Those who cherish freedom must recognize the work of today’s solar science revolutionaries
Jeffrey Foss, PhD
Practically everyone knows that Galileo is a heroic figure in the rise of modern science. Most people do not know, however, that the scientific revolution that Galileo launched relied on the support and protection of the Medicis. The very name of this family signifies the marriage of power and wealth that strikes fear and loathing into the hearts of those among us who – how shall I put it? – lean to the left.
But without the support of Princess Christina, wife of Ferdinand I de Medici, the truth that the Earth goes round the sun would have remained a mere theoretical novelty.
Why did Galileo turn to the Medicis? Because only they had the gold required to support his research and protect him from The Church of Rome. Why did the Medicis support Galileo? They, like many rich people before and after, supported the arts and sciences.
They also resented the stifling power of The Church, and were charmed by the gallant Galileo who dared to stand up to it. So they defended Galileo against the Inquisition, which aimed to silence him and burn his books – along with his body, perhaps, just for good measure.
Fed, funded and protected by the Medicis, Galileo launched the first great scientific revolution. With the telescope he built with his own hands, and the money of his patrons, he saw with his own eyes – for the first time of any human being – the evidence that would establish Copernicus’s revolutionary idea that the sun is at the center of our solar system, and we and our planet go around it.
The very meaning of the word ‘revolution,’ in such phrases as ‘The American Revolution,’ derives from its occurrence in the title of Copernicus’s book: On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres. Galileo was the Washington that turned Copernicus’s declaration of independence into the first revolution against establishment science and a globe altering success – given Medici cash.
Many things are said to be unsustainable these days, such as driving our cars, transporting our food from afar in ships and planes, and flying in jets merely to enjoy Thanksgiving Day with our families.
One thing that really is unsustainable, though too few realize it, is the reigning scientific orthodoxy of the 2000s. Government-funded science today serves as an Orwellian Ministry of Truth, just as Church-supported science did in Galileo’s day. Nothing could be more opposed to true science. Nothing like this would have been tolerated by America’s Founding Fathers.
The government-science orthodoxy that largely controls most people’s thoughts and actions nowadays is the idea that Earth’s climate is controlled internally by CO2 levels, and is being warmed apocalyptically by the CO2 that humans emit.
The revolutionary modern-day Copernican idea is that our climate is controlled by the sun, just like our orbit through space. Perhaps new Medicis will one day help solar scientists establish the hypothesis that Earth’s climate warms and cools following the quasi-periodic rising and falling of our Sun’s brightness.
Everyone now believes that the Earth circles the Sun, but most do not know that the original Copernican idea established by Galileo’s first scientific revolution was in turn defeated by Newton`s scientific revolution, which showed that the Earth follows an elliptical path round the sun, not a circular one.
Newton`s elliptical path model then fell in Einstein`s revolution, which more accurately models the Earth as falling into the gravitational well caused by solar gravity.
The historical lesson is this: science progresses through revolution and renewal.
The frailty of the CO2 theory is shown in Graph (A): While CO2 has been climbing smoothly from 1890 to the present day, Northern Hemisphere temperatures have repeatedly gone up and down without any linkage to atmospheric carbon dioxide levels.
Soon, R. Connolly and M. Connolly, 2015. Re-evaluating the role of solar variability on Northern Hemisphere temperature trends since the 19th century. Earth-Science Reviews. Vol. 150, pp. 409-452 [Based on Figure 31(a) and (c)].
The power of the solar theory is obvious in Graph (B): Global temperatures are clearly linked to changes in the brightness of the sun (total solar irradiance, TSI).
Though the solar theory has been marginalized by government-funded climate scientists, it should be supported for the good of science itself, which we know is an inherently revolutionary activity. New Medicis need to fund and protect the new Galileos of our age.
We the People need to start questioning government-science with the same principled scrutiny and skepticism we employ for all other government business. We need to once again recognize the virtues of privately funded science, notably its essential freedom from government control.
Those who cherish freedom must become cognizant of the work of the solar science revolutionaries, support it, and help disseminate it among the people. A good place to start would be the work of Dr. Willie Soon, whose sun-centered theory of climate change has made him a modern Galileo: a scientist shunned, denied funding – and demonized by government-supported earth-centered climatologists.
Belief grounded in actual, replicable evidence must remain free if science is to survive – along with American life, liberty, prosperity and happiness. America flirts with severe decline when it consorts with the enforcement of scientific orthodoxy under the banner of “climate change.”
But flirtation need not lead to marriage. It’s not too late to call the whole thing off.
Dr. Jeffrey Foss is a philosopher of science, Professor Emeritus at the University of Victoria, Canada, and author of Beyond Environmentalism: A Philosophy of Nature.
‘Everyone now believes that the Earth circles the Sun, but most do not know that the original Copernican idea established by Galileo’s first scientific revolution was in turn defeated by Newton`s scientific revolution, which showed that the Earth follows an elliptical path round the sun, not a circular one.’
The Ancients knew the earth went round the sun and an elliptical path was taken. This is seen in the astronomical work by the Incas, Aztecs, Egyptians and Greeks. This knowledge was then lost, as indeed were the advances made by the Romans whose knowledge of concrete and erecting large buildings was forgotten for 1500 years.
Similarly, prior to Dr Mann we surely knew the overwhelming impact of the sun on our planet and the resultant rise and fall of temperatures, combined with other factors. Information we seemed to temporarily forget. So history repeats itself and hopefully historians, geologists and climatologists will rediscover things we always knew
tonyb
And who built the megalithic structures which predate all of the above? Maybe they are the ones who taught the Egyptians, Greeks, etc etc. about how the solar system worked.
“Yup”, the Egyptians, Greeks, Babylonians, etc., surely learned via discoveries that were made via use of the Great Pyramid of Giza.
The megalithic structure now known as the Great Pyramid of Giza, which was originally covered in pure white limestone, was surely constructed to be used as a “reflecting telescope” for the studying and mapping of rotational/revolution movements of “heavenly” objects (earth, Sun, moon, planets, stars, comets, galaxies, etc.)
The megalithic structure now known as the Great Pyramid of Giza, which was originally covered in pure white limestone, was surely constructed to be used as a “reflecting telescope” for the studying and mapping of rotational/revolution movements of “heavenly” objects (earth, Sun, moon, planets, stars, comets, galaxies, etc.)
Yet we were all taught that they were tombs. They are still called tombs by some. Yet every Egyptian tomb ever found was covered with hieroglyphics, and there are no hieroglyphics in any of the pyramids.
What has fascinated me is the physical evidence that all megalithic structures on any continent where they are found bear similar tooling marks. How is that supposed to be explained?
“Yep, it is the per se ”tooling marks” (or lack thereof) that are associated with all megalithic structures that presents the greatest conundrum for researchers and archeologists.
They keep attesting to their imaginary “facts” that their “named” cultures used copper chisels and wood mallets to fashion all the stonework at known historical sites …… even though they know it would have been an impossible feat to accomplish.
Just imagine, sitting at a “drawing table”, a couple hundred yard back from the Great Pyramid of Giza, with a large piece of parchment …… that has a large triangle on it with the same “grid pattern” as that of the “white limestone” facing on the Great Pyramid, ….. and while watching the Moon’s reflection as it moves across the face of the Pyramid, …… denote its position on the parchment’s grid.
It one does that until the “pattern” starts repeating itself, ……. the Lunar month reveals itself.
Then you do the same thing by watching …………………….
Tonyb
This was my reaction as well. The astro-scientists of Central America worked out the eclipses of the Earth and moon back two hundred million years. Is it possible they thought the sun orbits the Earth? I don’t think so.
The general assumption is that humanity moves from darkness into the light and never turns back. But night has followed day many times. The central question before us is whether this “modern” step into the half-light will be followed by light or night. The forces of darkness cloud the intellectual and spiritual horizons. Madness abounds.
It is high time we set a new path that demands accountability on all fronts. No freeloading. Imagining a future catastrophe does not make it believable or real. Imagining that some technology will work “sustainably” does not mean we have to invest in it. Show us first.
In about 50 years we will face “peak energy” after which we will slowly run out of everything. So obviously the thing to invest in is a new form of concentrated, dispatchable energy. After we discover that, we are in heaven.
Most things can be made from aluminum as a large fraction of this planet is aluminum bound to silicon. All we need is energy. And aluminum is energetically inexpensive to recycle.
Crispin we will always have all the energy and other commodiries we need. Human ingenuity is the magic boundless commodity that provides what we need. Frittering this resource through fantasy science, degrading of education and standards for higher learning and selectively funding scientific enterprise to serve ideology is what needs be feared.
Those who see only a bean counter’s zero sum, petri- dish world that makes humans passively helpless (the “sustainable” folk) are the ones who write all these scary books. For those who cry “What shall we do?” the answer is ….nothing, please. It will be done for you as it always has been, by that minority that possesses the magic commodity. The only thing the criers need do is leave them to do.
Perhaps small examples of the bounty is needed: 1)We don’t demand zinc. We demand anti-corrosion of culverts, barn rooves (roofs if you insist), etc. 2) my first computer was an airconditioned room bigger than my first apartment. My cell phone in my shirt pocket is far more powerful than the first computer. 3) All the metals we ever mined are still here on the surface of the earth; a bit of gold in your wedding ring likely came from the Gold Coast across the Sahara more than a millennium ago. Mining today is a topping up exercise.
Gary, your comment is a beautiful, accurate and edifying. Thank you. I’m keeping this one.
Grain however is unique among commodities as it is not existing.
Next year’s wheat crop is just a dream in my head. It is an assumption.
Steven W. A perfect example – what human brains have done with grains that used to be grass seed is magical!
Gary,
The simple fact that we are living on a planet with a finite volume and finite mass
shows that the claim that we will always have the energy and other commodities we
need is obviously wrong. Also if human ingenuity is magic and boundless how can it
be frittered away?
The mas of the planet grows by about 40,000 tonnes of “dust” from space per year, so not finite.
Izaak. I wish I had the time to show you it is not a zero sum game and I believe you are a smart person and don’t think we are bounded as in a petri-dish. My examples were to cover the entire subject but the are supposed to tease you to think differentky how things really work. Rethink this and incl6de that we are 50 years away from peak population growth. I have been contemplating a book. Malthusians are stuck in this zero sum idea and are destined to be diametrically wrong every time. The trouble is their simple view of a dynamic case is very appealing to laypersons and it is “logical” the way it is framed so they get a lot of traction with it despite abject failure of prognoses every time.
Demand does not grow exponentially. Cars aren’t getting bigger and are in fact using less metal.
Right on MarkW. Moreover by mid century we will be at peak population and the mass of overall demand for newly produced materials will soon after decline through continued miniaturization, recycling, substitution, etc.
@ G Pearse …and some day we will be able to mine what lays under the oceans, as technology continues to improve through human imagination.
Julian Simon’s Rule: “As population increases, the time-price of commodities will decrease for most people, most of the time; however, unfortunately, most people will assume the opposite.“
Julian Simon’s revolutionary insights of the mutually beneficial relationship between increasing population and the increasing availability of natural resources (as evidenced by declines in commodity resources over time) are counter intuitive; but they are real. The earth is a closed system in the way that a piano is closed system. Although the piano has only 88 keys there is a nearly infinite variety of combinations in which the keys can be played to compose music. The same applies to our planet. Although the earth has about 100 elements, there are an infinite variety of ways in which those elements can be combined to produce useful inventions and materials. The number of atoms on the earth may be fixed; but the possible combinations of those atoms is infinite. What matters then is not the physical limits of resources on the earth, but the limits to human freedom to experiment and to invent, to reimagine the use of the resources that we have. Gale L Pooley and Mariam L Tupey. The Simon Abundance Index. A New Way to Measure Availability of Resources. 2018. Cato Institute.
Crispin
‘The general assumption is that humanity moves from darkness into the light and never turns back’
Reading history, the inescapable fact emerges that sometimes we have been here before and lost the knowledge, perhaps through a collapse of the system with too many mouths to feed or being overrun by barbarians as with the Romans.
That darkness into light back into darkness is well illustrated in the modern day.
General Train journeys are often slower than they were a century ago. No one has been to the moon for half a century and supersonic air travel disappeared a quarter of a century ago.
There is no linear line of ever increasing knowledge or accomplishments and certainly as far as our climate goes, we appear to know less about it the more computer modelling takes the place of proper research
“In about 50 years we will face “peak energy” after which we will slowly run out of everything.”
We shouldn’t neglect the entire universe that surrounds us with plenty.
If there is a “peak energy” in the next couple of hundred years it will because the population has stabilized and efficiency gains exceed the demand for more stuff.
There’s no need for “peak energy”. We can use more of it per capita, but hopefully we will use it better, efficiently, and more cleanly. We seem to be always 50 years away from fusion, but one day we will be there. Once that happens, we are good for millennia.
Even if we take longer to build practical fusion power plants, we have enough uranium and thorium out of the ground to last 1000 years if we are smart enough to use modern reactor designs (like LFTR) which permit continuous reprocessing to remove neutron absorbers like 135-Xe, and simultaneously harvest valuable short lived isotopes with minimal delay.
These efficient designs also burn much of the waste, but more importantly, burn closer to 100% of the fuel, in contrast to old light water reactors burning about 1% of their solid fuel before rods are replaced. The old rods are stored under water. Terribly inefficient and wasteful. Good for making bombs, however.
“The general assumption is that humanity moves from darkness into the light and never turns back. But night has followed day many times….Imagining a future catastrophe does not make it believable or real.”
Maybe not, but your wording seems to suggest that any imaginable future catastrophe would be mere fantasy.
More and more of the posts and comments here are degenerating into calls of “chicken little”, as though catastrophic events were unknown and even impossible on a global scale. But why then did these advanced prehistoric civilizations not only disappear, but take their knowledge with them to the grave?
The only answer I can imagine is that the destruction of their social and economic base was so thorough that it was impossible to reassemble and maintain the skills and knowledge they had acquired.
I doubt very much that our present civilization is any less vulnerable to such a fate. And it probably wouldn’t require an asteroid strike or even a major CME , because we are so, so far out on a limb, and creeping ever closer to the point where it must break…
Dismissing all warnings of catastrophe as “alarmists” is only going to leave us even less capable of dealing with a crisis.
I don’t know whether heat or cold, toxic wastes, an EMF strike , a solar CME, massive volcanism or a bacterial or viral plague is more likely to trigger a collapse of civilization. But it’s quite clear to me that we’re less prepared for any and all of them with every passing year.
I replied to your comment above, but my post has disappeared. This is how science is championed here it, by censoring heretics. How original…
BTW I wonder if anyone has received notifications of comments or new posts since the latest format change. I certainly haven’t, no matter whether I check one box or both. The only way I can tell if someone has replied to a post of mine is to go back to the blog and search on my name. Such is progress…
Very strange. Now I see my missing post above, only it’s signed otdropogo. I assume this is censor’s remorse typo. The post was not there at 20.29 yesterday.
Tonyb,
Is there any evidence that anyone before Kepler thought the earth moved in an elliptical orbit? While
various people in the greek world proposed a heliocentric model it was never developed to the point
where people could make predictions using it. In contrast the Ptolemic system in contrast was developed to the point where it was extremely accurate and in fact more accurate than Copernicus’ system.
As for the Incas and Aztecs and Mayans there is no evidence that they thought that the earth went
round the sun. This might well be that all such evidence was destroyed by the Spanish but if you have
evidence that they did believe in a heliocentric model then I would be interested in hearing it.
Izaak
Probably the best physical example of an astronomical device is the ancient Greek antikythera mechanism.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antikythera_mechanism
conversations between Plutarch citing Aristarchus and Egyptian sources remarked that ‘the earth revolves in an oblique circle while it rotates at the same time about its own axis . The notion of this ellipse being known about in the ancient world was documented by Bailly in 1781 and Gauss in 1819
The ancients knew a lot more than we often give them credit for but I do not want to venture into speculative Erik Von Daniken territory here!
tony
Galileo’s scientific evolution was not that he corroborated the Copernican model by showing the phases pf Venus.
The Galilean revolution was that he made theory consciously subject to experiment.
After Galileo, no longer could a beautiful theory defeat any argument. Now, an ugly experiment could defeat any beautiful theory.
Einstein’s revolution was more of the same.
“The Ancients” thought that the sphere was the perfect shape, that the heavens were more perfect than the Earth, and based on those assumptions piled up more and more spheres to explain the motion they observed. Ptolemaic epicycles are a set of fudge factors, additional spheres to describe the motion of planets that were not adequately described by the first sphere. When the Roman Church tried Galileo, they used the “settled science” of the day because so much of their science was dependant on the Greek philosophers.
Today, physicists freely debate Einstein’s General Relativity formulations. Yet it is one of the most tested and established of physical theories explaining many things in our universe with high precision. GR has Passed all experimental measures to the limits of measurement error given it so far.
Yet there are many highly respected, thought-full brilliant physicists (theoretical cosmologists and astronomers) suspect there is something more to know that will fundamentally alter the formulation of GR, maybe on the Hubble scale (about 4 Gigaparsec), and they are welcomed and respected with their arguments about GR’s current formulations. And no one so far has been able to theoretically merge equally well tested quantum physics with Einstein’s GR without having the proposed Grand Unification formulations blow-up in a mathematical sense.
Yet no physicist of any credibility or respect would try to invoke “consensus” as a reason to fully and unquestioningly accept Einstein’s GR formulation.
So it is utterly amazing to me* that so many good respected physicists remain silent to the calls by climate scientists to accept the incontrovertible “consensus” of the future catastrophic projections being made by climate science today.
*Hal Lewis (a respected emeritus physics professor and long-time APS member from UC Santa Barabara) famously (within physics circles) resigned in 2010 very publicly over this exact same issue of “consensus climate science” acceptance by the APS.
https://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/201011/memberresigns.cfm
And if anything it has only gotten worse at APS since Dr Lewis’s resignation. That should have been awake-up call to the physics community what was happening to them, the damage to their institution inflicted on them by their “leadership.” The politics and political ideology that infiltrated their science and pursuit of scientific truths with skepticism as their sword to slash through the junk science is being destroyed right in front of them.
“Hal Lewis (a respected emeritus physics professor and long-time APS member from UC Santa Barabara) famously (within physics circles) resigned in 2010 very publicly over this exact same issue of “consensus climate science” acceptance by the APS.”
And by quitting, he lets them win. He, and many others, should have stayed and fought from within, if they are truly as disgusted as we are led to believe.
My guess is he tried, especially after the 2009 ClimateGate emails came out and showed the unethical behavior in the government climate adjustment bureaus. But 2010 was a time of a newly elected Barack Obama in the US White House. John Holdren was probably putting the word out fall-in line or get kicked to the curb on any advisory panels. The ascendancy of liberals and their grip on power across all advisory committees was increasing and pushing skeptical views out of committees. As an emeritus professor, he was no longer chasing grants but he was no longer had a voice on UCSB’s departmental tenure committee to control who they let go, like skeptics.
When the Iron Curtain fell and freedom flowed in, we didn’t notice that aparatchiks flowed out! They patiently unveigled their way into global NGO enviros, UN, important institutions, universities, technical societies and journals, broadly into education and governments, while we slapped each other on the back for winning the Cold War.
Here we are today watching the destruction of and subversion of free enterprise, personal freedoms, family, and civilization itself. Are the bought and paid for climateers even aware that they are being used as blunt tools. Beware of a nation of chessplayers.
“And by quitting, he lets them win.”
I disagree, Lewis led a very quiet life, his APS resignation got much more attention than if he had written an editorial for an APS journal. He died less than a year later, perhaps he wanted to let the Society and its members appreciate his stand while he still could.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/07/09/obituary-hal-lewis/
“So it is utterly amazing to me* that so many good respected physicists remain silent to the calls by climate scientists to accept the incontrovertible “consensus” of the future catastrophic projections being made by climate science today.”
Politics replaced Religion as the Faith of Western World. Journalists are today the priests and work to expand Politics to all walks of life: A Totalitarian Democracy.
This +100
Eisenhower, of all people, warned about this back in his Farewell Address.
It’s in the paragraphs after the better-known military-industrial complex ones (and he was right about that, too!).
“Akin to, and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our industrial-military posture, has been the technological revolution during recent decades.
In this revolution, research has become central; it also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government.
Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been over shadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers.
The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded.
Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.
It is the task of statesmanship to mold, to balance, and to integrate these and other forces, new and old, within the principles of our democratic system-ever aiming toward the supreme goals of our free society.”
When was the last time we saw statesmanship in our elected officers, much less in the permanent, ever-growing bureaucracy? Ike was the last POTUS who actually shrunk the Federal government, only possible because the US was coming of the greatest war expansion in our history.
Of course, we are now living through a fundamental conflict between differing views of the supreme goal–is it freedom (for which we fought WWII) or is it social justice?
The rump-end of the totalitarian ideology of the left, despite repeated historical demonstrations of the horrifying failures of those experiments, still clings to a fantasy Utopianism (aka Clown World) that fuels the CAGW scam and the GND.
We still have a long war ahead of us, folks.
Well stated, Dr. Foss. Bravo!
For whatever reason (either Anthony’s moderation tool kit rules, or WP manipulations to throttle comments), comments posted here at WUWT will not appear until about hh:05, 5 minutes after top of every hour.
-Post a comment and wait for the clock to 5 minutes after the hour, then hit rrefresh to see an hours worth of comments come through.
I suppose that is one way to keep spammers out.
I noticed that too. Double posting is likely….
Except that the TSI reconstruction that underlies the temperature reconstruction is all wrong.
Here is the correct TSI:
It is poor argumentation to use incorrect data.
The posting does a disservice to truth.
Perhaps Jeffrey Foss can contact Willie Soon, and become as Princess Christina, so as to make another attempt at the truth.
Leif
It looks like your argument is actually with Soon, R. Connolly and M. Connolly (2015), from the link Foss provided, which depicts TSI construction from Hoyt et al. (1993). You might explain why your reconstructions look so different from Hoyt et al.
You might explain why your reconstructions look so different from Hoyt et al.
The main point is that Hoyt relied [largely] on the invalid Hoyt and Schatten reconstruction of solar activity. But in addition Hoyt also invoked a number of dubious other proxies. Solar physics has progressed a bit since the early 1990s.
You can find more at
https://leif.org/research/EUV-F107-and-TSI-CDR-HAO.pdf
The graph shows correlations but is poorly labeled. What do the various colors represent? Also the vertical axis is not labeled.
Slides 49-55 of https://leif.org/research/EUV-F107-and-TSI-CDR-HAO.pdf
is where the extract comes from.
Willie Soon, Ronan Connolly, Michael Connolly
http://ceres-science.com/content/pdf_files/scc2015_preprint.pdf
The paper discusses the various TSI estimates for many pages, then chooses to use the “Hoyt & Schatten reconstruction (Hoyt & Schatten, 1993; updated by Scafetta & Willson, 2014) of Total Solar Irradiance trends.”
Yet YOU keep ignoring how much better their “old” paper fits the temperature changes over the decades, while the IPCC selects much newer papers that doesn’t come close…..
The old, obsolete Hoyt reconstruction was selected BECAUSE it coincidentally fits the temperature curve.
I was afraid you’d say that. It looked too good to be true.
Lief, I believe you will see similar values to those on your personal site (which is missing a y axis and scale, incidentally) with the (peer reviewed) paper by Soon and Baliunas as Figure 11.1 and similar.
What is remarkable is how badly the measurements vary from one dataset to the next, proof that determining the value is a difficult experimental task.
Seems to me, you were part and parcel of the new nrltsi2 and or satire model. A simple summary is that this model reconstuction most prominent effect is to provide larger amplitude in the modeled TSI. You seem to take great joy in point out when someone doesn’t use your work, but have you read their paper and redid it with the your groups new-improved model? Or do you must enjoy saying they are wrong so thay you can also toot your own horn?
Your new sunspot and tsi calculations may be correct, but I remember early criticism that seemed to indicate that some of the assumptions are still just that. A best guess assumption, hence I don’t believe in one of the authors shouting “wrong!” is unbiased, thoughtful nor aware if there is even a consequence to the issue.
Other astrophysicists desagree with which your opinion :
https://www.hindawi.com/journals/aa/2019/1214896/
Indeed, it is poor argumentation to use incorrect data.
Actually they do not, as they are only concerned with the past few cycles, while the issue concerns the variation over centuries.
science requires good people searching for truth and given support when they need it. I am not a scientist but studied history. Galileo and Copernicus are two giants in the long story of science that had to be fought for against long odds. Those fighting deserve our support in every way.
Today, Galileo would be termed a denier, for denying that the sun revolved around the earth.
And in the field of medicine, spare a thought for Ignaz Semmelweis, who paid with his life at the hands of the establishment.
Bruce, in Galileo’s own day he faced a great deal of resistance from other scientists because he was going against the Aristotelian consensus which was the “settled science” in his time. It is a long story but he faced less harassment and criticism in his time over his heliocentric claims than non-alarmist scientists face today.
Seems pretty clear.
I don’t think this following comment really addresses the topic of the article. But, here are some interesting bits of history to consider…. some of it quite ironic.
– Galileo had rejected Kepler’s idea that the planets were in elliptical orbits. Rather, Galileo stood by the pure circular orbits that Copernicus proposed. And the model of the circular orbits actually was less accurate than the system of crystal spheres, that the Greek Philosopher Ptolemy created. So, the Roman Catholic Church was actually sticking to the evidence by defending a pagan view of the universe.
– Kepler’s proposed elliptical orbit idea didn’t have an explanation as to why the planets followed those paths. It is not until Newton’s law of universal gravity, that things really started to come together.
– Copernicus (who held an office in the Roman Catholic Church) had his book proposing the solar-centric universe in the RC library for over 200 years.
– Copernicus said “We have a supremely good and orderly creator, therefore the heavens ought to behave in an orderly manner”. So Copernicus’ view of the universe supported the idea of things normally behaving according to rules created by God, as opposed to the Greek view that they were regularly influenced by the various gods who often fought with each other.
– Opposition to a solar-centric universe came mostly from academia, rather than the RC Church religious leaders themselves. Universities were very enamored of the Greek philosophers, and the solar-centric view was in direct opposition to that. But, for those who read the bible, there was no opposition to the solar-centric view in scripture. Though, the RC Church also believed its own assertions to be on par with scripture.
Joe
The following is closer to the truth about the actions the RC Church took with regard to Galileo. It is cut and pasted from Wikipedia.
” The Galileo affair (Italian: il processo a Galileo Galilei) was a sequence of events, beginning around 1610,[1] culminating with the trial and condemnation of Galileo Galilei by the Roman Catholic Inquisition in 1633 for his support of heliocentrism.[2]
In 1610, Galileo published his Sidereus Nuncius (Starry Messenger), describing the surprising observations that he had made with the new telescope, namely the phases of Venus and the Galilean moons of Jupiter. With these observations he promoted the heliocentric theory of Nicolaus Copernicus (published in De revolutionibus orbium coelestium in 1543). Galileo’s initial discoveries were met with opposition within the Catholic Church, and in 1616 the Inquisition declared heliocentrism to be formally heretical. Heliocentric books were banned and Galileo was ordered to refrain from holding, teaching or defending heliocentric ideas.[3]
Galileo went on to propose a theory of tides in 1616, and of comets in 1619; he argued that the tides were evidence for the motion of the Earth. In 1632 Galileo published his Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, which implicitly defended heliocentrism, and was immensely popular. Responding to mounting controversy over theology, astronomy and philosophy, the Roman Inquisition tried Galileo in 1633 and found him “vehemently suspect of heresy”, sentencing him to indefinite imprisonment. Galileo was kept under house arrest until his death in 1642.”
When it comes to anything controversial, it’s a safe bet that Wikipedia will get it wrong.
Wikipedia will always be dominated by the loudest voices and the most passionate followers, not the smartest or most knowledgeable.
“Copernicus said “We have a supremely good and orderly creator, therefore the heavens ought to behave in an orderly manner”. So Copernicus’ view of the universe supported the idea of things normally behaving according to rules created by God, as opposed to the Greek view that they were regularly influenced by the various gods who often fought with each other.”
Instead it seems no gods were involved.
Do you have proof to support your belief?
Simply amazing, and the oldest fake news we know, still echoing in academic chambers.
It was Kepler who showed elliptical orbits were more perfect than circular, not less, and who discovered universal gravitation, not Newton, nor Galileo.
Newtons operational algebra is simply plagiarized from Kepler.
Galileo received a copy of Kepler’s original discovery and told a confidant he understood not one word!
The entire CO2 debate devolves into a basic lie on this issue. Leibniz, whom the Founding Fathers based the Declaration of Independence, “Pursuit of Happiness”, on, made fun of Galileo’s inability to solve the Rota Aristoteles “paradox” because of his Aristotelian ideology!
It does the effort no benefit to push the Galileo meme – it makes CNN look amateur.
It is no wonder a poor kid of 16, Greta, is invited by Mr. Bercow to Westminster and not Pres. Trump.
Is Greta a modern day Galileo?
Kepler used Tyco Brahe’s observational data to derive the elliptical orbits. Brahe should get some credit–even though his hypothesis was wrong.
Do you know what a Keplerian janitor is?
One that sweeps over equal areas in equal times.
Kepler got Tyco Brahe’s meticulous observations from Brahe’s widow after Tyco’s death. He had to do some smooth talking to convince her.
“Is Greta a modern day Galileo?”
More like a modern day Nongqawuse
More like a modern day Nongqawuse
Learn something here every day.
Every time I think I know everything, somebody comes up with a Nongqawuse.
Neither Ptolemy, Brahe (of the golden nose), nor Copernicus figured out that gravity is outside all their perfect geometries even with good data. That is the first physical scientific publication from Kepler. The lurch back to arithmetic, logic, simple geometry is by those reeling from the blow. Russell went so far Gödel had to forcefully remind the world of the error. Leibniz dynamics showed Descartes’ same mistake.
Einstein equated the stress-energy tensor to spacetime, so a physical spacetime. The EHT confirms this now.
All of this is missing from the Galileo narrative, meaning science is missing. It is no wonder that climate went bonkers.
Using the term “Earth’s climate” when you mean fractions of a degree change in an average air temperature is not helpful in moving understanding. “Atmospheric warming” or atmospheric temperature changes, or even global atmospheric warming seem closer to your intent, and the authors you cite.
For a place, if you take standard items of a weather report, say temperature, precipitation, wind direction, and wind speed – all of which get integrated by the plants growing there – can you show that the place’s climate has changed?
Not where I live.
Our climate is a lee-of-mountains continental interior, dry hot summer, cold winter, some snow and spring showers. Despite CO2 or changes in the brightness of the sun (total solar irradiance, TSI), that’s the way it was in 1880, and long before, perhaps 10,000 years.
Eisenhower’s 1961 farewell address had two warnings: the most often noted: military industrial complex; the other, science-technological elites dictating public policy.
“Akin to, and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our industrial-military posture, has been the technological revolution during recent decades.
In this revolution, research has become central; it also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government.
Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been over shadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers.
The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded.
Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.”
Such a scenario unfolded in the Soviet Union later known as Lysenkoism, whereby a science (anti-science) narrative dominated science agencies, and, in some realms, killed alternative and contrary expressions and ideas along with some of the scientists who espoused them.
Today, in the climate change industry with “consensus” science the only acceptable version of the truth, along with using Holocaust metaphors to describe and demonize those whose own evidence does not support the consensus narrative, we have another Inquisition whose purpose is to uphold the established belief system.
Ah, you beat me to it.
The paragraph after that is this:
“It is the task of statesmanship to mold, to balance, and to integrate these and other forces, new and old, within the principles of our democratic system-ever aiming toward the supreme goals of our free society.”
Ike was the only POTUS to ever reduce the size of the Federal government, and only got it through Congress because both parties wanted him as POTUS, and coming off the largest expansion of the government ever for WWII made it palatable. Since then, we have seen nothing but growth of the power and bureaucracy of the Federal state.
Furthermore, we are living through the continued ideological success of Marxism and its descendants, despite the horrifying historical evidence that this is a road to serfdom and totalitarianism. A substantial minority of Americans, especially younger ones, believes that social justice is the goal, not individual freedom. That’s the conflict underlying the rise of CAGW and the GND.
We have a long war still ahead of us, although the Trump election represents an unexpected battle won.
I’m in moderation? For what purpose?
Just a gentle reminder of whose in control 🙂
who is?
Does anybody know what time it is?
Does anybody really care?
I do grow so weary from otherwise intelligent people misrepresenting the issues the Church had at the time with Galileo. It was complicated situation complicated by politics and science. At the time, the Church was the leading proponent and supporter of science and felt it had an obligation to not promulgate false science.
Also at the time, Aristotle was revered and the consensus of the scientists accepted Aristotle’s view of the earth. Galileo was never an apostate in the eyes of the Church, he had failed, in their view, to prove many of his theories and he also brought theology into science which was something the Church avoided. He was, as it turned out, in error about many of his heliocentric theories as was later proven by other Catholic and Protestant scientists. The Church did not want theology attached to unproven scientific theories or to any theories, in reality, but especially not false theories.
Galileo was an egotistical loudmouth and brought all of his problems upon himself. The true story is far more interesting. If the Church had been like Governments in our day, they would have not cared about the accuracy of the science but, fortunately, they were not. In essence, Galileo wanted them to accept all of his theory, even those parts which were not proven. Compare to AGW today. If the Church had not challenged parts of his theory, which were wrong, it would be like the Governments today demanding everyone accept the hypothesis of AGW and CC, though it has never been proven and putting the full weight of the Church behind it. They were not willing to do that and especially, not after Galileo brought theology into the mix. If he had left it at hypotheses and left God out of them, the Church would have had no problem with him.
Also Galileo was never, ever tortured. He was treated quite well, in fact. The true story is fascinating, full of intrigue, including the Medici’s, and politics. The Inquisition had nothing whatsoever to do with Galileo. The Church was the guardian of truth in science and accepted proven science over the Bible in every case. We can only dream of governments today of being as careful with science, especially, the “science” of climate change and global warming, as the Church was in its day.
The Galileo Controversy
https://www.catholic.com/tract/the-galileo-controversy
If I recall rightly (it’s been a long time), although Galileo was not tortured, he was shown the torture implements and given an explanation of exactly how they worked. That changed his mind swiftly. No torture necessary.
That is false. By his time, torture had been forbidden and banned by the Church. He was not threatened.
Again, the Church was the CDC of today, if you will. Scientists were free to conjecture and propose all they wanted. Galileo was told that. If he had accepted it, instead of insisting he knew it all, he would not have been in any trouble. He was wrong about a number of things and the Church and scientists of the time were right to be cautious about accepting all of his pronouncements. The Church did not want unproven science accepted as proven and wouldn’t it be nice if governments today were like that and concerned about proof of conjectures? Galileo was quite an interesting guy with an enormous ego and a big mouth. He brought his problems onto himself. Also, Galileo was the one who took his science into the realm of religion and, in doing that, put himself against the Pope and the Church. The Church thought that it was their duty to understand the world God had created and really was not hung up on science contradicting the Bible. That came from many of the Protestants and the Reformation which was another entire political problem.
I will repost this. It is an excellent analysis of what went wrong with Galileo and the Church.
https://www.catholic.com/tract/the-galileo-controversy
Don’t forget, when Galileo first created his invention, he went into partnership with insurers because he could see ships returning before anyone could with the naked eye. He would inform insurers who would rush to cover the ships. Talk about a sure thing! Galileo got a cut. The only thing he had to do to continue this lucrative business was to keep his mouth shut. He couldn’t. The ethics of first doing it and then, being dumb enough to blab are interesting, to say the least.
He also wrote a novel with a fool in it. The fool was the Pope and that was not a smart thing to do. The Pope thought himself a good friend of Galileo. This portrayal of the Pope as a fool hurt the Pope very much and did Galileo no good.
The Medici’s were no saints as portrayed in this article. It is impossible to understand what happened at the time without having knowledge of the politics in Italy and all of Europe.
From my link.
“At Galileo’s request, Cardinal Robert Bellarmine, a Jesuit—one of the most important Catholic theologians of the day—issued a certificate that, although it forbade Galileo to hold or defend the heliocentric theory, did not prevent him from conjecturing it. When Galileo met with the new pope, Urban VIII, in 1623, he received permission from his longtime friend to write a work on heliocentrism, but the new pontiff cautioned him not to advocate the new position, only to present arguments for and against it. When Galileo wrote the Dialogue on the Two World Systems, he used an argument the pope had offered and placed it in the mouth of his character Simplicio. Galileo, perhaps inadvertently, made fun of the pope, a result that could only have disastrous consequences. Urban felt mocked and could not believe how his friend could disgrace him publicly. Galileo had mocked the very person he needed as a benefactor. He also alienated his long-time supporters, the Jesuits, with attacks on one of their astronomers. The result was the infamous trial, which is still heralded as the final separation of science and religion.”
It is impossible to understand Galileo, the Medici’s and the Church without understanding the politics of the time. Politics then as now are a dirty game most often played by the rich and powerful.”
The bottom line is that the Church was being cautious with Galileo’s theory and knew there were parts of it that were wrong or not proven. They were right. They only asked Galileo to put his information out there for discussion and evaluation, perhaps, that day’s peer review. He would not. He believed his theories were right about everything, including that the planets move in a circle around the sun. They don’t as was later proven by other, religious scientists.
I have linked only one source. There are many out there to confirm this.
“Galileo, perhaps inadvertently, made fun of the pope, a result that could only have disastrous consequences.”
Nice attempt at spin. You make it sound like it was Galileo’s fault and the church did nothing wrong. BS.
In the modern era, the most powerful people on earth are regularly mocked by their detractors and political foes. They are not placed under house arrest for the balance of their life, in fact they don’t even get arrested. Well… that’s not strictly true. If they mock their leaders in say Iran, or North Korea or…
I trust you see my point.
Depends on where you live. In most of the world, mocking the powerful is a death sentence, even today.
Regardless, you seek to judge the actions of those in the past by today’s standards.
That is exactly what the “DC Swamp Creatures” have been doing and will continue doing to their “detractors and political foes”, ….. aka: President Trump, SCOTUS nominees, ….. via accusations, arrests, convictions, needling, murdering, ….. without regard of The Rule of Law.
“Regardless, you seek to judge the actions of those in the past by today’s standards.”
We judge all history by today’s standards. If we did not, it would put medieval repressive governance on the same footing as democracy of today. Many people gave their lives so that we could have that. We stand in judgment of the past, and the best you can say about those who wielded power against their detractors in such a manner is that they were a product of their times. This does not excuse the evil they wrought.
Despising yesterday’s standards and making them inexcusable is how we keep our societies from regressing. Evil is evil regardless of when in history it took place. We study it so that we do not repeat it.
There’s a difference between judging the system and judging the people who lived under that system.
Declaring that anyone who in the past failed to live up to modern moral standards is an evil person is an exercise in self-aggrandizement and self-delusion.
If that defense Mark, everyone at Nuremberg would have been found not guilty.
“That is false. By his time, torture had been forbidden and banned by the Church. ”
No.
” St. Nicholas I’s ninth-century condemnation of this practice had fallen into oblivion, and more than three more centuries would pass before Catholic voices—few and isolated at first—began to call for the abolition of torture as contrary to the spirit of Christ’s gospel. But all the popes and the majority of theologians up until the eighteenth century (including even the great moralist and Doctor of the Church St. Alphonsus Liguori) continued to endorse confession-extracting torture. It was not until 1816 that a bull of Pope Pius VII finally enjoined all Catholic rulers to abolish this practice.”
https://www.catholic.com/magazine/print-edition/the-church-and-torture
Some of these comments above are true, others are fiction.
Galileo was indeed called before the Inquisition, several times, following his heretical letter to the Medici’s Grand Duchess Christina in 1615 defending his heliocentric views. The following year, the Inquisition’s grand inquisitor Cardinal Bellarmine told Galileo in Rome that he could no longer “hold or defend” Copernican theory, either orally or in writing.
Later, in 1633 after publication of his provocative “Dialogue”, Galileo was again summoned before the Inquisition. He ended up making what we call today a plea bargain – as a result of which he was sentenced to house arrest, as we know.
An excellent account of what went on at the trial is the book “Behind the Scenes at Galileo’s Trial” (University of Notre Dame Press, 2006), by Richard J. Blackwell.
You don’t think catholic.com would be a tad biased?
Any more biased than Descartes?
Jeff,
Yes, on the one hand, I would, indeed. On the other, the Catholics do know their history well. If this had not been confirmed by many other independent historians, I would not have used that link precisely due to potential bias.
Despite the general acceptance of the usual story about Galileo and the Church as expressed in this article, there are many other non-religious, non-Catholic sources which confirm the information in this link.
I used this source as I thought they did a pretty good job of explaining this particular historical episode with all of its nuances and politics.
In Jacob Bronowski’s TV series “The Ascent of Man,” one program spends a lot of time on Galileo and his problems with the Church, it reflects many of the things above, e.g., being shown the rack, and letting Galileo’s imagination discourage him from attacking the church through devices like Simplicio. IIRC, Galileo spent quite a bit of time in essentially “house arrest,” though was permitted to have all visitors.
One thing not mentioned above was that the Church was having troubles with that upstart Martin Luther and was in no mood to tolerate another challenge to its authority.
https://www.amazon.com/Ascent-Man-Jacob-Bronowski/dp/B004OZ16QO – buy it!
Oh my, the BBC has been keeping the videos off YouTube, they may have relaxed or gotten sloppy. The full episode is at http://www.infocobuild.com/books-and-films/science/TheAscentOfMan/episode-06.html The Galileo portion starts at 12m05, though the first 12 minutes are well worth watching too.
Warning: do not watch that episode (or any other!) if you need to get to work on time today. The focus on the Church starts around 24 minutes, an assertion that the Vatican relied on a forged document to convict Galileo is around minute 41. The reference to being shown the instruments of torture is soon thereafter.
BTW, don’t watch any of the other episodes either. You’re better off not knowing. 🙂
Oops – my Amazon link was for the book (worth buying), the DVDs are at https://www.amazon.com/Ascent-Man-Dvd-Set/dp/B000NDI3SK/
I’ve been to the villa where Galileo lived under house arrest. It had been purchased by a bunch of doctors and turned into a lovely meeting facility for business events and weddings. It has a spectacular view of Florence, perhaps emphasizing to GG that he was in exile. But what luxurious exile! It’s a beautiful setting with gardens and a large, handsome villa with I’m sure all amenities of his day.
That it took the Church until 1992 to exonerate Galileo is telling indeed.
You write with such certitude, you must have been there, for only you can be correct.
So the case is made that because Galileo was a vigorous defender of his own theory, a scientific “partisan”, if you will, he then deserved to be threatened with the Inquisition? Upstarts like Galileo presumably deserve vigorous rebuttals by partisans on the other side of the question, but not any sort of criminal prosecution or otherwise patently unfair treatment!
In the case of Global Warming theory, to the extent that it was originally a new “upstart” theory (with some scientists leaping into the fray in its favour) it certainly might have been helpful had it met with more open debate and opposition? As it is, the whole flawed “greenhouse” or “hothouse” idea appears to have become a kind of conventional way of thinking, now, to the point where any serious challenges are now the “upstart” ideas! I mean, imagine, stodgy old skeptics insisting that the evidence for AGW is insufficient or even inconsistent, are now the upstarts somehow! But when did extrapolations from greenhouse-like laboratory enclosures become proof or corroboration of anything happening in the atmosphere?
Now, looking at what I just said above, am I just being confusing or is there a reasonable way out this sort of messy need to “beat back the upstarts unless they can prove themselves? The way I look at it, neither Galileo, nor any would be AGW pioneers, nor any *other* variety of scientific upstart, should be able to count a real victory unless they can convince most of a skeptical opposition, *without coercing them*, neither physically, nor with a political funding takeover either! “Convince the skeptics” is the key thing that never really happened with Global Warming theory, at least on the level of saying that any AGW effect would be really significant or problematic! What I would question is whether the complete “greenhouse” effect — including any supposed water vapour feedbacks — has been well corroborated even as a *minor* influence on climate?
In a way, then, it is actually concerning when many of the best educated scientific skeptics present themselves as “lukewarmers”. I mean, where is the verve or the nerve to even try to knock apart an unconfirmed hypothesis?
Actually, the “feedbacks” were a ‘patch’ added on the CO2 calamity science when serious calculations found CO2 alone rather disappointing as a threat on its own.
The fact that the feedbacks had to multiply the CO2 effect by 500% to be scary is like a mild headache being life-threatening when you use prussic acid as the cure.
KcTaz – Early 1990’s my first satellite internet-very fast over land line. An American Priest being interviewed on some program, discussing the Catholic Church records of Galileo and the Church spanking. Not about his theories, but Proselytizing. More than one incident after being admonished. I am not Catholic. Science within some form of governance is a foot race with Truth.
Well said. Copernicus had been urged to publish his theory by a number of Bishops. In addition, when the secretary to Pope Clement VII presented the heliocentric theory to Pope Clement VII, the Pope was pleased and presented the secretary with a valuable gift.
Galileo, like Gen. Patten, was at times, his own worst enemy. Making fun of those in power can be dangerous, in any age. The Tower of London still had it’s rack, and was used.
It is also poor taste to pass judgement on past ages, when who knows how future generations will judge the present one.
Government science is just as absurd a term as government education, government medicine or government charity. Force is incompatible with honest inquiry.
Yes, but in those days there was not much difference between the governments and the Church. After the Reformation, only the churches changed, they and the government or, at least, the predominant church, were either the same or closely aligned.
They were the ones with the money along with the Aristocracy but they were usually aligned. The Catholic Church founded or supported many universities throughout Europe in the Middle Ages and during the Renaissance. Again, after the Reformation, other denominations did the same in conjunction with the State religion of the nation.
It would seem, in those times, the goal was science, not theology. As I said above and the article I linked to reported, Galileo is the one who brought theology into his theories and that is what got him into trouble. It was not his science. The Church was extremely careful to not mix the two.
We could only wish AGW/CC had not become a government sponsored church instead of being allowed to stand alone as independent science. That it has become the state religion in many nations and is corrupted by ideology makes me often think we are devolving instead of evolving.
President Eisenhower’s 1961 farewell address provided two warnings: political dominance of the military-industrial complex; scientific-technological domination of public policy. Eisenhower’s words were prescient given our current climate change “consensus” narrative.
“Akin to, and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our industrial-military posture, has been the technological revolution during recent decades.
In this revolution, research has become central; it also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government.
Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been over shadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research.
Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers.
The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded.
Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.”
Eisenhower may have also been referencing the state of science in the Soviet Union later to be known as Lysenkoism. Climategate (Nov. 2009) illustrated the scientific gate-keeping that has led us to where we are now whereby personal attacks substitute for dialogue.
+10 for the Lysenkoism comment.
It hadn’t occurred to me that Ike might have that in mind.
CAGW will go down in history as the biggest science scam ever, even bigger in costs and wasted effort, than Lysenkoism.
As long as we can hold on to our Republic and it’s guarantees of freedoms of speech and self-defense, we have a bulwark against the increasingly powerful efforts to dictate scientific thought.
That’s why this is a crucial battle in the war of ideas.
“Perhaps new Medicis will one day help solar scientists establish the hypothesis that Earth’s climate warms and cools following the quasi-periodic rising and falling of our Sun’s brightness.”
the modern medicis, Bob mercer mega trump donor and the Koch brothers did fund a look at climate science: Berkeley Earth.
opps they found that GHGs do explain the rise in temperature.
ironic.
Dumb philosophy professor, doesnt know history
“opps they found that GHGs do explain the rise in temperature”
Really? The study actually established causation? What did they do to attempt to disprove their own hypothesis?
correlation or causation?
So why does “Soon’s Revolutionary Solar Model Whose Only Possible Historical Comparison is Galileo Act Now and You Will Receive FREE Ginsu Knives!” have to rely on claims of large urbanization bias?
The BEST effort was in fact a confirming stake in that particular zombie’s heart. But here’s the zombie back on the front page. The recent validation of the surface record with satellite-based surface measurements (https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aafd4e/meta) adds another stake… oh wait it’s back up and walking again.
Mears’ RSS was recently mal-adjusted to match the surface records. Roy Spencer shows quite clearly on his blog what they did. RSS is now off the reservation compared to radiosonde data. It just blew too many Democrat’s minds when Senator Cruz used the previous version of RSS a few years ago to show how badly the models are doing. Mear’s had to adjust his RSS so that wouldn’t happen again.
But nice try Geoff.
“Mears’ RSS was recently mal-adjusted to match the surface records. Roy Spencer shows quite clearly on his blog what they did. RSS is now off the reservation compared to radiosonde data.”
The opposite of the truth
If not then explain this? ….
http://postmyimage.com/img2/792_UAHRatpacvalidation2.png
There is the well-known problem of all sat temp series running cold vs balloons post ’98 on introduction of the AMSU sensor onboard NOAA15.
UAH have not corrected for it.
http://postmyimage.com/img2/510_Tropospheretrends.png
RSS have …
But still not agreeing with RATPAC balloons.
So “mal-adjusted to match surface records” is just the usual “…..” here.
Actually RSS acknowledged the problem of the fact that NOAAs 14 and 15 do not agree and not knowing which one is incorrect went with the latest. 15.
RSS have split the difference.
UAH is a massive outlier of all the temp series and is furthest away (running cold) vs radiosondes.
Neither are for for purpose.
No, the satellite verification of the surface is not RSS, it was AIRS temp readings of the surface itself. RSS and UAH measure the troposphere. Read the link.
As far as UAH vs other data sets goes, Spencer’s blog post doesn’t “quite clearly” show anything. It appears to say that an adjusted version of the IGRA data set may match the adjusted-downward UAH better after 2000 than RATPAC (the radiosonde data set actually created for climate comparisons) so then UAH isn’t such an outlier. See Anthony’s response below.
It would be great to see more signs that you are authentically interested in physical trends, vs what appears to be partisan boosterism.
They had to torture the data to get what little correlation they were able to show.
steven mosher April 28, 2019 at 3:47 pm
Well even the Medicis made their mistakes.
Also the Koch brothers are nowhere on the some level as the Medicis.
I mean go the Louvre and try and play the game spot the “Koch brother”
michael
Mosher
You said, “opps they found that GHGs do explain the rise in temperature.”
Would you please point to the page on the BEST website where it states and justifies that claim?
Is it, where does it state?
And to add to your handle you could also state ” who published a so called paper in act one, science one of a new and totally unknown journal, one more arm floated by a publishing group who were shown to be faking peer review and publications. ”
That’s the credibility of your BEST paper.
“opps they found that GHGs do explain the rise in temperature.”
Even if they do, this does not justify the wild claims of impending doom that can only be averted by abandoning the very energy sources that lifted humanity out of squalor along with the absurd notion that doing so will not return us to that very same squalor.
Is your sarcasm and self assured commentary ever directed at those people?
Though I do have to give you kudos for your recent practice of posting comments longer than a single word. Thanks for that.
I love the way our resident troll declares that Berkeley Earth represents science and anyone who disagrees is dumb.
Then again, attacking those who fail to worship as he does is Steve’s forte.
Bullseye!
Many things are said to be unsustainable these days, such as driving our cars, transporting our food from afar in ships and planes, and flying in jets
By 1893, 2.5 million pounds of horse manure filled NYC streets every day. It was unsustainable.
During the U.S. Civil War, a parade and or dignitaries in Washington DC, required prior to the ‘event’, shovels removing about 2 feet of horse manure on political main-street. Took 2 companies of Infantry and many teams/wagons. When wet, warm weather, stunk to the tune of outhouse overflow.
We are stuck in the CAGW paradigm, stuck in the ‘box’ of assumptions that were required to create the so-called Bern model of CO2 sources and sinks and resident times that was created to enable there to be AGW/CAGW.
There is unequivocal evidence that the Bern model is wrong and hence no CAGW or AGW.
A dozen peer reviewed papers (different authors, independent observations C13 fraction, phase analysis, mass balance analysis, C14 resident time, planetary temperature vs CO2 recent, and so on) have all unequivocally ‘proved’ that human CO2 emission is only responsible for roughly 5% of the recent rise in atmospheric CO2.
The remainder is caused by the increase in planetary temperature.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/05/13/is-murry-salby-right/
An Australian atmospheric scientist Murry Salby and others have shown, using multiple independent observations that humans are only responsible for 5% of the recent increase finding and that atmospheric CO2 levels closely correlate with temperature change, not anthropogenic emission.
Salby has shown that (the fact that atmospheric CO2 correlates to temperature not anthropogenic CO2 emissions) is only possible if there is a large unaccounted-for source of CO2 coming into the biosphere and logically much larger natural sinks for CO2.
The missing large source of CO2 is the same missing source for hydrogen that is entering the biosphere, to replace the water that is dragged down into the mantel.
It has been found that there is three times more water being dragged into the mantel than is coming out of volcanic eruptions. This is an impossible paradox.
The source of the water and CO2 is CH4 that is being extruded from the liquid core of the planet as it crystallizes. The core of the planet started to crystallize roughly 1 billion years ago.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/11/181114132013.htm
Seismic study reveals 3 times more water dragged into Earth’s interior
“This research shows that subduction zones move far more water into Earth’s deep interior — many miles below the surface — than previously thought,” said Candace Major, a program director in the National Science Foundation’s Division of Ocean Sciences, which funded the study. “The results highlight the important role of subduction zones in Earth’s water cycle.”
If other old, cold subducting slabs contain similarly thick layers of hydrous mantle, then estimates of the global water flux into the mantle at depths greater than 60 miles must be increased by a factor of about three,” Wiens said.
for water in the Earth, what goes down must come up. Sea levels have remained relatively stable over geologic time, varying by less than 1,000 ft. This means that all of the water that is going down into the Earth at subduction zones must be coming back up somehow, and not continuously piling up inside the Earth.
believe that most of the water that goes down at the trench comes back from the Earth into the atmosphere as water vapor when volcanoes erupt hundreds of miles away. But with the revised estimates of water from the new study, the amount of water going into the earth seems to greatly exceed the amount of water coming out.
My first time in Italy last year we spent far too little time in Florence where we spent far, far too little time in the Basillica de Santa Croce (Church of the Holy Cross), where Galileo is buried. According to the guide, the Medicis protected Galileo even after his death, when as a convicted heratic he could not be buried in sacred ground. So they initially had him buried outside a private chapel at the Medici estate (near, but not in sacred ground). When the Church reversed its ban, admirers had his body disinterred and reburied in the church.
In addition to Galileo, other famous people buried in the Santa Croce include: Niccolò Machiavelli, Michelangelo Buonarroti, and Gioachino Rossini. There is a large funerary monument of Dante, but he is buried in Ravenna.
Alan,
If you go to Florence again, visit the Renaissance Technology Museum. [don’t remember real name — just my description] Absolutely amazing the quality of the technology at the time. One device that stood out was a 12 foot telescope beautifully balanced and wonderfully stained and protected. Many other devices that I can’t remember now. Unfortunately, I stumbled on the museum on the last day I was in Florence and didn’t get to spend as much time as I wished.
And Galileo’s villa in which he lived during his house arrest, has been restored as a business meetings and events site. I lucked into a business gig where we spent three days working there. It has a great view of Florence (double-edged sword that, since GG was exiled from town) and spectacular gardens, as well as being a handsome large villa even by today’s standards. So add that to your next Flroence visit, along with Santa Croce and the Ren Tech Museum.
One of the contradictions in modern government funded secular education is that the CAGW religion gets into the curriculum without question or balance. It is the fastest growing religion for youth in the western world; strongly supported by the education system, which should support scientific understanding rather than blind belief.
If you lean to the left but like freedom you might try shifting your balance a bit so you lean to the right.
Then you might realize Trump is your man. He is also skeptical of Climate Change.
And he has created a committee that might straighten things out:
“Donald Trump Picks Climate Change Denier to Head Committee on Threat of Global Warming”
https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-climate-denier-global-warming-committee-scientists-react-1339203
The committee head is William Happer who is known in less psychotic circles as a skeptic, not a denier.
On another subject, if you like freedom how could you like Obama’s signature act Obamacare aka The Affordable Care Act. Under that act people who didn’t have government approved insurance were subject to a tax penalty of about $600 per uninsured person. Is that freedom?
The left is not really big on freedom.
It seems you’re from Canada so you probably can’t vote in US elections, but you could support Trump with your words.
Every politician on the left is a big fan of the green new deal. So Trump is your only hope.
The tenets of the NGD as so expensive they would require that the US Treasury and Fed simply crank up the printing presses and print the dollars it called for to spend.
Private business and enterprise would shrivel in the US as inflation and the government’s cometition for capital would put them under. Economic growth would actually plummnet due to the inefficiency of the government taking over the economy.
But Democrat’s love the idea of printing money to buy power, divide and conquer special interest groups and tribal loyalties with that cash flow. That is why Democrat’s love it. The environment would actually be degraded much faster as the US grew ever economically poorer.
In Venezuela, the people are eating whatever they can find in nature, even zoos are gone. It is a warm climate of course generally so not too much need to cut down the forests for wood. But in US and Canada, the forests would rapidly be cut down by desperate population needing winter fuel to survive with “renewable” electricity too expensive for the huddled masses.
But the elites and the ruling elite would have theirs, just like Maduro and his cronies do now in Venezuela, and Castro and his close circle in Cuba, and Fat-boy Kim in NorKo, and Putin in Russia.
That $600/year O-care penalty was set to go up dramatically after a few years as well.
People who are on O-Care now like it, since they those are the people who mostly get lots of subsidies to pay the premiums.
CAS 29th April summed it up very well.
Galileo created a lot of his problems because of his lack of any respect towards the Roman Catholic Church. The Pope was his friend and defended him against many of the senior clergy, but Galileo went too far when he wrote a book which clearly pocked fun at the Church.
The Church just as it still does today , is slow to admit that in many things it gets things wrong, the idea that the Jews killed the Son of God, which led to the Nazi death camps for one, but they are not alone in fighting to keep their power and influence against new ideas.
History is full of cases where the new ruler wants to delete a previous rulers thoughts and deeds, we see this with today’s political parties, each’ claiming that their ideas are so much better than the other lots ideas and deeds.
The book 1984 is full of this suppressing of older ideas in favour of newer ideas, many of which are clearly worse than the previous way of thinking
and doing things.
I look back to “The good old days”” of the 1950 tees, but I can also recall the bad things, when rich ladies could arrange a abortion, which was of course not called that, but a poor woman had to go to a back yard “Doctor” for the same thing, with the Police Vice Squad accepting bribes from the rich Doctors but cracking down on the back yard ones.
It took a very brave Doctor, one Bertran Wainer here in Victoria to expose all of this, and finally the Law was changed.
So while overall I still have good memories for the stability and law abiding attitude of those far off days, I realise that many things had to change. But we all know that the pendulum can and does frequently swing too far, and the Church back in the dyes of Galileo thought the same..
MJE VK5ELL
Germ theory (Ignaz Semmelweis), plate tectonics, mitochondrial endosymbiont theory, natural selection theory, Piltdown man, and Mendelian genetics were all cases where the slow wheels of science ground down the opposition. We are so inundated with well funded fraud in this time that even without the reproducibility crisis, it is doubtful that the scientific community has the resources to debunk the overwhelming amount of woowoo currently generated- for example, homeopathy, chiropractic, accupuncture, low salt/ low fat and every other diet recommendations, stretching before exercise, anthropogenic global warming, marijuana as panacea, pm2.5, glyphosate as carcinogen etc etc. I for one did not anticipate that the end of the age of reason would be brought about by an unstoppable flood of nonsense. The better that science explains the real world, the more the scientifically disenfranchised just make s**t up.
https://www.thecollegefix.com/keynote-speaker-at-harvard-diversity-conference-says-christians-should-be-locked-up/
Always knew that history was never kind to socialism, never quite understood how and why, and never knew I would live long enough to experience it. Wonder if it will become a bigger “…ism.” I remember biodiversity raising its vegetative head. Those that preach diversity need some education, maybe Christian.
We’re nearing the end of “the crazy years” in Robert A. Heinlein’s future history. What follows is theocratic dictatorship in the United States. Fortunately Micheal Mann makes a poor Nehemiah Scudder. Unfortunately, “Occasionally Coherent” fits the part much better with her “fire and brimstone” ranting. If things go according to Heinlein’s projection, anything resembling a sane human culture will not reemerge before 2070.
Burn incense at the altars of Fineline (God of Engineers), Zeemoff (God of Automation and Building Contractors), and M’Affrey (Goddess of Dragons).
Because any unveiling of a historic scientific breakthrough should start with 14 paragraphs of hype and propaganda (to make sure no one gets put in an inappropriately skeptical mood!)
Boy we sure have a lot of history experts here. If the history is so clear, then why do so many of these experts disagree with each other.
For the same reason alarmist ‘experts’ disagree with skeptic experts.
Fear of upsetting the ‘consensus’.
I won’t offer yet another opinion on the relation of Galileo’s life and work to present day climate science.
However, I will suggest that the forces at play in Galileo’s time included political and personality currents as well as religious. A very nice book on the subject is Galileo’s Daughter, by Dava Sobel. In addition, translations of Galileo’s own words are widely available and are well worth the read. Many are referenced and summarized in Sobel’s book. His thought is often a breathtaking view into a careful, cautious and humble mind conversing with the universe, not just on the solar system but even more so laying the foundations for classical mechanics.
A couple of oft quoted lines of his are
1. In questions of science the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual.
and, evidence of his lifelong devout faith,
2. I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.
Galileo did himself no favours by mocking one of his religious patrons.
The writing style of the day was less of a series of facts and arguments and conclusions, but more in the form of a dialogue between several characters. Think of an infomercial in text form. Several characters were invented for the purpose of the book. One was usually the wise character who did all the explaining while the others were lesser types who fed him questions.
Galileo’s problem was that not only did he make one of those ‘lesser’ characters a complete buffoon, but he made him a complete buffoon that look rather a lot like a mildly significant member of the current church.
So when Galileo turned up with his book it was not the outrageous claims that upset the church – remember this is the era when it was held that because God created everything, the more you understood how things worked, the closer you could get to God. The church had actually heard all the current theories and wanted someone to clarify if God had placed the sun or the earth in the middle. They didn’t care which, it was God’s doing either way – it was the open insults he insisted in having all through the script.
Painting Galileo as a massive victim and a hero of science is oversimplifying the story. Foss does himself little favour for going down that path.
Thank you, Craig. You did a better job than I in trying to explain the life and times of Galileo.
The Heliocentric model of the solar system has been known about for millennia – long before Copernicus and Galileo. Take a look at the 1st century Jewish zodiac in an ancient synagogue at Hamat Teverya on the Sea of Galilee.
In the central imagery you can clearly see Helios the Sun holding a spherical blue Earth in his (gravitational) grasp. A better depiction of the Heliocentric model would be hard to find.
http://passionforfreshideas.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/p-Hamat-Teverya-e1407361222494.jpg
Sorry to say that the base of this topic is untrue. Medici’s family doesn’t “protect” Galileo against the Cattolic Church. Galileo was persecuted and repudiate his theory to have his life safe. This way He was able to continue his studies in lonely place. So it was His “repudiation” that saved his life not the Medici’s Family!
Silent deletion of posts is evidence of censorship.
Sad to see WUWT going that way.
This article is wrong. Padua was the centre of scientific revolution (or Scientific Renaissance) in that time, and Galileo made no exception since he was teaching there:
http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20190203-the-birthplace-of-modern-medicine
Padua, Veneto, the Most Serene Republic of Venice where he could teach freely and without having to fear the Inquisition, from 1592 to 1610, and where he made his most important discoveries and applications.
But Galileo preferred to follow Medici’s money and get back to his native Tuscany where, teaching at the University of Pisa, he was handed over to Inquisition instead.
There is an overwhelming human drive to be “believed”, even if one is not right. If you believe in something, anything, take the time to challenge your belief using opposing best arguments. Challenge yourself at every turn. Say it isn’t true. Then if you still observe the phenomenon take raw data on it. Then submit that raw data to standard statistical measures. The author of this post failed to test his believed premise at the most basic level.
Governments covet the stifling power that churches and science can wield together if unified and usurped through “public policy.” (Emphasis on usurp.)
The term “reigning scientific orthodoxy” is very apt for describing how science works in real life. The “scientific method” describes science as well as that childhood song, “I’m Just a Bill” describes how a bill becomes a law.
A much more contemporary example is found in the field of nutrition science.
In the 1970’s, a British nutritionist named John Yudkin saw his reputation destroyed and his career ruined for pointing out that sugar, and not fat intake, was the driver behind obesity. He showed that the landmark study that established the myth was obviously faulty. For decades, public policy was based on myth, leading to an obesity epidemic that has lead to an early death for untold numbers of people. Today, half a century later, we are still recovering.
If more people understood how science is actually done, they’d understand how things can go so wrong, as they have in climate science.
https://getpocket.com/explore/item/the-sugar-conspiracy
This post about Galileo is histoeically inaccurate. He was childhood friends with the pope of his time, that is what protected him. Stop spreading myth.
This series of blog posts is the best treatment of the Galileo affair that I’ve ever read. It covers the entire process of how heliocentric cosmology came into being.
http://tofspot.blogspot.com/2013/08/the-great-ptolemaic-smackdown.html?m=1
So where is this use of power today by rich families to protect fact-based science questioning of the Climate Crusades? Nowhere, in my humble and powerless opinion. We have the internet but not much else.
Thank you Anthony in the absence of bravery elsewhere.
This is article repeats many of the tropes about Galileo versus the RCC. A few important historical facts about the Galileo controversy:
1. Heliocentrism was not condemned by the RCC and was taught in many Catholic universities before Galileo after Copernicus’s work was published and widely read. Copernicus’s work was published shortly before he died as he feared the opprobrium of other cosmologists (he says this in the introduction) and he dedicated the work to the Pope and the book received the imprimatur of the Church (it couldn’t have been published otherwise at that time in Catholic parts of Europe)
2. The only religious objection at that time to heliocentrism was from Luther who condemned Copernicus as ‘This fool that goes against the Holy Writ’
3. Galileo’s views were objected to by other scientists as claimed to have ‘proven’ that heliocentrism was true with his observations (lunar motions around Jupiter) – he hadn’t proven it by scientific standards of then or now as his model was no more elegant than the Ptolemic model as Galileo insisted (wrongly) that the orbits had to be perfectly circular – requiring nearly as many epicycles as the more ancient geocentric model
4. The scientific obstacles of no velocity sensation on earth (pre Newtonian laws of motion) and much more importantly the absence of stellar parallax made the motion of the earth difficult to accept for many (Tycho Brahe for example wouldn’t accept the theory for this latter reason in particular)
5. Galileo was permitted by the Pope (a personal friend of his) to publish his views but was told he had to also publish scientific arguments against his theory and favoring geocentrism (who opposes a red team here?!?)
6. Galileo chose to publicly insult the Pope and as a temporal ruler of that time he had no choice to take Galileo to task.
7. It was Kepler and not Newton that proposed elliptical orbits that solved many of the inelegancies of the heliocentric model
8. Stellar parallax wasn’t observed until 1839 when Bessel invented an instrument that could detect it in one of the closest stars to our solar system (however, over the course of the 18th century cosmologists overwhelmingly understood stellar parallax was not observed as stars were incredibly further away than had hitherto been believed as the heliocentric model with elliptical orbits was the simplest model that described what was being observed.)
9. RCC subsequent objections to heliocentrism owe much more to the fraught political climate of the time and the paranoia that the reformation had caused within the Church – Galileo’s arrogance in his dealings with the Church did little to ameliorate the situation (Bellarmine’s approach for the Church did little either)
The once settled Science will Soon be unsettled , when it’s shown Gas is Metal – liquified in a Kettle https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t0eINoQdk0I
You can say that again.
The once settled science will Soon be unsettled – as the gas turns to metal -liquified in a kettle https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t0eINoQdk0I
Jeffrey: An enlightening article about Galileo and a well-argued call for more attention to solar science; I have an old blog post on the latter topic at https://www.scienceunderattack.com/blog/2018/10/1/solar-science-shortchanged-in-climate-models-1s.
And it’s good to see someone taking the current system of government funded science to task, a subject first taken up by President Eisenhower in his 1961 farewell address.
May I point out a couple of nit-picking inaccuracies in your post:
(1) The Medicis did indeed fund Galileo’s later work, but at the time he made his initial telescopic observations in 1610, he was still a mathematics professor at the University of Padua. His booklet “Starry Messenger” describing his discoveries was dedicated to one of the Medicis, in the hope of gaining their patronage – which of course he did.
(2) Elliptical orbits were actually proposed by Johannes Kepler in the early 1600s – but his groundbreaking work wasn’t recognized until Newton’s time. Newton’s theory of gravitation provided a physical explanation for Kepler’s laws of planetary orbits.
Elementary school level of history of science. It was all more complicated what Copernicus postulated and what Galileo has demonstrated and why Church was persecuting Galileo. Partly because Galileo did not have a proof. And it was not Newton who has proven elliptical orbits but Kepler who deduced them from measurements. Newton only explained that central inverse square law force leads to elliptical orbits. And Einstein correction to Newton in Solar system is very small. It accounts for only 43 angular seconds in Mercury orbit per 100 years.
“Global temperatures are clearly linked to changes in the brightness of the sun (total solar irradiance, TSI).”
Global temperatures move inversely to changes in the solar wind pressure/temperature. Stronger solar wind states drive colder AMO anomalies, and La Nina conditions.
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/association-between-sunspot-cycles-amo-ulric-lyons/