.
- Roger Pielke Jr.: climate science is a grab for power.
Any layman can look at the “debate” from the standpoint of a juror.
When a climate scientist makes ridiculous statements or outright lies, the law say as a juror, I can ignore them.
Agreed.
‘Climate models are the core of the warning about climate change. They have never been so examined. Perhaps we can end the climate policy wars by a test of the models. Whatever the costs of such reviews and tests, they would be trivial compared to the need to establish public confidence in these models.’
No, we don’t need tests. The assumption for the validity of climate (sic) models is that scientists understand the atmosphere well enough to model it, to the point of determining weather decades out. The public knows they can’t tell us what the weather is going to be NEXT TUESDAY.
Indeed, every year we get announcements of innovations in modeling that are going to give even ‘better’ results from the models. A declaration that all models before were junk. I remember innovations like ‘we are going to include clouds now,’ and ‘we are adding aerosols to the models.’ An incredulous public asked, “You mean you didn’t even have clouds in the models ?!?!”
It is self-evident the models are junk. There is no need to test them to find out.
Climate models, yes.
Mr Kernodle, now that is the perfect
climate model !
Good one, Mr Kernodle.
The models have already been falsified, with the exception of the Russian model, by the empirical data since CMIP5 was released. While this does not prove the Russian model is right, it is reasonable to discard all the others. Of course if the long term projections of the Russian model are accepted, there is no reason for alarm.
The ‘tests’ are called verification and validation. The IPCC admits that the climate is a chaotic system for which prediction is impossible. As such it is impossible to verity and validate climate models.
Sooo . . . the American people aren’t going to give up their cushy, fossil-fuelled lifestyle, for which substitutes don’t exist, on the say-so of a bunch of hippies wearing The End Is Nigh! sandwich signs and packing Ouija boards.
Anyone who’s passed the 7th grade can put the graph of “warming” for the last 20 years up against the graph of rising CO2 emissions and conclude that CO2 is unlikely to be the agent warming things the TERRIFYING degree and a half since 1850. We know a non-problem when we see one.
“a bunch of hippies wearing The End Is Nigh! sandwich signs and packing Ouija boards.”
You left out “and who hypocritically don’t ACT like the end is nigh, living in modern luxury and even, like Leonardo di Caprio, etc., owning multiple houses, using private jets, to get to yachts they dive off with their supermodel of the week. Yachts owned by people who made money on…oil”.
But not quite as succinct, I realize…
1.5 degrees????
I thought it was .8 Goldrider
The first rule of investing applies here. Never, ever, ever take financial advice from somebody wearing fancy socks or Birkenstocks. CAWG is all about the money.
Cheers,
Speed
“Whatever the costs of such reviews and tests, they would be trivial compared to the need to establish public confidence in these models.”
And how is there a “need” to establish trust in models which are false, and give wrong results, and are used to grab power, and to impoverish people?
The need is to widely disseminate the truth and to let everyone in the whole world know they are being duped and have been had.
Menicholas,
“And how is there a “need” to establish trust in models”
There is a need for those who tell us the models are reliable. Try to see things from others people’s perspectives. This is advice for scientists, and so written to make sense from their chairs.
Yet they are so certain of their predictions that they want to dismantle Capitalism, empower central authoritarian government to remove individual liberty, impoverish the middle class with crippling energy costs and fees, and destroy the quality of living for the masses to protect the luxuries of the elites with money who will buy government indulgences to live free and skrew all others. CAGW is so transparently Political Science that to call it physical science is completely laughable.
It is even worse than that. Raising energy prices and limiting availability will flow into all aspects of the world economy. There will be less water, less food, less medicine, less R&D, less innovation. It translates into enormous death and misery world-wide, but particularly in lesser developed countries. The question becomes: “How many millions of human beings do you want to kill to fight climate change.”
The new models with clouds and aerosols gave pretty much the same answer as the previous models. So why would we think they were any better? They should have been screaming “Oh my God! The tipping point is not five years from now – it was five years ago!” Or else they should have said “We actually have 25 years to go to the tipping point.” Either one would have made us perk up and look a little more closely.
But the same results merely told us GIGO.
Neo – excellent point. In the U.S. particularly, any POV needs to convince the guy (or gal) entering the voting booth. The intelligensia and cultural leaders have drunk the Kool-Aid. But the average Joe looks at the cost involved, and has concluded so far that he/she is not going to bear that cost.
Falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus
There are two sayings that I had read in the past but just happened to save yesterday that are applicable to claims by climate scientists: Hitchens’s razor and the Sagan standard.
Hitchens’s razor: “What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.” It asserts that the burden of proof regarding the truthfulness of a claim lies with the one who makes the claim, and if this burden is not met, the claim is unfounded, and its opponents need not argue further in order to dismiss it.
Sagan standard: “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.”
I give you Chiropractic and Homeopathy. The former declare one has imaginary ailments like “subluxations” or “a rib out” (out of WHERE?) and fix them with treatments proven imaginary (placebo effects). Homeopaths claim woo-woo water will fix whatever provided you believe it in. I suppose demon-exorcists and smudge ceremonies work on the same principals. But at the end of the day it doesn’t matter what you believe or think you feel–it matters what the FACTS show. And the facts are all against CAGW being anything other than a redistribution scam.
But all of the above occupy that wonderful Catch-22: I can’t prove it exists, but you can’t prove it doesn’t. VERY convenient!
Yes, and here in Ontario, Canada, our previous progressive Liberal government actually allows for our tax-funded healthcare system to pay for this crap. Oh, and add Traditional Chinese medicine, i.e., acupuncture, qi and folk medicines.
All the while telling us (hell, demanding) that we have to “listen to the science” of climate change.
Lets face it, scratch a warmunist, and you’ll find no end to the unscientific crap they’ll believe in.
Hell, our Prime Minister, Sockboy Selfie, Junior, is all in on climatechangeglobalwarmingcarbontax. AND he cups (just google it).
I have a friend who had acupuncture therapy. I did more for her than a neurosurgeon’s cutting her.
I think it goes way beyond a mere redistribution scam.
Way way beyond that.
That, and what Glenn “Instapundit” Reynolds says: I’ll believe it’s a crisis when they start acting like a crisis”.
The “they” are the climate scolds, Chicken Littles and Usual Suspects (i.e., the same folks who appear at literally EVERY protest), and people like Gore and Suzuki and di Caprio who own ocean-front property, etc.
>>>Despite thirty years of efforts by most of the elite institutions of America, US governments have done little to fight climate change. While a bout of awful weather might panic America into enacting activists’ wish list, as of today this is one of the great political failures of modern American history. It is rich with lessons for when scientists warn of the next disaster.<<<
What hubris.
Right
“Discuss the lessons we can learn…”
As in, “don’t be a self serving liar”?
Neo
The problem is worse than that. The average layperson is not exposed to the skeptic side at all. They hear only the warmists gloom and doom and are constantly told that anyone who questions this is unworthy of any consideration and maybe should be locked up for misleading the public. Salby addresses this with a forceful statement at 1:24:30 in this video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1710&v=rohF6K2avtY).
My local paper won’t publish my letters to the editor that question the “consensus view”. I contacted one Op. ed writer who stressed the need to save the world from our CO2 and she had no idea the hockey stick graph had even been questioned let alone falsified.
Actually, the average layperson IS exposed to the skeptic side–all day long. In the diners and truck stops and feed stores of America, no one believes in this shi-te. One reason why is people who actually work outside and get their hands dirty realize the weather comes and goes and has been ever thus. I’ve been looking at the same high tide mark for 50+ years, hard to convince me the seas are rising 3mm and that this means anything. Those who remember grammar-school geology class (back when they still taught that, instead of intersectional grievance studies) know the past included both the lush jungles of the dinosaurs and the great glaciations–none of which were caused by SUV’s.
The ONLY people who buy this crap wholesale are social climbers within the Blue Bubble of the Eastern Acela corridor and CA moonbat-chic. They only read and write each other, and they think they’re much, MUCH smarter than We Deplorables, hence their conviction. Same crew believed in eugenics back in the early 20th century.
Well said Goldrider ,
I have farmed all my life and still get my hands dirty out in the sun and rain .
I mix with a large number of farmers and rural folk and they virtually dismiss global warming — climate change .
A minority who studied science in university are believers as they say that they learnt that
“CO2 increasing in the atmosphere will warm the planet and as temperatures and CO2 are both increasing there definitely is a linkage ”
Our Labour Green government has had a so called “nuclear moment ” and believe that “we ” have to take precautions to help save the world .
They are going to do this by spending ten billion dollars on a light rail from the center of Auckland to the Airport which will only be used by Auckland’ers to fly around the world.
Ten billion dollars would pay for one hundred kilometers of four lane motorway which would be used by all including freight which is the life blood of New Zealand as an exporting country .
The small amount of permanent warming that we will experience around the world can only be good and the increase of CO2 in the atmosphere can help grow food to feed the world .
I am sure that the populations of our largest cities have little idea how the food gets onto the shelves of their local supermarkets and they cannot see that if the energy prices are pushed up by our stupid government policies that prices can only increase.
Climate change is a Non Problem that has been taken up by activists who want to save the world .
Goldrider
Your point is well taken and my experiences with folks follows yours but they never heard of Richard Lindzen or Judith Curry or any scientific documentation that disagrees with the consensus they read and hear about. They just know it all “smells bad” and there isn’t anything they can see that fits the doom and gloom narrative. So if confronted with the “97%” argument their only response is “I don’t buy it” instead of being able to show where the hypothesis is falsified in failed models and disproved assumptions. I am convinced there has to be a better counter argument available to the general public or this tremendously wasteful expense will continue indefinitely.
DMA: never stop writing, and never give up! Give them the real-world facts and some figures that a newspaper’s editor can quickly check for themselves – I’ve had several letters published in my local paper.
I admit that in my area we’re lucky enough to have a broad-minded editor who’s interested in debate and likes a bit of a punch-up in the readers’ letters page!
Another thing to consider is that a lot of us simply don’t believe anything the government says, because we’ve seen how it lied so many times in the past in order to increase its power. And an even larger number assume that anything in the media is a lie unless proven otherwise.
Convincing people to go back to living in mud huts because Climate Change required complete control of The Narrative, and the left lost that when the Internet became popular.
The only place where they still have total control is the schools, which is why the vast majority of Climate Change zombies I see these days are kids. It’s been beaten into them for twenty years, and they need time to learn that they were lied to.
Mostly, though, scientists who want to convince people should act like scientists, and not a closed priesthood of secret data and secret teachings. It’s not hard to convince people of the truth when you openly show it to them. It’s harder to convince people of lies with no evidence.
Mark,
That’s an important point! I kept this post focused narrowly on climate science, but the broad loss of confidence in America’s institutions is an important factor. And loss of confidence in government officials is the core of this. To see why, read The Big List of Lies by Government Officials.
Also see Gallup’s annual Confidence in Institutions surveys. Terrifying data to anyone interested in America’s future:
https://news.gallup.com/poll/1597/confidence-institutions.aspx
Larry, A third point could be: Stop exaggerating the gravity and certainty of your claims.
Caleb Rossiter summarized this process in the following:
A powerful publicity machine magnifies the alarm, bombarding citizens with exaggerations and claims of certainty that are proven wrong as you dig down to their underlying scientific studies:
Public figures, news editors, and commentators make claims that are more alarmist than what individual IPCC authors say at the release of the report.
Individual IPCC authors make claims at the release of the report that are more alarmist than what the official press release says.
The official press release makes claims that are more alarmist than what the report’s summary for policy-makers says.
The summary for policy-makers makes claims that are more alarmist than the various chapters of the reports.
The chapters of the report make claims that are more alarmist than the studies they reference in the footnotes.
The studies referenced in the footnotes are often actually peer-reviewed and generally make cautious claims about a possible trend spotted in one or a small number of locations or in a global computer model.
Both types of studies are more speculative than definitive because, as they always acknowledge in the fine print, they are based on highly-uncertain measurements of highly-complex phenomena with many interacting causes, of which warming gasses generated by human activity are only one, and often a minor component.
For governments to make policy on such a hierarchy of exaggeration brings to mind James Madison’s warning: “A popular Government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy; or perhaps both.”
Ron,
“A third point could be: Stop exaggerating the …certainty of your claims.’
We can make a long list of mistakes made by scientists in the climate crusade. Judith Curry and others have well documented that one.
But it is kinda human nature for experts to exaggerate the certainty of their conclusions. Proposing reforms that fight human nature is imo a waste of time. That’s why – as I propose here – we need external reviews. Second opinions by experts unaffiliated with the project.
+1, Mr Clutz.
+1^10
Yes, and all of the people cannot be fooled all of the time.
“To many laypeople these actions by scientists scream “something wrong”.”
To this layperson it screams fraud
+42.
Western society is made up of people who have been profsssionally marketed at by the msm ( newspapers, magazines, radio, tv and now the internet) for a century and a half or so with the period since ww2 being of particular intensity and featuring mass broadcast television.
Citizens have been tried on with all manner of over the top bs and their bs detectors been honed to a fine standard so when the CAGWarmists come along with their ready reversion to abuse ( ‘deniers’) and breathless doom and gloom every time a cow farts the instinctive reaction in most minds is, ‘oh here they go again, what’s on the other channel?’
Its about maintaining ones ‘credit as a witness’ as the judiciary might put it or in the CAGWArmistas case their utter lack thereof. And the beauty of it is they brought it on themselves.
Some of us have run out of channels to go to. I just turn off the TV. My science news if filtered through sites like WUWT which help me keep my cool while digesting what the CAGW crew is trying next. At one time my wife feared I would actually throw something through the screen.
What went wrong was scientists became activists and rightly got there butts kicked.
I would also add it appears that many on the left have already conceded what we have been saying the whole green climate science movement is in trouble, once USA stood alone now …
https://www.resilience.org/stories/2018-12-04/populism-is-bad-for-the-environment/
They actually realize that the sort of change they want and think needs to happen is beyond even Germany and France because they could not get the popular vote up. I would add Australia to that list.
What went wrong was scientists became activists and rightly got there butts kicked.
One can either be a scientist or an activist, one can not be both. Scientists are supposed to be neutral and go where the data leads them rather than prejudicing the results beforehand. Activists, on the other hand are never neutral, they pick a side and prejudge everything through the lens of that side. the two are incompatible such that once one becomes an activist, one ceases to be a scientist.
One cannot stand as a scientist on anything other than reproducible experiments and data along with the understanding of what would falsify it.
As a scientist one cannot “believe” in anything.
One of my friends challenged me with “well what do you believe in ?” my answer is that I believe in the falsifiability of all human knowledge – if it is not falsifiable then it isn’t really knowledge.
With that comes a somewhat depressing realization and acceptance that everything I know might be wrong.
Ken Irwin
“With that comes a somewhat depressing realization and acceptance that everything I know might be wrong.”
I find that liberating.
Excellent points of views, Mr Endicott. You have described
the issue perfectly.
“What went wrong was scientists became activists…”
I think what happened was activists became scientists.
School provides a barrage of propaganda that humans, particularly in their industrial activity, are destroying the earth. Many students that swallowed that message went into “earth sciences”.
I agree, the standard for earning a degree has fallen so low that anyone can become a scientist, especially in certain fields. I knew a person with a Master’s in Programming that could not program a simple sorting algorithm (their job was Senior Programmer – they later became a vice president of a department). I knew a person with a physics degree that thought that the Moon was bound to the Earth by the electromagnetic force. I knew a person with a Masters (in something) that thought Man hid from dinosaurs in caves (and we ween’t talking about birds). The list goes on.
Many activists started pretending they were scientists and hid out in government and university positions where they are protected from having to actually produce anything truthful or useful. They flock together like some kind of children’s cliche and reinforce each other’s beliefs. Reality is something to be denied – it isn’t politically correct and therefore banned.
Worse (and scarier): I know a nurse who is an anti-vaxxer…
“I think what happened was activists became scientists.”
It’s so obvious that sd is what happened, once one thinks sociologically. But the mass’s and journalists’ default assumption is that “scientist” = unprejudiced.
Well, that default will get overthrown, maybe permanently, down the road. An unforeseen side-effect! But deserved by the arrogant scientific community, which bridled at the prospect of institutionalizing a Science Court to serve as a check on their runaway fads and dogmas.
But not, regrettably, New Zealand!
The only possible climate change we might want to prepare for is cooling. And the way we do that is by having thriving economies, with relatively cheap, reliable energy available 24/7. The slight warming we’ve experienced since the LIA has been beneficial, and the weather is just weather. Worrying about climate is foolish. Man can and will adapt, just as he always has.
Ding! Ding! Ding!
We have a winner.
people trying to save the world also should not resort to the persecution of skeptics and launch into a world-wide propaganda campaign, much targeted at children, that would make Goebbels blush. It’s not like the world hasn’t seen this before.
the facts should speak for themselves
I would add that they need to also accept that in democracies the correct way to get change is thru democratic process not trying to impose socialism on them by force. I think France found that out the hard way 🙂
LdB
I think France would strongly disagree that socialism is bad (or more to the point: that socialism is worse than capitalism). What’s bad is the proverbial “running out of other people’s money”, and the cognitive dissonance as this is happening is stunning to watch.
The French are arguing about how to divide up the spoils, but they’re quite happy with the prospect of “spoils”.
people don’t like to admit they were played. whether it be to the tune of their laziness or their stupidity.
for now, we can sit back and watch how this turns out and interview them later, can’t we.
“One of the saddest lessons of history is this: if we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth.
The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken.”
Carl Sagan – Our Demon Haunted World.
One reason now given for the current mistrust of science is that while in the past Kuhn’s concept of overthrow of paradigms was true, it no long exists. We are now merely expanding these. This could be because we have no new ones or fail to see them. Certainly we are expanding many now old concepts. The trust first came from WWII with the science of the atom which produced NSF. It was a classic case of problem solving. Consider all hypotheses with thoughtful skepticism. Lots of money was spent on all these, and the result proven with considerable trepidation. We now fail in some (many?) areas, but there are still cases where real problems of various importance are solved. Where is the considerable trepidation?
Is this ‘excuse’ just another version of the “science is settled?” It was claimed once over a century ago.
A climate change crusade with no support in the data
https://tambonthongchai.com/2018/12/14/climateaction/
Thank you for your report. I have saved it for future use.
“While a bout of awful weather might panic America into enacting activists’ wish list…”
Only if they could clearly show that their wish list would be enough to fix the problem and stop the bad weather. And this would present an insurmountable problem. Because among other things China.
No, I think it is much more simple than that. From my own perspective, if most of the information I received from the “consensus” scientists was accurate or at least reasonable I might have gone along with it.
But the reality is that there is PLENTY of information from that group. But if someone feeds me a meal that consists of 80% accurate and reasonable “information” and 20% exaggeration, lies and ad hominems I am going to toss the whole thing because clearly I no longer know what to believe about the other 80%.
Right on point. Some self-styled skeptics have been loose cannons and insufferable. But climate advocates haven’t made the effort to give people the commentary they need in order to believe them, and the burden’s on them to prove their case. Advocates have responded to fair criticism with snark and insults. The best of the skeptics get no respect at all from their believer counterparts. Just look at the treatment of intelligent skeptics such as Curry, Pielke Jr. and Cliff Mass.
The response of advocates has been to escalate the scare tactics. The media blitz in support of the IPCC SR and Poland have been completely over the top. The few rational voices get drowned out and sullied by association.
Advocates (or believers) will never win the debate if they argue values and morality, and that’s been their go-to approach. Part of the polarized political environment can be laid at the feet of self-righteous climate advocates.
Once again, the group that has the burden of proof needs to be honest about what’s solid fact and what’s uncertain. They get nowhere by arguing that skeptics are wrong to harp on uncertainty -mainly because skeptics are right about this. Advocates can’t actually prove very much – they need to follow the cues of a good trial attorney and be persuasive, and that requires some humility and straightforwardness.
Advocates (or believers) will never win the debate if they argue values and morality, and that’s been their go-to approach
it’s their go-to approach because the science and the data really isn’t on their side. It’s the old adage about the courts:
When the law is on your side, pound the law
when the facts are on your side, pound the facts
when neither is on your side, pound the table.
they’ve been pounding the table for years.
@John Endicott – Yup!
If they had a sound scientific basis for their claims, they could just put the EVIDENCE out there and it would receive the appropriate response.
What they have put out there, by contrast, is not science but propaganda in support of a secular religion where any challenge to their pre-conceived conclusions is treated like heresy.
Not only is there no empirical evidence to support the notion that CO2 drives temperature anywhere in the current or past climate records, there is plenty to suggest it has NO effect whatsoever in those same climate records. The lack of quality and adequacy of said records is another issue in and of itself, but the fact remains that they have nothing to support their outlandish claims of “human CO-2 emission-related ‘catastrophic climate change'” that vaguely resembles “science.”
The repeated claims that “we only have [fill in the blank] years to ACT to “save ourselves” from [the certain “climate doom” du jour]” especially in the face of how many such alleged “tipping points” have already been passed without incident, just makes the whole thing farcical.
This sounds vaguely like the Mueller investigation lack of evidence and results.
Exactly.
Climatology was a field of study based on dozens of other fields with a large number of unknowns. Climate science is a pseudo science based on a large set of assumptions adopted to support a political agenda.
The reason climate scientists don’t debate skeptics is they are without ammunition. The only reason this nonsense is still going on is because the media has continued to hide all the problems. Until folks like Larry realized they have been conned, the deceptions will continue.
I think part of the reason the media has been so lazy and inept is that they get free stories pushed out by PR firms who’ve been hired to spread the message. Lots of free news to spread and fill up space.
Regardless, the media has become spineless cowards who are too stupid or too paid off to look at both sides of the question, let alone consider both sides. The NYTimes is essentially a lap dog that on occasion does real reporting.
Media these days:
1) fire the actual writers and editors who might actually know how to journalize
2) hire uni grads with useless degrees and pay them next to nothing (or nothing if you call them interns)
3) give them impressive titles like “senior” writer or “executive editor” (even if they are in their mid-20s)
4) have them re-type press releases from Greenpeace, WWF, etc.
5) try to sell online ads, subscriptions, etc. to pay for the corporate jet
6) go broke
7) fire everyone and beg for government assistance because “independent journalism”.
I don’t agree. Climate science has discovered important things, like ENSO and AMO.
The problem came when they tried to jerk up their relevance and importance with the MMGW scare.
“Just look at the treatment of intelligent skeptics such as Curry, Pielke Jr. and Cliff Mass.”
Neither Pielke Jr nor Mass are skeptics.
Nor Curry for that matter. All three are, as far as I’m aware, “lukewarmers”
We need more compelling science than a theory with no laws, axioms, postulates nor formulae to consider limiting the source of Carbon upon which all Carbon Based Life Forms depend.
the public’s skepticism about the need for radical action results from a lack of information.
Wrong!
That’s the same “If only we could package the message right the peons will fall in line” nonsense the alarmist have been peddling. The problem isn’t a lack of information/communication, they’ve been bombarding the public with “information” for years now thanks to a compliant media. The skeptical public isn’t buying it because they see through the BS. They remember when they are told that “snow will be a thing of the past” one year and than told that “warming means more snow” the next. They remember when the alarm was over a cooling world (“In search of the coming Ice Age”) before it was alarm over a warming world (“An Inconvenient Truth”). and all the other contradictory “information” that the alarmist have been peddling. Most of all they recognize a money/power grab (“carbon taxes”) when they see one.
In addition, people don’t take to being called names. After the BS leads them to be skeptical to then be lumped in with holocaust deniers, flat earthers, and other assorted kooks only works to push the masses further away from where the elites want to lead them.
The only place the alarmists “information” finds root is in the indoctrination of the young (who haven’t enough life experience to detect BS as well as the adults) in our school system. One can only hope as they grow older/grow up, those kids will realize how badly they’ve been lied to.
This article ignores the economic uncertainties.
The assumption of the Climate Change political lobby is that the Precautionary Principle applies.
That is: The potential negative impacts are so great and irreversible that we must at before we have any evidence that the threat is real.
This is actually reasonable if the required action so free or so near to free as to be lost in the uncertainties of growth. But the desired counter-measures to catastrophic AGW are so expensive as to make the Precautionary Principle apply also to avoiding them. Increased poverty kills.
Remember, only catastrophic AGW demands the Precautionary Principle be applied so only catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming is in scope for policy decisions.
My neck of the woods gets a new wind field every year or so “for the environment.” Peddle green failure somewhere else, because it is sanity that has failed.
I don’t think this is over. If we get a Dem president and Dems in control of both House and Senate, draconian climate legislation might await.
It really might come down to Republicans holding the Senate.
Indeed it isn’t, a Dem controlled legislative and executive branch will try to ram-rod through such legislation. As long as they don’t get 60 in the Senate, the Republicans can filibuster. The Dems might try to do away with the filibuster completely, but perhaps wiser heads will remember how Harry Reid’s doing away with it for judicial nominees bit them in the ass and think twice about that.
But even if they do get it though the Senate (by getting 60 or by eliminating the filibuster completely) it will end up in the courts, and that’s where Trump’s Harry Reid fueled legacy of appointing constitutionalist judges to the bench will be our last best hope of stopping the left’s madness. So ironically, we may have Harry Reid to thank should that situation ever come to pass.
Not if, but when. It is going to happen.
“The time for debate has ended”
There never was a debate. And that’s another reason for skepticism among the masses. They recognize when they’re being railroaded. Asserting, without reason, that the “debate is over” when anyone dares question “the (non-existent) consensus” doesn’t fool them.
+97 I always laugh at this canard. The “debate” never started, because the Eco-Nazis know they will lose the debate.
They are trying to keep a house of cars up in a hurricane as it is, since the basis of their claims is all hypothetical bullshit, circular reasoning, group-think, appeals to authority, and (on point) shouting down anyone who disagrees. Exposed to direct debate, the weakness of their claims will quickly be exposed.
should be house of CARDS
Whew, thought it was a new HDTV show, ala “tiny houses” or something arty:
http://museumarteutil.net/projects/house-of-cars-1-and-2/
FM says some interesting stuff but still misses the points:
1) There never was an honest debate. The climate consensus refused.
2) It is not all established that there is the need for more than adaptation when it comes to the changing climate.
3) The policies demanded by the climate consensus have failed in every way possible.
People are worse off, not better off thanks to climate consensus policies.
Hunter,
This was a discussion of one specific aspect of the climate policy debate. It wasn’t the Britannica entry on climate change you appear to be looking for.
It “missed” thousands of “points” in this massive and complex subject.
We are fortunate that we have the internet and sites like WUWT and ClimateAudit. Except for this, the advocates of CAGW have had all the traditional advantages, as mentioned in the article. Paradoxically, their ready access to the press and publicity has encouraged them to engage in self-destructive behavior. They thought they could get away with anything, and this belief has been the rope that hung them. Turning off the air conditioning in the Senate cambers, marches, nutty advocates like Sarah Myhre, photo shopping the the Gore/Nye “Climate 101” video, their collusion to stifle dissenting views as exposed in their emails, and even their choice of a public spokesman, Al Gore for heaven’s sake, have all served to undermine their credibility. Scientists, after all is said and done, are people too, and individually they are just as likely to be crooks and frauds as members of any other segment of our society. And when they are led by a self-serving politician like Al Gore, it is just that much easier to make the connection.
This is likely to be one of the benefits of a society that is not run by a small group of oligarchs or a tyrant. The history of WWII is one of massive miscalculations by the Axis. They focused on wonder weapons (Germany) and mythical racial superiority (both Germany and Japan), and never confronted the simplest facts of the war. Neither could interdict and diminish the industrial might of the U. S. Their beliefs blinded the small groups that dominated these countries to reality. The same thing occurred in the Soviet Union, but their tyrant, Stalin, had the good fortune to be our enemies enemy. FDR had the common sense to invite his most hated political adversaries, Detroit auto executives, to help manage and direct the mobilization. Two years after Pearl Harbor, Willow Run was producing a B-24 every 59 minutes. In Axis countries, and in the Soviet Union, political enemies or those thought to be racially inferior were liquidated.
It is not by accident that advocates of CAGW behave in a fashion that is reminiscent of the Nazi’s rise to power in the early 1930s. Protests of those who dare to speak out against them, including violent action by small groups of supporters, and concerted efforts to deny employment to those who don’t agree with the party line, are symptoms of their belief that they alone have the genius to recognize and act o solve society’s problems. They will be repeatedly blind-sided by reality, but it will always be someone else’s fault. Simply disagreeing with them makes a person responsible for acts of nature that are beyond anyone’s control. This alone is enough to discredit their political movement.
Lesson #0: Don’t change the name of the threat – “crusade” – when reality bites you in the ass and proves your screeched base premise is wrong – – “The human conversion of fossil materials to energy increases the PPM of Co2 in the atmosphere globally and for every x PPM increase the rate of release to space of long-wave radiation (thermal energy) is decreased globally which negatively changes the weather locally.” …except when it doesn’t.
Lesson #3: Stop adding to the end of every study: “…however we do not fully understand all of interactions of the system or know of the source of XX so more research is needed.” (So please send more money.)
When it is clear that NONE of the measures that might have mitigated climate change were implemented – like massive nuclear power – and all that was done was crony politics high virtue signalling ineffective nonsense – like windmills and solar panels – its fairlty clear to even the most uneducated that the governments are not really that worried and neither are the more acute activists.
It was all a game. Theatre. For political power and profit.
THAT is why we haven’t done a damn thing. It wasn’t needful that we did – and they knew that.
At least the development of fracking allowed the displacement of coal resulting in CO2 emission reductions by the U.S. I suppose that governing bodies in the U.S. can take some credit for staying out of the way of this technology, although that isn’t the case in all states and jurisdictions. But when the people are asked, they reject outrageous restrictions on it, e.g. Colorado voters rejecting added setbacks.
Don’t forget the billions to be made in the carbon trading fraud– another reason to keep the scam alive without doing a damn thing about the supposedly real problem, except to attempt to tax the plebeians and to promise to trade carbon credits.
Oh, and don’t forget, third world countries: we need your land to save the world. Hope you don’t mind too much.
Deforestation? Who cares about forests when we have to save the planet?
Overfishing? Who cares about overfishing when we have to save the planet?
If we don’t save the planet first, nothing else matters.
A fraud that serves many purposes. Brilliant!
Leo-
“When it is clear that NONE of the measures that might have mitigated climate change were implemented”
Exactly right. That’s what convinced me CAGW was sham. It was over 25 years ago that I realized if CO2 was really a problem, it could be solved with two actions: (1) Convert all electrical power generation to nuclear, and (2) since half the highway fuel used was for freight, require all freight going over 200 miles to be shipped by rail. Then electrify the railroads. Nuclear power and electric railroads were commercially available 25 years ago. Problem solved!
The 97% never understood climate science but they sure as Hell could see the BS about seal levels inundating them and the rains are never gunna fill their dams again and the bloody great list of bizarre things supposedly caused by it- http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICLES/globalwarming2.html
and the constant movement of tipping points-
https://climatechangedispatch.com/25-years-of-predicting-the-global-warming-tipping-point/
but then they were led to believe electricity would be free from the sun and wind-
https://www.adelaidenow.com.au/news/south-australia/south-australia-will-have-highest-power-prices-in-the-world-after-july-1-increases/news-story/876f9f6cefce23c62395085c6fe0fd9f
and in any case all you had to do was change a few light bulbs and shower heads and jump onboard a solar FIT scheme and EVs would be cheap for the masses.
Well every scientific skeptic has to admit out of that lot the price of solar panels sure fell a lot but then they canned the generous FIT schemes for new chums. Like the 200,001st and subsequent Tesla buyer you aint gunna win friends and influence people.
The public, for the most part, does not revere scientists, or even really care about what they say. It’s probably more accurate to say that numerous scientists revere themselves and expect the public to do the same. The attitude that they are gods who deserve worship is inculcated through culture and training, as evidenced by this PhD student’s glorying over scientists’ perceived cultural supremacism. It’s really quite nauseating, but illuminating to see how these people view themselves.
https://twitter.com/_beccaharrison/status/698599493852340224
“The public, for the most part, does not revere scientists, or even really care about what they say.”
They did once when they were improving their lives and health but then they filled the venerable Sandstones with social science and the BS contaminated them all. My own take is a plethora of weak minds and statistical packages coupled with the exponential advance of computing power was a lethal brew for science and the scientific method and climate science is the rule rather than the exception there.
This study is satire, but it’s not far from what we’d see coming out of climate science.
https://www.bmj.com/content/363/bmj.k5094
Definitely a laugh out loud satire.
Thank you for link.
Excellent points of views, Mr Endicott. You have described
the issue perfectly.
Lesson #1
Be right!
And hence their failure. They have neither established that climate change is unnatural nor have the established that it is bad.
Larry, as always, this is a wonderful post.
Regards,
Bob
Bob,
With all due respect, I think you need to read this post a little more carefully.
Kummer cites a “need” to get everyone to accept what climate models are predicting, and calls the fact that we are not all 100% CAGW true believers “a failure”.
LK,
Am I wrong?
If so, please correct me, and accept apologies.
This post sounds to me like a carefully worded CAGW believer’s cry of anguish.
Menicholas ,
“Kummer cites a “need” to get everyone to accept what climate models are predicting, ”
With all due respect, I think you need to read this post a little more carefully.
This is written for climate scientists, describing how they should have conducted their campaign to warn the world. Models are their primary tool, therefore they need to establish the public’s confidence in them. Objective tests and reviews by experts (from outside their community) are the logical ways to do this.
Your comment sounds to me like you didn’t read this post carefully.
From the article: “The weather will determine how policy evolves, and eventually prove which side was right.”
Yes, the weather will be the final arbiter, and the weather up to now is the reason most people don’t believe in CAGW, because they don’t see drastic changes in the weather they have known all their lives. The alarmists are crying wolf and your average citizen doesn’t see it.
The downside to this is the tempertures will have to get cooler to prove the alarmists wrong. I sure hope it doesn’t get too much cooler. That’s a high price to pay to be correct. 🙂
[Check your email address, Tom. Looks like you’ve typo’d it and it’s bumping your posts to the mod folder. -mod]
Tom,
“the weather will be the final arbiter, and the weather up to now is the reason most people don’t believe in CAGW”
That nails it. Activists have had astonishingly poor luck. The pause in temps. The pause in North Atlantic hurricanes. Plus little in the way of other kinds of extreme weather in developed nations: droughts, tornadoes, etc. The weather has been unkind to them.
With their command of the media, academia, government agencies, and NGOs – a good bout of extreme weather could be used to panic Americans (the cause, natural or anthro, wouldn’t matter). History shows that we’re easily to panic.
They have had poor luck. But luck changes. And they only need to win once. It’s not over yet.
Unfortunately for them, 97% of the public have no more faith in the “media, academia, government agencies, and NGOs ” : )
How exactly is being wrong an example of poor luck?
Is it not instead an example of wrongly deciding on something, of deciding something is true when it is not true?
There are other reasons:
1. inertia and apathy – people don’t change unless they have to and their motivation is strong. Think New Year’s Resolutions.
2. inability to assess risk accurately – most either over-estimate or under-estimate risk. Seeing the way so many drive, I’m taking the “under.”
3. there are more immediate things to worry about – climate is far away, the credit card bill is due.
Gary
1. or is it they dont change unless there is a reason too
2. who is assessing the risk accurately – you think the Climate alarmist are assessing accurately? they are willing to collapse the entire world’s economic structure based on cataclysmic scenarios that have essentially no chance of happen and to achieve results that have zero chance of changing the outcome. The real calamity will happen if they get their way.
3. No, the more immediate thing is opportunist trying to use scare tactics to usher in political change that has nothing to do with climate.
The people that are resisting the Climate change Meme are far and away the more informed and more rational.
Couldn’t have said it better, Bob.
That’s the best paragraph you’ve ever written, Larry. Congratulations.
The solution is to stop the power and funding of the people who have lied to the public (yes, they have lied, claiming things known not to be true).
Get the US out of the UNFCCC, end EPA, DOE, NSF, NOAA, NASA and all federal funding for all climate modeling teams, most academic grants for tendentious studies which marry a weak or vague hypothesis to future predictions by climate models. This must stop. It will stop. The pensions and retirements of public sector employees who have been among the liars must be brought into the public eye, and we need to stop provided fuel for their game-playing. They are elites no longer. They are failures. Stop sending them on fabulous junkets several times per year on the public dime.
+1
Federal funding of research to advance our understanding of the earth’s climate and the factors which affect it is both reasonable and necessary.
Regrettably, much of recent federal funding related to climate has been directed toward studies which use flawed climate data, unverified climate models and unrealistic Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs) to produce “scary scenarios” of potential future climate catastrophes. Arguably, such studies contribute nothing to advancing our understanding of the climate. Rather, they are intended solely or primarily to attempt to convince the citizenry to accept the climate science ”consensus” and the actions urged by the consensed climate science community, climate change activists in federal departments and agencies, environmental activist groups, and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change; and, to provide material to the media to assist in that effort.
I find it difficult to believe that the US Congress authorized and appropriated these funds with the knowledge or intent that they would be used for purposes other than the advancement of the science. Furthermore, I find it difficult to believe that the federal departments and agencies contracting for these studies do not know that these studies are based on flawed data, unverified models, uncertain fundamental inputs and unrealistic RCPs.
“Federal funding of research to advance our understanding of the earth’s climate and the factors which affect it is both reasonable and necessary.”
But not at the scale it’s currently done.
In the current political environment it would be difficult to simply defund climate research. I think it would be much easier to transfer most climate research monies (why spend so much money studying what climate scientists say is settled?) to low-carbon energy research (that climate scientists insist we need). Let most climate scientists go model something else. Spending money on low carbon energy research (not subsidies or a new green deal) is a win-win for everyone. And I’d much rather have that than another study that concludes global warming might increase the severity of migraines, that was published after a previous study that concluded global warming might increase the number of migraines was invalidated by observations.
Government funded “low carbon energy research” is lose-lose, not win-win.
You’ve started with the assumption that we “need” energy that is “low carbon;” we do not, since the notion of “CO-2 driven” climate “catastrophe” is nonsense.
You’ve then compounded that initial error by assuming that if there were a desirable “low carbon” energy source that was actually competitive with “high carbon” energy sources, that government would need to “invest” in it – private capital would break down the door to fund any new competitive energy source, no taxpayer robbing would be needed.
My usage of the term “low carbon” energy sources was simply for political expediency’s sake. Breakthroughs in non-hydrocarbon energy sources would be a win-win for everyone.
“Federal funding of research to advance our understanding of the earth’s climate and the factors which affect it is both reasonable and necessary.”
Something unlawful can hardly be called “reasonable.” The US government has no constitutional authority to do anything like climate research.
Just think of how many border walls could be built out of the money being wasted on climate nonsense. Trump really has missed an opportunity.
Border walls are as foolhardy and unnecessary as most climate research. Border wall is a symbolic project and is not needed to secure the border.
Wrong.
Squared.
How can you take them seriously when NOTHING they predict EVER comes true?
eg. Yesterday was the tenth anniversary of Al Gore predicting the North Pole would be ice free in 5 years.
Speaking of Al Gore, don’t discount his contribution to the failure. Don’t pick an obnoxious jerk as your primary spokes-jerk.
Personally, I would like to see Al head up a cast of activists and climate scientists for Dancing with the Stars. Then, we could watch them fall on their faces like Bill Nye did, for the nincompoops they are.
Bill Nye bow tie guy.
I never trust a guy who wears one.
I consider it a stroke of good fortune that Gore is the one who grabbed this role for himself. He was not picked, and his position has only helped discredit the climate mafia.
For a variety of reasons, it has not been enough to put an end to the shenanigans, which remains, and it remains an enduring mystery why.
As William F. Buckley said:
Academia and its associated institutions have soiled and disgraced themselves with political correctness, virtue signalling and behaviors that are completely antithetical to the ideals of free inquiry and open-minded learning. Witness the latest in the Cliff Mass witch hunt. If any academic dares question the latest orthodoxy, the “woke” contingent attacks them viciously like a feeding frenzy of sharks.
Falled Hippies, living their ultimate dream of never being responsible for anything, inflicting their failed beliefs on anyone they can.
Yes, and aside from the disagreement over the attempt to draw the line between every “bad weather” event and “climate change,” Cliff Mass actually agrees with the Climate Fascist memes. Which shows you just how intolerant the Climate Fascists are. There will be NO heresy spoken!
People have gotten very tired of the hysteria and hyperbole. Especially when climate change scientists conclude that every comet striking the earth, every earthquake, every lost species, every volcano, every hurricane, etc etc is linked to man made climate change. And President Trump us at fault.
[Please stay with one login_id. .mod]
People have gotten very tired of the hysteria and hyperbole. Especially when climate change scientists conclude that every comet striking the earth, every earthquake, every lost species, every volcano, every hurricane, etc etc is linked to man made climate change. And President Trump us at fault.
Failure of “the climate change crusade”?
Are you kidding me?
I’m about to have expensive, unreliable “renewable” energy crammed down my throat— whether I want it or not.
Correct—it’s walking, so it’s not dead yet. As I say below, state and local action, driven by local activists, is keeping the crusade going, even if it is headless.
But they’ve won – the money-runners have now chimed in:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/dec/10/tackle-climate-or-face-financial-crash-say-worlds-biggest-investors
RIP science and rationality
Of course the financiers are on board: carbon trading will be a huge market. I can smell the money already! That big whooshing sound will be money going from citizens into the carbon trading markets.
After all, if Enron was one of the first to push for carbon trading, what could go wrong?
Science and rationality may be saved by the people on the street puking at all the BS they’re being asked to swallow.
Easy to fix: just have the pensions of anyone in government (or academia) who pushes this stuff be funding 100% by carbon trading credits.
Or, alternatively, take away their guaranteed pensions and give them a small business to run…
“Insanity is repeating the same pithy quote on insanity that everyone else uses until all the readers are insane.”
Seriously, I don’t know how much I have left in me. How many times will I have to read that same thing? And it’s always presented like it’s the first time anyone has ever read it.
Steve,
Just like those Ten Commandment things, and “Know Thyself”, and all that philosophy.
“And it’s always presented like it’s the first time anyone has ever read it.”
You must be loads of fun in church. Do you stand and scream “I”ve heard all this before”?
Hmm, I have to concede that this was funny, LK.
But it made me wonder…are people with really good memories the ones who are less likely to go to church every week?
As usual, Larry Kummer gets it all wrong.
“Despite thirty years of efforts by most of the elite institutions of America, US governments have done little to fight climate change. While a bout of awful weather might panic America into enacting activists’ wish list, as of today this is one of the great political failures of modern American history.”
Not a failure at all. There was nothing to fight. CO2 global warming is a scam. The US is actually one of the few countries that have reduced their CO2 footprint in the last 20 years. Actually since the atmosphere needs more CO2 NOT less, it is actually China and India that are doing the world a favour.
True, this fight isn’t over and insanity prevails in too many places still.
Larry has a curious blind spot on climate change, he sees all the things the climate scientists and associated activists are doing wrong, but he is convinced that the climate scientists are correct and just arguing badly for some inexplicable reason. He refuses to accept the obvious explanation that they are hiding the data because it shows they are lying.
See my comments, and his response over on his blog https://fabiusmaximus.com/2018/12/10/lessons-from-climate-change-crusade/
Bill,
“obvious explanation that they are hiding the data because it shows they are lying.”
I don’t guess about motives, or other things that can’t ever be proven. In my opinion that is just chaff in the debate. It quickly descends to schoolyard name-calling, of which there is already far too much of in US politics.
The lying has been proven Larry. You obviously havent been watching Tony Hellers’ videos that show that 20 years ago, NOAA and or NASA GISS would put out a temperature graph and then 20 years later the data would be all changed to make it look like CAGW is happening. What Tony has shown would certainly stand up in court so I am at a loss as to why no one has taken these agencies to court for fraud. Your blindness continues Larry.
Hansen’s testimony was 1988 not 1989
Now that I’ve read the whole post & comments – Great Post (-:
Steve,
Thanks for catching that! I’ve fixed it in the original post.
I noticed too, many hours after you say it was corrected.
As of 5:00PM EST, it still says 1989.
steve case
Yes, this year was the 30th ‘anniversary’ of his prediction based on scenarios.
Not sure where the author is from but California has doubled-down on “renewables” and the wind farms and solar arrays are clearly visible as you fly in and out of LA. Gov Brown stands in the ashes of a fire and declares, “This is the new abnormal” to great acclaim in the Golden State. When the Dems get the House, Senate and Presidency back it’s Katie bar the door.
I am re-posting a comment I made earlier this morning on Judith Curry’s blog concerning the ongoing persecution of Dr. Cliff Mass here in Washington State:
It has often been said by climate activists that the science of climate change is settled; that the voting public supports quick action against climate change; and that it’s only been the opposition of fossil fuel interests and the politicians who support those interests which keeps America from quickly reducing its carbon emissions.
Over on the Cliff Mass blog, this has been a recurrent theme for those climate activists who make a sport of denouncing his opinions. I’ve made the point there on that blog that the only possible means of substantially reducing America’s carbon emissions within the timeframe climate activists are now seeking is to put a stiff price on all carbon fuels.
And even this won’t be enough. If America is to achieve an 80% reduction in our GHG emissions by 2050, a program of government-mandated carbon fuel rationing combined with strictly enforced energy conservation measures covering all sectors of the American economy must eventually be adopted.
It is simply impossible to compress a hundred year’s worth of technological and economic transition away from carbon fuels into a thirty year time span without experiencing major collateral impacts.
The question arises, is new legislation from the Congress needed to pursue this kind of highly aggressive, nationally-enforced anti-carbon program?
The answer is no. The Supreme Court has ruled that the EPA has full authority under the Clean Air Act to regulate America’s carbon emissions; and further, that the process used by the EPA in 2009 to determine that CO2 is a pollutant was properly followed.
The President and the EPA now have all the authority needed to pursue a highly aggressive anti-carbon policy, if they choose to do so.
Here is a plan to reduce America’s GHG emissions 80% by 2050 using the existing legal authorities of the President as enabled by the Clean Air Act and by existing national security legislation. This plan is similar to the one that was being pushed by 350.org and by other environmental groups in 2009.
In this version, the original 350.org plan is augmented by a system of carbon pollution fines which is the functional equivalent of a legislated tax on carbon. Moreover, the plan adds a provisional system for imposing direct government control over production and distribution of all carbon fuels, if carbon pricing doesn’t prove to be fully effective.
Phase I: Establish a legal basis for regulating carbon dioxide and other carbon GHG’s as pollutants. (2007-2012)
— File and win lawsuits to allow regulation of CO2 and other carbon GHG’s as pollutants under the Clean Air Act.
— Publish a CAA Section 202 Endangerment Finding as a prototype test case for regulation of carbon GHG’s.
— Defend the Section 202 Endangerment Finding in the courts.
Phase II: Expand and extend EPA regulation of carbon GHG’s to all major sources of America’s carbon emissions. (2021-2022)
— Issue a presidential executive order declaring a carbon pollution emergency.
— Publish a CAA Section 108 Endangerment Finding which complements 2009’s Section 202 finding.
— Establish a National Ambient Air Quality Standard (NAAQS) for carbon pollution.
— Use the NAAQS for carbon pollution as America’s tie-in to international climate change agreements.
— Defend the Section 108 Endangerment Finding and the NAAQS in the courts.
Phase III: Establish a fully comprehensive EPA-managed regulatory framework for carbon. (2023-2025)
— Publish a regulatory framework for carbon pollution under Clean Air Act sections 108, 111, and 202.
— Establish cooperative agreements with the states to enforce the EPA’s anti-carbon regulations.
— Establish a system of carbon pollution fines which is the functional equivalent of a legislated tax on carbon.
— Establish the legal basis for assigning all revenues collected from carbon pollution fines to the states.
— Research and publish a provisional system of direct carbon fuel rationing as a backup to the carbon fine system.
— Defend the EPA’s comprehensive system of carbon pollution regulations in the courts.
Phase IV: Implement the EPA’s carbon pollution regulatory framework. (2026-2050)
— Commence operation of prior agreements with the states for enforcement of the EPA’s anti-carbon regulations.
— Commence the collection of carbon pollution fines and the distribution of fine revenues to the states.
— Monitor the effectiveness of the carbon regulatory framework in reducing America’s GHG emissions.
— Adjust the schedule of carbon pollution fines upward if progress in reducing America’s GHG emissions lags.
— Assess the possible need for invoking the provisional system of direct carbon fuel rationing.
— Defend the EPA’s system of carbon pollution regulations against emerging lawsuits.
Phase V: Implement the provisional system for direct carbon fuel rationing. (Start/End contingent upon Phase IV progress.)
— Issue a presidential proclamation declaring that Phase IV anti-carbon measures cannot meet the 80% by 2050 target.
— Initiate the provisionally established system for imposing direct government control over production and distribution of all carbon fuels.
— Apply the Phase IV system of carbon pollution fines in escalating steps as needed to incentivize Phase V compliance.
— Defend the government-mandated carbon fuel rationing program in the courts.
Phase VI: Declare success in reducing America’s carbon emissions 80% by 2050. (If complete by 2050 or earlier.)
— Assess the need for continuing the EPA’s anti-carbon regulations and the US Government’s mandatory fuel rationing program beyond 2050.
— Defend the government’s anti-carbon measures against emerging lawsuits if these measures continue beyond 2050.
Remarks:
Phase I of this plan was complete in 2012. The legal foundation needed to impose aggressive across-the-board regulation of all major sources of America’s carbon emissions remains in place awaiting the appearance of a president willing to use it.
When Barack Obama was Chief Executive, his Clean Power Plan and his other anti-carbon measures might have achieved possibly one-third of his Year 2050 GHG reduction goal. But the remainder depended upon a highly uncertain combination of accelerated technological advancement and raw unvarnished hope.
And yet, when Barack Obama had the opportunity and the means to move forward with the 350.org plan, he refused to go through with it. Nor were 350.org itself and the other AGW activist groups willing to push hard for adoption of their 2009 plan after their initial victories in the courts. From 2012 onward, those activist groups could have worked closely with the EPA using the ‘sue and settle’ process to put their 2009 plan into effect. Why didn’t they do it?
Could it be that in 2012, President Obama, 350.org, and all the other anti-carbon environmental groups were afraid of massive political blowback if they had pushed for a program which can be highly effective in quickly reducing America’s carbon emissions — but at the expense of imposing great personal and economic sacrifice on most Americans?
“…the only possible means of substantially reducing America’s carbon emissions within the timeframe climate activists are now seeking is to put a stiff price on all carbon fuels.”
— For completeness, you need to include carbon capture as an alternative. If the money spent on windmills had instead been allocated to carbon capture, it would be further down the cost reduction curve. The Green world could have also reversed their longstanding positions on nuclear energy. And nuclear energy doesn’t have to be as expensive as it is today.
A global implementation of this combination could have addressed enough CO2 emissions to make CAGW a non-issue. So why does the IPCC propose a mitigation strategy that they already know in advance is guaranteed to fail?
Well, if a solution exists, what justification do they have for hundreds of billions of dollars in transfer payments?
Implementing Phase III and beyond, or perhaps implementing Phase II fully, will require fighting and winning a civil war.
KT66 -Yup. See yellow vest direct street action.
Phase III and beyond would require a cooperative Congress. I don’t agree with Beta Blocker’s view that the plan can all be done through executive action. Particularly once you get into controlling the production of fossil fuels – that would require a civil war since Congress would never have anything to do with such a thing.
THIS IS ALL MADNESS. COMPLETE UTTER MADNESS.
You bet it is! If the activists are really proposing this, they have a lot in common with Major Kong! Whaahwooo!
Responding to Steve O, KT66, a_scientist, spalding craft. and Alan Tomalty:
We have to ask the question, do climate activists honestly want America’s GHG emissions to be sharply reduced over the next thirty years?
To put a hard number on it, let’s again use President Obama’s target of an 80% reduction by 2050 as the goal. If this is what climate activists really want, then working through the EPA and the Clean Air Act (CAA) is the only possible means of getting from here to there. It can’t be done any other way.
Point 1: The CAA assigns responsibility for managing nationally-focused pollution abatement actions to the Executive Branch working in cooperation with the states, thus shielding the EPA’s pollution abatement efforts from outside political interference such as might come from the Congress.
Point 2: The CAA assigns clear lines of authority for identifying which substances represent a significant danger to human health and the environment and then for managing their reduction once those substances have identified through approved EPA procedures as being ‘pollutants.”
Point 3: The CAA and its EPA-managed processes include mechanisms for balancing costs against danger reduction benefits in evaluating the worth of emerging pollution abatement technologies, and in deciding what specific mitigating measures are useful and appropriate for reducing emissions of a specific pollutant.
Point 4: The CAA and its EPA-managed processes have a forty-year record of success in greatly reducing America’s air and water pollution problems.
Point 5: Because the EPA has successfully defended its 2009 Section 202 Endangerment Finding for carbon in the courts, the agency has already laid a strong legal foundation for building on its past experience with other classes of pollutants in taking on GHG’s as its most ambitious pollution reduction project ever.
Using the Clean Air Act as the main policy agent in reducing America’s GHG emissions would be the greatest challenge the EPA and the state governments have ever faced. Apart from the expected public resistance when the plan becomes fully operative in about 2026, among the more important challenges would be to defend the plan against lawsuits in the courts.
This is how the plan described in my earlier post can be successfully defended against legal action:
A: Recognizing that carbon emissions are everywhere ubiquitous in the American economy, the plan must treat all major sources of America’s GHG emissions equally. All major sources of carbon emissions must be directly and fairly regulated, and the burdens of compliance spread equitably across all emission sources.
B: In setting a NAAQS for carbon, the plan must explicitly acknowledge that CO2 is a well mixed gas on a worldwide scale and that America’s contributions to GHG reduction must be part of a worldwide anti-carbon effort.
C: In managing the transition away from carbon fuels, the EPA must use past practice to the maximum extent possible in its anti-carbon strategies, while at the same time recognizing that sharply reducing greenhouse gases in as short a time span as thirty years will require creative use of existing law.
D: In using carbon fines and fees as the functional equivalent of a legislated tax on carbon, past precedent in applying fines and fees to pollutant abatement strategies must be followed. Where past practice can’t be followed, justification for an expanded application of fines and penalties as a pollution abatement strategy must be explicitly documented and justified.
E: In developing a provisional option for enforcing a program of direct carbon fuel rationing — because other aspects of the plan might not prove effective in reducing GHG emissions fast enough — past precedence in America’s response to serious national emergencies must be properly cited and referenced.
F: The provisional carbon fuel rationing program must be backed by defensible evidence that anthropogenic global warming will be catastrophic if it continues, but also preventable through aggressive anti-carbon government action.
Specific responses to reader comments follow:
Steve O: “For completeness, you need to include carbon capture as an alternative. If the money spent on windmills had instead been allocated to carbon capture, it would be further down the cost reduction curve. The Green world could have also reversed their longstanding positions on nuclear energy. And nuclear energy doesn’t have to be as expensive as it is today.”
Here in the US, including the options of nuclear, wind, solar, and hydro in the power generation mix is strictly a public policy decision. Left to its own devices, the power market in the US would swing decisively towards gas-fired generation given that among all the choices available for the next several decades, gas-fired generation has the least technical, environmental, and financial risks. It also has the highest profit making potential for private investors.
The plan described in my original post would follow past EPA practice which encourages the states, the polluters, and the engaged public to cooperate in deciding what approach works best for reducing a specific pollutant.
However, given that the short thirty-year timeframe limits the usefulness of highly uncertain technological remedies such as carbon capture and sequestration, seriously aggressive energy conservation measures will be necessary to stay on schedule. Raising the price of all carbon energy sources is by far the most effective way to incentivize these conservation measures.
As someone who has worked in nuclear construction and operations for the past thirty-five years, it’s also my opinion that nuclear power has no future in the United States unless the federal government puts a stiff price on all carbon fuels, bringing the total life-cycle costs of natural gas into much closer alignment with the costs of nuclear.
Steve O: “A global implementation of this combination could have addressed enough CO2 emissions to make CAGW a non-issue. So why does the IPCC propose a mitigation strategy that they already know in advance is guaranteed to fail? Well, if a solution exists, what justification do they have for hundreds of billions of dollars in transfer payments?”
A hundred years from now, nuclear power is likely to be all pervasive throughout the world even while carbon fuels in the form of limited quantities of gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel will still remain available for some applications such as for military aircraft.
On the other hand, it is possible, but maybe not probable, that we will find some way of efficiently extracting massive quantities of CO2 from the air and then recycling it through the world’s carbon fuel management system as a high-density energy carrying medium for our larger aircraft and for our larger land vehicles.
Anything is possible if you have enough time and can spend enough money.
KT66: “Implementing Phase III and beyond, or perhaps implementing Phase II fully, will require fighting and winning a civil war.”
a_scientist: “KT66 -Yup. See yellow vest direct street action.”
Let’s remember that the basic plan described in my original post was first proposed by 350.org in 2009, and that Phase I of their plan was complete in 2012. At which point Barack Obama and the EPA abandoned the 350.org plan and went with the Clean Power Plan, a carbon reduction policy which, in my opinion, had the seeds of its own failure deliberately implanted within it.
While Phase II of this extended version of the 350.org plan is under development in the early 2020’s, its future impacts will be merely an abstraction to the average voter, much as the future impacts of Obamacare were an abstraction while the ACA was being debated in 2010.
Once the extended plan begins to be aggressively implemented after 2026, its economic and social impacts will then begin to be felt. At that point, probably in the late 2020’s, a robust and well-informed public debate over the validity of today’s climate science will commence, replacing the largely inconsequential debates now occurring hither and yon in the backwater alleys of the Internet.
Once that public debate is concluded, and if the same pattern happens with aggressive EPA action against carbon as has happened with the aggressive rollout of Obamacare, the voting public will eventually come to accept the social and economic burdens imposed by taking strong government action against carbon.
Moreover, the revenue-positive carbon fines and fees imposed by this plan are intended to become a large source of revenue for the states. It is conceivable that in the period beyond 2030, revenues from carbon fines and fees could become a significant fraction of the total income collected by state governments nationwide.
The state governments, all of them, would be stupid not to take the money. And take it they will. After all, the anti-carbon regulations were legally and constitutionally mandated by the president and the EPA acting under long-established Executive Branch authorities.
spalding craft: “Phase III and beyond would require a cooperative Congress. I don’t agree with Beta Blocker’s view that the plan can all be done through executive action. Particularly once you get into controlling the production of fossil fuels – that would require a civil war since Congress would never have anything to do with such a thing.”
When Congress crafted the Clean Air Act more than forty years ago, it deliberately removed itself from the process of deciding what substances might eventually be classified as pollutants requiring strong government regulation to control and to reduce. This responsibility was assigned by law to the President and to the appropriate agencies within the Executive Branch.
Now that excessive concentrations of CO2 and other GHG’s in the atmosphere have been determined by the EPA to represent a danger to human health and the environment; and now that the EPA’s scientific determination has been successfully defended in the courts, the EPA and the Clean Air Act are the only appropriate public policy tools for successfully managing the long and difficult process of greatly reducing America’s carbon emissions.
As for what Congress might do in the late 2020’s if the national debate over today’s climate science goes critical mass, our Senators and Representatives will be more than happy to let the president, the EPA, and the cooperating states do what current environmental law and what past precedent require that they do.
Alan Tomalty: “THIS IS ALL MADNESS. COMPLETE UTTER MADNESS.”
Doing what has to be done if America is to reach President Obama’s goal of an 80% GHG reduction by 2050 requires electing a series of US presidents who are willing and able to walk their talk of addressing the dangers of climate change. This means using the EPA and the Clean Air Act to their maximum possible effectiveness in reducing our GHG emissions.
Everyone should recognize that Donald Trump’s election as president in 2016 was an aberration in the long term ebb and flow of American politics, one that won’t last long. A Democrat will certainly be elected president in 2021, and the Democrats will probably take control of the Senate as well. Everything Trump did while he was in office will be quickly overturned and erased.
That said, if the Democrat who follows Donald Trump as president doesn’t use the EPA to its maximum possible effectiveness in controlling America’s carbon emissions, it will become obviously apparent that climate activists have an agenda which doesn’t necessarily include saving the earth from climate change.
There are a good number of politicians and scientists that do not believe that most of the warming is man made.
Their main objective is money. Because they would be demoted or suspended as we have seen in Australia, a good number of academics toe the line. We will hear from these when they retire. I know of some.
I do not think that Suzuki believes it all, but the money is good. You can tell he cannot explain it as he avoids direct questions and debates. He is not a climate scientist, he is a biologist or zoologist(does not matter which one)
I spoke to some politicians a few years ago who know it is a scam, but did not do much as it would cost votes from the uninformed public.
The only one who has stood up is Trump and we may see something from Brazil.
SKY News in Australia and the One Nation party in Australia know that it is a scam.
Larry,
Your article implies that mistakes were made and lessons can be learned, but I do not believe that is the case. What was done, including the lack of transparency, the demonization of critics, the refusal to answer questions and debate those with different opinions, the refusal to test the models, the silence around outrageous claims and so on, was done deliberately and would be done again, only more so.
The murderer who gets caught, does not regret the murder, but regrets getting caught. They do not suddenly learn that murder is bad. They are not looking for spiritual enlightenment on how not to murder. They have justification, in their minds, for what they did.
I am sure that James Hansen does not regret turning off the air conditioning during his Senate testimony. He regrets not being able to turn on the heat! Those who use to debate climate crisis skeptics do not wish they had done more debates. They regret ever doing any it at all! Those withholding or manipulating data do not feel bad about doing it. They just wish they had done it better!
If this movement had done what you suggest to persuade the public, it would already be a forgotten movement. They have no desire to learn your lessons. They are not interested in being honest brokers. They have a movement to fight for, and the ends justify the means, even if their means guarantee failure.
(+42 x 10^42)^42
Spot on James.
I agree James
John Endicott
December 14, 2018 at 12:20 pm
(+42 x 10^42)^42
———–
John, as per my position, I can only say;
this;
(+42 x 10 and42)M
will be good enough for me, mathematically…which mathematically may stand for 462M, kinda
of like 462 million… 🙂
Life and everything conundrum in the meaning… 😉
cheers
James,
“was done deliberately and would be done again, only more so.”
Actions were taken. After 30 years we see the results. That allows us to evaluate the actions, and identify mistakes.
Lacking telepathic power, I don’t guess about motives of the hundreds or thousands of scientists involved.
You do not have any opinion or any way of inferring the motives of those who falsify historical records, lie about their own research, and say nothing while the work they do is blown out of proportion, misrepresented and hyped and used to declare imminent Armageddon is upon us, etc?
I do not have to be psychic to know that people who make stuff up are liars and not to be trusted.
Yup, what Menicholas said.
I agree Menicholas. Larry Kummer is trying to say that climate scientists have not been able to get their message across. That is preposterous. In the last 30 years they were able to lie and deceive their way into billions of $ of useless and fraudulent climate model studies and were able to convince 99 % of the world main stream media and keep in line 1000’s of obedient groupthink colleagues and 97% of the world’s politicians. I would say that their success has been a Joseph Goebbels dream. THE BIG LIE OF CAGW HAS BEEN THE BIGGEST AND MOST SUCCESSFUL LIE OF ALL TIME. So in reality it is the opposite of what Larry Kummer is trying to tell us. What Larry is really complaining about is the intelligence of skeptics who see through this lie.
Actions speak louder than words. Actions speak louder than intentions. I am not making a judgement on their motives. I am making a judgement on their actions (or inactions).
A couple of old truisms come to mind in regards to this:
‘The road to hell is paved with good intentions.’
And,
‘Fool me once…shame on you. Fool me twice…shame on me!’
The reason why I wrote: “…was done deliberately and would be done again, only more so.”, is because it has been done for decades. When it didn’t get the results they wanted, they doubled-down on their methods, and the escalation of those methods continues to this day.
These are not stupid people. Their decisions are not made from ignorance. They have created a paradigm and now they must live by it, or allow a paradigm shift that will result in the end of a way of life for themselves and their piers.
They cannot do the things you suggest. They cannot admit that the burden of proof is theirs, and that they need to answer all questions honestly. Early on, they adopted the Precautionary Principle and the idea that ignorance of the problem should not be grounds for inaction. It is a founding aspect of the paradigm that absolves them from the responsibility to make a powerful case for a climate change catastrophe and answer all objections. Since they cannot make that case or give sufficient answers to the myriad of objections, they cannot do as you suggest. In fact, they clearly feel no need or responsibility to be transparent.
The paradigm also collapses if the scientists disavow the activists. The activists are the life-blood of the paradigm. Without them, the grant money shrivels. The scientists know this, so they walk the fine line of feeding the activists with scientific ambiguity, while avoiding directly saying what they know is untrue or unfounded. In the current climate change paradigm there is a symbiotic relationship between scientists and activists. Neither can survive long without the other, and the paradigm cannot survive without both.
I completely agree with you Larry, when you recommend that the scientific community take heed of these lessons and implement them ASAP. In the long run, it would be the best thing for science. But I disagree with the idea that it is ‘ignorance’ that restrains them from doing what is best. Long ago, they made the choice that the ends justify the means. Having made that choice, they are now trapped in their own web. They cannot choose otherwise without destroying their web, their paradigm, their livelihood.
Cliff Mass is the perfect example of what I am saying. He embodies the lessons that you are recommending and, consequently, the paradigm is mobilizing to destroy him, as it has many others before. It is just naive to think that this is done out of ignorance. Individuals supporting the paradigm can try and claim ignorance, but it is a willful kind of ignorance. The paradigm itself has a terrible intelligence and awareness. It knows what you are saying, and has willfully rejected it a long time ago.
That is why it acts they way it does.
Ignorance is no excuse.
Perhaps someone mentioned this, but I missed it. True advocates should lives their lives accordingly… Those who believe the sea is rising should sell their seafront properties. Those who believe CO2 is killing the world, should decrease their CO2 footprint and not fly the globe burning jet fuel and live in mansions set at 70 degrees year-round. Those who believe in green energy should be promoting safe nuclear power plants using Thorium…
Dan,
” True advocates should lives their lives accordingly …”
While you logic is sound, people are weak. Jefferson gave us some of the most powerful calls for human liberty and equality ever made. He did not live by his rhetoric, to state it kindly.
But that didn’t diminish the gifts he gave us.
I don’t believe personalizing debates about science or public policy helps. It it is just chaff. Of course, everybody sees these things differently.
I remember having a discussion with a scientist who thought that the world should follow the directives of the scientific community. I told him how it worked at the pharmaceutical company where I worked as finance exec:
Leaders from R&D present ideas to a management team, who provide minimal funding to continue exploration, increased funding to speed development, or zero funding to kill the project.
Spending decisions depend on other things besides the pizzazz of the project. How much money does the company even have to spend? What are the other priorities? Maybe expanding the salesforce to maximize last year’s product launch is more important. Maybe the company is about to be sold. These decisions are properly in the realm of managers who are responsible for the overall enterprise.
It’s the same with climate alarmism. It’s up to them to present a business case and it’s up to politicians to decide what actions to take based on what is known. Lots of areas compete for taxpayer funds. Roads. Healthcare. National defense. Retirement. Welfare. And so on. It’s up to the politicians to balance all the competing priorities on behalf of the electorate. Economics, and Decision-making under uncertainty are also relevant practice areas.
It’s inconceivable that an R&D manager would simply demand that a project move forward, while declining to show the supporting data, or to accuse the managers of bad faith for being unconvinced, or to refuse an open discussion, but many climate scientists seem to feel entitled.
The essential point is that nobody has presented a convincing business case for radical, extremely expensive actions in order to reduce the risks associated with climate change. They may have done a poor job of presenting themselves, but I believe if they had done a better job of making things clear, it would be even more obvious that we should simply wait and see.
“Pouring more water on a rock does not make it wetter.”
This statement blames the failure of the masses to accept CAGW on the masses being as dumb as a rock: We are too dense to receive wisdom.
I think the public has not received their “wisdom’ because it is not wisdom, it is selfserving, baseless propaganda.
SR
Yes, this reminds me of a former boss (who management FINALLY sacked when she started to pull the same crap on them): if she didn’t get what you were telling her (and she always had the air of someone who thought she was the smartest person on the room), it OBVIOUSLY had to be your fault for not explaining it better to her.
Hard to argue with that logic.
Steve,
“We are too dense to receive wisdom.”
Please re-read the post. You have totally missed the point. I describe the “information deficit model” and then say:
I then describe two kinds of mistakes by scientists’ that produced the result:
I’d accept Climate Science:
If climate science wasn’t pushed as an absolute in schools.
If the predictions from climate science seemed to be true.
If climate science didn’t confuse accuracy and precision.
If climate scientists didn’t rig the peer review process.
If climate scientists didn’t sabotage scientific careers.
If IPCC reports weren’t re-written after final approval.
If climate scientists didn’t try to sue the opposition.
If climate scientists didn’t appear to fudge the data.
If climate scientists didn’t resort to name-calling.
If climate scientists complied with FOI requests.
If climate scientists agreed to debate the issue.
If climate scientists didn’t exaggerate findings.
If climate scientists didn’t rig grant programs.
Canards bullshit & lies:
Methane is 86 times more powerful than CO2 at trapping heat.
Warm sea water is melting Antarctica from below.
Thermal expansion affects world-wide sea level.
Water vapor rains out after a few days.
People depend on glaciers for water.
Burning biomass is carbon neutral.
Methane from Cattle is a problem.
Sea level rise is accelerating.
Polar bears are going extinct.
CFCs caused the Ozone Hole.
The deep ocean is warming.
Average world temperature.
97% of scientists agree.
Coral reefs are dying.
Drought is increasing.
Antarctica is melting.
Greenland is melting.
Ocean acidification.
Well said, Steve!
“I’d accept Climate Science:
If climate science wasn’t pushed as an absolute in schools.
If the predictions from climate science seemed to be true.
If climate science didn’t confuse accuracy and precision.
If climate scientists didn’t rig the peer review process.
If climate scientists didn’t sabotage scientific careers.
If IPCC reports weren’t re-written after final approval.
If climate scientists didn’t try to sue the opposition.
If climate scientists didn’t appear to fudge the data.
If climate scientists didn’t resort to name-calling.
If climate scientists complied with FOI requests.
If climate scientists agreed to debate the issue.
If climate scientists didn’t exaggerate findings.
If climate scientists didn’t rig grant programs.”
Not me.
I would accept it if it was a real science instead of a religion, AND the findings were correct.
The second section is true enough…those are all lies and made up BS.
+1, Mr Case.
It is interesting to compare the handling of climate science press releases with that of Pons and Fleischmann’s publication regarding what has come to be termed cold fusion – Although they never called it that, the press did.
Pons and Fleischmann have since been vindicated. The effect they described is still not well understood, nor is it even certain that it is nuclear in origin.. but it certainly exists. Yet, they were subjected to a horrific and totally undeserved denouncement by the scientific press, simply because their honestly and accurately presented findings seemed too preposterous to be true.
Peer groups like MIT set out to repeat their experiment with the deliberate intention to find a null result… and unsurprisingly they did just that. Other less biased researchers found a positive result, though!
Meanwhile the climate scientists have shown a total cowboy attitude to science, yet even when they are caught red-handed stating an intention to hide results from the public, they get whitewashed. When we examine their findings without bias, we find that they seem to contain deliberate misrepresentations of data. This just doesn’t add up. By the standards applied to Pons and Fleischmann, these guys should have been kicked right out of the science community, and then some.
Instead, we have a situation where in academic circles, anyone who questions their work is likely to lose their job.
Ian,
“we have a situation where in academic circles, anyone who questions their work is likely to lose their job.”
That’s a powerful insight, about something I’ve often written about. Skeptics of mainstream climate science (e.g., Judith Curry, Roger Pielke Sr.) are attacking the ruling paradigm. As Thomas Kuhn said in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, mainstream scientists push back hard against those who attack the paradigm in their field. It is a cruel process, but that’s how modern science works. The great physicist Max Planck described the result (circa 1906):
There are no easy fixes to this. Science institutions have no interest in changing. As with biomedicine, where the government funds research it can insist on higher standards. But we’ve seen that a GOP Congress has no interest in doing so with climate scientists. Two GOP presidents during the past 30 years have had no interest in doing so.
Perhaps the replication crisis will produce institutional changes. Perhaps eventually the weather will prove climate crusade to be the largest and most significant example of the replication crisis – and that big splash will force change. We can only guess at how this will all play out.
About low energy nuclear reactions (aka “cold fusion) – there is some interesting work being done on it by quasi-commercial firms. See this post for details:
https://fabiusmaximus.com/2018/09/13/update-on-fusion-power/
Please go away.
No.
Hunter not yet, as Mr Kummer has not answered
the question of whether he is or not an AGW.
There is a remarkable parallel in the banning of DDT because of a false (but convenient) understanding of the science. The crusade was led by environmental NGOs, implemented by the UN WHO and supported by the left wing media. They managed to keep it up for 60 years, killing tens of millions of mainly poor people in the third world and sentencing hundreds of millions to diseases from which they ultimately recovered. Another triumph for dumb environmentalism. I wonder how many they will kill this time.
Reference: The Excellent Powder – Donald Roberts and Robert Tren.
Indeed.
In fact, one can also raise the issue of AIDS alarmism as well.
– In 2017, 380 000 people died from AIDS-related illnesses in the Eastern and Southern Africa Region, corresponding to 42% decrease since 2010. Adolescents both sex contributed to 22,000 among these deaths (6%)
– In 2017, 280 000 people died from AIDS-related illnesses in the West and Central Africa Region, corresponding to 24% decrease since 2010. Adolescents both sex contributed 13,000 of these deaths.
– Malaria deaths reached 435 000 in 2017.
– The WHO African Region carries a disproportionately high share of the global malaria burden. In 2017, the region was home to 92% of malaria cases and 93% of malaria deaths.
But, hey, the narrative…
Is it over?
We will see,the gullible citizens of Canada will make the best test of the CAGW memes strength in 2019.
Academic,Bureaucratic and Media Canada has been all in on CAGW propaganda for the duration.
Finally the politicians feel brave enough to impose a tax on everything,in the name of saving us from Catastrophe.
Taxing the only viable transport fuels in a country where everything is transported vast distances =A tax on everything.
So if we passively accept this tax,then meme has not been a failure, for in Canada it will have accomplished the goal.
Supposedly we have a “very high level “of education…
Yet the average Canadian cannot do their own tax filings.
Now if the country is ripped assunder by this final straw, well I will guess some Canadians can still do math…and the meme has failed.
email me via twitter and we can get a Yellow vest program started in Canada.
Go to the gas station and look for “low carbon” fuel. That fuel is cheaper than all the others because it is free of the carbon tax.
Oh wait. That fuel doesn’t exist. The public is paying the tax but are given no alternative.
Governments are trying to force people to go green by whipping them, not by helping them. Eventually people rise up against those holding the whip.
“…the only possible means of substantially reducing America’s carbon emissions within the timeframe climate activists are now seeking is to put a stiff price on all carbon fuels.”
=========
That is complete and utter nonsense because there is no alternative product.
Would people stop eating if you put a tax on all food. Of course not because there is no alternative.
If you make the tax on food high enough all that happens is an increase in the death rate which reduces the food eaten.
The same will happen as you increase the carbon tax. People will die and thus fuel use will decrease.
+
When Al Gore’s book came out, I immediately realised what a slick piece of propaganda it was.
Thankfully, hot on its heels in my city bookshop appeared Professor Robert Carter’s ‘Climate – the Counter Consensus’ and Professor Ian Plimer’s ‘Heaven and Earth’, along with Emeritus Professor S.Fred Singer and Dennis T. Avery’s ‘Unstoppable Global Warming – Every 1500 Years.’
Let’s not forget the much-needed (and timely) valuable contribution made by these authors in response to the doom-mongering which was just beginning. Essential reading for all.
I very eloquent and rational article and well put out.
“Summary: Despite thirty years of efforts by most of the elite institutions of America, US governments have done little to fight climate change.”
US governments have “done little to fight” the incoming tides either, which is about as good an analogy as you can get. “Fighting climate change” is not being done (for the most part, though “King Obama” did his best to make sure this country was FUBAR) because it is FUTILE, and because the US (or any other) government is NOT in control of the Earth’s climate, nor is humanity in general. And the people therefore don’t support such a “fight.”
“While a bout of awful weather might panic America into enacting activists’ wish list, as of today this is one of the great political failures of modern American history.”
Bouts of awful WEATHER should not panic America into doing ANYTHING, because it is *JUST* WEATHER. If a “bout of bad WEATHER” panics the US into adopting the economically ruinous “climate policies,” it will be a sign of the SUCCESS, not FAILURE, of the “climate” propaganda.
“It is rich with lessons for when scientists warn of the next disaster. The 21st century will give us more such challenges. Let’s try to do better.”
NEXT disaster?! “Climate Change” as the term is used IS NO DISASTER, since it is MERELY an elaborate fairy tale used to push a political agenda. Are you suggesting that the lack of adoption of more colossally STUPID “climate policies” by the US is a BAD thing?!
“MORE such challenges?!” WHAT “challenge?!” Humanity has not been remotely “challenged” by the changes to the climate since the late 1800s – quite the reverse, in fact. The climate has IMPROVED. A warmer climate is a BETTER climate for life on Earth. If you want to see a “challenging” change of “climate,” see what happens should we return to “Little Ice Age” conditions, with TODAY’s population. THAT will be a “challenge,” and if humanity is stupid enough to squander its resources chasing its tail trying to “control” the “climate” through its CO2 emissions, it will be an INSURMOUNTABLE one.
“Do BETTER?” What does that mean – get the suckers to buy into this crap?! The whole introduction sounds like you took it from the same mold as the “If only the COMMUNICATION of “climate change” was better, the peons would support us” mentality.
Let’s do better, indeed – let’s stop trying naked power grabs based on junk science, and let’s start expanding useful knowledge based on ACTUAL science about NATURAL climate drivers, so we’ll know what’s REALLY coming, not keep trying to revive the Lysenkoist “climate change” crap or it’s next replacement.
I have the distinct impression that only a few people posting here have read this post carefully and understand what is being said by the author.
Hence my earlier comment about it being carefully worded.
Numerous commenters who we all know well to be strongly skeptical of CAGW have praised this post.
Baffling.
AGQ Is Not Science, you have read this the way I did, and your response is a much better summation that I managed.
Thank you.
+1 DUDE
One clue to the crusade going off the rails comes from cases like Solyndra and Solo Power. These two company failures that took down sizable amounts of taxpayer funds directed by strong political hands never had a ghost of chance of success in their own industry sectors. They were sizable companies and workforces with nothing to speak of in terms of market share, market valuation, or future. They were in fact ghost operations from a marketplace perspective like ghost employees that never show up for work. They existed in order to harvest loans and grants while providing short term virtue signaling to political leaders. Their technology and futures were never compelling to anyone other than government staffers with orders to move the funds without questions. Those operations were conducted while sidestepping the market leaders. Such fraudulent public policy has no staying power.
The basis for the “climate change” crusade is entirely a ploy for political power, it has nothing to do with science.
The apparatchiks have actually revealed their real motives many times over the decades.
Except for Al Gore, not a single individual involved in the issue is known to most voters.
The “climate change” media freak show will never have any credibility as long as the voters think that Al Gore is the leader of the political movement.
Indeed, the day that Al Gore became the apparent leader of the “climate change” movement is the day that the movement lost the voters.
Larry Kummer sounds very urbane and broad-minded but what is the point about talking about “debate” when all the language is stuck inseparably to the notion of catastrophe, which, as Andy May demonstrated in his excellent recent article, is a false and deceitful premise. It is simply false to assert that risk of catastrophe is a serious mainstream scientific position, even leaving aside entirely the narrative of skeptics – just international academia. It’s not.
The clock is running for actions that might break the deadlock. Eventually the weather will give us the answers, perhaps at ruinous cost.
This clock ⏰ exists only in fantasy-scam land. No catastrophe is conceivably on the horizon on any rational scientific basis. Even the Holocene has been 3-5 deg C hotter than now, and past ages have been more than 10 degrees warmer, with the planet in rude health, forests up to the poles. So the notion of a 1.5 C warming being in any remote sense catastrophic is nonsensical. Not to mention the disgraceful silence on the clear evidence of global greening and boost to plant growth from CO2 enrichment of the atmosphere.
All this has been abundantly discussed numerous times. Why is this nonsensical fantasy of catastrophe still wasting everyone’s time?
It will be time to talk about debate when the mainstream opinion formers are open mindedly willing to consider the possibility that there is no catastrophe looming and that CO2 might be net beneficial in its small influence. That CO2 is not an enemy but a friend. Will this ever happen, Larry?
It bothers me when someone is spot on and speaking the truth, and no one responds.
So I am responding: Great post, Tasfay, keep fighting.
Tasfay,
I am amazed at the number of people here who say that scientists are overconfident in their findings – esp about the IPCC’s reports that state almost everything — including statements about the past — with some degree of uncertainty.
Adjacent to those complaints are astonishingly confident statements about the future made by amateurs. Given with the certainty that many people confine to basic arithmetic. Well, ok then.
Well then, 30,000 climate crusader flown to exotic destinations around the world every year for two weeks to come up with more regulations and ideas to tax the sheet out of the west. Unknown faceless parasites that are trumpeted by the MSN to agree on how much MORE blood should be sucked. ALL based on models that have so many fudge factors, adjustments, unknowns and have never been right….
TRILLIONS are being spent … and they want more year after year. Oh yeah 12 years till the end of the world…you know how many times I’ve heard this in my life? EVERY F-ING YEAR, nonstop, I’m so sick of talking about, hearing it daily and having to put up with fake enviro scientists spouting the next extinction/catastrophe/ end of the world prediction, just around the corner that never happens and cost us billions of dollars to solve a non existent threat.
The population has stopped listening to you scientists because of this alarmism, we all have tried our best to understand but have been shut down and you ridiculed us unwashed. More computer models and stupid graphs mean nothing when you dont fully understand the science yourselves…. just more mental masturbation to puff up and hide your lack of knowledge. You have set back science a century and caused misery around the world.
Honestly, when push comes to shove like in France (and its here in Canada), destroying this globalists agenda, I will be in the streets and die if needed.
Larry, your thought that governments have failed miserably in not having a policy in place to battle CAGW is an odd tack. You suggest we better fix it for the next dire (Malthusian) case brought to us by scientists. It is typical of those from the arts side of scholarly endeavor to have such reverence for scientists, once justified but not in the last few generations. Degraded and corrupted science education has flooded the field with Crackerjack^тм (prizes) Phds, who as S. McIntyre describes it, would be lucky to be highschool science teachers a few generations ago.
A recent PhD in Australia, (BTW on the sceptical side of the divide) got his degree for a statistical analytic critique of the HADCRUT temp data set. This is an indictment of both innocent student and witless professor. A decent piece of work perhaps for a batcheor’s degree (I undertook a seismic exploration of a major limestone formation locating new caves for my BSc.).
Typically on the arts side, but certainly advanced in climate science, is the abandonment of the scientific method and even of the finer elements of logic that perhaps the arts still acknowledge, for consensus as a measure of a theory’s significance.
Larry, the only support for CAGW causal theory is “what else can it be?” The “what” being that weve had <1C temp increase since the Little Ice Age. They perish the thought of how the temp dipped a degree or more from the Medieval Warm Period with little difference in CO2, which they have tried to disappear with their hockey sticks. If I am overlooking the real proof, could someone please come out right now and enlighten me?
Tell me, Larry, what convinces you that we are headed for heatborne disaster.
Gary,
As so many writers have said, please provide a quote showing what you are critiquing. You don’t appear to have read the post.
“your thought that governments have failed miserably in not having a policy in place to battle CAGW is an odd tack.”
The post says nothing remotely like that. I give two examples of errors by scientists, and this conclusion:
“You suggest we better fix it for the next dire (Malthusian) case brought to us by scientists. ”
Can you do better than silly exaggerations? Let’s replay the tape.
“the only support for CAGW causal theory is “what else can it be?”
How nice that you cosplay a climate scientist. Do you have anything relevant to say about this post?
“what convinces you that we are headed for heatborne disaster.”
What convinces me that you even read this post? Nothing.
Well then your post is confusing. If governments failed miserably to get going on policy to deal with something that no one can provide clear evidence for, one might ask why we havent a policy for dealing with Bertrand Russell’s “orbitting teapot” see Wiki for this instructive item.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell%27s_teapot
Failure to do something about a worry for which there is no definitive evidence is a failure to be thankful for. And logically why should we correct this failure for the next time we are faced with the vicissitudes of the orbitting teapot? We surely we would have to find it first and this could cost trillions!
So, Larry, what convinced you we face an existential threat. I truly would like to know. I suspect you may not have given this much thought.
Oh BTW, I am a geologist and an engineer. I even studied paleoclimate as all (most) geology students do.
Gary,
Try reading the post. Nobody will spoon-feed you the contents.
Well I re-read the article and came away with the same thing. Why not answer the simple question. It is a natural one to be asked here. If you have been convinced that the IPCC view is even very approximately correct, what convinces you?
As a scientist myself, I definitely am open to be convinced. With a necessarily complex science like climate, I know it won’t be unequivocal evidence, but no one has ever been able to set down this evidence in front of me. I’m certainly not convinced by hype and scientific misbehavior.
I get the same kind of ‘answers’ and dismissal you give me when I ask a climate scientist.
“In November, Washington voters decisively defeated an ambitious proposal to fight climate change.”
Actually, Washington State voters saw a tax & spend bill (they called it a fee, because the word tax is no longer used in the State. The bill, if passed, would not, nor could it have an impact on Earth’s climate. People do not like to be lied to. WA State has a couple of serious issues that need attention (the Cascadia Subduction Zone, for example), but global warming isn’t one of them.
Washington voters did approve a large gasoline tax (over 2 years) when that bill was designed and explained as a highway fixing effort.
You want to make people think, ask them if they want to help their children’s children’s children. Ask them if they think there will be another ice age.
If they say yes, ask them if it would be worthwhile to postpone it a little while by warming up the atmosphere.
If they say no, ask them why they think there won’t be another ice age when the earth has had so many!
Good one Larry, beautiful… if I may say.
cheers
Whiten,
Thank you for the review! Here’s a bit of background you might find of interest.
I created the first draft of this in 2009, when I didn’t know much about climate change (but was very familiar with the public policy process). These recommendations seemed pretty obvious now, and still seems so today.
I’ve circulated this post for comment from some climate scientists. Early comments: some of those I respect have given up on climate science. As Max Planck said, we might have to wait for current leaders to pass from the scene before progress becomes possible.
I totally disagree. I’ve personally seen strong leadership revitalize situations far worse than this. People – esp modern Americans – give up too easily.
I met a great chess player, a grand champion, a long time ago. I don’t recall the details, but he told me about a great player who would play on long after the game appeared hopeless. After winning in an endgame, his opponent asked why he continued played when anyone else would have conceded. “Ah, that’s why you lose” was the reply.
Thank Larry, for the reply.
I am quite sure that this is maybe off topic, but just for the sake of trying to add a line there,
maybe also a bit too late in the day.
You mention chess there, in the position and proposition of a point put forward.
In my understanding, I got to say, in this point in time the best ever indisputable winner in chess happens to be The Alpha Google Zero, an AI…can you believe it!
But still the most beautiful player in chess this days still happen to be the Leela Alpha Zero AI,
so too speak, the little sister of The Alpha Zero Google…a “weaker” AI
The most beautiful thing Leela does, in chess, as far as I can tell, is that when a game against Leela
is lost, the opponent gets a simple message;
“if you do try a go in draw, you better be ready to surrender… longer it will take, more humiliating and more clear the loss will be….something that Alpha Zero Google not so keen on applying it so clearly…
So, the point tried here is in the proposition, that these days there is no way to consider a win or even a draw if one happens to be in a certain loosing path…for certain…only a condition for further loos and further humiliation till the end of the game…especially if the loosing party flirts with the idea of a possible win or draw while the condition is one of an actual clear loss.
Maybe should not have done this, but only triggered by the mentioning of a chess game.
Still, Leela, the AI Alpha zero, shows this proposition in chess game playing, as far as I can tell.
Please forgive my jump here, in this given way, as most probably no much value there, and also maybe truly off context of your article here….
thank very much… 🙂
(should not done this, but hey, done it any way, hopefully meni does not mind.)
again.
cheers
“First, the basis for the warnings must be evaluated by an interdisciplinary team of experts outside the community sounding the alarm.”
One or more “science courts” of some sort (not governmental, not necessarily even official or certified, perhaps not even coming to any firm conclusions, similar to the Dutch Climate Dialogue site), as proposed in the 1970s, is desperately needed. Such an institution would have shortened the time needed to correct the Consensus on nutrition, ulcers, DDT, etc.
Roger,
I agree! This would be valuable because nobody likes other experts grading their work. Pressure for that must come from the paymasters.
“perhaps not even coming to any firm conclusions”
That would be very helpful to policy makers and the public. For example, “the evidence is insufficient to validate the climate models at this time.” It would also shatter climate scientists complacency, point to weaknesses in their work, and spur efforts to do better.
Yes, a science Star Chamber to rule on what is true and enforce their decisions…that is what we need!
Not!
We have the scientific method for that.
Politicians need to stay out of it, for the sake of the truth, for the sake of determining what is what according to objective reality.
IOW…for the sake of science.
Peer review and Star chambers do not get at the truth, they enforce experts opinions.
Science is the belief in the fallibility of experts, not a method for granting them authority over what is what.
Menicholas ,
“Yes, a science Star Chamber to rule on what is true and enforce their decisions”
Let’s replay the tape. I said:
These investigative commissions are commonly used mechanisms in the US. They study and issue recommendations for action by the elected officials of the Executive and Legislative branches. They have nothing in common with a star chamber, which is…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Chamber
“We have the scientific method for that.”
How’s that working out for yah?
“US governments have done little to fight climate change. ”
Not true; state and local governments are just getting started, with the public in those locales behind them. (Alas.)
Roger,
” state and local governments are just getting started”
Examples, please. California is, as usual, the outlier. See “Voters rejected most ballot measures aimed at curbing climate change” in the WaPo, 7 November 2018 — “From Arizona to Colorado, voters reject measures to ramp up renewables and limit drilling.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/energy-environment/2018/11/07/ballot-measures-taking-aim-climate-change-fall-short/
I Googled for “renewable projects USA state and local” and got this search-results page:
https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=renewables+projects+USA+staate+and+local&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8
I seem to recall warmist sites trumpeting and activists trumpeting their plans to do an end-around Trump’s policy by going local. I’ve read of conferences ought state government officials and mayors on implementing renewables, etc. States and localities are committing to a high percentage of renewable electricity in the future—Washington state has just done so, by its legislature and governor. And this is just getting started.
In the end, it’s all good, as such persistence in the face of the failure of similar renewables-inpositions abroad is indefensible and will terminally discredit The Anointed.
(I hope. OTOH, environmentalists might come up with a REAL threat and they’ll be ignored, because of their prior wolf-crying.)
The so called mitigation of their so called CAGW is just BS and fra-d according to Dr Hansen.(Guardian interview about Paris COP 21.)
And Lomborg’s latest research shows that there would be no measurable change to temp by 2100 even if every country carried out COP 21 to the letter.
So how many more trillions $ have to be wasted over how many more decades before they eventually wake up? Do maths and science count for nothing anymore?
Here’s the Lomborg link.
https://climatechangedispatch.com/where-do-we-get-most-of-our-energy-hint-not-renewables/
FM makes good points but misses the white rlephant in the room:
Is any of the mitigation effort justified?
The consensus largely refuses to address that question.
And it is not only important, it is the fundamental issue.
And the public square is firmly controlled by pro-consensus people.
Hunter,
“FM makes good points but misses the white elephant in the room:”
This is a focused article about one specific aspect of the climate change debate. It is not the Britannica article about climate change. There are ten thousand things it does not discuss.
At 1800 words it is too long for many readers. Many find anything over 1000 words to long to read or absorb.
Phase III and beyond would require a cooperative Congress. I don’t agree with Beta Blocker’s view that the plan can all be done through executive action. Particularly once you get into controlling the production of fossil fuels – that would require a civil war since Congress would never have anything to do with such a thing.
Yes, because legislation that starves and freezes people to death would be, rightly, very unpopular.
To do so for no justifiable reason would be just plain murder.
Here’s Dr Hansen’s COP 21 BS and fra-d quote from the Guardian interview in 2015. So much for their delusional mitigation nonsense.
Mere mention of the Paris climate talks is enough to make James Hansen grumpy. The former Nasa scientist, considered the father of global awareness of climate change, is a soft-spoken, almost diffident Iowan. But when he talks about the gathering of nearly 200 nations, his demeanour changes.
“It’s a fraud really, a fake,” he says, rubbing his head. “It’s just bullshit for them to say: ‘We’ll have a 2C warming target and then try to do a little better every five years.’ It’s just worthless words. There is no action, just promises. As long as fossil fuels appear to be the cheapest fuels out there, they will be continued to be burned.”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/dec/12/james-hansen-climate-change-paris-talks-fraud
Here’s Lomborg’s Paris COP 21 study that shows no measurable change to temp by 2100, EVEN if FULL compliance was followed by ALL the countries involved.
When will they wake up to their delusional nonsense?
https://www.lomborg.com/press-release-research-reveals-negligible-impact-of-paris-climate-promises
They should have instead did a Nuclear energy campaign. Then people might have taken them seriously.
That they have not gotten fully behind perhaps the only presently achievable means to reduce that which they say must be reduced, or we are all doomed, is perhaps the most transparent and telling aspect of their web of lies and deceit.
Larry,
On 15 June 2009,in Australia there was a meeting between Senator Steve Fielding accompanied by 4 Scientists,the late Bob Carter,William Kininmonth,David Evans and Stewart Franks with the Climate Minister Penny Wong, the Chief Scientist,Professor Penny Hackett and Professor Will Stefan.
A briefing paper was prepared by Senator Steve Fielding. It outlined questions put by the Senator and the supporting material supplied by his scientific advisers from Australia and overseas.
They were questions the Senator wanted answered to make an informed decision on whether or not an emissions trading scheme was the best course for Australia or not to deal with climate change.
The then Labor Government needed his vote in the Senate.
The questions were-
1.Is it the case that CO2 increased by 5% since 1998 whilst global temperature cooled over the same period( See Fig.1)?
If so, why did the temperature not increase; and how can human emissions be to blame for dangerous levels of warming?
2.Is it the case that the rate and magnitude of warming between 1979 and 1998 ( the late 20th Century phase of global warming) was not unusual in either rate or magnitude as compared with warmings that have occurred earlier in the earth’s history ( fig.2a, 2b)?
If the warming was not unusual, why is it perceived to have been caused by human CO2 emissions ; and, in any event,why is warming a problem if the Earth has experienced similar warming’s in the past?
Question 3.
Is it the case that al, GCM computer models projected a steady increase in temperature for the period 1990-2008, whereas in fact there were only 8 years of warming followed by 10 years of stasis and cooling?
If so ,why is it assumed that long-term climate projections by the same models are suitable as a basis for public policy making?
The answers which later drew an incisive rebuttal from Fieldings advisers were-
1.When scientists talk about global warming they mean warming of the climate system as a whole,which includes the atmosphere ,the oceans and the cryosphere etc.
The observational evidence clearly indicates that the climate system has continued to warm since 1998.During this period, ocean heat content has risen,ice and snow have continued to melt, and there has been no material trend in global air temperatures.
( As an aside under ‘ ice, snow and frozen ground’ they say…’There has been a small increase in the area of Antarctic sea ice, although it is not known whether the amount of Antarctic sea ice has changed because there are no data on ice thickness’).
There is then a statement that time scales of around 10 years can mask the atmospheric warming trend because of ‘ natural variability.’
On Question 2.
‘While the Earth’s temperature has been warmer in the geological past than it is today,the magnitude and rate of change is unusual in a Geologic context.Evidence from ice cores shows that between ice ages and warm interglacial periods temperatures increased by 4 to 7 degrees C. However this was a gradual process taking approx. 5000 years……Globally the Earth has already experienced warming of 0.76 degrees C since 1850, a very rapid change inn geological terms.’
( There then appears the Hockey Stick to show that warming over the last 2000 years has been ‘ unusual’and outside the envelope of natural variability.
On Question 3, the Answer was
‘It is not the case that all GCM computer models projected a steady increase in temperature for the period 1990-2008.
As noted above, air temperatures are affected by natural variability. GCMs show this variability but are not able to predict when such variations will happen.’
Larry,
The responses by Fielding’s advisers were predictable and clear in rebutting this cavalcade of obfuscation.
They make the point that for the government to invoke natural variability as an explanation for the elapsed temperature curve ( and the ‘pause’) is to destroy the credibility of their previous arguments.
This episode is very unusual worldwide in highlighting the dispute on inter alia ‘ the pause’.
Larry,
On 15 June 2009,in Australia there was a meeting between Senator Steve Fielding accompanied by 4 Scientists,the late Bob Carter,William Kininmonth,David Evans and Stewart Franks with the Climate Minister Penny Wong, the Chief Scientist,Professor Penny Hackett and Professor Will Stefan.
A briefing paper was prepared by Senator Steve Fielding. It outlined questions put by the Senator and the supporting material supplied by his scientific advisers from Australia and overseas.
They were questions the Senator wanted answered to make an informed decision on whether orr not an emissions tradind scheme was the best course for Australia or not to deal with climate change.
The then Labor Government needed his vote in the Senate.
The questions were-
1.Is it the case that CO2 increased by 5% since 1998 whilst global temperature cooled over the same period( See Fig.1)?
If so, why did the temperature not increase; and how can human emissions be to blame for dangerous levels of warming?
2.Is it the case that the rate and magnitude of warming between 1979 and 1998 ( the late 20th Century phase of global warming) was not unusual in either rate or magnitude as compared with warmings that have occurred earlier in the earth’s history ( fig.2a, 2b)?
If the warming was not unusual, why is it perceived to have been caused by human CO2 emissions ; and, in any event,why is warming a problem if the Earth has experienced similar warming’s in the past?
Question 3.
Is it the case that al, GCM computer models projected a steady increase in temperature for the period 1990-2008, whereas in fact there were only 8 years of warming followed by 10 years of stasis and cooling?
If so ,why is it assumed that long-term climate projections by the same models are suitable as a basis for public policy making?
The answers which later drew an incisive rebuttal from Fieldings advisers were-
1.When scientists talk about global warming they mean warming of the climate system as a whole,which includes the atmosphere ,the oceans and the cryosphere etc.
The observational evidence clearly indicates that the climate system has continued to war since 1998.During this period, ocean heat content has risen,Ice and snow have continued to melt, and there has been no material trend in global air temperatures.
( As an aside under ‘ ice, snow and frozen ground’ they say…’There has been a small increase in the area of Antarctic sea ice, although it is not known whether the amount of Antarctic sea ice has changed because there are no data on ice thickness’).
There is then a statement that time scales of around 10 years can mask the atmospheric warming trend because of ‘ natural variability.
On Question 2. While the Earth’s temperature has been warmer in the geological past than it is today,the magnitude snd rate of change is unusual in a Geologic context.Evidence from ice cores shows that between ice ages and warm interglacial periods temperatures increased by 4 to 7 degrees C. However this was a gradual process taking approx. 5000 years……Globally the Earth has already experienced warming of 0.76 degrees C since 1850, a very rapid change inn geological terms.
( There then appears the Hockey Stick to show that warming over the last 2000years has been ‘ unusual ‘ and outside the envelope of natural variability.
On Question 3, the Answer was
It is not the case that all GCM computer models projected a steady increase in temperature for the period 1990-2008.
As noted above, air temperatures are affected by natural variability. GCMs show this variability but are not able to predict when such variations will happen.
Larry,
The responses by Fielding’s advisers were predictable and clear in rebutting this cavalcade of obfuscation.
Larry Kummer, “While a bout of awful weather might panic America into enacting activists’ wish list, as of today [doing little to fight climate change] is one of the great political failures of modern American history.”
Exactly backwards. Doing nothing to fight “climate change,” a dissimulating obfuscating neologism meaning industrial CO2 emissions, is probably the greatest political triumph achieved in the US since the defeat of the Soviet Union.
The US has found its way to the truth of the matter in the face of insistent junk science, lying at the IPCC, the vociferous lies and distortions of green NGOs, and the willful ignorance and partisan, biased hortatory of the media.
Hooray for America, I say!
“Since James Hansen brought global warming to the headlines in his 1989 Senate testimony,…”
Testimony in which James Hansen presented his temperature projections without any uncertainty bars, as though they were perfectly accurate.
Testimony in which James Hansen expressed 99% certainty that CO2-induced global warming was already upon us in 1988 (not 1989), which 99% was based on a statistical inference that ±0.13 C of temperature jitter represented all of climate variability. Deep science, that./sarc
Testimony that, if not intentionally duplicitous, was 100% misleading. There was no evidence of a crisis then, there is no evidence of a crisis now.
“There are simpler and more powerful explanations for the [climate alarm] campaign’s failure.”
Yeah. They’re lying and the public figured it out.
““The time for debate has ended” –Marcia McNutt”
She’s right, but not for the reason she (and very likely Larry Kummer) thinks.
The time for debate is over because the alarmist side has been guilty of fake science, wild exaggeration, active censorship of critical thinking, conspiracy to deceive (see the climategate emails), betrayal of science, and all-around abandonment of any sort of integrity.
“Important: climate scientists can restart the climate change debate – & win.”
Fat f***ing chance.
They lost the debate because, first, they are not scientists, second they abandoned any aspect of science back in 1988, and third the AGW-pushers are generally incompetent.
“Thomas Kuhn tells us what we need to know about climate science.”
Thomas Kuhn used inaccurate and equivocal language to describe science. Whatever else he may have gotten right, he is wrong about the way science works. He won’t tell us anything we need to know about climate science.
Dick Lindzen will tell us what we need to know about climate science.
Such as, When an issue becomes a vital part of a political agenda, as is the case with climate, then the politically desired position becomes a goal rather than a consequence of scientific research. (my bold)”
That’s climate so-called-science. All politics, no science.
perfect. shame there’s no up vote mechanism
Sure there is.
You just used it.
Let me add my upvote to yours.
Nicely stated, Mr Frank !!
Spot on Pat Frank. Well said
“a statement that time scales of around 10 years can mask the atmospheric warming trend because of ‘ natural variability.’
How can you tell? And if it’s in 10 year cycles isn’t it a crap shoot to know what is natural or agw? Oh and what ever happened to the “it takes 30 years to record a climate cycle to see AGW”? Oh yeah, it didn’t get very hot.. it stalled.
“Globally the Earth has already experienced warming of 0.76 degrees C since 1850, a very rapid change inn geological terms.”
Funny, that number has creeping up by .1 a degree 20-30 years ago and now it’s creeping up by .01 degree , ooooh that’s preeetty scary, at this rate by 2030(12y) it might hit “GASP!” .766 !!!
THINK OF THE CHILDREN …THEN WE’LL NEED A GAJILLION DOLLERS …IPCC TOLD SO BUT YOU WOULD NOT LISTEN!!!!
“The Yellow Vest protests in France are the death knell for large-scale action in France. What went wrong?”
What does this have to do with AGW, Mr Kummer? As is so often, your proses
are very misleading and confusing for the enlightened reader.
Hans,
“What does this have to do with AGW?”
The initial spark for the Yellow Vest protest was the proposed increase in the carbon tax. Cancelling it was the French government’s first response. Even the liberals at the NYT couldn’t spin this as good news for the climate crusade:
NYT: “‘Yellow Vest’ Protests Shake France. Here’s the Lesson for Climate Change.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/06/world/europe/france-fuel-carbon-tax.html
Thank you, Mr Kummer. Yes, this is true but only
in part, as the demonstrators stated in numerous
reports there were a host of grievances and not
strictly carbon tax.
You certainly have contempt for those whom risk
bodily injury or worst, to stand against globalists
and their cronies in Brussels.
“Occupy Wall Street, the Tea Party, Black Lives Matter, and now the Yellow Vests. These are the peasants protest of our time. Without feasible goals, without organization. They dominate the media for a brief time, exciting the Outer Party (for whom becoming informed is entertainment). leave little or nothing behind. It is back to business as usual for France’s ruling class!
As I predicted.”
This is an insult to free Frenchman whom took to the
streets, at their own peril, to demand repeal of encumbering
taxes and regulations. And what is your quote suggesting,
that out of this a new movement, a political party or the
resurrection of the French Republic? Perhaps their aim was
to address a number of domestic issues and not the overthrow
of the seated government.
Having read your piece, still leaves me wondering whether or
not you believe in Global Warming.
What went wrong? When you want to reorganize civilization, you need a plan, and you need to move to something better, and you need to fund it. What we got was higher taxes to cause deprivation and poverty to force the middle class to convert to something that does not work. Oh my, I see that conversion through starvation ended badly. Who could have guessed. I suppose a plan to a new utopia based on slogans and bull with no details or substance is not a good social plan. The conversion is so complex and so vast, it is unplannable by human society.