Guest post by David Middleton
From The Washington Times…
The science of climate change is anything but settledBy Roy W. Spencer – – Wednesday, March 13, 2019
ANALYSIS/OPINION:
On March 5, 58 senior military and national security leaders sent a letter to President Trump denouncing his plan to form a National Security Council panel to take a critical look at the science underpinning climate change claims. Their objections to such a Red Team effort were basically that the “science is settled.”But if the science is settled, what are they afraid of? Wouldn’t a review of the science come to the same conclusion as the supposed consensus of climate scientists?
The letter claimed, “Climate change is real, it is happening now, it is driven by humans, and it is accelerating.”
While climate change is indeed real, it is not at all obvious how much humans have to do with it. Even the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) admits this, saying only that over half of warming since the 1950s is believed to be human-caused. So, “driven by humans” is an exaggeration, even by the IPCC’s rather alarmist standards.
The additional claim that climate change is “accelerating” can also be challenged. In recent decades, warming actually decelerated, and there is a growing gap between climate model forecasts and measured global temperatures.
In fact, a peer-reviewed paper published last year in the prestigious Journal of Climate found that the observed level of global warming since the late 1800s, including the deep oceans, was consistent with a climate system only half as sensitive as are the climate models guiding U.S. energy and national security policy.
And even that study assumed that all of the warming was human-caused. If recent warming is only half anthropogenic, then the global warming problem is only one-fourth as bad as the public is being told.
In their letter, the Gang of 58 then used Hurricane Florence from last year as a supposed example of human-caused climate change. Seriously?
[…]
Dr. Spencer goes on to demolish the Gang of 58’s reasons for opposing President Trump’s Red Team.
Dr. Spencer nails it:
Their objections to such a Red Team effort were basically that the “science is settled.”But if the science is settled, what are they afraid of? Wouldn’t a review of the science come to the same conclusion as the supposed consensus of climate scientists?
What are they afraid of? Getting their @$$es kicked? Made to look like fools? Losing precious time in the Global War Against Weather? According to Ayock & Beto (Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez & Robert Francis O’Rourke) we only have 10 or 12 years to save the planet from destruction… So, clearly the planet can’t afford any delays in the implementation of the Green New Deal Cultural Revolution. Speaking of saving the planet…
Speaking of Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke… Did anyone else hear his moronic comments about the Green New Deal Cultural Revolution? (Side note: My wife, who is Mexican, refers to Beto as “Puto.” I can’t repeat what she calls Ayock in a PG-13 environment…not that the George Carlin bit was PG-13).
QUESTION: Your thoughts on the new green deal?
BETO O’ROURKE: The question is on the Green New Deal, and if you don’t mind I will take the spirit of the question. We face catastrophe and crisis on this planet, even if we were to stop emitting Carbon today, right now at this moment, we know that the storms we saw in Texas, Harvey, which dumped a record amount of rain on the United States of America, as long as we have kept records, that claimed the lives of too many of our fellow Americans, flooded people literally out of their homes and businesses. Storms like Harvey will be more frequent, severe and devastating. Ultimately they’ll compromise the ability to live in a city like Houston, Texas. The droughts experienced in the panhandle of Texas, five years straight. We got rain and went back into droughts again. The same scientists say those droughts will be more profound, more severe. At a town hall like this. A young woman came in with her two children. She was skipping her son’s basketball practice to be there to talk to a Democrat though she was a life long Republican. She told me what her grandparents planted on the farm, what her parents planted on their farm, she’s now trying to plant it and it doesn’t grow. She said climate change isn’t something to prepare for. It is here.
Let us all be well aware that life will be a lot tougher for the generations that follow us, no matter what we do. It is only a matter of degrees. Along this current trajectory, there will be people who can no longer live in the cities they call home today. There is food grown in this country that will no longer prosper in these soils. There is going to be massive migration of tens or hundreds of millions of people from places that are going to be uninhabitable or under the sea.
This is the final chance. The scientists are unanimous on this. We have no more than 12 years to take incredibly bold action on this crisis. My gratitude to them for the young people who stepped up to offer such a bold proposal to meet such a grave challenge. They say we should do nothing less than marshal every resource in the country to meet that challenge, to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels, to get to net zero emissions, which means not only must we emit less greenhouse gasses, we must plant things that absorb greenhouse gasses and Carbon and invest in the technology to allow us to claim some that are in the air now. Can we make it? I don’t know. It’s up to every one of us. Do you want to make it?
[ applause ]
Your kids, my kids. Ulysses, who in 2050 is going to be just about my age, will be looking back on this moment in Keokuk in 2019 and every moment thereafter to judge what we did or failed to do. Thinking about us, his kids’ lives, whether they can even breathe, depends on what we do now.
Some will criticize the Green New Deal for being too bold or being unmanageable. I tell you what, I haven’t seen anything better that addresses this singular crisis we face, a crisis that could at its worst lead to extinction. The Green New Deal does that. It ties it to the economy and acknowledges that all of the things are interconnected.
It also recognizes some communities have borne the brunt of pollution more than others. The asthma deaths we have in the United States of America concentrated in some neighborhoods, some people more than others. It wants to make sure we do our part in making this more equitable, helping communities already hurt so badly. That we ensure there are jobs available for those looking for work for purpose, for function in their lives who are succumbing to the diseases of despair.
In so doing make sure the world’s greatest superpower, its greatest democracy, and economy brings everything we have to the unique challenge. Literally. Not to be dramatic, but literally, the future of the world depends on us right now here where we are. Let’s find a way to do this.
As difficult as it is to imagine, Puto Beto appears to actually be dumber than Ayock, and rates 25 Billy Madison’s.
“Climate change is real… and it’s accelerating.”
It could hardly be accelerating because the change isn’t even systematic. The slightly warmer temperature that’s existed now for two decades resulted from a couple of brief episodes of warming that just happened to be before El Ninos – warming that was random.
https://edberry.com/blog/climate-physics/agw-hypothesis/what-is-really-behind-the-increase-in-atmospheric-co2/ [16:00]
It couldn’t have been caused by CO2, which increased steadily.
What does the mob do in year 12 or sooner when they wake up and discover there is no emergency? What do the chase next?
This…
Ah. The world ended 19 years ago from global warming. That is why it is now called climate change. The “sell by” data on global warming expired in 2000. 2030 is the new “sell by” date for climate change.
This 30 year spread is no coincidence. Climate is formally defined as the average of 30 years of weather.
What did the followers of Harold Camping do when his predictions failed? It is much the same as for most of the followers of Paul Ehrlich, either just don’t talk about it much, or consider the whole exercise consciousness raising.
A person cannot claim to be a scientist while claiming a scientific issue is settled. Science is provisional.
per Dr Spencer: “While climate change is indeed real, it is not at all obvious how much humans have to do with it.”
While I totally agree with the statement I believe we all need to emphasize that climate change, while real, has been going on for millennia without human intervention and is not constant either – at least there is no reason to assume it is constant. The fact that it is real and is NOT new – ie since humans began – is something most people miss when these discussions happen. The second point about it not being constant is directed toward those who seem to assume the temperature change will ALWAYS be 0.1deg C per 10 years (or any other number). No where near enough data is available to support the ‘constant’ assumption.
Could it be she is a bad farmer? Did she go to college, work in some field, and go back to her inherited farm? Chances for endless speculation.
Probably should seed in the Spring and not the Winter.
Almost all of these 58 “senior military and national security leaders” will freely admit that they don’t understand the ‘climate science’, and haven’t made a serious attempt to do so.
What they will not admit, even to themselves, is that they are still making a judgment call as to which of the climate scientists are telling them the plain unvarnished truth, which of them are exaggerating, and which of them are lying. If pressed, these leaders will then probably say something like “but 97% of them say the same thing”.
And once again, these same national security leaders will not have taken any time to seriously investigate what they think this apocryphal “97%” have agreed upon, and what they have not agreed upon. They will likely cite something emanating from the orifices of CNN, MSNBC, or the BBC. If only they would admit to their own laziness, then that would be a huge step forward in national security.
Under the rules of the scientific method, CAGW is already a disconfirmed hypothesis because CAGW’s hypothetical global temperature anomaly projections have exceeded empirical observations (UAH 6.0 and radiosonde datasets) by more than 2 standard deviations for a statistically significant duration of almost 23 years, despite 30% of all man made CO2 emissions since 1750 have been made over the last 23 years:
All other CAGW projections for: Sea Level Rise, extreme weather frequency/severity trends, CH4 projections, Antarctic Land Ice loss, ocean acidification projections, etc,, have also been disconfirmed under the rules of the scientific method.
Based on observations and known physics, ECS is somewhere between 0.6C~1.7C which not only isn’t a catastrophe, it’s a net benefit from: increased global greening and crop yields from the CO2 fertilization effect (30% increase per CO2 doubling), warmer global temperatures have greatly increased arable land area in Nothern latitudes, warmer temperatures tend to increase precipitation, increased CO2 makes plants more drought resistant, less early frost lost, longer growing seasons, less energy use for heating during winters, fewer animal and human deaths from exposure, etc.,
CAGW is already dead and it’s high time a Red Team be commissioned to expose this reality.
“But if the science is settled, what are they afraid of? ”
There are some statistical weaknesses that could be exposed in such a review.
https://tambonthongchai.com/2018/05/27/spurious/
“On March 5, 58 senior military and national security leaders sent a letter to President Trump denouncing his plan to form a National Security Council panel to take a critical look at the science underpinning climate change claims.”
To what extent does the commander-in-chief have any say in the promotion of any of these 58 senior military and national security leaders? If Donald Trump has any input into any of their future promotions, he should appropriately promote their colleagues who did not participate in this letter because they know otherwise.
I think all 58 were “senior military and national security leaders” prior to January 20, 2017.
The only reason Trump got elected, was because the electorate felt the hairs raising on the back of their necks.
He is just trying to put the pin back in the grenade.
I think Roy Spencer is a great voice for promoting the calm, rational view that climate change is not a problem.
I’m just not happy with him driving around with a infrared detector which he claims shows proof of the effects of downwelling radiation.
I prefer Tim Ball’s explanation.
The science of climate change is anything but science
“the world’s greatest superpower, its greatest democracy”? If Beto and Ayock take control, we will see the end of civilisation as we know it.
Dr Spencer wrote:
“Their objections to such a Red Team effort were basically that the “science is settled.”
But if the science is settled, what are they afraid of? Wouldn’t a review of the science come to the same conclusion as the supposed consensus of climate scientists?”
Nassim Nicholas Taleb created the idea of Anti-Fragile in his book by that name. He writes about this because he came to realize we live in Black Swan world. And our world is able to withstand Black Swan shocks because it has evolved anti-fragile resilience. Unforseen stressors have made it stronger, not weaker. Anti-fragile systems thrive on chaos. Chaos delivers a shaking out of bad ideas, unfit modifications, and bad ideas.
Anti-fragile things get stronger when stressed. Darwin understood this as natural selection of the fittest to changing environments, new niches. In biological systems, everything from our bones to the adaptive immune system get stronger, more resilient, less likely to break when a serious challenge arises. We immunize, doctors now tells parents to let their children play in the dirt, be around animals, get outside, stop living in a sterile environment. These things properly tunes and challenges the immune system. They make it stronger. Same for bones. A stay in space microgravity immediately starts to make bones weaker. They stop being stressed. Stress makes them anti-fragile. This is also a bottom-up way of organization. Bottom-up systems thrive on chaos. Strength and resilience arises.
This concept applies to political systems too. Socialism/communism are top-down directed economies. They have 5 year plans for the economy from bureaucrats far removed from the consequences of their decisions. These systems are fragile. They can easily break. On the other hand, free-enterprise/capitalism that thrives in a representative democracy is anti-fragile. It is bottom-up organized. There is aconstant creative-destruction. Businesses are allowed to fold/go belly-up. Entrepreneurs compete. Profits and losses ultimately weed out the weaker and bad ideas.
The Earth’s climate system is also anti-fragile from 4+ Thousand-Million of years of constant challenge. Feedbacks have evolved from the deep, vast oceans in high latitude ice systems, cloud systems, in the ocean currents to move and release heat.
Thus the realization that Searching for anti-fragile truths is the basis of the scientific method. It is a bottom-up method of inquiry. Researchers independently exploring new ideas, new hypotheses in a bottom-up human enterprise of the mind to understand nature. Theories and hypotheses that don’t fit data/observation are discarded early if the scientific method is faithfully followed. The scientific method is a shifting path to find a truth about the nature of something being studied. Indeed many pet theories, if honestly evaluated with the scientific method, die early painless deaths for the area of science they inhabit.
What we have with today’s Climate science is top-down, consensus-enforced science. It is fragile. It has not been adequately challenged. It is brittle. It is easily breakable. The consensus science carrying climate change will ultimately break now in a spectacular fashion.
So the problem that “they” are afraid is founded on the fact that they know the State of their Climate Science is Fragile. It is brittle. It will easily break if stressed or pushed. Exactly because their so-called “settled science” is brittle they fear what will happen when a credible, critical examination of it arrives.
Very well said.
A most astute analysis.
Missed a few things there .
Too Big To Fail finance casinos are not allowed to break – there are given infusions of the blood of the economy. Better medicine is Glass-Steagall, forced separation, surgical intervention.
Not much scientific activity there.
As far as bones in orbit go – it is not micro-gravity, rather the missing Schumann Resonance that enhances osteoclast activity. We really need to bring the actual biosphere with us.
Scientific activity here is stunted.
bonbon,
This essay is a generalist essay. For that type of essay, it is necessary to stay out of the trees, limbs and leaves and focus on the forest. After-all it is the forest that matters in the Big Picture of the ecosystem that the other animals depend upon.
Specialists of course dive down into the leaves, into the weeds. The details do matter. A deep understanding is essential to specialists. Examining the micro-scale of what is happening. Putting it into the context of the macro-scale. So osteoclasts, osteoblasts responding to micro-stress fractures in calcium-hydroxyapatite crystal structures, that’s far too much detail to discuss in a generalist essay.
There is a lot more that I could have discussed. Yes, too big to fail banks back-stopped by the taxpayers is huge problem in a capitalist society. It invites bad decisions on the bank presidents to take too much risk. Risks they wouldn’t take without Uncle Sugar with the tax-payer checkbook sitting in the shadows.
In the Soviet context, Lysenkoism was also another example top-down “science.” So was Geo-centrism in the 16th-17th Centuries a top-down science enforced by the Catholic Church hierarchy. And Galileo felt its wrath when he went against the top-down enforced consensus.
I don’t buy the analysis , it is brittle.
What broke the Soviet was the refusal to go for Reagan’s SDI – economic implosion followed almost to schedule. SDI was a an economic top-down strategic solution to a still-current problem.
Then in 1990 the so-called capitalist system refused to go with SDI, and large scale projects like reconstruction of the Comecon, instead looted them to the bone – result one financial crash after another – rather brittle I would say.
Now China has taken up the torch with mega scale projects , the BRI, putting “capitalism” to shame. Notice the old labels becoming let’s say, yawn inspiring?
People need to see Pence, Pompeo, Rubio pompously puffing “capitlism” for the Potemkin it is and get on board to large scale massively needed programs again, MAGA.
Why do 2 China premier’s mention FDR’s inspiration? Dump the old rhetoric and listen.
The scientists are unanimous about this.
There were four scenarios put forward by the IPCC report, and RCP8.5 was the worst one.
How can scientists be unanimous if they had other findings?
At best, this is ignorance and stupidity. At worst, it’s outright duplicitous, and I’m a leftie!
Roy Spencer says:
Not quite what the IPCC said. What they said in the 2013 AR5 assessment report was:
Here “extremely likely” is defined as having 95–100% probability. The IPCC went on to say:
Here “likely” is defined as 66–100% probability.
Roy states that the IPCC said “…only that over half of warming since the 1950s is believed to be human-caused…”. In fact what the IPCC said was that there is 95-100% probability that more than half it was human-caused; and there is 66-100% probability that ‘all’ of it was human-caused. In that context, to say that the IPCC believes warming since the 1950s is primarily “driven by humans” is hardly an exaggeration.
Ahm, no. The 95-100% is defined as ‘extremely likely’, not the other way around. As far as I can see there is no mathematical or sratistical basis for it – they just put a number to an opinion.
Correct. There is no mathematical basis for the IPCC’s characterizations.
The percentages are simplifications of the first and second standard deviations.
Statistically they are not very significant. If engineers used these sort of numbers 737 max 8’s would be dropping out of the skies every 6 months.
If a publicly traded oil company used these sorts of numbers to book reserves, people would go to jail.
I only like this thread because Dr Roy was involved
‘senior military and national security leaders sent a letter to President Trump denouncing his plan to form a National Security Council panel’
Reagan fired the air traffic controllers. Trump should fire these yahoos.
I think most, if not all of them, left government before President Trump took office.
Then Dr. Spencer should not have characterized them as ‘senior military and national security leaders,’ rather FORMER ‘senior military and national security leaders.’
The difference is significant.
That’s how they characterized themselves… 58 Senior Military and National Security Leaders Denounce NSC Climate Panel.
Oddly enough, Eos characterized it this way: Former Officials Slam Planned White House Climate Change Panel.
Dr. Spencer was replying to what they said, not who they were.
Whether they were current or former Senior Military and National Security Leaders is really irrelevant to their opinions on climate change. For that matter, their status as Senior Military and National Security Leaders is wholly irrelevant to the science.
Eisenstein’s 100.
Eisenstein’s 100.
Beto O’Rouke is living proof of the H L Menken assertion “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”
The Democrats decry Republicans for the ‘Politics of Fear’, but they appear to indulge in that particular vehicle with gusto.
Yep. Thank Ronald Reagan for this. When he crushed the Soviet Union in the Cold War, he gave control of “the bear in the woods” to the Democrats.
Puto and Ayock combine Menken’s hobgoblins with a fascistic quasi-religious zealotry, which is particularly effective on low information, zero life experience, young voters.
Reagan was the worst president ever because he actually saw that problems could be solved. From a government standpoint no problem is ever solved without having more government and once you have more government and the problem is still there it’s because, off-course, you don’t have enough government.
“…the global warming problem is only one-fourth as bad as the public is being told.”
My only objection is the the use of the word “bad.”
“Science of climate change”
WHAT science?
What are they afraid of? Those who support the “climate change is killing the planet” fantasy probably know that it is a fraudulent manipulation of pseudoscience that creates the belief, and that it has nothing to do with real scientific reasoning. That said they will lose either way from the President’s sponsored scientific review. Either the President’s panel does real science and shows there is nothing to worry about, or they play by the rules the climate fetishists have established and demonstrate that democrats and socialists are actually witches in disguise who want to eat our children and solar panels and wind turbines are the work of the devil.
These 58 brave warriors afraid? You must be joking – they have Greta and kids taking point!
Meanwhile NATO Chief Stoltenberg is invited by Pelosi to Congress to promote a new Cold War for 2020!
Not clear if the kids are in on the action.
As far as Beto goes – his book Cult of the Dead Cow: How the Original Hacking Supergroup Might Just Save the World is out. As a teen blogged as Psychedelic Warlord.
So the Dems are pushing the Green New Death , the Cult of the Dead Cow , and Cold War.
It’s settled then. (You just couldn’t make this stuff up!).
Why does the elephant in the room always get ignored. The UN is pushing this on the world. The UN is made up of government representatives. These representatives are mostly politicians. Governments of the world listen to the UN thinking they have the moral high ground because they are looking out for the greater good of the planet. What could that greater good be? Could it be Europe’s reliance on Russian gas? It’s not wise to rely on an enemy for your winter survival. Could it be the enrichment of a dangerous super power… again Russia. The free world has a small fraction of world petroleum reserves. All but Canada are reliant on petroleum imports in the long term. Instead of feeding an enemy, why not create your own energy and keep your hard earned cash at home? Ordinary citizens will not accept high taxes and energy prices unless it’s for a greater cause and that cause would not de-funding Russia.
“Enemy” – surely you don’t take Freeland seriously? Or Pompeo?
Macron thought he was Jupiter and taxed the French for a “greater cause” – Have a good look at the result – get it in Quebeqois.
Now just try and force Germany into a corner on Nordstream2, Turkstream. Go ahead – I’ve go the popcorn ready.
The loosers in all this are Freeland’s Ukrainians who tried geopolitics – bad for business.
The great Judith Curry is taking one topic at a time. Sea level: if I can summarize crudely: no good evidence to be alarmed about globally, but some areas will be hard hit and (no doubt) appropriate action should be taken. Dr. Curry is all about adaptation and improving infrastructure.
Hurricanes:
“Apart from the challenges of simulating hurricanes in climate models, the amount of warming projected for the 21st century is associated with deep uncertainty. Hence, any projection of future hurricane activity is contingent on the amount of predicted global warming being correct.
Recent assessment reports have concluded that there is low confidence in future changes to hurricane activity, with the greatest confidence associated with an increase in hurricane-induced rainfall and sea level rise that will impact the magnitude of future storm surges. Any projected change in hurricane activity is expected to be small relative to the magnitude of interannual and decadal variability in hurricane activity, and is at least several decades away from being detected.
Decadal variability of hurricane activity over the next several decades could provide much greater variability than the signal from global warming over the next century. In particular, a shift to the cold phase of Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO) is anticipated within the next 15 years. All other things being equal (such as the frequency of El Nino and La Nina events), the cold phase of AMO harkens reduced Atlantic hurricane activity and fewer landfalls for Florida, the east coast and the Caribbean.”
Top of the list of signatures.. John Kerry! Enough said?