Guest essay by Robert Bradley Jr.
“This warming [of 5 to 9 degrees Fahrenheit this century] is as certain as death and taxes.” (Professor Andrew Dessler, below)
Andrew Dessler is one of the leading climate scientists/alarmists of his generation. And he is a master at presenting his case, not unlike a highly skilled lawyer. He knows the answers–and counter-arguments are just noise.
His textbook, Introduction to Modern Climate Change (2nd edition: 2016), does not seriously engage a range of opinions in its 250 pages. A review of the text/index confirms that many key controversies and open questions are either downplayed or absent, thereby creating–in his world–settled alarmist science.
I will later write an in-depth review of this textbook, which not only covers physical science but also related issues in political economy, energy economics, and history. Suffice it to say that Dessler dodges numerous germane issues in his primer. Here is a list of the wholly missing areas, presented alphabetically, that the author needs to address in a 3rd revised edition:
- Argument from authority
- Climategate
- Climate-change exaggeration
- CO2 forcing: logarithmic, not linear
- Confirmation bias
- Deep ecology
- Deep-ocean mixing (re “missing heat”)
- Energy density
- “Fudge factors” (re climate models)
- Government failure (vs. “market failure”)
- Iris Effect (re “missing heat”)
Dessler’s latest op-ed (he is a favorite in the Houston Chronicle), “Why the Green New Deal Makes Me Hopeful About Climate Change,” demonstrates these character traits/opinions.
He is the smartest guy in the room and argues from authority.
“As a climate scientist, I have studied the impacts of human emissions of carbon dioxide on the climate system for nearly 20 years. Over this time, my research, as well as research by my colleagues, has made me increasingly worried abut the impacts of climate change on human society.”
He is certain that the current climate-model predictions are correct.
“If we don’t take action, unchecked greenhouse-gas emissions would lead to global-average warming over this century of 5 degrees Fahrenheit to 9 degrees Fahrenheit…. This warming is as certain as death and taxes.”
He is a deep ecologist, fearing that the optimal, fragile climate will be torn asunder to remake human civilization in a very bad way.
“With continued fossil fuel use, we might see warming over the current century sufficient to literally remake the Earth’s environment and our place within it.”
He sees wind and solar as the savior (quite unlike his mentor/hero James Hansen, who understands the fundamental concept of energy density).
” … there is hope. The cost of wind and solar energy, which do not emit dangerous greenhouse gases, has dropped rapidly in the past decade and is now competitive with coal energy in many places.”
I am not a climate scientist. But I can follow the bottom lines of the argument pretty well–as have hundreds of other “skeptics” of climate alarmism, thanks to the Internet and open publishing. (Regular reading of Judith Curry’s Climate Etc. can go a long way in this regard.)
Gerald North: A Second Opinion
But my distrust of climate Malthusianism also relies on the views of Professor Dessler’s senior colleague in the Department of Atmospheric Sciences at Texas A&M, Gerald North.
Back in the corporate world working for a company (Enron Corp.) that was very active on the climate issue (alarmist, with six profit centers at stake), I hired Professor North as a consultant to give me the inside scoop on climate science. What he told me was very interesting, including that climate models were unreliable. (It is models that generate scary warming scenarios.)
North via email said these things about climate models in 1998/99:
“We do not know much about modeling climate. It is as though we are modeling a human being. Models are in position at last to tell us the creature has two arms and two legs, but we are being asked to cure cancer.”
“There is a good reason for a lack of consensus on the science. It is simply too early. The problem is difficult, and there are pitifully few ways to test climate models.”
“The different models couple to the oceans differently. There is quite a bit of slack here (undetermined fudge factors). If a model is too sensitive, one can just couple in a little more ocean to make it agree with the record. This is why models with different sensitivities all seem to mock the record about equally well. (Modelers would be insulted by my explanation, but I think it is correct.)”
“[Model results] could also be sociological: getting the socially acceptable answer.”
Professor North’s opinion of speculative, not settled science (contra-Dessler) was reconfirmed with a 2010 email from North to Sheldon Graham Jr (dated January 6, 2010):
“In another decade of research we will have squared away a lot of our uncertainties about forced climate change. As this approaches we can be thinking about what to do if the warming does indeed appear to be caused by humans and to what extent things are changing as result.”
North told me the same thing twenty years ago. The year 2020 is just ahead for another ten-year increment, but I imagine the mirage will remain. (Professor Dessler, please call your office ….)
Conclusion
Andrew Dessler is a very serious, able climate scientist. His books and tweets need to be read and understood by his critics. It is a rare window in the mentality of a true believer, a Malthusian deep ecologist who is sure he is right about both the alarm and the need and ability of government intervention to save us from certain peril.
Let the debate continue. Contrary to Dessler’s view, there are two sides to the climate debate, and one of them offers the hope and expectation that the other does not.
Originally posted at Master Resource, reposted here at the request of the author.
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“The cost of wind and solar energy, which do not emit dangerous greenhouse gases, has dropped rapidly in the past decade and is now competitive with coal energy in many places.”
Dressler needs to read the recent study of wind turbines , which shocked many by pointing out the poor economics of large turbines – they produce power at twice their claimed costs and last half as long
Dressler also omits the cost of hypothetical storage for wind and solar (which does not really exist, in a practical sense, so it is an estimate for a hypothetical system), or the spinning conventional backup required. Perhaps the storage problem will be solved about the time climate computer models give accurate results?/should I add a sarc?
The storage problem can never be solved because energy demands will outpace any attempt to plan and build an engineered electrical storage solution, unless the West completely de-industrializes and destroys the economy and standard of living growth. Then of course, nothing is solved, because just as we’ve seen with the rise of China’s industrial output, de-industrialization merely shifts the emissions elsewhere on the planet.
None of this is lost on the more intelligent alarmists. So that only leaves one conclusion about them.
Good points – thank you Joel.
The problem with forecasting climate shifts is the same as forecasting changes in the stock market. But financial forecasts are based on human behavior, which is semi-predictable and fed by the emotion of greed, whereas climate forecasts are based on models generated by computers, which use programs that are biased by the user’s political/pseudo-religious or other personal leanings. Most of the forecasting is based on how much cash it generates, anyway.
Therefore, if you WANT the future to be 5F degrees warmer (which you wouldn’t notice, even if it happened) it WILL BE 5F degrees warmer – until you get there. And if it isn’t 5F degrees warmer, then you just push your goal post further ahead.
Aren’t we supposed to be in an ice age by now, or something like that? I’m tired of snow coming and going as it pleases! I want (heresy!) those 5F degrees extra warmth!!!
My car is gasoline powered and it doesn’t emit dangerous greenhouse gases either, but it’s reliable.
Link please to study?
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/12/29/wind-farm-turbines-wear-sooner-than-expected-says-study/
Wind farm turbines wear sooner than expected, says study
charles the moderator / 6 hours ago December 29, 2018
From The Telegraph
Start here.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/energy/windpower/9770837/Wind-farm-turbines-wear-sooner-than-expected-says-study.html
I haven’t seen the original study.
Fake engineering just as bad as fake science.
Wind farms would be a good idea if there were places near ever major city were the wind blows 24/7. As there is not wind farms are located hundreds of miles from the nearest city which requires a new high voltage power line to transmit the power. The power line voltage, towers, lines, transformers, and so on must be designed for maximum load even though actual average load in Germany will be less than 20% of wind farm maximum output.
When travelling by train from Paris to Berlin, I noticed wind farm after wind farm (100 to 200 turbines) located in regions where there is insufficient wind to even consider installing a wind farm. Every wind farm had only two turbines turning very slowly which has strange as there appeared to be almost no wind.
Obviously in Germany wind farms were installed in locations where there is not sufficient average wind to justify a wind farm and solar farms where installed in locations that do not receive sufficient sun.
When comparing wind to natural gas power generation, for example, the wind is assumed to be ‘available’ 35% (available is any wind, what is important is percentage of nameplate average per day) of the time. As noted below the German’s wind farms provided only 17.3% average of nameplate which is half of 35%.
The Germans ignored reality and continued to install more and more sun and wind gathering equipment, so at peak wind and sun have more ‘green’ electricity than they can use without the magic storage system.
://notrickszone.com/2015/02/04/germanys-energiewende-leading-to-suicide-by-cannibalism-huge-oversupply-risks-destabilization/#sthash.8tE9YRDj.PSllYaQF.dpbs
No one ever said that a Wind Farm needed to generate and sell electricity to be able to generate revenue
Fake engineering
Haven’t seen that phrase before, but it fits. Fake news, fake education, fake history, fake science, and now it’s trickled down even into engineering.
I have twice in successive summers travelled once west to east one year then from the north to the south to Bavaria in the second year by train in Germany
On both occasions the view out the train window was that there were wind turbines stretching out to the horizon and on both occasions their blades were hanging listlessly not turning
I could not help reflect on the unused capital cost of those vast wind farms
“…..wind and solar energy, which do not emit dangerous greenhouse gases”
The construction of wind and solar sure do emit greenhouse gasses, and so do the construction of access roads, transmission lines, and we still haven’t addressed storage.
Large scale wind and solar would and more CO2 now, with the promise of saving later.
Not to mention the energy forms used and amount involved in making these useless monsters. Lots of smelting of metals and factory heat and light before one of these things ever turns. All lost when they die of old age, which is a fraction of the time they were sold as having.
We have endless armies of zombie brainiacs from the academic world who know nothing about practical economics. Yet they never hesitate to tell us what to do with our own money. They frankly make me sick.
Which “Many Places”
Off Grid…
Island Nations…
Isolated Locations??
Dressler also needs to read the article below as well as the comments. He and AOC need to answer to the issues of cumulative and irreversible harm to residents forced to live within 20 km from industrial wind turbines. Dr. Mariana Alves-Pereira, who has stated publicly that knowing what she now knows about the harm from low frequency noise and infrasound from these turbines, she wouldn’t live within 20 km of a wind turbine.
https://stopthesethings.com/2018/12/06/silent-killer-why-wind-turbine-infrasound-causes-serious-health-problems-for-wind-farm-neighbours/
Somehow, as tragic as this is, I cannot muster an iota of sympathy.
“Dressler needs to read”
Dessler
Thank you Jeff Alberts.
Dessler?
https://www.pinterest.com/pin/399905641882193667/&psig=AOvVaw3I_cO1SSukbJvohLlyvAYN&ust=1551563170757317
https://www.google.com/search?q=Shellenberger+on+Wind+and+solar+will+not+work&oq=SHELLENBERGER&aqs=chrome.1.0j69i59j0l4.5329j0j8&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8
“Andrew Dessler is a very serious, able climate scientist”
bwahahaha bwahahaha
He is very able. And I take his work very seriously. But the things he does NOT discuss in his primer is as important than what he does discuss. This is very uncertain science, after all… failure of disclose pertinent information or engaging in half-truths is the lawyer’s trick he seems to employ.
He’s an alarmist activist. that alone says he’s not a scientist able or otherwise. You can either be an activist or you can be a scientist, you can’t be both as they have mutually exclusive goals (the former has a predetermined viewpoint that all else is filtered through whereas the later follows the evidence even if it leads away from initial presumptions).
“He is very able. And I take his work very seriously.”
That my be true, but he can’t be “able” at climate science. No one can. Aside from merely measuring and documenting changes in things like temperature, precipitation, hurricanes, etc., the whole field is entirely theoretical. The sensitivity of temperature to CO2? Theoretical. The response of hurricanes to rising temperatures from CO2? Theoretical. It’s all just words and opinions. Not science.
Climate scientists don’t do anything to demonstrate their abilities as climate scientists, unless you consider their climate models to be actual predictions instead of just loose “scenarios.” And in that respect, they are certainly not “able.” First, insufficient time has passed to be able to reliably test the ability of models in predicting the behavior of a system whose changes can only be physically measured over the course of many decades, and even over shorter terms climate models have never been remotely able to predict in advance quantitative changes in the climate.*
Here’s Dessler’s bio from Wikipedia:
“Dessler worked in the energy group at The First Boston Corporation doing mergers and acquisitions analysis in the mid-1980s.[5] He left his job as an investment banker on Wall Street in 1988 to go to graduate school in chemistry.[6] After receiving his Ph.D. in 1994, Dessler did two years of Postdoctoral research at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center and then spent nine years on the research faculty of the University of Maryland from 1996 to 2005.[7] Dessler went on to become an Associate Professor of Atmospheric Sciences at Texas A&M University from 2005 to 2007 and has been a tenured Professor of Atmospheric Sciences there since 2007.[2]”
As you can see, he’s done a lot of research and I’m sure he’s written a lot of papers and books. But that’s just being a specialized kind of word processor, not a scientist. I’m not seeing anything that would indicate he’s accomplished any tangible achievement with respect to the Earth’s climate system.
* The term “predict in advance” might seem to be redundant, but some climate researchers seem to think that coming up with a model in the year 2000 that somewhat follows the curve of temperatures from 1900 to 2000 counts as a “prediction.”
I agree with icisil,
If dude is a climate alarmist, he can’t be very impressive.
Andrew
Dessler had a PR paper duel with Roy Spencer a few years back. He basically refused to see anything he did not like. His counter papers to Spencers’ did not address the issues, just restated his preconceived beliefs.
He may be bright ( depending upon definition ) but he is not a good scientist, nor is he an honest broker in the effort to understand climate. He is an activist.
Ancel Keys was a very prominent and respected scientist.
It is possible for very prominent and respected scientists to enforce their orthodoxy. The fact they are prominent and respected is no guarantee of quality.
Ancel Keys lived to 100, and his wife lived well into her 90’s. Maybe he did know some stuff of import. I don’t agree with everything he did, but I think he and Dr. Yudkin(his adversary) both had valid research and serious points about health and diet.
The accusation is that his most famous work was deeply flawed. Studying the eating habits of a Catholic nation during Lent (and then passing that off as their normal diet) is either gobsmackingly stupid or outright fraudulent.
The enforcement of diet orthodoxy was as nasty as the enforcement of climate orthodoxy.
Many people acknowledge what Keys did wrong. He stands as an example of how science can go bad.
My grandfather lived to be 101.5 He had a so-so diet, drank multiple alcoholic beverages every day and smoked from age 14 to age 40, but quit when the bad health effects of smoking came to light. He did, however, work into his mid-80’s doing physical activities (boat business/ welding/pounding propellors into shape with a hammer) and was thin most of his life, never really getting too heavy. His living to that age is due to genetics and staying active and maybe to the alcohol. He did not follow the Key’s dietary advice.
I’ll bet that he felt loved and respected. Things like that affect your longevity more than the obvious issues like diet and exercise. link
Back to the thread, there is always a Ravi Batra or Matthew Simmons lurking behind every issue….and a lot of them are from Texas.
Meanwhile we have an update in the Atlantic…..
http://www.climate4you.com/images/NOAA%20SST-NorthAtlantic%20GlobalMonthlyTempSince1979%20With37monthRunningAverage.gif
It would be interesting to see this charted along with solar cycle. It’s starting to look like the sun plays a much larger role than CO2.
If it’s the sun then it would have to involve multi solar cycles with the ocean cycles as storage units with charge and discharge cycles all their own. No one knows basically.
But of course we now live in the post modern, no-uncertainty era for the good of …….policy crusades?
Thanks ResourceGuy, a very nice graph to beat the warmists with in my next newspaper letter!
He was also the conman behind the Texas permanent drought projection.
Where was this prediction made?
“Where was this prediction made?”
It was made in The Houston Chronicle on July 10, 2011:
https://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2016/04/19/the-texas-am-permanent-drought/
That is not a prediction of permanent drought. The book they reference is where the predictions are made. They essentially are: longer droughts, heavier rains, higher temperatures.
Since I haven’t read the book, I don’t know what prognostications the authors made, but the Houston Chronicle article was written by Andy Dessler. In it he clearly states: “The weather of the 21st century will be very much like the hot and dry weather of 2011.” He didn’t mention ‘heavier rains’, he predicted a 90 year drought lasting from 2011 through the end of the century. He may not have used the phrase ‘Permanent Drought’, but he certainly predicted one.
Dutch news website Nu.nl is banning people who deny the involvement of humans in climate change from commenting on its readers’ reactions section.
‘You can disagree with the government’s climate plans on NUjij, we encourage critical discussion about the measure to which the Netherlands can make a difference, and you can certainly set out why you think climate change has progressed too far to be tackled,’ the website said.
https://www.dutchnews.nl/news/2019/02/dutch-news-website-bans-climate-change-deniers-from-making-comments/
That’s a great indication! It means they’re being inundated with sceptical comments. When the plug their ears and chant “No, no, I can’t hear you” you’re winning.
NZ site Stuff.co.nz also have that policy.
Hi James this doesn’t work http://realclimatescience.com/ and last post was May 2016 and last post on his twitter account was March 2018. This was his original site https://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/ and it is still active but nothing new since May 2016 when he supposedly moved to another site. Odd?
That’s incorrect. I check his site daily and it always has new content. It was up yesterday, not today.
Just tried both of the above again and zero!
It must be because you have been placed on his list of Climate Contrarians and so are being redirected to a different website so he doesn’t have to contend with your far more accurate viewpoint.
/sarc
Just tried again and the site is up and running!
The divide between climate alarmists and climate skeptics is similar to the divide between Trump haters and Trump supports. Each side looks at the same information and sees something completely different. Climate alarmists see the end of the world as we know it and climate skeptics ask “What’s the big deal? We don’t see it.” I don’t think there’s any way to bridge that divide.
Chuck – “I don’t think there’s any way to bridge that divide.”
If we shared a common enemy it might be possible to ‘bridge that divide’. Humanity will unite to defend the Earth. Perhaps we could join together and attack the Moon.
Especially now the Chinese are doing ‘things’ on the Moon. I see billions of dollars worth of new tariffs ready to go .
50% tariff on moon cakes.
Won’t work. Leftists are indoctrinated for at least 12 years to automatically appose anything suggested by someone they view as Right-Wing. It’s why so many of them were calling for Muller to be fired right up till Trump suggested it.
Of course, the reverse is also true. Anyone suggesting something they disagree with is automatically redefined as Right-Wing and a Racist, Denier, Homophobe, ect. Look at how they turn on anyone in their camp who deviates even slightly from the narrative. But it goes even further. They will actively rewrite history to justify their world view. IE, the National Socialist Workers Party is now deemed ‘Right Wing’ despite holding almost all the traditional Leftist beliefs.
Heck, I’ve had local Progressives argue with me that the Slave owners of the old South, and the Sothern Democrats who upheld the segregationist and ‘Jim Crow’ laws clear till the 70’s, were really “Right-Wing’ because they were racist, and every one know that only Right Wingers are racist.
>_<
“Each side looks at the same information and sees something completely different.”
To some extent this is true but there is active rejection of data that supports skeptic views by the alarmists. No one has tried to address Harde 2017 except Kohler and that was a joke with no substance then Harde’s reply was not allowed into print. (https://hhgpc0.wixsite.com/harde-2017-censored)
No one is looking at the extreme weather records to conclude that all bad things are increasing because they can’t get that out of the records. No one is looking at the sea level data and proclaiming wild acceleration and projecting meters of rise this century from the data.
Where it is true is the two views of the value of model output. One side treats it as data and the other considers it guess.
Climate alarmists are people who went on a sun holiday and got crap weather. Sorry, crap climate. Sorry again, crap climate change.
‘This warming is as certain as death and taxes.” The Green New Deal will definitely make taxes more certain, and the resultant poverty will make death come earlier for many.
MN could use some warm now
You forgot the death taxes.
With continued fossil fuel use, we might see warming over the current century sufficient to literally remake the Earth’s environment and our place within it.IOW: And remaking our place in Earth’s ecology is my (and people like Gore) job!!
I see that blockquotes don’t work now….
Is that true?
(if you don’t see blockquoted text, then it’s true)
(my bad!)
I had lunch with Jerry North and Andy Dessler some years ago where Dessler said that we might be living underground because of all of the climate problems. This is a ‘deep ecology’ mindset where the earth is seen as very fragile and the idea of economic adaptation foreign. Our answer should be–fears of climate change is more reason for free markets and wealth to ease adaptation…. But the other side will have none of that!
Dessler must have taken in to much of HG Wells’ Time Machine. He’s obviously a Morlock rather than an Eloi. A very disturbed man, IMO.
Arrgh…. Too much!
Andrew looks like a clone of Michael Mann! Why do these guys all look alike? No chin, with a scruffy, unshaven derelict look? Maybe climate alarmism is genetic.
It’s the phony earnestness of expression – like an actor trying to hard to sell his part.
Possession??
I had the same thought. Great minds …
Nah, just a simple disease, for the simple.
No Dessler does not have piggy eyes and a face you want to punch. Be fair. He has a tramp’s unshaven look nearly as good as Steve Bannon’s, not like the usual, neatly crafted, lefty “rectal ring” of facial hair like Mann et al.
He looks a bit dopey in the given photo but that could due to selection bias.
His science is poor but not quite as bad as Mann.
What science?
Same barber, or lack thereof.
If your measure of a man’s climate science understanding is the way they look, then I can see why you are a skeptic.
This from the top boys at
Columbia University, Princeton University & Stanford University
“Forests, carbon sinks, cannot make up for delays in decarbonizing the economy
To stabilize the Earth’s climate for people and ecosystems, it is imperative to ramp up natural climate solutions.”
…like a bit less the AOC generating hot air ….
https://phys.org/news/2019-02-forests-carbon-decarbonizing-economy.html
Turn off the heat and power to the universities. Other than the hard sciences departments at least.
This warming is as certain as the prediction that the West Side Highway in NYC will be underwater by 2012. Oh Wait!
Sorry, but that earnest expression on his face when he talks “certainty” about the reeking garbage he thinks is “science” looks little different than the faces of those who walk around with signs preaching that the “End is near.” He’s the same as those idiots, wearing a “scientist” Halloween costume.
5 to 9 degrees Fahrenheit? I bet he got those numbers from his favorite conversion formula F to C.
More sad yet is this description of a Fahrenheit to Celsius conversion from the BEST site that boggles the mind:
This is wrong, on many different levels. It is partially correct in that a Fahrenheit measurement of 40.5° F would be properly reported as 40.5° F +/- 0.05 °F. A proper conversion of F -> is a simple matter of a subtraction by a constant and a multiplication by a constant. The first is to subtract 32 from the Fahrenheit temperature. 40.5 +/- 0.05 F – 32 = 8.5 +/- 0.05F
So far, so good, but this is where it goes off the rails. After removing 32F from the value, the difference is multiplied by 9/5 to complete the conversion. Turning a fraction into a decimal always has th problem of deciding how may significant figures to use. Luckily, the rule of significant digits tells us that you must use the same number of decimal places as the LEAST of the measurements. That’s actually another factor to guide us, because 5/9 is not a measurement with an uncertainty, but merely a factor of two numbers.
One decimal point it is.
Since the value is being multiplied, the fractional uncertainty is in play again: 0.05/8.5 = 0.005 = 0.00 (evens round up, odds stat on the number) Multiply 8.5 * 5/9 = 4.7. °C. Since the fractional uncertainty returned a zero value, the final result is 4.7C +/- 0.0C.
Check the result: 4.7 * 9/5 = 8.46 + 43 = 40.46 = 40.5C
I see where BEST got their uncertainty, by multiplying 0.05 * 5/9, which is correct as far as it goes. However, when multiplying by a constant, the fractional uncertainty has to be calculated first, then the math performed to get the result, and then the fractional uncertainty returned to the absolute by multiplying the fractional by the math result. BEST took 8.5 * 5/9 , returned two extra significant digits in the decimal side, and then performed the same math on the Fahrenheit uncertainty without doing the fractional conversion.
Yep, a ‘tell’ (as in poker), that most “climate scientists” share is their inability to use significant figures correctly.
Because they’re not scientists.
‘“This warming [of 5 to 9 degrees Fahrenheit this century] is as certain as death and taxes.” (Professor Andrew Dessler, below)’
Absolutely. We cannot curb Chinese emissions when the EU has already succeeded to move industry there. The science is settled on the 1990 sensitivity (1.5..4.5K per doubling). This is supposed to end the world in 12 years.
I thought peak stupid was already, but new sources are found viable when demand increases.
stupid seems to be a near infinite resource, just when you think you’ve reached the peak you find there’s plenty more where that came from.
So…if taxes can be cut? Will that make the world colder? Because it was -41 here two days ago and I’ll live with taxes if it keeps the temp up.
“sees wind and solar as the savior”
How about nuclear? Usually a good way to separate the serious from the kooks.
Nuclear is absent from his 2016 textbook, but Andy is now including nuclear as ‘should also be considered….’ in his op-eds. This is a dead giveaway of a Malthusian I = PAT worldview (re Ehrlich and Holdren) where even carbon-free energy is not good because it would allow more PAT.
It means he’s accepted that his wind and solar dream is a complete load of manure.
Just saw this from Dessler (Feb. 15th tweet): Andrew Dessler
@AndrewDessler
Feb 15
More
Realize that whatever policy eventually emerges, you will not get 100% of what you want. I’m not a huge fan of nuclear, but if building nuclear plants gets us to zero CO2 emissions in a few decades, then build away! I’m more than happy to compromise on that point. 3/
He’s more than happy to compromise ??
As if anyone who actually gets anything done gives a rat’s ass about any portion of his being, let alone his opinion.
Andrew Dessler “I’m not a huge fan of nuclear, but if building nuclear plants gets us to zero CO2 emissions in a few decades, then build away!”
I think this is a step in the right direction for alarmist thinking. We are hearing this more and more from that side. Slowly, one by one, they are starting to wake up to reality. What’s that old saying? Somthing like: People go mad in crowds, and regain their sanity, one by one. I think we may be seeing some of that regaining of sanity from the alarmist side.
Yes, Mr. Dessler, let’s call a halt to bird-killing windmills and substitute nuclear power. The Right will agree to this. Your political problem is solved, at least as far as getting the skeptics on board is concerned..
Windmills cannot power the economies of the Earth. Millions of birds and bats are killed unnecessarily because of windmills. We need to stop going down this destructive, dead-end road. Alarmists need to see it as a dead-end road.
Nuclear power generation is a much better alternative to windmills. Nuclear doesn’t produce CO2 and it doesn’t kill birds and it is fully capable of powering the economies of the world now, and into the future.
Give up the windmills and solve your problem using nuclear power generation. Save the open spaces for the animals.
I am all for that.
Letting uranium sit around doing nothing is an unforgivable waste of resources.
Nuclear for base load power.
Let’s get started. I was ready decades ago, but especially by 2007 when oil spiked.
It will again the next time we have a worldwide building boom and strong economy.
Save oil and gas for where it is the best choice.
“……..we MIGHT (My emphasis) see warming over the current century sufficient ……….”
So, you don’t really know.
“So, you don’t really know”
That happens a lot in climate science. They do a lot of guessing. Climate science, in its current form of selling the CAGW narrative, is not a very precise science. The more ambiguity, the better, the CAGW promoters say.
[SNIP…take your filthy comments somewhere else. They’re not welcome here. -mod]
MM is that you
“mythical gas chambers”….you are a REAL “denier”….
he’s a filthy little troll
Obviously. Hope Anthony sees it and takes it down. Disgusting.
Was Tab Caplock already taken?
(p.s. made the mistake of following the link back to his sewer. it’s like a mini /pol. trolls trolling trolls)
“mythical gas chambers”
Seems we have a real live holocaust denier and conspiracy theorist troll in out midst.
We don’t hear from many straight up, wild eyed Nazis these days. And it’s still too many.
There are two huge problems that the climate alarmist must explain.
The first is their manipulation of the ground based temperature data, which has occurred multiple times over the 2 decades. It always results in cooling the past (pre 1960) and warming the present (post 1990). Manipulation of actual temperature data is well documented in the US (from which the vast majority of pre 1950 data comes from) and Australia. Furthermore, up to half of the full dataset is made up. We simply don’t have records over large swaths of ocean prior to the 1970s or from much of Africa and Asia today. Maniputologists use models to generate this data. Some of the recent model generated data has even created phony record warm temperatures. That’s what helped 2016 become the “hottest year on record”. The hand-waving over the ground based temperature record is simply epic and well documented by Steve Goddard at realclimatescience.org (site down today)
The second problem is the dis-junction of climate model temperature predictions from reality. Dr. Roy Spencer has published articles on this. Explanations for this, while said with a straight face, have been laughable. Since the models generally rely on CO2 levels as the only driver of temperature, the fact that the models have all dramatically overestimated temperatures is, if anything, proof that CO2 level changes have very little influence on temperatures.
I’ll throw in a third problem for good measure: the claim that we will experience an increase in the frequency and severity of severe weather. Why, with CO2 levels at the highest in recorded history, did the US experience the fewest # of tornadoes EVER in 2018? Why did the US experience a 10 year severe hurricane drought with no category 3 storms from 2006 – 2016, the longest such period on record? It is also well documented that 9 of the top 10 most devastating Pacific typhoons and 9 of the top 10 most devastating Atlantic hurricanes occurred prior to 1980. Yet alarmists and their media apologists continue to promote the severe weather due to global warming narrative.
Toss in the morphing of global warming into climate change, and how now everything from severe cold to heat, and from no snow in Winter to extremely snowy Winter, and droughts and floods and every storm we DO get…all is because climate change.
“We have to get off fossil fuels or we might have another Harvey. Do you like it when people die?”
At this point, I am rather certain that the huge spike in drug overdoses and suicides among young people is either mostly or completely attributable to children being told they live on a dying planet and the world is going to end soon and badly and there is no doubt about it and it is the fault of anyone who is not a True Believer.
Some kids are no doubt able to see right through this malarkey as just hot air, but others are just as surely convinced by it, and are in a state of resigned despair and depression.
The people responsible for this are among the most rotten and despicable criminals ever to inhabit the Earth, AFAIAC.
Well they are also pushing viable baby abortion and infanticide. So we know what they are.
(the 4 letter word that describes climate hustlers and Progressives: it starts with E and ends in L)
(and has the roman numeral 6 in the middle).
“We do not know much about modeling climate. It is as though we are modeling a human being. Models are in position at last to tell us the creature has two arms and two legs, but we are being asked to cure cancer.”
Simple, stop its blood supply. Without funding it can’t grow.
I wonder if he is related to Paul Erlich. Chip off the old block.
Anyone who professes such certainty in what will happen 80 years from now, while never having been able to predict what will happen in the next year or two, exposes themselves as nothing but a propagandist, and certainly not a scientist. He can’t explain how the entire system works, and thus can’t predict year to year changes, but he in his mind knows for certainty that we are all doomed? I weep for this generation of mindless drones who eat up this crap.
Andrew Dessler is concerned about what happens by the end of this century? Why is this?
Hasn’t he been listening to fellow notable alarmist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s assertion that the world will end in 12 years if we don’t “address” climate change (whatever that means) starting RIGHT NOW!
80 years from now . . . phfffttt!
Now go eat a big cheese burger!!
So, he’s a skilled Climate Liar. Kudos to him. Must be proud.
Look up Kalama Sutra …
No serious computer modeling engineer would consider modeling earth’s climate accurately (and with any predictive skill) as being possible. Let alone an expectation of any level of CERTAINTY (predictive skill).
Systems Modeling engineering is not exactly new stuff. Given known characteristics and interactions within a system and the level of complexity of a system, it is possible to compute what is required (like the amount of data…quality of data…accuracy of factor interaction equations…etc…etc) for a model to be skillful or useful.
Given the complexity and lack of knowledge of and lack of good enough data of the earth’s climate, climate modeling fails by orders of magnitude in all of the basic requirements. We don’t have anything from which to build a skillful model from…or with. Not data…not accurate enough knowledge…not enough computing power.
The levels of funding ($Billions) for Climate Modeling Research should never have rrached the levels they have achieved based on lack modeling requirements known from the very start.
Modeling for more narrow aspects of climate are certainly of possible value, but modeling the energy flows in the entire earth’s climate is just not feasible. We lack at least 3 orders of magnitude of good historical data and we currently lack about the same 3 orders of magnitude of computing power IF we had the data.
We also lack sufficient understanding of many very key elements within the climate system. E.g. Intertropical cloud formation and the emergence of storms obviously control local air and ocean surface temperatures on a daily basis, but we can’t even model these phenomena very well yet.
To the extent that climate is chaotic (which it appears to be), the CAUSES of chaotic system noise like short term (decadal or even multi-decadal) temperature fluctuations cannot even in principal EVER be known.
Why are not significant numbers within the science community pointing out the utter futility of climate modeling?
Instead, we have climate models that are falsifiable that have not been abandoned. All the models assume AND ABSOLUTELY REQUIRE positive feedback from increased mid troposphere humidity and temperatures in the tropics. That has not happened, so even these inadequate and very limited models have already been falsified, have they not?
Why would anyone be afraid to deny the veracity of climate model predictions?
DocSiders
+1
Besides all of that we have earth history and documented human history, both making the ideas of the climate alarmists frankly impossible.
CO2 is horrifyingly low, and we need more of it.
Earth and people are better off in a warmer world, and it has been far warmer than now with lower CO2.
And CO2 does not drive temperatures, or lead temperature, ever, in any records. Period.
The earth is far too cold, and cold kills, not warmth.
The warming that can be determined as likely having taken place is mostly all milder cold, in the Arctic, in Winter, and at night. Summer hot days are down markedly over the past 80-100 years.
Crop yields up, planet greener, no increase in storminess, no increase in heat waves, no disappearance of snow, no Arctic death spiral, no perpetual droughts, no acceleration of sea rise…and NO sudden spike of global temp as CO2 has increased sharply.
Wind turbines do more harm than good, solar and wind increase power cost, harming the poor and not affecting the wealthy, no climate refugees, no drowning islands, no plagues of disease and insects…
Nothing, nothing…not one frickin thing is happening they warn about, and yet they gaslight themselves and others that it is all coming true and worse than anyone even thought.
We are living in a Fellini film of a Kafka novel.
We are like the frog in the pot, only it is the skeptics that are sitting in the pot as it heats up, knowing what is going on but just sitting around discussing it, while some skeptics tell the rest not to be rude.
And the socialists might very possibly take over the US government, using this crap as their gate key.
But last week’s release of a Green New Deal resolution is the first time I’ve felt a sliver of that worry fall away, because it feels like solutions are finally on the horizon.
The characteristic fallacy. The GND can only affect US emissions. They are around 12% of global emissions. And they are not growing, unlike those of the developing world.
These people are always demanding we do things to curb global warming without ever saying how much effect it will have on global warming if we do them.
Maybe because it will have none.
So in that case lets ask, yet again, why do they want us to do them?
The characteristic demand of the warmist: to take an action to solve a problem, which action, if his theory is correct, will have no effect on that problem.
Listen to what they say and believe them. Christine told us in clear language a few years ago.
AOC is shouting it at the top of her lungs right now, and every Democratic Presidential candidate has signed on.
Yesterday Mikey Mann Tweeted out his endorsement of the NGD, and did so while praising the washed up actress and drugged-out-rocker groupie Pam Anderson as one of his favorite source of information.
They are telling us what it is really about…you just need to listen to what they are saying, and believe them.
Are you saying, they really intend to implement the NGD?
I guess its possible. One of the greatest fallacies observers can commit is to look at the pronouncements and stated intentions of fanatics who are out of power and think that what they are saying is so ridiculous that they can never try to implement it when and if they do come to power.
And then, partly because no-one has taken them seriously when out of power, they do come to power and do exactly what they said they would.
But the NGD is so obviously defective that its very doubtful, surely, that Congress and Senate would allow it to be implemented?
“Are you saying, they really intend to implement the NGD?”
Well, some of those crazy Democrats may have that intention but they are just fooling themselves because it is never going to happen.
Ban airplanes. Ban cows. Run the whole country on windmills. It’s insanity.
Even some Democrats are backing away from the Green New Deal because of it outlandish propsals. Democrat Senator Dick Durbin said he read the GND several times and it still didn’t make sense to him. Dick will have a lot of company when the Democrats start to be asked questions about the GND.
What the Democrats need to propose is the New Nuclear Deal. Their aim should be to replace retired power plants with nuclear power plants, and all new electrical power generation should be from nuclear. This way they reach their goal of reducing CO2 production, they stop killing birds, and the nuclear electricity is sufficient for all present and future needs. No power outages because the wind isn’t blowing or the sun isn’t shining.
If the Democrats are really serious about doing something about CO2, while keeping society viable, nuclear is the only way. Windmills and solar are inadequate to the task and hugely expesnive to the environment and the budget. To continue to focus on them is a dead-end road.
There seem to be an increasing number of alarmists who are making noises about supporting nuclear power. I think we will see more of this as people study the GND and realize just how preposterous doing it that way really is. You are not going to be able to sell the GND to the average American. If you tell them you want to ban cows, they will laugh in your face if they think your are serious.
The Democrats need a new CO2 reduction plan. One that works. One that’s practical. One that won’t be laughed out of the room.
I also do not think the GND will happen, for multiple layers of reasons.
I think that, yes, the people who proposed it will do what they can to make the bill a law, but I have no expectation that they will remotely succeed.
Unless somehow Dems win the WH in 2020, and the House and the Senate, then do what they said they want to do and pack the SCOTUS…
At that point, which I do not think will happen, anything is possible.
But I also do not think there is any chance at all that this plan can ever be made a reality, and certainty not in 10 years.
People are not going to volunteer to give up cars, the airlines are not going to volunteer to close up shop, and all plane owners scrap them.
There is no chance of building out the grid, or the number of wind devices, and solar units, needed to make even half of power from these sources, not in ten years, maybe not ever. Not enough materials on hand, not enough ability to ramp up production that quickly.
Demolish or rebuild every building in the country? Who pays? What materials? Energy?
Labor? And those who do not go along, which will be most people, do they make everyone? By what authority? They would have to tear up the entire Constitution.
Trains everywhere? No one even thinks trains are efficient except in certain circumstances of population density and travel distance and passengers willing.
High speed rails connecting every city? Massive land confiscation…those routes need to be long straightish lines. Where are the trains coming from? What power source? Wind? Solar? Travel only by day? There is no possible way to build grid scale battery storage.
And the parts about jobs and housing and healthcare and handouts of a living wage?
Any one of those is ludicrous from a economic and fiscal standpoint alone.
And then take away and presumably slaughter every cow and other farting beast?
Good luck with that.
Oil and gas companies and associated industries fold their teepee and go out of biz?
Please.
There is no part of the whole thing that is possible technically or fiscally or legally, or even logistically. All at once though?
And then of course, there is no reason to do any of these things. Except made up ones.
Lies, power grabs, pandering for the votes of the penniless and shiftless and panicky.
Yeah…um…NO!
The cows alone: That is food for people that like to eat, and are not gonna let some politico grab their food, including many favorites: Burgers, milk, cheese, yogurt, pizza, steak, bacon…so many others, and anything containing any of these or made from them.
All kidding aside, the pizza and the bacon kill the deal right there.
The Democrats need a new CO2 reduction plan. One that works. One that’s practical. One that won’t be laughed out of the room.
But do they need a plan for reducing US emissions?
Or a plan for reducing global emissions?
This is the problem. Its not clear there is any plan (certainly they do not have one) which is going to reduce global emissions, in which case its not clear why they need a plan to reduce US emissions.
I mean, why reduce local emissions when they are not locally harmful, and when to do so will have no effect on the supposedly harmful global ones?
This is the key difference with real pollutants. CO2 emission is not, locally, any sort of safety or health issue. Its quite unlike particulates or SO2. Raise or lower it, and in itself it has no effect on health issues at all.
I suggest they need plans for reducing air pollution in cities, and for reducing pollution of a genuinely locally damaging sort generally. Even if it raises CO2 emissions.
I am saying the objective has little to do with climate, and more to do with power and instituting socialism.
Yes, that is a quite logical conclusion to draw from their conduct.
Dessler is the ‘scientist’ cited by NASA as ‘proving’ positive cloud feedback by looking at clear sky/all sky TOA radiative imbalance. Only problem was, his regression had an r^2 of 0.02! Pure junk.
Wrote up his shoddy example in essay Cloudy Clouds in ebook Blowing Smoke.
I bet Dressler drives an SUV, typical alarmist hypocrite.
His name is Dessler. I’m sure he hates it when people call him “Dressler”. So, carry on.
In this case, he is not wrong; certainly, with predictions like his, against the arguments of rational dissent, there have been massive divisions within human society, divisions which are being levered wider and ever wider by people like this “professor”, wilfully aided and abetted by the mainstream media, of which our beloved BBC is one of the biggest culprits.
As a real Texas Aggie (’77), I find him embarrassing….
Well you know the old joke:
To get a degree in climatology at A&M all they do is take them out and stand them in the rain.
If they come in out of the rain they get a masters degree.
Over the last 75 years (since 1945) 96% of all Co2 man has produced has been produced. This Co2 has meant an increase of 110ppm in the atmosphere to roughly 410.
The maximum temperature from a 30% increase in co2 from 1945 to today is 0.5C (maybe less) but using their data roughly this much.
The amount of heat added to the system depends greatly accordingly to the amount of co2 you predict for 2100. It is the IPCC’s contention that a midrange number is 650 or so and the high end number is 1400ppm. The high end number would require adding 12ppm/year for the next 80 years. Since we are only producing 2ppm /year now it means starting next year mutliplying our co2 output by 6. Since that isn’t going to happen we should assume a linear growth over the 80 years. In order to get to 1400 our generation of energy would have to double ever decade for 8 decades in a row to produce the 1400ppm. This is not realistic in a number of ways therefore this number is simply a number climate alarmists put in to create graphs to scare people. I don’t think anybody actually thinks we would get to that, thus they have the more realistic 650.
650ppm still requires a massive increase in energy consumption. That is 3ppm/year for 80 years. We can assume that developing nations will continue to aggresively increase co2 output but not for long. The US has already reached peak co2 output and is declining as we decrease energy use by becoming more efficient in many ways and also from use of LNG more and more which produces less co2. Assuming other countries eventually follow the US and that over time other energy sources become more and more cost effective it is not hard to assume that by 2100 virtually no energy will be produced with co2 and that before then by 2050 and maybe by 2080 we would have large amounts converted to non-co2 sources.
In the back if it is impossible to make solar and others cost effective it is certainly possible and likely we would have to consider nuclear which can be made incredibly safe. If its a choice between the end of the earth and nuclear I think rational people have to go nuclear.
Of course this would depend on if we see any consequences at all from global co2 output. I remain incredibly skeptical that there are ANY negative effects today that are at all attributable to heat or co2.
A level of 650 co2 according to the models does not generate 5F MORE in temperature. It generates 1.6F in temperature. If he is saying the net increase from 1780 to 2100 is 5F – 9F he is way hotter than even the IPCC’s super hot computer models that are twice as hot as reality.
Reality is as I said above. From 1945-2020 we have gone up 0.5C thus for a 30% increase which gets us to 620 or so we will see at most another 0.5C or 1F.
The IPCC says 1.6F but they are extremely hot. He says 5-9F which is insane and impossible.
In order for him to be correct he has to assume co2 levels climb like to ridiculous levels where humankind makes no advancements in technology for 80 years and continues to use fossil fuels when nuclear is readily available and safe even in a worst case scenario.
The other way is he assumes that some discontinuity occurs in the atmosphere and the atmosphere starts acting radically different than it has over the last 75 years.
This is the problem with the alarmist narrative now. We have 75 years of evidence of how the atmosphere has reacted. For 75 years and 30% increase in CO2 the effect was 0.5C. Another 30% cannot cause 1.0C or 2.5C or 4.5C as he suggests because it would mean for instance temperatures would have to start rising at 4 times the rate it has risen for the last 75 years.
Thus his prediction is essentially belief in a miracle. That suddenly for no reason he explains the atmposphere will start ballooning in temperature at 4 times the rate it has for the last 10 years, 30 years or 75 years. It’s ridiculous and impossible.
“He [Dessler] says 5-9F which is insane and impossible.’
Which is why Dessler can’t be taken seriously. He might as well start invoking magical incantations. To paraphrase Richard Lindzen, Dessler might as well believe in magic. He is indeed his own joke.
But reacted to what? It would be more accurate to say that we have 75 years of evidence to how the atmosphere is acting, as we have no idea, whatsoever, as to how or why the global average temperatures have fallen and risen during that time; just because “scientist say” that it is so does NOT mean that it is so.
Exactly.
It is widely believed that prior to 1950, CO2 changes were not enough to effect the global temp.
And the interval prior to that had changes as least as big as since.
So there is no way to say with certainty that CO2 per se has changed anything.
If it suited them, alarmists could use the same sort of sophistry to make an equally compelling case that we must emit CO2 in every greater amounts to stave off and ice age and/or starvation.
There is every indication that the MWP was warmer than now, and no one knows why it ended, or why the LIA ended.
Not being able to give a solid reason for each of those, there is zero way to say what is happening now is not completely the same reasons as then.
Somewhere in the past 30 years or so, the notion that the interglacial could end at any time has been replaced by some supposed certainty that it will last thousands of more years, and I have seen some references to belief that it cannot end for tens of thousands of years more.
I am not so sure that the way the Milankovitch cycles align can explain the similar length of the previous interglacials, nor why the timetable of them changed radically and suddenly along the line.
No good explanation at all for why the previous glacial advance gave way to the Holocene, and no good explanation for the Younger Dryas…
Not knowing any of these things, not even having convincing evidence for any particular theory that explains any, let alone all, of these changes, makes the future an unknown, almost completely.
The one thing that we do not see in any past history is a warmer world causing catastrophe, and the previous interglacials were warmer and everything around now lived through them.
So it seems the warmistas have seized on the single least likely conceivable outcome.
Which actually never occurred to me before.
It seems literally that everything else is on the table, besides what they claim is inevitable.
I just want Dessler to answer one simple question. Karl, et al. 2015 was readily accepted as the new authority on global temperature. It was hailed as the “pause buster” and its adjustments to the data were incorporated almost overnight. The premise was that, rather than declining or reaching a plateau, global temperature rise continued throughout the early 2000s. My question is: If CO2 has a large effect on global temperature and there are positive feedbacks associated with that warming, why is the rate of warming from 1950-1999 identical to the rate from 2000-2014? There was a massive increase in emissions from Asia during the latter time period, and we’re told that atmospheric CO2 levels have jumped significantly. If there has been no change over 70 years in the 1 C per century trend, what scientific rationale can you present for why you are certain that a five-fold increase will occur?
The scientific rationale, at least my falsifiable hypothesis, is that his cognitive dissonance is totally capable of hiding his knowledge of the null hypothesis from his outside voice.
Let’s see if Andrew Dessler can answer the following question: Why did the warming stop?
https://holoceneclimate.com/why-did-global-warming-stop.html
He would be the first alarmist to answer it!
So the choice is death by climate change or death by Marxism. One of these killed a hundred million people in the last century. Not a tough choice, really.
Is there an “anxious climate scientist” appearance meme going on?
Andrew Dressler seems to resemble Michael Mann, in a chubby, baldy, gr(e/a)y, beardy/goatee sort of way.
Or am I confusing coincidence, correlation and causation?
Same half wit mentality as well
john, you’re being generous with “half”.
Regards,
Bob
The confirmation bias is so strong now in them, they cannot see any way forward without an alarmist climate message.
As such, they are not scientists. Dessler (and similarly K Hayho at TTech) are simply charlatans. Snake oil sellers.
Scientists explore alternative explanations to their favored hypothesis. The strong CO2 GHG forcing hypothesis has not been supported by observation, yet they press on as if the hand tuned model outputs somehow provide that proof. They use terms like high certainty, incontrovertible in regard to their 5-9 degree F claim. It is absolute garbage science.
His book wouldn’t stand scrutiny of an inquisitive student in his class. He’d probably have such a student ejected from his class if he brought up the problems in his text book. Problems he has chosen to ignore at th epril of his students being ill equipped to understand the issues. Issues such as CO2 forcing is a logarithmic function, and heat energy lost the the deep oceans is not missing, since the amount of deep ocean warming is below instrumentation precision limits, and the Law of Entropy precludes it ever being “found”. And future projections are not data, and that the GCM’s are just error propagation engines that are hand-tuned to provide convenient results. And even between the large ensemble of GCM outputs, the model mean is meaningless and is an attempt to hide the wide range of estimates (huge uncertainty even if you accept them as valid).
Probably the single most important head-in-the-sand, refusal to acknowledge reality issue by Dessler (and his ilk) is that fossil fuels for transportation needs are irreplaceable for the forseeable future in our society. Replacing them in transportation requires a very large scale nuclear build-out that would take at least 50 years. So the reality is any democratic government that tries to impose otherwise will find itself tossed to the curb, just as Macron of France is now finding with just modest fuel taxes on French citizens. This latter issue of irreplacebility of fossil fuels that Dessler tries to ignore simply makes him an ideologue pushing an agenda, and agenda that would be disastrous for humanity if actually implemented. SO he pushes it probably for his own fame and funding. In other words, he is simply a rent-seeking quack with a PhD.
Compare
“If projected twenty-first century climate change is uncertain, then the actual changes might turn out smaller than we now project, or larger …
… Uncertainty about how the climate will actually change consequently makes the issue more serious, not less” (The Science and Politics of Global Climate Change Dessler & Parson 2006).
In a later edition (2010) they interpose a ‘life-threatening illness’ analogy to drive the point home to the simple-minded all of which is question-begging on stilts.
It is the “best estimate of climate change this century”, the central estimate around which uncertainties are supposed to lie, that is becoming more uncertain:
http://image.al.com/home/bama-media/width620/img/news_huntsville_impact/photo/19673985-standard.jpg
All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in every country.” [Hermann Goering]
Andrew Dessler took the 30 pieces of silver long ago. He betrayed science.
Joel, you are absolutely right and it can’t be refuted scientifically. Everything you said is absolutely provable. The climate models are error propagation machines. The uncertainty from simply the numerical error propagation is 100C. They have put unnatural dampers in the models to keep them from exploding with impossible numbers.
Also the only way averaging results makes sense is if you are looking at accurate models with unsure initial conditions. Using the ensemble method you could then determine different outcomes but when the models themselves have no accuracy averaging a bunch of error results simply produces a random result. Of course they tune these error machines to produce a certain output so the average is just a random number within a hand-picked range they decide in advance.
It’s garbage. Everything about it is garbage. I took a class a few years ago at Stanford and they could not refute anything I questioned. They won’t teach anything besides basic science which doesn’t show any numbers. They will talk about evaporation and energy flows but they can’t study or teach or justify the models so it is all a big hidden ridiculous boondoggle.
My website if you care to look is: https://logiclogiclogic.wordpress.com/
I’ve bookmarked your page John. You look like a clear rational thinker. Will study your essays more in the coming days/weeks as time allows.
Just keep in mind: None of us, since the time of Aristotle probably have an original thought. We just recycle old ideas into our “new” problems. That is why the decline of reading the classics makes all of humanity ignorant of what we do not know but instead think we do in some new, novel fashion. Even the Old Testament tells of epic floods, droughts, locust plagues, famines, and mass migrations. Yet somehow with all our educated academics, when those things happen today it is all because of the magic CO2 molecule.
Joel
Dessler and Hayhoe, what a pair.
Liars and scammers extraordinaire.
Both declared Texas to be dry forever.
Then they found they were not so clever.
The rains came and the Lone Star flooded.
And then neither were so star studded.
The press ignored what they had hyped from their sessions.
And for a time asked them no questions.
But now all that has been forgotten.
And so the pair are back but we know they’re still rotten.
That needs to be put into a Hank Williams sorta ballad, Texas style.
Andy Dessler – Your cheatin’ heart will tell on you.
(Instead of sleep not coming) Andy, the heat won’t won’t come, the whole night through.
Climatology really is the pound shop science compared to the rest, is it even a science, and not just a study.
As I posted on another thread, calling it a study is a way to give bullshitting some kind of “science” credibility.
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.
H L Mencken
Back up now
The urge to save humanity is almost always only a false-face for the urge to rule it.
H L Mencken
The kind of man who wants the government to adopt and enforce his ideas is always the kind of man whose ideas are idiotic.
H L Mencken
Ocasio-Cortez GND? Hmmm.
Dessler in his owns words.
Aug 30, 2011
https://www.theeagle.com/opinion/columnists/paying-the-price-for-climate-change/article_140c4d1b-4280-524f-b574-00898c0d26ec.html
Texas Gov. Rick Perry stirred up controversy on the campaign trail recently when he dismissed the problem of climate change and accused scientists of basically making up the problem.
As a born-and-bred Texan, it’s especially disturbing to hear this now, when our state is getting absolutely hammered by heat and drought. I’ve got to wonder how any resident of Texas — and particularly the governor who not so long ago was asking us to pray for rain — can be so cavalier about climate change.
As a climate scientist at Texas A&M University, I can also tell you from the data that the current heat wave and drought in Texas is so bad that calling it “extreme weather” does not do it justice. July was the single hottest month in the observational record, and the 12 months that ended in July were drier than any corresponding period in the record.
I know that climate change does not cause any specific weather event. But I also know that humans have warmed the climate over the past century, and that this warming has almost certainly made the heat wave and drought more extreme than it would otherwise have been.
I am not alone in these views. There are dozens of atmospheric scientists at Texas institutions such as Rice, the University of Texas and Texas A&M, and none of them dispute the mainstream scientific view of climate change.
This is not surprising, since there are only a handful of atmospheric scientists in the entire world who dispute the essential facts — and their ranks are not increasing, as Gov. Perry claimed.
And I can assure Gov. Perry that scientists are not just another special interest looking to line their own pockets. I left a job as an investment banker on Wall Street in 1988 to go to graduate school in chemistry. I certainly didn’t make that choice to get rich, and I didn’t do it to exert influence in the international arena either.
I went into science because I wanted to devote my life to the search for scientific knowledge and to make the world a better place. That’s the same noble goal that motivates most scientists. The ultimate dream is to make a discovery so profound and revolutionary that it catapults one into the pantheon of the greatest scientific minds of history: Newton, Einstein, Maxwell, Planck, etc.
This is just one of the many reasons it is inconceivable for an entire scientific community to conspire en masse to mislead the public.
In fact, if climate scientists truly wanted to maximize funding, we would be claiming that we had no idea why the climate is changing — a position that would certainly attract bipartisan support for increased research.
The economic costs of the Texas heat wave and drought are enormous. The cost to Texas alone will be many billion dollars (hundreds of dollars for every resident), and these costs will ripple through the economy so that everyone eventually will pay for it. Gov. Perry needs to face squarely the choice confronting us: either we pay to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases, or we pay for the impacts of a changing climate. There is no free lunch.
Economists have looked at this problem repeatedly over the past two decades, and virtually every mainstream economist has concluded that the costs of reducing emissions are less than the costs of unchecked climate change. The only disagreement is on the optimal level of emissions reductions.
I suppose it should not be surprising when politicians such as Gov. Perry choose to shoot the messenger rather than face this hard choice. He may view this as a legitimate policy on climate change, but it’s not one that the facts support.”
===================
Dessler in this article makes many logical fallacies for his argument. First he
– creates strawman arguments,
– then he puts forward half-truth/half-conjecture statements like, “But I also know that humans have warmed the climate over the past century, and that this warming has almost certainly made the heat wave and drought more extreme than it would otherwise have been.” And passes he the whole statement off as fact.
While he may “know” by our CO2 emissions that human activities (fossil fuel and land use changes) have very likely warmed the lower atmosphere, he certainly doesn’t know to any degree of certainty about a regional weather month-long event (July 2011 heat and lack of rainfall).
As far as his arguments about what economists say on “the costs of reducing emissions are less than the costs of unchecked climate change.’ Is simply untrue. It was untrue in 2011, and it is even more untrue now. What economists universally agree on is a graduated, increasing carbon tax will begin to reduce fossil fuel consumption. But that is not the real issue. Maybe he thinks if he repeats that costs versus benefits lie enough, it’ll be true. But he has to know that is a lie now after the work of Bjorn Lomborg and Bill Nordhaus. The “do nothing” option is clearly the best option at this point. Let free markets work. Let the world’s economy grow as fast as it can without massive government regulations throttling growth. That’s how you rationally deal with climate change from an economist’s view.
As for his “hundreds of dollars (of cost) to every resident” in economic damages from a prolonged drought, he simply needs to do some basic math on even just the cost of gasoline that vrtually every Texan incurrs at the pump. If the average resident puts 15 gallons in their car every two weeks (conservative), at $2.25/gallon, that sans carbon pricing is ~$880/yr. If you want to decrease emssions, we know from historical data, it needs to get to at least $4/gal to begin to curtail driving. So at $4/gal the Texas resident is now paying $1560/year, a $680 difference. And that’s just gasoline. Next move on to electricity and natgas rates like Cal’s near double Texas average rates, now you’re getting into low thousands/year for every year, regardless of drought. And as for many rural families that produce Texas’ agriculture output and live on bare margins of profitability, a segment he seems to be so concerned about, use far, far more gas, diesel, propane to make their products, so the carbon costs would be borne on them and put them out of business for good. Drought would become neglible in impact becasue you just chased your agricultural sector to Mexico or Argentina, or Brazil.
Where Dessler says, “In fact, if climate scientists truly wanted to maximize funding, we would be claiming that we had no idea why the climate is changing — a position that would certainly attract bipartisan support for increased research.”, there is clear convincing evidence none of the “mainstream” (consensus) climate researchers want to discuss the huge uncertainty in climate science consensus. Huge uncertainties exists in their model predictions and drought/rainfall predictions, and storm severity predictions. Open discussions of uncertainty, welcome in every field of science except apparently climate, is taboo in consensus climate science.
Dessler is simply a joke. A bad joke on Texas and his students. None of his arguments hold up to critical scrutiny. I feel sorry for his students, paying kilobucks for his half-truth filled course work, getting loaded up with loans, and nothing to show for it but a shoddy thinking unable to critically evaluate data, scientific claims, or “consensus” science.
“As a climate scientist at Texas A&M University, I can also tell you from the data that the current heat wave and drought in Texas is so bad that calling it “extreme weather” does not do it justice. July was the single hottest month in the observational record, and the 12 months that ended in July were drier than any corresponding period in the record.”
Dessler is right about the severity of that summer.
I live in Oklahoma, just north of Texas and that summer was as hot as any summer I can remember, and I’ve been around a long time. And it was extremely dry at that time. I spent over $100 dollars in a month just watering the trees around my house (I have a lot of trees) because I was afraid the drought was so severe it was going to kill these huge, beautiful 50-100-year-old trees.
And then the rains came! It rained so much that the Texas and Oklahoma droughts disappered and haven’t been back since. And the summers have been much milder since that year.
And now today, we have the subtropical jet stream bringing in the moisture to the U.S. (the Pinapple Express) so it looks like we are not going to have to worry too much about drought for a while.
Drought and heat are a regular part of the climate around here. We dry, and dry and dry, until it starts getting worrisome, and then it rains and the drought goes away for a few years. It’s normal.
Exactly.
For him to be in the field he is in, and either think or pretend that a drought, even a bad one, is not normal and expected periodically, but is instead a sure sign of some calamity, marks him as no scientist.
If he thought it was, he is incompetent.
If he just said it, he is a deliberate liar.
Given the blind allegiance to the ill-informed concept of the Green New Deal (GND), it is time to get serious about the CO2 from burning fossil fuels. Politicians, lacking in engineering/science skill, are falling for the false, but self-serving (grants to researchers) concept that CO2 has a significant effect on climate. This concept stems from the knowledge that CO2 is IR active (absorb/emit thermal radiation at earth temperatures), i.e. a ghg (greenhouse gas), and that it is increasing in the atmosphere. The false scenario that it is causing Catastrophic Global Warming is propagated by the media because scary stories attract audience which complies with their true motivation which is to sell advertising.
Delving deeper into the science reveals that, mostly below about 10 km, radiant energy which has been absorbed by CO2 is, via thermalization (sharing the absorbed energy with surrounding molecules), rerouted to water vapor molecules (WV, is also a ghg) progressively with altitude. WV molecules radiate the energy to space (again increasingly with increasing altitude). The evidence of this is the notches in graphs at different altitudes of radiation flux vs wavenumber (wavenumber is simply the number of wavelengths in a centimeter). The notches are centered at the principal absorb/emit wavenumber of CO2.
. Ghg significantly radiate at the same wavenumber (or wavelength) as they significantly absorb.
The consequence of this is that the contribution of each additional CO2 molecule to warming at low altitude is no more than its increase to the total number of ghg molecules (CO2 + WV) i.e. on average about 1 part in 10,000. From 1960 to 2005, about 5 molecules of WV were added to the atmosphere for each molecule of CO2.
At high altitude, 15+ km, quite the opposite condition exists. WV molecules are greatly reduced to about 32 parts-per-million (ppm) (because of the low temperature ≈ -50 °C). The ppm of WV molecules above this altitude is greatly exceeded by CO2 molecules which are about 410 ppm throughout the atmosphere. At great altitude, 40+ km, there is essentially no pressure broadening. This results in the observed spike centered in the CO2 notch. Increased population of CO2 results in increased cooling. Apparently the increased cooling at very high altitude compensates for increased warming below about 15 km. This is demonstrated by multiple compelling evidences that CO2 has no significant effect on temperature/climate listed at Section 2 of http://globalclimatedrivers2.blogspot.com .
Andrew /Dessler sees wind and solar as the answer to keep[mg carbon dioxide down whose greenhouse effect he blames on global warming. In so doing he follows James Hansen, his “”mentor/hero.” He may be a hero to him but he also lies like a dog about temperature that year. nt. His argument is to show to the audience a warm spot on the left hand side of the super El Nino of 1088 that intrudes into his temperature field from the right and claim that these few spots raise global temperature above anything in the past. , The year he made his presentation to the Senate that they represent the high temperature limit shownn his temperature chart. What really happens is that yes, there are these temperature points there and they look like they are creeping up the side of the super El Nino to reach to even higher temperatures. se What is left out by now is that on the right side of that same super El Nino, are similar spots, but they look like they are creeping down the super El Nino on the right side. Combine the dots from both sides and the overall temperature of the El Nino a location is very nearly the same as the rest of his temperature curve on the left. All that Hansen had to do to show high temperature was to divide his temperature record exactly at the peak of the super El Nino and the take away the right side of the super El Nino of 1988.
You arew the loser. Anthhy, . if ypou keek blcking information hufor arbitrary reasons. Arno
Arno,
You need to be more patient with WordPress. It has nothing to do with Anthony or his website settings.
And you should apologize to AW …. or just go away.
I I apolologize, Anthony. I misjudged you.
From the article: “Dessler’s latest op-ed (he is a favorite in the Houston Chronicle), “Why the Green New Deal Makes Me Hopeful About Climate Change,” demonstrates these character traits/opinions.”
What it demonstrates to me is Mr. Dessler appears to be clueless if he thinks the Green New Deal is a good thing, or even possible. This doesn’t give me much confidence in his judgement.
Mr. Dessler needs to concentrate on getting those new nuclear reactors up and running. You know, the ones that are going to replace all that windmill foolishness.
I think everybody agrees that with 7.5 billion people on the planet, and with an explosive spread of technology, we are truly in uncharted waters. There is just no historical data to allow any confident prediction to be made about future climate. To be so certain, we would have to have data from a time when the Earth contained 7.5 billion people more or less doing stuff that we are doing today.
Who knows? Maybe it is really methane from rice paddies messing with the climate. Or, cow farts. Or nothing. The climate maybe is just doing what it has always done: Change. And, do we really know if is changing? Is our definition of “climate” arbitrary and of no real scientific use?
Anybody who says otherwise is just saying stuff he has no business saying.
Funny that the author cherry picked a quote from a North mail
jeez how would know this?
Appealing to North?
On Jan 6, 2010, at 11:42 AM, Gerald North wrote:
Hi Mr. Graham,
One last time. From your letter to the editor.
The question for scientists is whether CO2 increases cause a global warming and if so
how much. The climate science community has settled on the answer that it does cause
warming and by a range of from about 1.5 C to 4.5 C for CO2 doubling. Is this bad?
Well it is if the top of the range is true, not so bad if the bottom holds. If the average
over the range happens, there will be winners and losers. Anyone deciding on how to
handle this will be making choices that affect people differently. These last are not
scientific questions. They are moral choices. My opinion on the subject is no better
than anyone else’s since how do we really decide on one person’s loss over another’s
gain?
But if you want my opinion it is that the likelihood of serious negative consequences
for most humans is large enough that perhaps we should take some precautionary
measures seriously. For example, conservation, cutting on imported energy sources that
could compromise our national security to name a few. Since at least some of these
measures are likely to be adopted, why not get the jump on our foreign competitors
and move on some of the technologies that have been discussed. Texas is likely to be a
big winner if we do, since we are loaded with opportunities here (wind, sun, etc).
In another decade of research we will have squared away a lot of our uncertainties
about forced climate change. As this approaches we can be thinking about what to do
if the warming does indeed appear to be caused by humans and to what extent things
are changing as result.
I hope this answers your question. If you have further questions I suggest that you
phone Professor Andrew Dessler. He has volunteered to continue the conversation via
phone: [REDACTED. You should know better, Mosh].
Jerry North
Steven,
The quintessential embarrassment for climate science is the oft repeated fact that the official uncertainty range of 1.5 C to 4.5 C has not budged in 40 years. The embarrasment is because this is after many, many billions of research dollars spent. But in fact the high end (above 3.5 C) has almost certainly been refuted by observation, and there are beginning to be peer-reviewed published papers that say that. Yet the official 1.5 to 4.5 C schtick persists … because they need it to exist. And the supercomputer modellers oblige, reducing themselves to nothing more than useful idiots.
That strongly suggests climate science is nothing more than a pseudoscience self-licking ice cream cone. (it exists for its own benefit.)
Professor North’s professional judgement (he is skeptical of formal models) has been, ever since I have known him, 2C for 2x, some 50% below the IPCC’s midpoint. This is a significant departure from Dessler that I have also emphasized in my emails that have become public at the above site.
In another decade of research
It’s always a some distant time in the future. When that decade passes (next year), wanna bet it’ll still require another decade of research?
he has the classic vanity beard too!
only down a bit up and running now.
http://realclimatescience.com
Enjoy
My personally most admired scientific mind has always been Richard Feynman. One of the notions he put forth with a great deal of vigor, that inspired that admiration was that for someone to call themselves a scientist they must be willing to argue the data and arguments that oppose their conclusions with equal rigor to that they must invest in arguing in support of them. Since it is patently obvious that Dr. Dessler never comes close to that benchmark, it is equally obvious that neither does he in any way deserve to be described as an “able scientist” of any sort. An “able propagandist” for he shares much more in common with Goebbels than he does with Feynman
An “able propagandist” perhaps, for he shares much more in common with Goebbels than he does with Feynman
“Andrew Dessler is a very serious, able climate scientist.” How about very serious, able climate propagandist?
The human models also tell us the creature has one breast and one testicle. Thus, like climate models, make predictions of future performance of the human race quite problematic.
Anybody else get disturbing vibs from just looking at the guy? Is he Mann’s clone?
Yes. And from the comment below, I agree with that too.
He is not any of those things, and reading his books is listening to the ravings of a lunatic or liar or fool.
Nothing new there. Countering his crap will not spring from studying what he thinks.
Andrew Dessler is a very serious, able climate scientist. His books and tweets need to be read and understood by his critics.
Uh, no, no and no. Reading anything from this creep could only make someone less sane.
“I will later write an in-depth review of this textbook, which not only covers physical science but also related issues in political economy, energy economics, and history. ”
I will look forward to your review.
“And he is a master at presenting his case, not unlike a highly skilled lawyer. He knows the answers–and counter-arguments are just noise.”
This strategy is effective propaganda. And it is employed more and more among the alarmists. It is not about supporting scientific arguments. They know those are far too arcane for the casual observer. It is fundamentally dishonest, but they don’t care.
Except for one thing: It is lies and people are onto it. They have to fool everyone or eliminate those that they cannot. Or it all comes down in their heads before they can seize power.
Andrew Dessler is a very serious, able climate scientist. His books and tweets need to be read and understood by his critics.
I understand Andrew Dessler. He’s ignorant, and he’s dishonest. See this post on my blog for some more details:
https://markbahner.typepad.com/random_thoughts/2006/02/fabulous_free_m.html
Specifically, there is this section:
I wrote, “3) A preponderance of evidence suggests that CO2 emissions will peak circa mid-century, or earlier, and will decline by the end of the century to a value that causes atmospheric concentrations to plateau at a value below 560 ppm (i.e., double pre-industrial concentration). This will happen through normal technological evolution…”
He responded, “Some of your points are scientific, but they have no merit. I was especially amused by number 3, that CO2 will peak mid-century w/o any policy to reduce GHGs. You say the “preponderance” of evidence supports you, when I think “no evidence” would be more appropriate.”
No one who knows anything about the history of global CO2 emissions and likely future CO2 global emissions would say there is “no evidence” that global CO2 emissions will peak “circa mid-century or earlier.”
We would be far along towards that if not for decades and decades of opposition to anything that would really help conserve fossil fuels.
Nuclear could have easily have replaced a large percentage of power generated by FFs.
Opposition to fracking for nat gas has hindered the move to that cleaner fuel wherever it can be substituted.
Right now there could be a program to replace every lightbulb in the country with the most efficient ones available. This simple step could save a huge amount of energy, and also a lot of money. LEDs are still not universally used. Huge amounts of our lighting, which uses(the last time I checked which was a few years ago) as much as 10% of total power in the US, is older types that waste power.
And another thing the US could do is build out a natural gas delivery infrastructure, with goal of getting gas service to every house in the country.
For things like heating water, drying clothes, home heating, and cooking, using gas directly instead of burning it to make electricity, and using the electricity to heat and cook and dry, would save a huge amount of energy. One of our engineers could probably figure out the savings rather easily, at least in regard to the ball park amount. At each step, burning the gas to run a turbine to make power and then transmit and distribute it, has losses of energy that are saved by burning the gas at the destination device. It would take a long time, but by building out the infrastructure jobs would be created, and people could switch over as appliances needed to be replaced.
We are the Saudi Arabia of nat gas, but the vast majority of Americans have no access to it.
These two things alone could take a huge bite out of everyone’s energy cost, at least those who do not have gas and still use inefficient bulbs. Both save by being more efficient, with no loss of performance. In fact, gas for heating has several advantages besides saving money and cutting energy use: It comes into building via underground pipes, and will not be interrupted by such things as ice storms and hurricanes or anything else that cuts electric power.
Wow If Pam Anderson is so anti fossil fuels why use plastic and fossil fuel to build her spice rack ?
8-or 9 degree increase in temperature … bring it on .