By Jim Steele
published in What’s Natural? column of Pacifica Tribune February 20, 2019
Politicians from all sides manufacture “crises” and “demons” to promote their agendas superficially designed to fight those crises. In his book “The Demon Haunted World”, Carl Sagan famously published his Scientific Baloney Detection Kit; a “do and don’t” list to guide honest scientific inquiry. Sadly, climate science has been too politicized. But Sagan’s advice can help separate the politics from honest science regards claims of a “climate crisis”.
The very foundation of scientific inquiry demands a vigorous skeptical challenge to every hypothesis. Several different hypotheses can explain the same phenomena. Anyone, scientist or layperson, can make assertions and models. But claims are not reliable science until rigorously tested and well vetted. Based on this understanding, our oldest scientific society, the Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge that Sir Isaac Newton once presided over, made “Nullius En Verba” its motto. It means take “no one’s word for it’.
We are all naturally blinded by our beliefs. To overcome our biases and strive for a greater scientific truth, our discussions will be well served if guided by Sagan’s principles. Below I paraphrase the most pertinent points in Sagan’s Scientific Baloney Detection Kit. (I add my comments in parentheses)
1. Do: Encourage substantive debate on the evidence by knowledgeable proponents of all points of view. (Saying there’s no more debate triggers the Baloney alert)
2. Don’t: Avoid arguments from authority. They carry little weight – “authorities” have made mistakes in the past.
(Unable to refute Einstein’s ideas, his antagonists claimed authority via consensus and published “100 against Einstein”. Evoking the mythical “97% of all scientists agree” is a similar tactic.)
3. Don’t: Don’t attack the arguer, attack the argument.
(Mud-slinging dominates politics. Dismissing valid arguments by calling the arguer a “denier” muddies the science.)
4. Do: Spin more than one hypothesis. Think of all the different ways in which something could be explained. Think of tests by which you might systematically disprove each of the alternatives.
(Climate change is extremely complex and governed by many variables. The aim of the What’s Natural column is to delve into all those complexities. Detailing natural climate change is not denying a greenhouse effect.)
5. Don’t: Don’t get overly attached to a hypothesis just because it’s yours. Compare it fairly with the alternatives. See if you can find reasons for rejecting your favored hypothesis. If you don’t, others will.
6. Do: Ask whether a hypothesis can be, at least in principle, falsified.
(Unfortunately, predictions generated by climate change theory cannot be falsified or verified by simple experiments or short-term weather events.)
7. Don’t: Don’t argue via adverse consequences.
(Claiming we will be “underwater in 70 years” or the world will be “irreversibly destroyed in 12 years”, are common adverse consequences; scare tactics that set off a Baloney alert)
8. Don’t: Don’t “appeal to ignorance”. In other words, don’t claim that whatever has not been proved false then must be true.
(The earliest claim that 97% of all scientists agree, was an appeal to ignorance. It was assumed if authors did not explicitly disagree with CO2 driven climate change theory, then they must all agree. In subsequent surveys, only 22 to 32% of scientists ever replied. Of those responding, only 49% believed humans are causing more than 50% of observed climate change. That means only 16% have actually agreed.)
9. Don’t: Don’t confuse correlation with causation.
(A recent extreme weather event happening when CO2 concentrations are high, may or may not have been worsened by high CO2. Far worse weather events happened over the past thousand years.)
10. Don’t: Don’t use straw man arguments — caricaturing a position to make it easier to attack.
(A common straw man attack I encounter has been ‘Jim Steele ignores the effect of rising CO2 only pointing out other possible reasons for climate change’. I do indeed point out natural causes to provide a greater climate perspective. But I never ignore the greenhouse effect. Clearly climate has been changing since the 1800s. CO2concentrations are unprecedently high and CO2 is a greenhouse gas. Those are undeniable facts on which we all agree.
But there is absolutely NO scientific consensus regards how “sensitive” the earth is to a doubling of CO2 concentrations. IPCC estimates of how global temperature will respond to a doubling of CO2 range greatly from 1°to 5°C. To accurately determine the earth’s sensitivity to higher levels of CO2, we must accurately assess natural climate change.)
11. Don’t: Don’t just count the “hits” and forget the “misses” when evaluating a hypothesis.
(There are many hits, yet many misses by both CO2 global warming theory and natural climate change theories. The science is not settled and the time for rigorous debate has not passed.)
Jim Steele authored Landscapes and Cycles: An Environmentalist’s
Journey to Climate Skepticism
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Excellent check list
Ah, thanks for the memory. Haven’t re(re-re-re…) read this in a while, will have to do so.
As if we need any more proof that CAWG is a cult, not a science.
Sagan and Crichton: what losses we’ve suffered.
Feynman called it Cargo Cult Science
https://sites.google.com/site/nzchinatravels/2019-cult-cargo-science
The article you link is by someone who mentions Feynman. This link is Feynman’s Cargo Cult speech.
Feynman died in 1988 so people can only guess what he would have said about climate science. Well, science is in a bad place these days. Most published research findings are wrong. Feynman said:
Things have become much worse in the 30 years since Feynman’s death. In their desperation to get published, scientists have tossed integrity out the window. There is no reason to think climate science is different than any other specialization. Feynman would be appalled.
Actually, with a consideration of probability, arguing via adverse consequences is a sensible thing to do.
It helps set our priorities.
Complete Rubbish, the problem is you can’t properly quantify the probabilities of things 100 years from now. Your priorities hence may be completely wrong and put you in more risk … you are not god, a time traveller or a fortune teller and you do not know the future risks 100 years from now.
But surely that is the whole point of probabilities, you quantify uncertainty? Sure, quantifying uncertainty is much harder than quantifying predictions, but:
– we don’t have a clue what the climate will be in 100 years
is a perfectly acceptable quantification of the future, it is a probability. Indeed, often people use ‘we don’t know’ as a prior probability in a Bayesian analysis.
https://youtu.be/cgclGi8yEu4
is very worth watching, listen particularly from about 14:00. There is talk about a small world and a large world.
Bayesian analysis adjusts over time and allows for your start conclusion to be totally wrong so now try to work out how you set a priority given you are conceede you can be wrong?
Lets give you a classical example, we convert totally to solar energy based (greenies are happy) on the probability that fossil fuel emission will us. A meteorite hits throwing up a plume of ash and we all freeze to death as we have switched to solar energy (had we stayed with fossil fuels we would have survived). Your Bayesian analysis will adapt but at the moment we made the decision there was no way to quantify the risks and make the right decision.
So we can’t quantify the risk of the meteorite? We can make some attempt. Same way we can attempt to quantify the probability that ‘alarmists’ or ‘deniers’ are right. Then having quantified those probabilities we can do a risk impact, looking at the consequences of those probabilities, whether they are benign or not.
Following Lindley (the video above is really very educational and amusing at times), we have to compare the probabilities – what is more likely, the meteorite or dramatic global warming?
You aren’t getting the problem .. it isn’t the meteorite risk that is the problem your decision creates it’s own risk, so follow it through
You assess the risk of decision (a) and that risk will involve a whole series of things over time that itself leads to future decision (b) and then decision (c) etc.
So right here and now you use your Bayesian analysis to calculate the probability of (a) based on your assessment on decisions that will be made in the future being (b) and (c) but is does it have believability or credibility?
The answer is actually given here
https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/225353/probability-of-a-single-real-life-future-event-what-does-it-mean-when-they-say.
Coming up with the prediction is one thing but for it to be believed you need to validate it and how do you do that we are a little short on times the human race has had to deal with meteorite strikes.
One difference is we know that meteorites have hit the earth. We also know that there are still big ones out there. So we do know that the risk is non-zero. We may not be able to calculate it precisely, or even roughly, but we know the risk is real.
Climate change on the other hand, we have no evidence that increasing CO2 is going to cause any problems whatsoever. Much less the catastrophes always being predicted.
What evidence we do have points to CO2 being benign to beneficial in affect.
That falls into the second part of the answer validation of a prediction.
It is actually the problem I have with Mosher he won’t make a prediction so I can’t do a validate check with what he says.
LdB, can you please read what you post before hitting the button? I have great difficulty understanding what you are trying to say with the garbled language and lac of punctuation. Also please reduce the number of ‘you are wrong’ and ‘complete rubbish’ remarks, it does not induce debate.
Sure and you stop making wrong and complete rubbish claims 🙂
If I’m not mistaken, M Courtney’s comment drifted a bit from the post.
If the there is sound evidence to back up the probable adverse consequence, then, yes, advocating action to avert those consequences is sound advice.
But in the context of “Climate Science”, there is no sound evidence to back up what is claimed.
In any field of science “what might happen unless we do…” demands sound, verifiable, falsifiable evidence.
Without that, you’re listening to is a used car salesman.
(Apologizes to those honest and ethical used car salesmen out there.)
I suppose you agree with Pascal’s argument, and are therefore a Christian. Try using that argument to convert people to Islam, Zoroastrianism, or to the Celtic religion, worshipping Lugh, etc.
Actually I am a Christian but that doesn’t mean I accept Pascal’s wager or the it’s inverse, Precautionary Principle.
But if you’ve ever done a Pareto then you will understand that we can’t do everything.
Assessing risks and severity is not a sign of baloney.
It depends on context.
When somebody tries to stampede you into a course of action by citing risks and ignoring everything else, that is indeed a sign of baloney.
My favorite rule of thumb:
If we have a clear eyed analysis of risks and benefits and the probabilities thereof, that’s one thing. If we have someone trying to terrify us into believing them, that’s a totally different kettle of
fishmale bovine excrement.Most European countries have a variant of the UK saying “I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it”. Your Coolidge quote is another.
Pascal was a brilliant mathematician and co-founder of theory of probability. On Pascal’s Wager, Nietzsche said Christianity destroyed Pascal’s mind. But then Nietzsche is the self-proclaimed Anti-Christ :-0
The fallacy of Pascal’s Wager is that it presupposes that you are backing the right horse. Which is not necessarily the case.
A good God would be completely honest, and would offer you genuine rewards for following him. However, an evil God would not have to be honest, and thus could mislead you into thinking you would be rewarded for following him, when in fact he has no intention of rewarding you.
Many of the most evil among human dictators gained power though falsely convincing the public that they were good. Frequently, such a dictator will create a scapegoat to deflect attention away from their own wrongdoings. Usually the scapegoat is innocent, or sometimes might actually be the force for good which the dictator needs to suppress at all costs.
Ostensibly you have no way of determining which applies, and if you find you have been duped into backing an evil being, what consequences might that have for you in an afterlife or reincarnation, consequences that might have been avoided by simply refusing to get involved?
The SG-1 Ori arc (Seasons 9/10) is a good exposition of this principle, and I suggest that all evangelists watch it.
Much of the climate alarmist argument suffers the same problem.
The point is simply a hypothesis should not be considered correct because it suggests the most adverse consequences.
The internet is littered with people who do not argue the climate change evidence. They simply argue if we ignore the catastrophic claims, and the theory is right, the consequences will be dire. Its bad science to accept a hypothesis just because it is scary
As someone said in an earlier post on this blog, I’ll start listening to them when they start wearing parachutes on commercial aircraft flights… just in case it might crash.
It is actually worse than that because the changes suggested to avoid the scary story could very well put humanity in more harms way because of the degree of economic upheaval. Making said change is not without it’s own risks.
Exactly….ill advised changes to fix something that may not be broken…
…like burning your food supply to avoid a food shortage that may never happen
(45% of corn is used for biofuel, burning soybeans)
…or creating more poverty to avoid (climate change caused) poverty that may never happen (substantially raising the cost of energy and living now)
…or cutting thousands of acres of (CO2 burning) forests so that we can reduce CO2
…or making our major cities ‘100% reliant on INTERMITTENT energy’ (just in case the worst happens….
There are plenty more….
The sad part is, they are doing all of those things you listed. Which is why you listed them of course.
They want to improve resiliency for extreme climate…. by taking money out of our pockets and destroying our energy infrastructure. Making sure that we can’t cope should an event happen.
It helps set our priorities.
===========
Nope. A false belief remains false no matter the priority.
The danger is that raising the priority may make a false belief appear true.
Arguing via adverse consequences is a flag in the baloney test, as I read it, regardless of whether some think it is ‘sensible’ …… particularly where the main argument that is being used in the media and the government, and listened to by the public….. is the ‘worst case consequences’.
A flag only, and a good one in this case.
But setting priorities must take account of many more factors than do we/don’t we tak action to address climate change risks. Society’s resources are not infite. So you must consider, for example, whether spending trillions of dollars now to address the climate change risk is more sensible from a risk/reward standpoint than other issues that could be addressed with that money like poverty, disease, hunger, economic development, etc. Bjorn Lomborg is good on this aspect of the issue
Probability is great. With any large, chaotic system with many variables it is impossible to estimate probabilities over any longer term. The probabilities reach 99 percentile(0% confidence interval) within a few interations of any model. The graphs of outcomes vs. time are meaningless at that point, since almost any outcome is possible.
So, to be consistent we need policies that take both cooling and warming into account. We must not do anything where one choice will eliminate the others.
The problem is our emotions concerning CAGW are at 11 and we have gone down the wrong path for roughly 20 years. We have become lost in the analysis and the arguments.
It is a fact that there is now unequivocal evidence (with pictures, a super obvious option that changes everything concerning CAGW, creates a new field of science in geology, 50 physical observations to support the assertion that the super obvious option is correct in addition to mathematical and modelling analysis that supports/requires the option to exist) that humans did not cause the majority of the rise in atmospheric CO2.
Parking whether you agree or disagree with that statement, if it is absolutely correct, the increase in CO2 hence logically did not/could not cause the recent increase temperature.
If there is no CAGW then the money that we are spending on green scams that do not work is stupidity^2.
If there is no CAGW/AGW the effort that we have made to model climate temperature and money spent to convince us that CAGW is ‘real’ is also stupidity^2.
Also helps to get the statistics right
https://tambonthongchai.com/2018/05/06/tcre/
https://tambonthongchai.com/2019/01/14/carbonbudget/
Also this
https://tambonthongchai.com/2018/12/03/tcruparody/
A good article, BUT:
“There are many hits, yet many misses by both CO2 global warming theory..”
Name ONE credible hit in favour of catastrophic global warming theory, with emphasis on “credible”.
Very good but “CO2concentrations are unprecedently high…”? Really?
1700ppm in Cretacious.
Don’t even have to go back as far as the Cretaceous Period to find much higher levels of plant food in the air, such as during the Paleocene and Eocene Epochs of the Paleogene Period.
To say nothing of even higher CO2 during the Cambrian, Ordovician, Silurian and Devonian Periods.
Also the Triassic and Jurassic. Of the past 540 million years, only parts of the Carboniferous and Permian were at times lower than now, although not by much, until our present glacial Neogene Period.
I noticed that too.
Its quite wrong.
Maybe the frame of reference was since the 1800s. In that context, the use of “unprecedented”still seems unprecedentedly inaccurate.
Totally agree CO2 has been much higher in the past. Plants are now starving for CO2. But that will be an essay for another time. Most readers are framing CO2 levels since the Little Ice Age.
Four CO2 molecules per 10,000 dry air molecules rather than three, as at the end of the Little Ice Age c. AD 1850, has been a great boon to plants and other living things.
Three times as many molecules would be even better, indeed ideal.
Correct John – 1200 ppm CO2 would be good – even more would probably be better, say 2000 ppm.
We should be happy that plants are happy on such low CO2 concentrations. We wouldn’t do so well with only 0.04% O2 in the air.
They can survive with such low CO2 levels. Evidence from greenhouses and such indicate that the are “happier” with much higher CO2 levels.
Allan,
Nothing wrong with 2000 ppm, but 1200 or maybe 1300 is ideal. More than that, C3 plants can’t take advantage of.
Commercial greenhouses use 1000 to 1300 ppm.
Thank you John – I don’t disbelieve you, but can you provide a good reference pls?
Allan,
There’s a reason why commercial greenhouses use about 1000 ppm, or maybe a bit more. It’s not cost effective to enrich the air more than that.
Some studies have found rice responding at up to 1800-2000 ppm, but most grasses and all trees top out at lower levels, ie from 600 to 1200 ppm.
The optimal CO2 concentrations for the growth of three perennial grass species
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5799915/
Young, rapidly growing trees benefit more from CO2 enrichment than established, older forests.
Thank you John Tillman – your comments appear to be accurate and most helpful.
[excerpts from the referenced paper]
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5799915/
Here, we examined the optimal atmospheric CO2 concentration effect on CO2 fertilization and further on the growth of three perennial grasses in growth chambers with the CO2 concentration at 400, 600, 800, 1000, and 1200 ppm, respectively.
We found that the optimal CO2 concentrations occurred at 945, 915, and 1151 ppm for the aboveground biomass of tall fescue, perennial ryegrass, and Kentucky bluegrass, respectively. Higher CO2 concentrations had diminishing returns of CO2 fertilization effect on plant growth…
From the references:
Nevertheless, the CO2 fertilization effect may sustain up to about 1000 ppm for leaf photosynthesis [46, 49] and 1800 ppm for grain yield of crops [50].
My comments:
A good paper, imo, subject to successful replication.
Note that while above-ground biomass was optimal at about 900ppm for all three perennial grass species, total (below-and-above-ground) biomass was ABOVE 1200ppm for two of the three species tested. 1200ppm CO2 was the maximum tested in this study.
Note also that according to other references, CO2 fertilization was effective up to 1800ppm in grain yield of crops. Grain yields are very important for humanity.
Hi again John.
I suggest that the real existential threat to ALL carbon-based terrestrial life is not HIGH atmospheric CO2, it is LOW CO2.
ON CO2 STARVATION
I have written about the vital issue of “CO2 starvation” since 2009 or earlier, and others including Dr. Patrick Moore, a co-founder of Greenpeace, have also written on this subject:
https://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2016/06/moore-positive-impact-of-human-co2-emissions.pdf
Summary
1. Atmospheric CO2 is not alarmingly high; in fact, it is dangerously low for the survival of terrestrial carbon-based life on Earth. Most plants evolved with very approximately 4000 ppm CO2 in the atmosphere, or about 10 times current CO2 concentrations.
2. In one of the next global Ice Ages, atmospheric CO2 will approach about 150ppm, a concentration at which terrestrial photosynthesis for almost all food plants will slow and cease – and that will be the extinction event for much or all of the terrestrial carbon-based life on this planet.
3. More atmospheric CO2 is highly beneficial to all carbon-based life on Earth. Therefore, CO2 abatement and sequestration schemes are nonsense.
4. As a devoted fan of carbon-based life on this planet, I feel the duty to advocate on our behalf. I should point out that I am not prejudiced against non-carbon-based life forms. They might be very nice, but I do not know any of them well enough to form an opinion. 🙂
_________________________________________________________________________
Atmospheric CO2 is inexorably declining as it is being sequestered in carbonate rocks. In the last Continental Last Ice Age, atmospheric CO2 declined to about 180 ppm – in the next Ice Age it could drop lower, even closer to the extinction point of C3 plants at about 150-160 ppm.
Virtually ALL food plants use the C3 photosynthetic pathway, so a drop of atmospheric CO2 to 150-160 ppm will be an extinction event for ~all advanced terrestrial life on Earth.
A few food plants (less than 1%) use the C4 photosynthetic pathway, including corn and sugar cane – but I doubt terrestrial life could survive for long on Sugar Frosted Flakes – notwithstanding the persistent rumour that “They’re Great!”
There are also CAM photosynthetic pathway plants, so we can look forward to having pineapple with our Sugar Frosted Flakes.
Regards, Allan
eCO2 is a “stressor” of C3 plants. It has the characteristic of “whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger”.
Elevated CO2 (eCO2) in many (I can’t say all) C3 plants leads to reduced % plant nitrogen & higher % carbon “fixed” in the plant. This context favors the production of metabolites.
We see eCO2 plants (C3s) with significantly higher anti-oxidant content. One question is why are so many more of those neccessary metabolites neccessary for eCO2 plants?
As for their benefit consider the anti-oxidant group flavenoids. Roots & shoots grown in their proper light (darkness of ground for roots & light for shoots) naturally have a lot of flavenoids – C3 plants reproduce fine without more.
eCO2 increased flavenoids cause even greater decrease than otherwise naturally occurs (due to flavenoids) of the auxin degrading enzyme (IAA-oxid-ase) which results in higher auxin (IAA form). Plus flavenoids act on signalling (calcium mediated) & alter auxin dynamics.
Flavenoids made (synthesized) in the root elongation zone tip interacts with the auxin there. If there was absolutely no flavenoids there then the plant would not have many root hairs (it’s primary root would grow long & it would also make secondary roots).
eCO2 sustaining local root auxin (due to high flavenoid synthesis) is part of why experiments show more root mass. eCO2 producing more flavenoids also raises auxin in roots (favoring side roots elongating) because they (flavenoids) at the juncture of root with stem shoot reduces the amount of auxin transported out of the root.
In some crops we humans value more root bio-mass. Whether every C3 plant is “better” because eCO2 modified their root mass is, in my mind, anthropomorphic speculation.
It has the characteristic of “whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger”.
Problem is when it does kill….
This is a very intelligent set of guide lines on how to debate any subject. Unfortunately humans are emotional creatures and a huge majority will never abide by them.
On any issue, always keep some doubt in mind. We are all fallible. Even when we are certain that you are right there is always the possibility that you are wrong. Be pragmatic and prepared to change your mind based on changing evidence or a convincing counter-argument. Being willing to admit to an error is a mark of intelligence.
And most of all, think for yourself. Don’t let other do your thinking for you.
Sorry for the lecture. With all the group think and craziness in today’s world I just couldn’t resist posting.
Marty: By listening to you exhorting me to think for myself and obeying you, I’m letting you think for me.
That’s a very considered response.
Trebla: It is only letting him think for you if you blindly accept his idea. If you think through thinking for yourself and then decide to think for yourself or decide to allow him to think for you, you have done the thinking yourself, until you decide to let him think for you, of course.
Trebla – you’re right! Like the old joke about saying you should do all things in moderation. Does doing all things in moderation include doing moderation in moderation too? Take care.
“3. Don’t: Don’t attack the arguer, attack the argument.”
Yes don’t attack, but do question the motivation of the arguer, many of whom have significant financial and political motivations.
It makes no difference what the motivation is data is data.
But data has quality. Duff data is often the result of motivation.
Follow the money.
That gives data too…
Nothing was said about the data quality they simply said motivation was a problem which it isn’t of and by itself. You are conflating a different problem which motivation may possibly feed into but that is by no means a given you can have very motivated honest people.
Motivation to find the truth is not the same as motivation to rule the world. You will get two different results from the same truth.
(Climate change is extremely complex and governed by many variables. The aim of the What’s Natural column is to delve into all those complexities. ………………..Detailing natural climate change is not denying a greenhouse effect.)
8. Don’t: Don’t “appeal to ignorance”. In other words, don’t claim that whatever has not been proved false then must be true.
Nice appeal to ignorance, ….. show us a proof of a Greenhouse effect that isnt just natural energy flow or transfer to deny.
.Detailing natural climate change is not denying a greenhouse effect.)
I believe that H L Mencken summed it up best in one of his many excellent quotes:
‘The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary.
I also liked:
“For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.” –H. L Mencken
It fits the CO2 drives temperature nonsense to a tee.
Jim
Any MSM news item that contains the phrase “scientists say” anywhere in it is the purest baloney known in journalism.
Or any scientific research containing the phrase “due to climate change”.
The Purest baloney is “experts claim”. “Scientists say” is a subset of that.
I agree with this one. Every time a news article starts with “experts claim” or “scientists say”, I shut it out. You know it is nonsense.
“Politicians from all sides manufacture “crises” and “demons” to promote their agendas superficially designed to fight those crises.”
Why do we let them gt away with it?
I’ve often read that humans have a natural tendency to over-weight possible negative outcomes, probably because it improves our long term chances of survival and reproduction in a dangerous world. This makes us more susceptible to giving undeserved attention/credence to those bearing messages of doom and despair.
We seem to let governments get away with regulation of greenhouse gas emissions though a scientific basis for this regulation does not exist by dressing up their argument to look like a statistical argument though this argument is not really a statistical argument. This is accomplished by changing the meaning of the term “unit measure” in the midst of the argument. Details on this application of the equivocation fallacy are provided by the late climatologist Vincent Gray in “Spinning the Climate.”
Never trust a graph on face value. They are all chock full of statistical manipulations. Therein lies the truth or otherwise. Best delve deep.
Eschew eristic!
Good one!!
My favorite is “eschew obfuscation.”
Sagan’s baloney detection kit must have been a little stale as he was a true CAGW believer.
NavarreAggie,
NOAA and many other CAGW believers assume that space around the earth is cold, close to absolute zero.
They are mistaken and RGHE goes in the trash.
The baloney detector knows that.
Space is cold by definition because of the crazy way classical physics works 🙂
Temperature is the average speed of particles of the thing being measured … only a few particles in space means by definition it’s cold. The problem I suspect you are trying to make is there is now way to bind Radiative transfer to temperature in classical physics but that still doesn’t make them wrong it is correct.
It is actually the same problem as a microwave oven it’s cold inside unless you happen to be a water molecule in which case it gets warm very quickly. So is a microwave oven hot or cold .. well that depends 🙂
The real answer is temperature is a construct of classical physics it is not a real physical property of the universe, in QM it does not exist except as a bunch of statistics.
LdB. I wish I knew enough to understand what you just said.
Space is cold because of lack of particles. But if you put a metal plate facing the sun, it’ll warm up considerably.
I’m guessing this is the crux of your statement. So temperature is once again, the wrong measurement.
Close.
The piece of metal is not space .. you have given the piece of metal a new definition of space 🙂
You will be currently in a room and you will have a temperature of 38deg the room probably something else, so again same location different temperatures. So if I asked you for the “room temperature” would you give me 38 degree being your temperature as you are in the room?
The piece of metal is hot in the same point of space that is cold and that is how it is. There is no ambiguity temperature is defined to it’s reference object in classical physics.
Good to see some respect for Carl Sagan, rather than attacking him as part of the scientific elite. It would be good if more people used his kit to examine their own arguments. As Sagan says,
“Like all tools, the baloney detection kit can be misused, applied out of context, or even employed as a rote alternative to thinking. But applied judiciously, it can make all the difference in the world – not least in evaluating our own arguments before we present them to others.“
Global Warming Travel Warning
===========================
The IPCC has issued an urgent travel warning.
Many people are foolishly travelling to countries, which have an average temperature which is more than 2 degrees Celsius warmer than their home country.
This activity is highly dangerous, and could result in the deaths of millions of people.
The IPCC suggests that people limit their travel, to countries which have an average temperature which is less than 1.5 degrees Celsius warmer than their home country.
Humans evolved in Africa, many millions of years ago. Climate scientists use the abbreviation “BT”, when they refer to this time (“BT” stands for “Before Thermometers”).
In the early days, early humans never travelled more than a few miles, over their entire lifetime. They never travelled more than a few miles, because kilometres had not yet been invented.
Humans, therefore, became adapted to a very narrow temperature range. Going outside of that narrow temperature range, could be deadly. Many early humans were eaten by lions, because they went outside of their normal temperature range.
But early humans had one advantage, that the other animals didn’t have. Because they never washed, early humans tasted horrible, and they didn’t smell very nice. So the other animals left early humans alone. And humans were able to travel all over the Earth.
====================
Scientists have proved that travel and temperatures, are more dangerous than smoking 60 cigarettes a day, for 50 years.
It is safer to stay at home, and take up smoking, than to go travelling in warmer countries.
Don’t worry. We understand that humans have an “urge” to travel. It comes from our early ancestry, when we had to find large herds of animals to eat.
Here at the IPCC, we want what is best for YOU. And we have had our top scientists work out a “safe” way of travelling.
To ensure your personal temperature safety, the IPCC has emitted the following travel regulations.
Travel will be limited to “safe” country groups. This means that travel may only take place between a country, and the other countries that are in the same temperature safety group.
For further details, please click the following link:
https://agree-to-disagree.com/global-warming-travel-warning
That’s funny and on point.
Driving in this morning listening to “Mob Boss” an NYC mafioso’s autobiography. He describes the replacing of windows in NYC owned tenements for energy efficiency as one of the most lucrative scams ever. Millions upon millions being skimmed by the mob. Sounds like the Green New Deal.
“Unable to refute Einstein’s ideas, his antagonists claimed authority via consensus and published “100 against Einstein”. Evoking the mythical “97% of all scientists agree” is a similar tactic.”
Einstein’s reply was (paraphrased) “If they were right, it would only take one.”
“Why a hundred? One would be enough”
I see where Einstein’s theory got another confirmation by observations of a star’s light as the star made a close approach to the Milky Way’s central supermassive black hole recently.
In Sagan’s time it was nuclear winter climate alarmism, later backpeddled to autumn. Looks like Sagan was one of the first climate modellers building alarmism in as a parameter. Looks like he had a problem with SDI, an initiative to make nuclear weapons obsolete.
Has climate panic its roots in the 1980’s cold war nuclear policies and propaganda?
No wonder some GND warriers talk about war on climate ; some of whom never heard of the Cuba crisis or SDI.
From the Dept. of Absolutely Stupid Nitpicking:
“Nullius En Verba”
“Nullius In Verba”
Thanks for a wonderful article!
“People called Romans, they go the house?”
(Life of Brian)
“….7. Don’t: Don’t argue via adverse consequences…..”
I see an earlier commenter picked this up, but it bears repeating. Almost ALL argument is via adverse consequences.
If I am considering a purchase, I weigh the advantages of having the item with the disadvantages of losing some money. If I am offered a new job, I weigh the extra pay against the extra responsibility. When I vote in an election, I consider the candidates’ platforms and work out what their policies will mean for me.
In the case of ‘climate change’ there is a big question over whether human CO2 input is a major driver or not. However, if we accept that it is for the purpose of the argument, there is another major question over whether the consequences will be beneficial or not, and if not, how bad they will be.
These are valid arguments which ought to be held – not simply ignored…
The principle is more rightly applied by considering the following. If the consequences were more or less severe, would we consider the hypothesis more or less correct? That is, we should not stumble into the misapplication of the Precautionary Principle based on potential outcomes. Increasing severity of future outcomes does not make an hypothesis truer (or falser).
“…That is, we should not stumble into the misapplication of the Precautionary Principle based on potential outcomes. …..”
We should not go anywhere near the ‘Precautionary Principle”, which is logically meaningless. So there is no such thing at the ” misapplication of the Precautionary Principle ” – all applications of it are mindless.
Expected severity of outcome may make you approach a problem with greater thought, But it is usually thought along the lines of “Is this person trying to frighten me into accepting his proposals…?”.
Even if you accept the “precautionary principle”, which makes a statement about possible actions rather than truth, you should examine the cost of the proposed “solution”. Disrupting the entire world economy and likely sending it back to the stone age is less acceptable than the worst, let alone most likely, result of any “global warming”. The “precautionary principle” actually demands that we leave the economy alone and let the unknowable technology of the future handle the problem which may never come.
Forget the Wall.
The Sky might fall on our heads.
We must build a Roof!
Or be heavily taxed to pay for one..
…”our oldest scientific society, the Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge that Sir Isaac Newton once presided over, made “Nullius En Verba” its motto. It means take “no one’s word for it’.”
Unfortunately for the illustrious subjects Lord Maynard Keynes’ biography of Newton shows him to be a raving alchemist.
But don’t take my word for it – see the bio.
Nothing wrong with studying alchemy in the late 1600s. Don’t judge someone from a different age and world-view by modern standards…
Don’t take my word for it, but Newton is judged in modern times as a a masterfull scientist, an icon, an example to all, a paragon of excellence.
Nothing wrong with that of course, except it’s fake news of fakery itself.
bonbon
There are numerous examples of scientists who have made significant contributions to science. Yet, went off on a tangent and pursued something that we now judge to be wrong. It has been said that a someone who has never made a mistake has never done anything.
If the ONLY thing that Newton had done was to co-invent calculus, his life would have been justified. Can you claim as much?
Yes, the best math teacher I ever had was a Velikovsky buff. Every June we’d rush through the last week so he could expound on his theories.
His math still works.
Newton did not co-invent anything, despite the Royal Society Clarke’s claims. We use today Leibniz’s unique calculus. Newton couldn’t even find his “Green Lions”. He plagiarized Kepler as he himself wrote. He was shown to be a kook in his own time by Leibniz. He even admitted to Hooke that “action at a distance” was pure magic.
One look at the papers Keynes bought should make clear the flakiest of fake news ever promulgated Newton. CNN is but an amateur shadow, BBC and Integrity Initiative too.
It’s a long tradition, obviously a lot of practice at that indeed.
Apply Newton’s pair-wise algebra to the solar system and it should disintegrate. Very suspiciously like the diverging climate catastrophe models, and worst of all, when applied to economy the crashes that inevitably follow are bailed out by the same people pushing climate. I put the climate model disaster right at Newton’s doorstep.
We know that alchemy is wrong because we understand how atoms are put together.
That knowledge was not available at the time of Newton.
Another point is that the experiments that were done by alchemists provided much of the data that was used to create the science of chemistry.
The periodic table was created before we had a solid understanding of atoms and electron shells.
Terrible! This Newton fellow must have been a dim blub.
Newton’s rings
What were Newton’s findings? Let him speak for himself:
“Concerning Magnesia of the green Lion. It is called Prometheus & the Chameleon. Also Androgyne, and virgin verdant earth in which the Sun has never cast its rays although he is its father and the moon its mother. Also common mercury, dew of heaven which makes the earth fertile, nitre of the wise. Instructio de arbore solari. It is the Saturnine stone.”
Alchemy is not a form of “early science”, rather anti-science promulgated by Conti et al. Ashmole’s entire books were Newton’s most read source.
Some more of this mumbo-jumbo alongside the IPCC report is very illuminating – just swap CO2 and the Green Lion.
Be careful what ye defend!
bonbon,
Quoting from Newton’s writings on alchemy is not a convincing argument that he got everything wrong. You have a hard road to hoe to demolish what is so firmly entrenched in history. I realize that Wikipedia is not the last word on science, but it does provide some counterpoints to your raging about someone whose writings have been admired by giants.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophi%C3%A6_Naturalis_Principia_Mathematica
Incidentally, I noticed that Newton’s first rule of logic reads very much like Occam’s Razor. Do you have any comments regarding that?
Newton also thought that God created the universe just thousands of years before AD 1700.
So what?
He’s still the greatest scientist of all time.
Bonbon,
Rutherford termed his work “The Newer Alchemy”, in a book published toward the end of his career (1937).
Previously, after the first radioactive transmution of elements, he told his research associates that, “They’ll have us up for alchemy!”
Chemical techniques pioneered and elements discovered by alchemists:
http://archive.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2009/03/15/good_as_gold/
Thanks for this article I enjoyed and will try to adopt / use a good portion of the wisdom it contains.
Ironically, to best improve this article I would remove CO2 entirely.
Maybe it is just me, and I do not really know that much, but every time someone tries to “CO2-splain” things to me I hear “CO2 causes warming cuz warming” = detector goes off.
And yet the astronomical Dr. Sagan, with his fellow Marxist, anti-American, pro-Soviet co-conspirators, perpetrated the “Nuclear Winter” hoax.
“And yet the astronomical Dr. Sagan … perpetrated the ‘Nuclear Winter’ ….”.
This is true, he forgot to apply his own Baloney Detection Kit.
On the other, when the experiment was run (Kuwait oil fires after the Persian Gulf war) and it did not live up to his expectations, he admitted that he had been wrong (in the book “The Demon-haunted World”).
“And yet the astronomical Dr. Sagan … perpetrated the ‘Nuclear Winter’ ….”.
This is true, he forgot to apply his own Baloney Detection Kit.
On the other, when the experiment was run (Kuwait oil fires after the Persian Gulf war) and it did not verify his predictions, he admitted that he had been wrong (in the book “The Demon-haunted World”).
Correct – Sagan had a problem with SDI, as Andropov had.
Dr. Dre,
I haven’t read Demon-Haunted World. I’d be pleasantly surprised if Sagan did indeed recant his Nuclear Winter garbage. Would you please be kind enough to quote here the passage from the book in which he admits that his anti-American, pro-Soviet fraud was indeed bogus.
Thanks!