Why Climate Change Isn’t Science
Environmentalists first predicted impending climate disaster in the 1970s, but they didn’t call it global warming. Back then, it was “Global Cooling” that would end life on earth as we knew it. The smog of industrial pollutants was blocking out sunlight so severely, we were warned, that our planet would enter a new ice age unless we acted quickly. Magazine covers featured pictures of snowball earth.
In the eighties, we cleaned up our air, the threatened the ice age did not occur, and thousands of people with time on their hands and seeking purpose in life had discovered that they could make a career out of disaster prophecy. Thus, it was time for a new catastrophe: “Global Warming” Well, maybe not so new. Same villain: us and our machines. Same victim: our delicate planet earth. Same threat: the end of life as we know it. Only the predicted temperature had changed.
Global warming appealed to the press’s appetite for calamity and became an instant hit. The headlines wrote themselves: The poles will melt! The oceans will rise! Lakes and rivers will dry up! Farmlands will become deserts! Millions will starve to death! This was big. Government would have to join the fight.
In the nineties, environmentalists switched their emphasis to “Climate Change” This was a marketing move. Global warming could credibly be blamed for warming, but climate change could be blamed for anything. If hurricanes increase one year, that’s evidence of climate change. If they decrease the next year, well, that’s climate change too. Droughts are caused by climate change, but so are exceptional rains. Warmer winters prove climate change, but so do colder winters. (Claiming that frigid temperatures are caused by global warming would sound ridiculous.) “Climate Change” was disaster gold. It couldn’t be disproved.
Which is exactly why it’s not science. It’s pseudo-science, according to the great philosopher of science, Karl Popper, who pointed out that for any theory to be considered scientific, it must be falsifiable. There must be something within the theory itself that can be disproved.
This may be technically true, but what was far more important was that “Climate Change” had already been proven — by three decades of data, by the computer models of climate experts, and by the overwhelming consensus of scientists.
But those “proofs” aren’t science either. Looking backward, climate change the phenomenon has been a constant feature of our planet. Real climate science tells us that temperatures have been much colder and much hotter in the past. (Canada once had a tropical climate.). For the past ten thousand years, we’ve been living in an interglacial period. These pleasant periods have tended to last for ten to fifteen thousand years, so real climate science predicts that we can enjoy about five thousand more years of temperate weather until the next ice age hits.
The theory of “Climate Change” is entirely different. To claim that it has been proven is to entirely misunderstand how science works. No scientific theory is ever proven. Theories that appear to accurately describe how nature works — like Darwin’s theory of evolution or Einstein’s relativity — are assigned the provisional status of not yet disproven, with the understanding that the discovery of a single contrary fact could throw a wrench into the works.
Strictly speaking, “Climate Change” theory isn’t really a scientific theory at all. It doesn’t take into relevant account factors which arguably have a far stronger effect upon climate than CO2, like the sun, ocean currents, and the greatest greenhouse gas of them all, water vapor.
What “Climate Change” is, is a bunch of doomsday predictions. Now, predictions are the critical part of the scientific method. They are what enable a theory to be proven or disproven. If they prove false, they’re also the best way to refute a theory.
Climate change alarmists have made lots of predictions. Perhaps too many, because not one of their predictions whose expiration date has passed has proven correct. Here’s a sampling, courtesy of Anthony Watts at wattsupwiththat.com:
- 1988, Dr. James Hansen. Asked by author Rob Reiss how the greenhouse effect was likely to affect the neighborhood below Hansen’s office in NYC in the next 20 years, Hansen replied: “The West Side Highway [which runs along the Hudson River] will be under water. And there will be tape across the windows across the street because of high winds. And the same birds won’t be there. The trees in the median strip will change…There will be more police cars…[since] you know what happens to crime when the heat goes up.”
- Sept 19, 1989, St. Louis Post-Dispatch: “New York will probably be like Florida 15 years from now.”
- 1990, Michael Oppenheimer, The Environmental Defense Fund: “By 1996, the Platte River of Nebraska would be dry, while a continent-wide black blizzard of prairie topsoil will stop traffic on interstates, strip paint from houses and shut down computers… The Mexican police will round up illegal American migrants surging into Mexico seeking work as field hands.”
- October 15, 1990, Carl Sagan: “The planet could face an ecological and agricultural catastrophe by the next decade if global warming trends continue.”
- 1990, Actress Meryl Streep: “By the year 2000 – that’s less than ten years away — earth’s climate will be warmer than it’s been in over 100,000 years. If we don’t do something, there’ll be enormous calamities in a very short time.”
- July 26, 1999, The Birmingham Post: “Scientists are warning that some of the Himalayan glaciers could vanish within ten years because of global warming. A build-up of greenhouse gases is blamed for the meltdown, which could lead to drought and flooding in the region affecting millions of people.”
- April 1, 2000, Der Spiegel: “Good bye winter. Never again snow?”
- March 29, 2001, CNN: “In ten years’ time, most of the low-lying atolls surrounding Tuvalu’s nine islands in the South Pacific Ocean will be submerged under water as global warming rises sea levels.”
- Oct 20, 2009, Gordon Brown, UK Prime Minister (referring to the Copenhagen climate conference): “World leaders have 50 days to save the Earth from irreversible global warming.”
To suggest that the scientific validity of “Climate Change” is debatable is to speak charitably. But there’s never been a debate, not for want of trying. Many skeptics have called for debates. In particular, Christopher Walter Monckton, 3rd Viscount Monckton of Brenchley, a hereditary peer, journalist, political advisor, inventor, and a skeptic well-versed in the details of climate science, has repeatedly challenged Al Gore to debate. That Al Gore has never replied to these requests is difficult to reconcile with his comments on the CBS “Early Show” (May 31, 2006):
“…the debate among the scientists is over. There is no more debate. We face a planetary emergency. There is no more scientific debate among serious people who’ve looked at the science… Well, I guess in some quarters, there’s still a debate over whether the moon landing was staged in a movie lot in Arizona, or whether the Earth is flat instead of round.”
These are not the words of a person who understands science. They are the tactics of a person who realizes he doesn’t have a scientific leg to stand on.
There must be another nonscientific reason for the “Climate Change” agenda. That reason may involve the billions of dollars that proponents have demanded for solving this “problem.”
“Climate Change” is a scam.
Reposted from American Thinker January 11, 2019
Of all those predictions the one by Der Spiegel was actually right. It was an April fool joke after all.
Streep should stick to (over) acting:
https://www.acsh.org/news/1999/02/01/an-unhappy-anniversary-the-alar-scare-ten-years-later
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/12/17/we-are-still-in-totalitarians-flunk-basic-reality/#comment-2560118
Malkom700 wrote:
“Today, it is clear to all normal people that the risk of climate change is realistic…”
That statement is the usual nonsense. “Climate change” is rarely if ever defined – it is a deliberately vague statement, not even a hypothesis, because it can mean everything and nothing.
The great minds of our age have stated that you cannot disprove a vague hypothesis:
“A theory that is not refutable by any conceivable event is non-scientific.” – Karl Popper.
“By having a vague theory, it’s possible to get either result.” – Richard Feynman
The “Climate Change” (aka “Wilder Weather”) hypothesis is so vague and changes so often that it is not falsifiable. It must be rejected as unscientific nonsense.
THERE IS NO CATASTROPHIC MAN-MADE GLOBAL WARMING CRISIS:
The Catastrophic Man-made Global Warming hypothesis is falsifiable, and has been falsified:
1. By the ~32-year global cooling period from ~1945 to ~1977, even as fossil fuel combustion and atmospheric CO2 strongly increased;
2. By “The Pause”, when temperature did not significantly increase for about two decades, despite increasing atmospheric CO2 concentrations;
3. By the absence of runaway global warming over geologic time, despite much higher CO2 concentrations than at present;
4. A hypothetical doubling of CO2 from the so-called “pre-industrial” level of approx. 280ppm to 560ppm would cause AT MOST about 1C of global warming (Christy and McNider 2017, Lewis and Curry 2018) , such that any credible humanmade warming predictions would NOT be dangerous, but would be net-beneficial for humanity and the environment.
5. The only conclusive evidence is that increasing atmospheric CO2 is hugely beneficial for the environment and humanity, due to greatly increasing plant and crop yields.
In conclusion, there is no credible evidence of dangerous man-made global warming driven by increasing atmospheric CO2, and ample evidence to the contrary.
Regards, Allan
United Nations, 19 September 1997
General Assembly
Nineteenth Special Session
Agenda Item 8
11th Plenary Meeting, 28 June 1997
“Programme for the Further Implementation of Agenda 21”
http://www.un.org/documents/ga/res/spec/aress19-2.htm
Many pages document.
UN policy agenda? Science ignored?
Barbara, have you researched vaccines and the pseudo science behind that hoax? Notice how the UN calls for global vaccination in it’s plans for restructuring human Civilization.
Ontario claimed in 2016 to plan for full electric and geothermal homes?
https://youtu.be/4bEhNyZtQZQ
Interestingly, all the stubborn folks on here who call me tin foil like names won’t investigate the collusion, conflicts of interest for board members of ncip, understand the implications of the 1986 national vaccine injury act that REMOVED ALL LIABILITY from vaccine producers, and on and on.
No long term control studies of vaccinated vs. Unvaccinated, or how about sv40 being proven to increase cancer risks some 45 years later (sure, that unnecessary polio vaccine did wonders for the eugenics program)
Agenda 21/2030 is real and it is full spectrum dominance
See the depopulation at work. Eugenics all the way down
simple-t is that you?
John Endicott,
A guy posts a video that says “Look at the data” and “Follow the money” and you call him a simpleton? The guy in the video even says “I’m not anti-vax, just anti-stupid.” But it seems any criticism of vaccine syunce on this site is met with the same type of cognitive dissonance and name-calling as is practised in climastrology.
The above video doesn’t even address the inclusion of human and animal DNA in vaccines. Perhaps you should check out Dr. Suzanne Humphries’ (PHd) videos and testimony before Congress. She covers in great detail the subject matter of this video. She also describes how organs are removed from living foetuses without anaesthetic, so as to avoid contaminating the DNA.
Or you could keep your tin hat on to avoid feeling sick.
A guy posts a video that says “Look at the data” and “Follow the money” and you call him a simpleton?
no, I did no (go ahead and look at the post again, nowhere will you find the word “simpleton” in that post). I simply ask if he was a previous poster* to this forum known for banging on and on about anti-vax nonsense in every post despite anti-vax not being the topic subject (until the mods finally told him to stop with his anti-vaxxer spamming) which is exactly what this “Matthew Drobnick” fellow just did. The subject is “Why Climate Change Isn’t Science” it’s not “Vaccines” or anti-vax conspiracy theories, as such anti-vaxxer propaganda is rather off topic.
* “simple-t” is the shortened name of the poster in question, the full name was a bit longer but I could never bother typing out everything after the t (so always referred to him as “simple-t” for short) and thus can’t recall exactly how the full name was spelled..
And incidentally, your comments about “But it seems any criticism of vaccine syunce on this site is met with the same type of cognitive dissonance and name-calling as is practised in climastrology” is exactly the same type of nonsense simple-t would often spew when challenged on his anti-vaxxer spam. so am I talking to another simple-t sock-puppet here? (that’s “simple-t” not “simpleton”, though if the shoe fits I won’t stop you from wearing it)
Dear Allan,
Exactly how does your comment relate to the E J Zuiderwijk’s (Zuider South wijk bay?) comment?
Please make unrelated comments free-floating.
Well, the debate may indeed be over except for the deniers who still persist in perpetuating the Anthropogenic Climate Change hoax, and their uneducated minions. The science is indeed settling and it doesn’t bode well for the alarmists.
“Well, the debate may indeed be over except for the deniers who still persist in perpetuating the Anthropogenic Climate Change hoax, and their uneducated minions. The science is indeed settling and it doesn’t bode well for the alarmists.”
As a “uneducated minion”, I’m a bit unsure of what you’re saying – seriously or factiously.
What I do know is “settled science” is an oxymoron. From early days of high school, the scientific method I was taught was based largely on a theory posed, and the attempts to disprove it. Once a portion disproved, a secondary theory incorporating the new knowledge was put up, also to be disproved. Nothing in my further education and life experiences has challenged that basic method.
Never has the scientific method been the building of a “body evidence” to prove, once and for all, that a theory is complete and accurate with no debate and declared that there is nothing else to know – i.e., settled science.
The quote “Which is exactly why it’s not science. It’s pseudo-science, according to the great philosopher of science, Karl Popper, who pointed out that for any theory to be considered scientific, it must be falsifiable. There must be something within the theory itself that can be disproved.” encapsulates how we have progressed over the ages.
Claiming “settled science” just proves one’s intellectual laziness and ignorance.
We went to the moon to prove it was not made of cheese.
“Well, the debate may indeed be over except for the deniers who still persist in perpetuating the Anthropogenic Climate Change hoax, and their uneducated minions. The science is indeed settling and it doesn’t bode well for the alarmists.”
I couldn’t agree more.
“Strictly speaking, “Climate Change” theory isn’t really a scientific theory at all. It doesn’t take into relevant account factors which arguably have a far stronger effect upon climate than CO2, like the sun, ocean currents, and the greatest greenhouse gas of them all, water vapor.”
Is there any scientific paper that enunciates AGW?. Like Einstein’s Theory of relativity paper or Darwin’s theory of Evolution, but defining AGW?
Never actually defining what you are claiming is one way to prevent your claims from being discredited.
“Is there any scientific paper that enunciates AGW?. Like Einstein’s Theory of relativity paper or Darwin’s theory of Evolution, but defining AGW?”
A single paper?
textbooks if you want to read.
You are reading the wrong textbooks
Steven Mosher, not one so-called climate scientist has any qualification, experience or understanding of Thermodynamics or heat& mass transfer. These are engineering technology since first written up up by the engineer Lazare Carnot around 1800 from practical experience. Those, who make claims about science in climate assessment, clearly have no idea about what constitutes engineering and science. Btw fluid dynamics, reaction kinetics and mathematics (dimensional analyses, control theory etc) are also engineering technology.
Sadi Carnot is the founder of thermodynamics. Lazare is his father.
I invented a 4th law of thermodynamics: “Entropy is proportional to temperature of body above Fermi temperature”
I wrote a mathematical proof of my 4th law by combining Fermi-Dirac statistics from quantum mechanics and Boltzmann entropy from statistical mechanics.
The 4th law of thermodynamics is historic and well known “the temperature in an office is always too hot or too cold but never somewhere in between”.
I am not sure anyone who actually pushed a Joy Christian article and couldn’t see the problem with it should be commenting at all on thermodynamics. We have been using it as a fun exercise to see how long it takes for grads to spot the problem with it.
I’m sure Dr. Christian and the reviewers and editors of Royal Society are more qualified than you. Send your paper rebuttal to Royal Society for publication. Don’t waste your time here hand waving.
Excerpt from my 4th law paper:
The 2nd law of thermodynamics is a generalization of the operation of heat engines. Entropy increases in heat engines because of inevitable heat loss. Actual thermodynamic cycles are non-adiabatic. The heat supplied to an engine does not all go to heating the working fluid. Thus the fluid has lower temperature than what it would otherwise be without heat loss. Lower temperature yields higher entropy. Engineering thermodynamics accounts for temperature of working fluid but not increase in temperatures of the engine and surrounding air, which are heat losses.
W = Qi – Qo
Qo = Qi – W
Where: Qi is heat in, Qo is heat out, W is work done by heat engine
Notice that Qo is total heat out including heat losses from hot radiating engine and hot air in the radiator cooling system. But the corresponding temperature in (Ti) and temperature out (To) refer to the temperatures of working fluid or exhaust gas. Thus, Qo does not exactly match To. The measured To is cooler because it does not contain all the heat in Qo. Hence, entropy (S) will increase.
So = Qo/To
Si = Qi/Ti
So > Si
dS = So – Si > 0
Therefore, while entropy is shown to be increasing in heat engines, the way it is discussed in engineering thermodynamics does not explain the increase in entropy at a fundamental level. The treatment of entropy in statistical mechanics is more fundamental.
And what is the value of climate sensitivity to CO2 doubling printed on these textbooks?
As far as I know, models have values for that “constant” ranging from 1.5 to 4.5 degrees C. So, aparently there is more than one AGW theory. Or even more precisely, there are several mutually exclusive hipotheses, but not really a full grown theory.
Nope, “climate change” is NOT science. Especially when the intended meaning is “climate change CAUSED BY human activities (specifically the burning of fossil fuels),” when the dreaded CO2 has NEVER been shown to “drive” the temperature, and, by extension, the climate, in the Earth’s climate history.
Global Warming? Climate Change is a simplistic hypothesis, adopted as fact by politically motivated people on the Left in order to demonize industry and provide an excuse to tax and seize control-either in fact or politically over large segments of the Western economy. They are aided in this endeavour by those who think that weakening Capitalism will strengthen Third World nations and the causes of the poor and disenfranchised.
This is nonsense. Virtually all human progress in the last 150 years has come from the increased efficiencies generated by economic pressures generated inherently by Capitalist systems.
There may be flaws in Capitalism and many have been dealt with by regulation. There is always a cost to regulation as it interferes with the basic function of that system, but whether or not there is a net benefit is a political tension that democracies have some ability to meter and evaluate. To perform this function adequately democratic societies require quality, factual information.
Climate Science has not provided this. We have been bombarded by a horribly dysfunctional and politicized scientific literature filled with activists disguised as scientists and funded by Leftist politicos for partisan purposes, aided and abetted by a structurally Left leaning and intellectually corrupt university system cranking out misled and undereducated young people.
A continuation of these practices will result in the collapse of the Western system and extreme social disruption soon to follow. Importantly. the Socialists very typically use economic problems created by Socialist policies as a springboard to blame those problems on the existing mangled Capitalist system and propose further Socialist policies as a corrective. This is what happened to Venezuela and Zimbabwe and the Soviet Union and others before as they doubled down on failed Socialist policies with more nonsense from the same illogical textbook. Socialism is inherently coercive and always leads to the same failed results.
The flaws in capitalism are for the most part caused by individuals having imperfect or incomplete information.
The theory is that people in government have access to better information than do mere citizens.
The reality is that people in government, being further from the problem almost always have worse information than do those on the scene. Worse, those on the scene have incentive to make the right decisions, while those in government have incentive to make decisions that benefit themselves.
Flaws in Capitalism are more to do with the fact that complete freedom ends up trending towards the desires of the individual rather than the needs of the group. Too much freedom is, in my mind, a Bad Thing(tm). If I was completely free I would be completely free to tease your dog, drink your beer and move your tv to a position where it was more comfortable to watch (aka – my place). Your counter to this would be of course ‘piss off, these are MY things’ which is why we have rules in our society.
Too many rules and you get a Socialist Paradise and/or Worker’s hellhole. Too many freedoms and you get anarchy.
Where does this leave Capitalism? If you allow a market to completely run itself you run the risk of the larger groups deliberately monopolising the market and then, having eating the competitors, stagnating it. Capitalism works as a force for good in that it drives development. It is often not selling people what they need, but what they want, and they want better things to improve their status. Greed is in fact good as the desire to have something you don’t really need, but helps you lord it up over your lesser peers means that the markets need to compete to provide it for you.
Greed and Need drive development. Yes they do have flaws that can be exploited and flaws that the constant desire for new cool stuff can overrule the pragmatic and also lead to class divide as the more economically successful pull away in standards of living. The system does reward the successful and those who are unable to be successful (which for the record is different from being un WILLING to be successful) can be left behind for no real fault of their own.
However overall the desire to be better has improved life expectancy, quality of life and equality of life and if you don’t believe me then take your time machine and crono-immigrate back to the feudal era cause nothing says ‘Life Is Good’ better than having to share your home with your own livestock.
Capitalism for ever.
Only government can create a monopoly. As long as the market is free, it is impossible for any one group to monopolize it.
The reasons are simple:
1) There are many alternatives to every product. To be affective, a monopolist not only has to control the product in question, but everything that can be substituted for the product in question.
2) Even if a potential monopolist does manage to drive everyone out of the market, the minute he raises his rates above the natural price for the product, dozens of competitors will jump in to take advantage of the above market prices.
As to the needs of the group? I give that no consideration whatsoever. Satisfying the needs of the individual will always result in the group being taken care of as well. Most of the time, those who are most concerned about the “needs of the group” are in fact concerned that there are people out there doing things that he doesn’t approve of, and he needs group actions to shut this down.
As to greed being the desire for things you don’t need. Why do you assume the right to decide for others what they need and what they don’t need? Do you believe that others have the right to decide that for you?
What’s wrong with some people having more money? If you want a world in which hard work and intelligence are rewarded, that’s the price. In my experience, those who complain the most about others getting ahead have never been willing to put in the effort to succeed themselves.
PS: You are confusing capitalism and democracy. Two entirely different things.
“Only government can create a monopoly. As long as the market is free, it is impossible for any one group to monopolize it.”
Complete nonsense and ignorant of history. Both Standard Oil and AT&T disprove your assertion.
Are they still monopolizing it?
Chris with his playbook stereotypes.
I think you meant to say “Too many freedoms and you get chaos.” It’s likely that a anarchistic society would have more (and better) rules than many societies existing today.
One of the best essays about the flaws of capitalism comes from the late, great Jude Wanniski:
http://www.polyconomics.com/essays/esy-960329.htm
“good socialism is better than bad capitalism. The logic of the statement is really inescapable. It is only when capitalism fails that people and nations resort to alternative forms of political economy.
…Capitalism, we must always remind ourselves, is not a political system, but an economic one. The distinction is extremely important, for it frees supporters of capitalism from having to defend it as a caring or compassionate institution, which it is not. It is coldly mechanical.”
Indeed, yes, good socialism is better than bad capitalism. Unfortunately, nobody knows how to create good socialism, and bad socialism is ….. very bad.
good socialism is like unicorns. Everyone thinks they’re great but no one has ever seen one.
Capitalism is an economic system where the means to production are owned by the public. Socialism is an economic system where the means to production are owned by the government. It is that simple.
Neither one has “caring or compassion”. They are about the role of government in society. And it has shown that government has no incentive to provide products and services efficiently. They have no competition in the supply of goods and services, and that is what drives efficiencies and innovations.
Socialism has a very poor record of improving the lives of its citizens. I could make a long list here of failed attempts, but it is easier to list successes. Zero…..and still waiting.
I would call it a Conjecture, which is a flawed Hypothesis.
A normal hypothesis is falsifiable and has some grounds in a consistent theory. The latter means not just a nice story but means that any other hypotheses that is includes or depends on must also be actual falsifiable hypotheses and not mere conjectures.
For example of the latter: the idea that the effect of CO2 is amplified by H20 by 3x to 4x depends on an additional conjecture that the global production H20 is only influenced by temperature in the atmosphere and not by, say, land use changes, agriculture methods or irrigation.
Or that changing levels of humidity in the air directly cause other changes in how the atmosphere behaves.
For example, warmer and moister air becomes lighter and enhances convection, which in turn carries the warm moist air high into the atmosphere where the water condenses and releases all that energy high above most of the CO2 and H2O in the atmosphere.
Referring to Jo Nova ,If Germany had built more windmills and Germany had no snow chaos, would that be a proof ?
😀
Of course it’s not science. The inaptly named “greenhouse” effect is a quantum phenomenon, and I have yet to see a single quantum mechanics paper that has studied climate change and greenhouse gases.
Hear hear! Plus loads. . .
Absolutely correct.
Don’t forget they tried to float the life ending disaster of “Acid Rain” as a segue into CC doom porn. Acid rain was the bridge between global cooling and global warming. They must have figured us lummoxes might call them out if the shift to polar opposites occurred too fast. Of course we are now getting a reprise of the idea in ocean acidification.
Don’t forget the ozone hole ‘crisis’ that was trotted out in the middle 70s, which led to the resulting Montreal Protocols which are now being falsely asserted to have fixed this crisis. It was never a crisis, nothing has been fixed because nothing was broken in the first place. The ozone hole has always been a totally natural phenomenon, and chlorine from sea salt is the main form of ozone eating chemical in the atmosphere. That chlorine is always going to be there unless the oceans freeze over.
I would hope no one is advocating for the oceans to freeze over so we can avert an ozone crisis. But then again, there are a few total misanthropes who’ve recently suggested that human extinction would be good for the planet, or a nuclear war might be our only way to avoid CAGW. So, what do you say, misanthropes? All in favor of frozen oceans to keep us safe from chlorine and salt in the air? Anyone? Buehler? No, I didn’t think so. Because frozen oceans would Flipper and salmon and those cute little sea otters.
Yep, forgot that one. The first the model generated disasters.
And The Prince of Warmingnest back then was The Prince of OzoneHolinest.
Back then, before he found his most lucretive alarm, he claimed that the Ozone “Hole” was making rabbits in (I think) New Zealand go blind.
Hmmm…fuzzy bunnies came before fuzzy polar bear cubs in the campaign. (I guess the bears need something to eat.)
PS Rabbits are an invasive species down under. If Al was right, then the Ozone “Hole” was helping to restore Ma’ Nature’s balance.
Alas and surprise!, he was wrong. An epidemic of “Red Eye” was to blame.
Guess which worldwide agency was also responsible for the Ozone scam?
Chlorine from the ocean will only make it to the stratosphere when it stops raining.
What do you think about nuclear tests in the atmosphere?
Could have stirred Cl up a lot.
Ended in 1963.
As global cooling failed as the apocalypse meme of the day, there was nuclear winter, still working on the cold side of things. Then there was simultaneously the acid rain and the ozone destruction by CFC’s, and a side issue about the frogs and then the bees dying off. Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming rose out of this muck like the first amphibians rising out of the sea….it was survival of the fittest of the apocalyptic nightmares served up to us by the self-serving “science” community. CAGW had the benefit of being off in the future, but needing sacrifice now, a great moral scheme. Remember all those carbon offset scams (cf. algore)
As if has become clear that the Earth is not warming at a rate convenient to the scaremongers, the weasel words ‘climate change’ took over as meme of the day. This very convenient to the religious interpretation of climate known as climate science. Just as those of a traditional religious ‘bent liked to intone, “The Lord works in mysterious ways” when some horrible thing happened to some wonderful person, so now it could be hot or cold or wet or windy or none of the above and the CC’er can intone, “See, climate change at work…We are all going to die, etc.”
But really, it all comes down to warming, not change. If the CO2 % in the atmosphere continues to rise, and the Earth does not warm, or warms tepidly, then the whole apocalypse industry is going to eventually move on to something else….Maybe they’ll Trump and the Russians will deliberately start nuclear war or having a wall around American will cause some sort of world horror….oops, they’re already going there.
They are going there, because the CO2 is rising, and the Earth is only warming tepidly. Just like the Soviet Empire fell when the Soviet leaders could no longer avoid the obvious fact that communism was a disastrous failure, the CC-ers and CAGW-ers will give up when even they cannot believe their non-sense.
No it’s not. It’s finger painting with all orange colors.
“These pleasant periods have tended to last for ten to fifteen thousand years, so real climate science predicts that we can enjoy about five thousand more years of temperate weather until the next ice age hits.”
At most another 5,000 years. I’m hoping it lasts that long but some cyclical predictions have it ending a lot sooner.
Unless of course CO2 does have an impact, in which case the next ice age will be delayed by a decade or two.
Actually there have been a few interglacials that have lasted ~30,000 years due to low eccentricity and this happens to be one of those. It’s a convenient fact for the gorebull warmers that we are in a super-interglacial period.
Yes what does Clive Best predict?
From his post (http://clivebest.com/blog/?p=2775) his last figure http://clivebest.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/fig41.png would indicate that we are in a cycle similar to the one 400K years ago. So we are around the middle of an interglacial. it is a steep curve, but still thousands of years.
Excellent article! Spot on! Every CAGW alarmist should read it.
I’ve read it. You could not write a more simplistic load of drivel if you tried. Seriously this is trash and is an embarrassment that a site that proclaims to be about science would print it. WUWT does have some articles to be taken seriously, but this is so full of nonsense an half truths it should never have got past first base.
If you are going to credibly claim that an article is a “simplistic load of drivel”, and “full of nonsense and half truths”, you should be able to provide a rational argument to support these claims, otherwise they are merely specious claims with nothing to back them up, and carry the intellectual heft of any average school kid.
‘they are merely specious claims with nothing to back them up’
You might even call it ‘simplistic drivel’.
How about the fact that the essay is self-contradictory. Firstly it claims that
climate change is not science because “It couldn’t be disproved.” then it gives a
list of failed predictions. So either it is not science because it doesn’t make any
predictions and can’t be disproved or it is science because it does make predictions
that can be disproved.
More fundamental the article never defines what it means by the theory of climate change — except in vague terms as a green plot to destroy the world. It is very unclear what the author is arguing against. Does he believe that adding more CO2 to the atmosphere will raise the average temperature or not? If so does he believe that humans are responsible for the increase in CO2? If the answer to both of these is “yes” then surely he believes in human caused global warming i.e. the theory of climate change.
Percy,
You said, “… or it is science because it does make predictions that can be disproved.”
The falsification of the predictions carries with it the condemnation that the hypothesis behind the predictions is not verified and not worthy of further consideration. Falsification does not make a prediction scientific. If someone were to predict that Godzilla was going to destroy Tokyo tomorrow, I imagine that it would be shown to be a failed prediction. No matter the pseudo-science behind the idea (nuclear radiation caused some mutation), the hypothesis is not truly based on science, and the subsequent falsification demonstrates that the hypothesis has no merit and does not deserve to be associated with the adjective “scientific.” It is little more than unsubstantiated conjecture wrapped in the trappings of pseudo-science.
As the article points out, it is the alarmists who have failed to define what the heck “Climate Change” is.
It really is fascinating how you can criticize an article for failing to do your job for you.
Let’s see – perhaps there’s a correlation to be had between a theory that ‘can’t’ be disproven to its proponents, no matter WHAT the evidence, versus a long list of failed predictions.
That’s only contradictory if you’re working backwards from a conclusion.
Maybe this is because climate changeism (and mosts of doomesdy environmentalism) is self contradictory. In the 1970s and 80s they were foolish enough to make very precise predictions, many of which have since been falsified. Since then they’ve become wiser and only make “predictions” that are so vague they aren’t or who are so fare into the future that anyone alive today won’t see if they come true – including those who made the predictions, and those affected by the negative consequences of their policies.
Wordsalad. Exactly doing predictions that fail, but then distancing itself from them and redoing from start, combined with creating a full cover prediction spectrum that guarantees ‘success’, is a sign of a failing paradigm.
This is i.e. sensitivity, regional predictions, and predictions on the direction of change of variables other than temperature.
For example, the range of projections of warming in 2100 is huge. The social effects like amount of climate refugees are even worsererst than that. You can argue predicting is prone to projection assumptions, and here lies a problem – the nonscientific paradigm is interested in not projecting, but choosing projection parameters so as to get policy advocacy instead of a true trial to look into future.
If cows fly, we need helmets. But because cows don’t fly, the paradigm didn’t produce a useful prediction on amount of projectiles in the lower atmosphere.
You can argue, that many of the predictions were by freak scientists published in nonscientific literature; obviously this is the case. However, the predictions have not been actively shot down, because they work as a convenient ideological background and are, in fact, very difficult to shoot down even when the fail is apparent. For example, the due time of the Hansen 1988 prediction was changed to a later time afterwards, in an apparent attempt of fixing a failed end-of-world prediction. This is some typical development for a religional cult, but not for good science.
Draw your conclusions.
I would be glad to put a mirror on your face.
With your great intellect and education just pick and point the sentences that you claim to be “nonsense an half truths”.
Of course you cannot, because you cant even know how to read. And you dare to accuse people for dishonesty.
“Of course you cannot, because you cant even know how to read. And you dare to accuse people for dishonesty.”
Well that sentence doesn’t make sense for a start…..
If that’s the best criticism you can come up with, then you should hang your head in shame.
The sentence is awkwardly written, but it makes perfect sense, unless your desire is to once again shift the attention away from your own shortcomings.
Shame is the first thing you jettison to become someone like Simon.
Translation: I couldn’t understand it, therefore I must insult it and hope that nobody calls me out on it.
Simple Simon always makes the same accusations, but never backs a single one up. Simple Simon ‘Knows’ that his Climate Faith is true, and everything else is false.
~¿~
Simon
How about some examples to support your ‘simplistic’ criticism? Anybody can make claims, but it takes someone who actually knows what they are talking about to provide examples and counter facts. Are you up to it, or is it your style to drive by, lob a verbal grenade, and disappear afterwards? Your remarks are similar to the tired refrain “There are so many things wrong with what you said that I don’t know where to start!” Usually, those who say that, just move on without even tossing a coin to decide where to start. In three words, “A cheap shot.”
Simon,
Every time you open your yapper and waste everyone’s time and mental energy with your trollish blathering, information is sucked out of everyone’s brain and vanishes from the Universe.
I always knew Hawking was just making that crap up off the top of his head
You know, like you do.
As Simon has just demonstrated – what’s the point?
You’ll have to admit that it’s becoming more sciency now as we see brilliant thinkers like NASA scientist Gavin Schmidt addressing the sociological components that intersect w/feminist concerns, humanities and sociology.
The world has already been destroyed and we’re living in a simulation. No wait, that doesn’t bring in trillions of dollars to redistribute.
Well, the UN third world movement and the UN north-south redistribution of wealth plans did not work out so let’s try the climate-based plan for the same money transfers.
The cult of CAGW were forced to change the historic surface temperature data (As per orders from the head of the NASA group James Hansen, who started CAGW) to match their ideology and they were also forced to change the topic from global warming to “climate change” as actual satellite planetary temperature measurements does not support either CAGW or AGW.
http://www.drroyspencer.com/wp-content/uploads/UAH_LT_1979_thru_February_2018_v6.jpg
Why has there no evidence of AGW warming from 1979 to 1997?
Why is there a ‘hiatus’/plateau (sic) in warming?
Changes to US GISS data since 1999.
The climate change science industry is now like the charlatans in the financial industry.
Let say there are 9,000 financial analysts (in academia and the finance industry) all working on predictions of how the S&P500 index will move over the next 90 days. Statistically, let’s charitably assume 33% (1/3) gets the overall ups and downs basically correct, or 3,000 analysts. Then over the next 90 days, of those 3,000, 1/3 are again basically correct in their prediction of the market movement or 1,000. Repeat this for 2 more 90 day cycles (a full year), and you’ll have 100 analysts hailed as brilliant financial forecasters. But were they really? Maybe some are, and maybe some just got lucky, because with so many different predictions and some players in the game, there will be some winners by chance.
Substitute “financial analyst” in the above with “climate scientist looking for a hard to get grant funding”, and you can see both how the climate change narrative and climate rentseeking by the climate scientist both advance in lock step.
Statisticians deal with this sort of many test (multiple comparisons) problem with additional special tests (such as the Bonferroni Method), but even those can be fooled. Which is why in particle physics, where many billions or trillions of particle event collisions may be analyzed in searching through collision debris for one unique signature, they commonly demand incredibly small p-values like 10 to the minus 25 or much lower before judging an observation as a confirmed observation of an event or search for an unique particle.
Climate Science of course does none of this. We have so many different “climate scientists” now making such a diverse range of predictions on weather come climate that some will get it right by chance and then be hailed as a skilled climate scientist.
Another way in which Climate Quackery is promulgated by established climate swindlers is to constantly produce new predictions at regular intervals. Eventually one (or two) of those predictions happens. The climate swindler makes sure all their past failures are not considered, only the one or two “hits” get scored. A full analysis of all predictions, both failed and successful, would of course show the climate swindler has no or only little skill that might be deemed to chance itself. This style of Climate Quackery is the prevalent and rampant modus operandi in the “establishment” climate modelling community today.
“… some will get it right by chance …”
And there is no greater ‘sin’ in science than to be right for the wrong reason(s)!
“There must be something within the theory itself that can be disproved.”
While climate change itself can’t be falsified, significant climate change arising from CO2 emissions can be falsified in may ways since all the prognostications of doom are based on a range of Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity that itself can be falsified in multiple ways.
Consider the lower limit of 0.4C per W/m^2 which requires surface emissions to increase by 2.2 W/m^2 per W/m^2 of forcing. Even the IPCC acknowledges that if the ECS is less than this, no action against CO2 emissions are necessary and in fact, it was this threshold that set the presumed lower limit in the first place.
Since all solar Joules are equivalent, the atmosphere has no internal source of power and any power in excess of solar forcing returned to the surface making it warmer than it would be otherwise must have originated from the surface sometime in the past. This limits the total amount of energy absorbed by the atmosphere to the total amount of energy emitted by the surface.
The atmosphere is semi-transparent where the radiant emissions at TOA are always more than half of the radiant BB emissions of the surface below and this is true even when the coldest cloud tops cover the surface. If the emissions at TOA were as little as 1/2 of the surface emissions below, the maximum possible surface emissions increase per W/m^2 of forcing would be 2 W/m^2 which is already less than the 2.2 W/m^2 of surface emissions per W/m^2 of forcing required to support the IPCC’s minimum ECS.
Since all Joules are equivalent, if each of the 240 W/m^2 of solar forcing resulted in 2.2 W/m^2 of surface emissions, the average surface emissions would be 528 W/m^2 corresponding to an average surface temperature of 311K, which is obviously much too large. Confusion arises as the IPCC considers CO2 to be a forcing influence on its own when in fact, only the Sun forces the system and by their accounting, doubling CO2 is EQUIVALENT to about 3.7 W/m^2 more solar forcing keeping CO2 concentrations constant.
Don’t be confused by claims that the system is more complicated than I say. It’s not and claims that it is are only made to misdirect you away from a simple and otherwise unavoidable truth. Any legitimate scientist knows that there’s no law of physics that can override COE or the SB Law, relative to matter absorbing and emitting energy, yet the IPCC requires some kind of unknown and implausible physics to support their position. Any legitimate scientist knows that Joules are Joules and that the planet has no way to distinguish incremental Joules such that the next W/m^2 of forcing can increase surface emissions between 2.2 and 8.6 W/m^2, while all the others only contribute 1.6 W/m^2 to those emissions, yet the IPCC requires the next Joules to be far more powerful at warming the surface than any of the others, even at the presumed minimum ECS.
Don’t be fooled by the fools. The nebulous excess complexity they assert is only there so that they can obfuscate these obvious violations of first principles physics. Challenge alarmists on this unavoidable truth and don’t let them get away with their BS.
NASA Says:
https://www.nasa.gov/audience/forstudents/5-8/features/nasa-knows/what-is-climate-change-58.html
“Earth’s climate is always changing.”
So the question then becomes, if climate is always changing, what’s a change from the change that would have otherwise changed if it hadn’t changed? 😉
Andrew
I disagree with Jones on a key aspect. He applies to ‘Climate Change’ what he believes climate change means. He thinks it has something to do with weather over time.
It is in fact undefined. Giving it infinite uses. Even conflicting uses.
‘It rained so hard the day I left
The weather it was dry, sun so hot
I’d like to froze myself to death
Susanna don’t you cry’
This on Facts vs Theories:
“Facts and theories are born in different ways and are judged by different standards. Facts are supposed to be true. They are discovered by observers or experimenters. A scientist who claims to have discovered a fact that turns out to be wrong is judged harshly.
Theories have an entirely different status. Since our understanding is incomplete, theories are provisional. Theories are tools of understanding, and a tool does not need to be precisely true in order to be useful. A scientist who invents a theory that turns out to be wrong is judged leniently. Mistakes are tolerated, so long as the culprit is willing to correct them when nature proves them wrong”. Prof. Freeman Dyson
“The method of science, as stodgy and grumpy as it may seem, is far more important than the findings of science.” Carl Sagan – Our Demon Haunted World.
The scientific method is a process which develops and progresses as follows:
Conjecture – A scientist suggests an idea that may explain or dispel some scientific problem – it is intended to get other scientists to explore the idea and supply comments, input and observational data or logical argument for or against the idea.
Hypothesis – Conjecture starts to firm up as initial experimentation, observation, logic and testing hold up the original idea. A hypothesis must then make predictions for further discovery. It should also propose further testing that might further strengthen or falsify the hypothesis (it must do both). A single (but reproducible) failure falsifies a hypothesis or at the very least requires the hypothesis be amended.
Theory – A Hypothesis firms to an accepted theory typically only after surviving testing of all the things that could prove or disprove it – particularly the discovery of its predictions. This acceptance is typically only forthcoming over a period of decades and in most cases generations as the “old guard” die off.
Fact – (or Law of Nature) – A theory becomes generally accepted as fact only if there is no known outstanding experiment (even a theoretical one which cannot yet be performed) which might falsify the theory. This is typically a very long process.
There is a step between theory and fact – that is Theorem or a mathematically derived proof of fact.
Note: At no point are any of these steps, not even Facts, sacrosanct – they can be disproven at any time but as you can imagine it is extremely difficult to get the establishment to accept a change in what was regarded as fact.
Time as a constant was considered a fact until Einstein came up with special and general relativity – which in truth started as a conjecture piece in the journal “Physik” in which he pointed out that many of the problems puzzling scientists at the time (such as the constant speed of light in the Michelson-Morley experiments) could be explained if we abandoned our concept of time as a constant. It is still a difficult concept to get your head around and in its day must have seemed a truly bizarre idea.
Newton’s theories on gravity were held as solid fact from 1687 but were unseated by Einstein’s Special Relativity in 1905 (followed by General Relativity in 1916).
Even theorems can come a cropper such as Earnshaw’s Theorem which proves (from Maxwell’s equations on electromagnetism) that static stable magnetic levitation is impossible – however this was before the discovery of diamagnetic materials and superconductors which required the amendment of the theorem.
Some theories can’t make the jump to fact – such as Darwin’s theory of evolution – which has been criticized by creationists as a non-falsifiable theory. Not so. Whilst there can be no experiment to falsify the theory, every time we dig up a fossil the theory is tested – and thus far has stood up to those tests (so it’s a much longer process). As J B S Haldane said when challenged by this question from Karel Popper “what could I show you that would falsify your theory ?” responded “Fossil rabbits in the Precambrian !”
Popper’s falsifiability of all science has been universally accepted as a benchmark for all scientific theories.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsifiability
If you apply the scientific method you will find that the AGW Hypothesis is barely a hypothesis at all and resides in a scientific no man’s land between conjecture and hypothesis. It is certainly not a credible theory or demonstrable fact – although it is often presented as such.
Once again this should alert you to the fact that persons making such claims as “the science is in and incontrovertible” (Barak Obama) are not scientists – no true scientist should ever make such a statement.
You should also note that the theory of global warming was railroaded from Hypothesis to Fact in an obscenely short period of time (scientifically speaking) by agenda driven warmists masquerading as scientists.
Given Dyson’s remarks earlier it should be obvious that most serious scientists are extraordinarily reluctant to declare something to be a “Fact” because of the approbation should they be wrong.
Example: Edwin Hubble discovered the “red shift” that (in part) allows us to measure the distance to the stars – this led to the conclusion that the universe has an “age” or starting point as well as the “Big Bang” neither of which Hubble propounded.
Big Bang Theory has thus far withstood all tests including the cosmic microwave background radiation, variations in this background that permitted the formation of stars etc. and the recent detection of gravitational waves – all of which were predictions of the theory which could not be verified at the time. You will note it is still called “The Big Bang Theory” it is not yet completely accepted as fact even though it’s been around a lot longer and has far better proof than Global Warming which IS being touted as fact – sorry I’m not buying the global warming theory as fact.
In my book anyone claiming global warming to be a “fact” is almost by definition not a scientist.
Thanks, KI. Good report.
Climate change exists apart from all that gobbledygook about methods and hypothamacallits.
Climate change is THE science!
Don’t you believe in climate?
How can you deny the science?
In the nineties, environmentalists switched their emphasis to “Climate Change” This was a marketing move. Global warming could credibly be blamed for warming, but climate change could be blamed for anything.
Not exactly: the IPCC (Climate Change) was founded in 1988, not in the 90s.
The term Climate Change had been widely used before then, e.g.:
Gilbert Plass’s ‘The Carbon Dioxide Theory of Climatic Change’, 1956.
Barrett and Gast, a letter in Science in 1971 entitled simply ‘Climate Change’.
Wallace Broecker, “Climatic Change: Are We on the Brink of a Pronounced Global Warming?” Science, vol. 189 (8 August 1975), 460-463.
The First Assessment Report came out in 1990, not in the 80’s. Likewise who cares when the term ‘Climate Change’ was coined or first used. The point the author makes is that the PR was all about CAGW until the Earth stopped warming. So the PR was changed. In a similar vein, the timeline of the predictions has also changed, with many stretching out to 2100 now.
I’m always surprised (every time!) that someone has to point out the error of someone else saying ‘it wasn’t called climate change until…blah, blah, blah’.
It doesn’t take much effort to find out, as Phil points out, that the sentence “In the nineties, environmentalists switched their emphasis to “Climate Change” This was a marketing move.”is nonsense. 1988 is when the IPCC was started, people – try not to forget that in future. And it undoubtedly took a few years of discussion before that (as usual with these things) before it’s birth. Therefore, mid to late 80s, not 90s.
But then when you have someone like Reg Nelson who says “who cares when the term ‘Climate Change’ was coined or first used”, everyone can see how much you so-called skeptics care for the facts! Who cares, indeed! Real sceptics care…
You rather miss the point (willfully so). The point isn’t when the phase was first uttered, it’s about how widely used it was. From the 1980s until the new millennium when ever most anyone discussed what today is being called “climate change” the phrase in use was “global warming”. around the turn of the century that began to change and “climate change” became the preferred term.
Or as even the Washington post (in an 2018 article) admits:
“The gradual change in preferred terminology from “global warming” to “climate change” among scientists and politicians began about a decade ago because that’s what their institutions called for. It also happened to be the preference of the George W. Bush White House.”
Or as William Safire of the New York Times wrote in 2005: “The contentious phrase global warming, first used by United Press International in 1969, seems to be undergoing a certain cooling; contrariwise, the more temperate phrase climate change is getting hot,”
“Money, Money, Money” baby
Goldman Sachs made a market in carbon trading as they made a market in sub-prime mortgages. After the financial crash that was the morality free explanation of their then Chairman. The climate change scare lurches from one greedy scandal to the next with all of it coming from ordinary citizens. This is not hyperbole. It is a series of facts. Carbon trading, green energy startups, wind power contracts, solar contracts all caught up in scandal after scandal. Politics is business by other means to paraphrase and update an old maxim.
I thought this was an excellent summary of the situation.
To me global warming is like astrology.
Astrology was also based on theory and conjecture. Arguably astrology seemed a reasonable theory in pre-scientific times. I can see how in ancient Babylonia or in ancient India when you saw the regular and spectacular movements of the stars and planets you might reasonably figure that there logically ought to be a connection between the movements of the planets in the sky and important events on the ground. Especially among the most learned it achieved a consensus.
Reams of data were produced about an earth centered planetary system. Only a few highly intelligent observers in ancient Greece figured out that the earth went around the sun and not the other way around and they were mostly ignored by the learned.
But astrology never had any actual evidence behind it and as we learned more we realized that astrology is total non-sense.
Ironically the news media was among the last to give up astrology. It figures. Now days astrology columns typically are on the comics page. If they appear at all. But years ago newspaper ran them as regular features.
Occasionally someone still asks my sign. It’s more of a cultural thing then a real belief. But yesterday’s science is today’s superstition and superstitions die hard. And they can be fun if you don’t really believe. I’m an Aries and I understand that according to the position of Jupiter I’m supposed to be wealthy. I wish!
Just to repeat myself, nice article.
“To me global warming is like astrology.”
Close, but to me, the real astrology-like stuff is the models: they are trotted out to “prove” anything.
More precipitation than normal?
Here’s a model that says this is EXACTLY what would happen.
Oh, the next year had less than normal precip?
See, this IS science, as we have a model that says EXACTLY that as well.
Just as astrologers will attempt to shoe-horn the 10s of billions of people who have ever been born into 12 neat signs, they often have to add things like “with Scorpio rising” and stuff when it doesn’t work.
Watts my sine? Well, it must be pi-halves, because I AM THE ONE!
To me, Climate Science ™ us more like Scientology.
It has a load of hypotheses that are ridiculous under close scrutiny, but impossible to disprove.
It is run by a cabal of elites.
Any deviation from the dogma is severely punished.
Anybody speaking out against it is subject to scorn and vilification.
Its primary purpose is to make money from deluded peope. *
Hence “Climate Scientology” ™
* I have to admit that this is only the secondary purpose of Climate Science ™ . The primary purpose apoears to be political, but has the same end.
One thing I’ve always found interesting and perhaps revealing is that the worst predictions about climate change/global warming are set in the distant future-decades to a century or more away. “A third of North America will be underwater by 2050” or “the earth will be like Venus in 2100″(those are both exxagerations obviously).
If it’s 2050 or 2060 or whatever and the world hasn’t ended-I almost guarantee you, the doomsayers will push back their predictions further and further into the future.
This is a very good article by Charles the Moderate pointing out that the ‘theory’ of CAGW and ‘Climate Change’ are not scientific as they are not falsifiable and therefore little better than ‘Just So’ Stories. The Astrology column would be a better guide to the future than the IPCC.
“In the eighties, we cleaned up our air, the threatened the ice age did not occur …”.
==================================================
The apparent lack of CO2 temperature forcing due to rapidly growing emissions 1945 – 1980 is attributed to aerosols in the lower atmosphere but that would apply only to the NH specifically North America and parts of Western Europe, but not the Eastern Bloc, China etc.
The SH would not have been affected due to the Coriolis effect.
However the same dip in temperature 1945 – 1980 occurred in the SH, but it is quietly being adjusted away:
http://woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3sh/from:1900/mean:13/plot/hadcrut4sh/from:1900/mean:13
“To me global warming is like astrology.” I’m not sure that’s entirely fair to astrologers, who at least need to calculate the planetary positions accurately.
The basis of climate alarmism is the greenhouse effect of CO2. However, like the motions of the planets this is well understood and defined. It works to a logarithmic scale, such that increases beyond 40ppm or so have little effect.
The claims of the climate alarmists would be like an astrologer claiming that “Gravity attracts all celestial bodies to each other, therefore we are screwed because the Moon is about to crash into us, followed a while later by the other planets.” – Of course we all (including astrologers) know why that is nonsense, it’s because potential gravitational energy translates into angular momentum. So, the collision could only happen when the orbital momentum is exhausted.. and that will take a very long time.
Climate alarmism is based on a similar premise, that a simplistic interpretation of a physical property must literally apply in all cases.
To avoid being unfair to astrologers, you can say it’s like Sociology.
Al Gore’s Church of Climatology
Popular myth of science is that you can have a proof of something. You can in mathematics and logic, but not in natural science. In climate science you can spot logical inconsistencies especially in MSM, where climate change results in warming and cooling at the same time.
Studies in natural science start with data. You slice and dice it and form a conjecture. That’s right. Correlation is not a proof, but it helps you to find a useful hypothesis. For example: CO2 emissions results in substantial global warming.
Then you establish tests that challenge your hypothesis.
– CO2 emissions increase the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere
– increased CO2 in atmosphere results in increase of surface temperatures
– increased surface temperatures result in more water vapor in the atmosphere
– increased water vapor in the atmosphere results in more increase in surface temperatures
– increased sea water temperatures result in sea level rise
– and so on
Previous examples should, of course, be more specific, more detailed. Each of them might be a research questionin a peer-reviewed paper.
If any of these tests fail, the hypothesis must be changed. It might be true in some circumstances, but not in all of them. This is difficult because observations might also be wrong. In climate science bad data is a problem that may result in a conclusion that we don’t know.
Computer models are a special case of a hypothesis. Putting all your equations together could reveal inconsistencies in your thinking. If model’s behavior does not match the observations you may learn how to change the hypothesis.
Panagopoulos, D. J. et al. Polarization: A Key Difference between Man-made and Natural Electromagnetic Fields, in regard to Biological Activity. Sci. Rep. 5, 14914; doi: 10.1038/srep14914 (2015).
Man-Made EMR is more Active biologically than Natural Non-Ionizing EMR
A large and increasing number of studies during the past few decades have indicated a variety of adverse biological effects to be triggered by exposure to man-made EMFs, especially of radio frequency (RF)/microwaves, and extremely low frequency (ELF). The recorded biological effects range from alterations in the synthesis rates and intracellular concentrations of different biomolecules, to DNA and protein damage, which may result in cell death, reproductive declines, or even cancer1,2,3,4,5,6,7. Under the weight of this evidence the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) has classified both ELF magnetic fields and RF EMFs as possibly carcinogenic to humans.
https://www.nature.com/articles/srep14914
As the Planetary Health Alliance moves forward after a productive second annual meeting, a discussion on the rapid global proliferation of artificial electromagnetic fields would now be apt. The most notable is the blanket of radiofrequency electromagnetic radiation, largely microwave radiation generated for wireless communication and surveillance technologies, as mounting scientific evidence suggests that prolonged exposure to radiofrequency electromagnetic radiation has serious biological and health effects. However, public exposure regulations in most countries continue to be based on the guidelines of the International Commission on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection1 and Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers,2 which were established in the 1990s on the belief that only acute thermal effects are hazardous. Prevention of tissue heating by radiofrequency electromagnetic radiation is now proven to be ineffective in preventing biochemical and physiological interference. For example, acute non-thermal exposure has been shown to alter human brain metabolism by NIH scientists,3 electrical activity in the brain,4 and systemic immune responses.5 Chronic exposure has been associated with increased oxidative stress and DNA damage6, 7 and cancer risk.8 Laboratory studies, including large rodent studies by the US National Toxicology Program9 and Ramazzini Institute of Italy,10 confirm these biological and health effects in vivo. As we address the threats to human health from the changing environmental conditions due to human activity,11 the increasing exposure to artificial electromagnetic radiation needs to be included in this discussion.
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanplh/article/PIIS2542-5196(18)30221-3/fulltext
The state will always chose a theory that will enhance its power and tax revenues.
The longest running nonsense has been that a committee of “experts” can “manage” a national economy. There is no such thing as a discrete economy.
The Federal Reserve System spent trillions of taxpayer dollars to prevent bad things from happening.
Another classic post-bubble contraction is underway and it will make the Fed look foolish.
It will prompt widespread condemnation.
The solar minimum is a built-in cooling force.
The public will notice the difference between hysterical threats and actual weather.
The tout that a committee can “manage” the temperature of the nearest planet will soon be seen as venal nonsense.
The popular uprising will mainly be successful.
The ambition to end democracy and replace with authoritarian central planing will likely be denied.
It won’t be easy.
This essay from the “American Thinker” is worth reading and circulating.
Philosophers have been trying to define “science” and “the scientific method” for a long, long time without coming to a common understanding so it’s not a surprise that the issue is not resolved here in a discussion thread.
I’ll just say that most of the descriptions of how the scientific method supposedly works has something in common with how science is actually done. And that little animated feature that American schoolkids all watched call “I’m a Bill” has something in common with how laws are actually made. But it’s very little.
If a high school science textbook describing the scientific method is like a recipe for how to cook a steak, what scientists actually do is more like hot dog manufacturing. Yes, you can still eat it, but…
Who cares what Streep or other “celebrities” say. Carl Sagan however, is a disappointment, even though he was a bit patronising, I enjoyed his work.
If you want to know what the scams anout read “Technocracy Rising: The Trojan Horse of Global Transformation” by Patrick H. Wood
This will connect a lot of dots.
“Strictly speaking, “Climate Change” theory isn’t really a scientific theory at all. It doesn’t take into relevant account factors which arguably have a far stronger effect upon climate than CO2, like the sun, ocean currents, and the greatest greenhouse gas of them all, water vapor.”
err wrong
AGW ( otherwise known as planetary climatology) Has to take the sun into account, and ocean currents and water vapor, and CH4, and black carbon, and N02, and S02, and basically all of atmopsheric chemistry and land processes, and cloud formation and well you name it.
The comment should have been directed towards computer models.
“Which is exactly why it’s not science. It’s pseudo-science, according to the great philosopher of science, Karl Popper, who pointed out that for any theory to be considered scientific, it must be falsifiable. There must be something within the theory itself that can be disproved.”
Well, Popper wasnt correct, but let’s assume he was. Lets assume he settled the question of demarcation.
Is climate science falsifiable?
Sure. Show that c02 is not a GHG.
In fact, we have folks all the time claiming they have falsified climate science.
Climate science says the temperature of the earth is governed by ALL radiative forcing.
Guys like Ned, think that Pressure governs planetary temperature.
So on one hand you have people who misunderstand Popper claiming climate science isnt falsifiable and on the other hand you have folks claiming to have falsified it.
hey c02 lags temperature! falsified!.. but wait I thought it could not be falsified?
Hey theres a pause! falsified!!!, but wait I thought it could not be falsified?
Hey ECS is really 1.2! falsified!! but wait I thought it could not be falsified?
Here is clue. Most every time you see folks cite Popper, they are wrong.
Here is a second clue. Philosophy doesnt change actual science and folks usually bring up
philosophy when they have lost the science argument. Just an empirical observation.
“Show that c02 is not a GHG.”
You obviously have no understanding of the Scientific Method. The burden of proof is on the person that puts forth the hypothesis. I learned this in High School. It’s not a complex idea to get your head around.
Besides that’s not the main issue at hand, the issue concerns materiality, expense, resources and mitigation.
Indeed, and whether or not CO2 is a GHG isn’t what matters – not to mention that it’s CO2 (carbon + two Oxygen) and not c02 (zero two of carbon) . No one is seriously disputing that CO2 is considered a “greenhouse gas”, It’s the effect, if any, it has on temperatures and how much of that is due to mankind that is at issue. That Mosh has to resort to strawmanning the issue shows that he knows he is defending the indefensible.
The author says “Climate Change” is not science, CC being an assemblage of dire model predictions and associated radical socio-economic prescriptions.
CAGW can be falsified because it has been.
A “fingerprint” of CAGW is enhanced warming in the tropical upper troposphere due to increased convection from the tropical oceans, or “hot spot”.
Over decades weather balloon and satellite measurements have failed to find it:
http://www.pensee-unique.fr/images/climate4youequator.jpg
Nonetheless the IPCC behemoth charges on regardless.
Mosher, don’t you have anything better to do? I know saving the planet sounds good, but seriously…
Mosher is reduced to what Nick Stokes is reduced to. Finding errors in our logic when he can’t prove CAGW. However that said; the 2 of them provide a valuable service to WUWT.
“Show that c02 is not a GHG.”
Things in physics are quantitative, not just qualitative. To drive policies they must be substantial. Common error in environmentalism is the lack of sense of proportion. Gigatons are irrelevant in planetary scale.
Do cost & benefit analysis of carbon taxes in the western World.
Sure. Show that c02 is not a GHG.
Easy. two (02) carbon (C) atoms is not even a gas at normal temperatures, it’s a solid. duh.
1 Carbon (C) and 2 Oxygen (O2) on the other hand…
In fact, we have folks all the time claiming they have falsified climate science.
science is predictive (falsifiability depends upon have a prediction that can be falsified). People that claim to have falsified climate science do so based on the failure of the predictions.
*YOU* claim climate science doesn’t make predictions only projections. therefore it’s not falsifiable as it’s not predictive.
so take your Pick Mosh, climate science is science that has been falsified (it’s predictions have been shown to be failures) or climate science is not falsifiable since it doesn’t make predictions only projections.
AFAIK, no one is disputing the IR absorption of CO2. The central hypothesis of the Church of CAGW is that CO2 has a measurable effect on the Earth’s climate, and that it is warming. Can you provide evidence for that?
Steven Mosher is wrong and let’s not bother with pretending he might have a point.
Then the answer is to pull a trick out of his own book and directly reply to his post with one word: “Wrong!”
It was a horribly dark period of time, when huge lies were peddled as truth
And when those daring to be truth-tellers were pilloried and worse.
When once- great industries which benefited man were attacked
And in their place rose industries which instead set mankind back
Don’t let it be forgot
That once there was a spot
For one long horrible time
That was known as Scamalot!
Why Climate Change Isn’t Science
One of the big reasons why it can’t be science is a pervasive and critical reliance on spurious correlations. When these statistics errors are corrected, nothing remains of climate change science. The theory of catastrophic agw and its implied climate action measures are creations of bad statistics. Pls see
https://tambonthongchai.com/2019/01/14/carbonbudget/
Also this more comprehensive list
https://tambonthongchai.com/human-caused-global-warming/
Very very true. That is why the alarmists have had to resort to cooking the books. Anyone that has had a look at any of Tony Heller’s videos knows what I mean.
Remember the nuclear winter, acid rain and the ozone hole scares.
Meryl Streep, lol.
Give he some credit: she saved us from alar, remember?
No honest Scentist would call it ‘Climate Change’. Such a name is purely designed to deceive and confuse. The very scavenging-ground of the likes of Mosher and Stokes, their natural home. And all the other swamp critters….. Brett
“In the nineties, environmentalists switched their emphasis to “Climate Change” This was a marketing move. Global warming could credibly be blamed for warming, but climate change could be blamed for anything.”
Haha, the hypocrisy is astounding. How do skeptics, including the author of this post, defend their position? “The climate has always changed, always has, always will.” So no matter what the climate does, no matter how fast temperatures rise, it’s just natural because temperatures have been higher before. Talk about a complete and utter lack of scientific curiosity.
Can you imagine if someone told a cancer researcher “People have died of cancer, always have, always will. It’s a waste of time to look at this issue.”
“The climate has always changed, always has, always will.” So no matter what the climate does, no matter how fast temperatures rise, it’s just natural because temperatures have been higher before.
It may well be. In fact that’s what’s know as the null hypothesis. It’s up to those claiming that it is something other than the default state (IE it’s just natural) to prove otherwise, to date they have failed to do so (as evidenced by all their failed predictions).
By pointing out the simple fact that climate changing is nothing new, that’ it’s been happening since climate first formed on this little mudball we call home, is not saying “It’s a waste of time to look at this issue”. That’s a strawman of your own making. What it is saying is that if you are going to claim that something other than the natural forces that have been changing the climate since forever is now in control, you actually have to prove it not just assert it. And to date such proof is conspicuous by it’s absence while the baseless assertions are conspicuous by their ubiquity.
Poor use of the “cancer” analogy, Chris.
A more apt scenario would be if a Cancer researcher claimed tumors are due to iPhones; “Please give me more money and throw away all iPhones and the problem will be solved.”
It would not be unreasonable to point out that cancers of that kind have always occurred and at the same frequency. Thus the researcher’s specific “iPhone” hypothesis would appear to have no rational basis.
That rejection of a flawed conjecture in no way says that cancer research (as an issue) should be halted.
Always Al Gore. Why no mention of Margaret Thatcher’s key role in pushing the Global Warming story into international politics?
Although Margret Thatcher was the first world leader to raise the issue, she never believed in global warming – calling it the doomsters favourite subject – she cynically used it in the vain hope of getting the public to support greater use of nuclear power.
She had just come out of the coal miner strike and the OPEC sword of Damocles was very much on her mind at the time. She did not trust the coal miners or the middle east with Britain’s energy security.
How is that French-built nuclear plant coming along in Britain?
Your title is catchy but inaccurate.
I think you mean ‘Statements by politicians and Meedja Personalities about climate are demonstrably falsifiable and to date, none have withstood the skeptical test of time’.
There is an enormous amount of rigorous science involved in measuring the parameters which demonstrate that climate has changed and will likely continue to change.
There is an equally enormous amount of rigorous science which has been carried out and can be carried out to test hypotheses as to how and why climate has changed and may continue to change in the future.
Studying solar cycles, solar events and cosmic rays can help understand the energy input budget for our planet.
Studies of the stratosphere, troposphere and atmosphere can elucidate how incoming energy inputs integrate into the homeostatic global climate system.
Studies of the oceans can elucidate how energy and gaseous equilibria modulate in time and space, affecting weather and climate for human beings.
Study of key oscillatory functions in global climate can inform mid-range weather forecasting, as can atmospheric studies of polar vortexes.
Studies of geomagnetism, volcanism and seismology can also inform how stochastic events can cause temporary imbalances to global climate.
Climate change is a subject of great depth and complexity, to which scientific measurement and rigorous experimentation can bring some light.
Verbal nonsense is not climate change, it is wordsmiths wittering on ad nauseam.
The title of the article is not quite accurate. Climate change is certainly the subject of scientific research. The point is that the theory of the greenhouse effect is incorrect, which relates climate change to a change in atmospheric CO2 concentration. And the theory of the greenhouse effect is erroneous, because it contradicts the fundamental concepts of physics: see for example https://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/0707/0707.1161v4.pdf
Not true, the theory of the greenhouse effect does not contradict the fundamental concepts of physics, the paper you cite is a load of drivel.
No-one has ever said, or can say, that Earth’s “climate” is not changing. (See MIT Prof. Emeritus Edward Lorenz, founder of Chaos Theory [1917 – 2008]: “Does the Earth have a climate? The answer, at first glance obvious, improves on acquaintance (1963)”.
However Luddite sociopaths attempt to frame discourse (“debate” is the wrong term), their perverse Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) means, first, that Planet Earth is entering an irreversible “global atmospheric surface temperature” (GAST) feedback loop, due in mere decades to convert habitable zones to baking desert; and second, that after 4.6 billion years this bizarre effect is due solely to Western cultures’ three-centuries’ Industrial Revolution, polluting atmospheres with 400 parts-per-million (ppm) (.04%) of carbon dioxide (CO2), a so-called “greenhouse gas” crucial to meliorating total solar irradiance (“insolation”, TSI) as it affects continental and marine plant life.
Not only is this hubristic conjecture –in actuality, collectivist/Statists’ highly politicized thrust towards despotic One World Government– entirely contrary to historical evidence plus recorded fact, but extrapolating such a linear result from minuscule proportions of a benign trace-gas has no objectively verifiable (“scientific”) component whatever.
“Science” is three things: A philosophy of the natural world; an empirical, objectively rational means of testing conjectures and hypotheses; finally, an explicitly social (“peer reviewed”) process not for proving theories (only Nature can do that) but for replicating procedural results in context-and-perspective of prior knowledge– no anti-entropic circularities, miraculous interventions or paranormal powers need apply.
Absent experiment, “climate science” is a mere classificatory scheme akin to botany, not Mendelian genetics, meaning that, however credentialed, no armchair academic expresses anything but “mere opinion”. (As Galileo showed in AD 1600, rudimentary testing invalidated Aristotle’s “impetus theory” of motion taught as holy writ by schoolmen for 2,000 years.)
Let’s face it: From Paul Ehrlich’s egregiously misconceived “Population Bomb” in 1968, deviant Warmists’ ultra-reactionary Cloud Cuckoo Land [Aristophanes] has proved a highly lucrative, malignant crony-socialist fraud for half a century. Anyone doubting this need only compare Al Gore’s centi-million dollar mulct with Norman Borlaug, meantime reviewing Australian Robert Holmes’ December 2017 paper proving that any planet’s Temperature T = PM/Rp, his “Mean Molar Gas Law” [studiously ignored by peculating Globulists (sic)] that excludes atmospheric CO2 from any climate influence throughout the solar system.
Said absolutely true, Pyrthroes. The work of Holmes mentioned by you: the original is here http://article.sciencepublishinggroup.com/pdf/10.11648.j.earth.20170606.18.pdf is another convincing proof of the inconsistency between the theory of the greenhouse effect and basic physical principles.
One problem with this paper is that Earth’s average surface temperature is only rarely its present ~288 K. At other times, it has dipped below the S-B figure of 255 K, and also risen higher.
Since its magma cooled, Earth’s surface temperature has ranged from about 223 to 298 K, or briefly hotter. The low estimate of -50 degrees C is for Snowball Earth conditions.
Albedo is higher than now during extensive Northern Hemisphere glaciations, and was much higher during Snowball Earth episodes.
“Strictly speaking, “Climate Change” theory isn’t really a scientific theory at all. It doesn’t take into relevant account factors which arguably have a far stronger effect upon climate than CO2, like the sun, ocean currents, and the greatest greenhouse gas of them all, water vapor.”
The modelling does but not only at a superficial level (considering how complex it should be) but also there is a need to confirm assumptions that should have been proven wrong eg oceans in equilibrium with the atmosphere and so absorbing 90% of the back radiation.
The problem with climate science in general is that there are too many variables and not enough equations to solve the system. One cannot run definitive climate experiments with the Earth’s global climate so one cannot really prove anything.