BY TOM HARRIS AND DR. JAY LEHR
When we started our careers, it was considered an honor to be a member of professional societies that helped practitioners keep up with the latest developments in their fields through relevant meetings and publications. Senior author Dr. Jay Lehr had the privilege of leading one of these societies long ago.
But things are different now. Whether it be chemistry, physics, geology or engineering, many of the world’s primary professional societies have changed from being paragons of technical virtue to opportunistic groups focused on maximizing their members’ financial gains in support of the climate scare, the world’s greatest science fraud. In particular, they continue to promote the groundless hypothesis that carbon dioxide emitted as a result of mankind’s use of fossil fuels is leading to environmental catastrophe. You have been hearing about it for the past decade and more, with 21 candidates for the Democratic nomination for the presidency in the next election promoting some form of a Green New Deal—a plan to eliminate the use of fossil fuels and replace them with wind and solar power thereby returning society to the lifestyle of the 1880s.
Dr. Patrick Moore, a co-founder of Greenpeace, wrote in 1994 that radical greens had taken over the organization after the fall of the Berlin Wall, leaving him no choice but to resign. The takeover of environmental institutions by extremists is now almost complete, the most important of which may be the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). President Donald Trump is aggressively trying to win back the EPA in the best interests of the nation, but it is an uphill battle as the climate cult has also taken control of academia, political parties, and governments themselves.
An example of how professional societies have apparently been hijacked by extremists concerns the Association of Professional Engineers and Geoscientists of Alberta, Canada (APEGA). Allan MacRae, a prominent long-time member of APEGA, was named to receive its most distinguished lifetime achievement award in 2019. Then APEGA staff learned that MacRae had written publicly about the damage done to humanity and the environment by radical greens. APEGA leadership strongly condemned his comments and his award was withdrawn. It led MacRae to write “Hypothesis: Radical Greens are the Great Killers of Our Age,” which explains the APEGA award withdrawal and to support his contention that radical greens have done enormous harm to humanity and the environment with their destructive, misguided policies. MacRae writes, “APEGA refused to discuss the evidence, and baselessly claimed the moral high ground.”
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The Long March through the Institutions.
We were warned,but they pulled it off anyway.
I have yet to see any evidence that a kleptocracy can be reformed using Roberts Rules of Committees.
Most of these heavily politicized bodies will just have to fade away.
An interesting side effect of these committees throwing their “Authority” behind the Cult of Calamitous Climate, is that they have thrown their authority away.
Only a fool continues to fund an organization that openly works against their interests.
About control of Requests for Proposals (RFPs):
In the USA, many years ago (? following Sputnik – 4/Oct/57) universities began to respond strongly to government funding. Within 20 years the funding formula for universities was transitioned to require the “overhead” and more of federal support.
In January 20, 1993, Al Gore became Vice-POTUS.
By influence and appointments Gore and his ilk were able to lead the global warming cadre within the research sponsoring agencies.
University researchers had to respond to the RFPs or go without funding.
Simultaneously, within universities job security, promotion, and salaries became (almost) dependent on the money and publications received via successful competition for the federal money.
As is often said: The rest is history.
Here is what you all can do:
resign from the professional organizations:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/02/08/ipcc-reviewer-resigns-from-agu-saying-i-will-not-renew-my-agu-membership/
Have to confess… One of the benefits of my not particularly looming retirement will be extinguishing my membership with the professional body I am forced to be a part of by my employer, and by law.
Once upon a time, I was scheduled to give a talk on climate change to my peers, organised by the professional body, and it sold out immediately. 24 hours later the professional body cancelled the talk despite a strong shout out of support from members. When I ended up giving a very mild talk on Antarctic geology, most of the room got up and left – having forewarned me they were not upset at my talk – they wanted to send a message to the committee.
Fast forward to the present and nothing has changed… They wanted to do a position statement with a glowing endorsement of catastrophic climate change, but got severely muted by the members. However, now they have found a way around that (ie form a small committee not consult with the members) and the next ‘position statement’ will undoubtedly not be voted on by the members (can’t make that mistake twice!), and from initial buzz will be far more in line with the political point of view than that of the actual engineering and geological membership!
It’s the same in the UK, with all the professional institutions that I am aware of, promoting climate change.
haaah! Yes indeed… of all that SHOULD KNOW Better.. the IAgrE of all. Disgusted. Carbon Footprints….and yet the Manufacturers provide more & bigger machinery. Mobile pelletisers – so you move great weights of machine uphill/down dale etc. Large crop sprayers,seed& Fert spreaders etc etc. Not all our fields are level – so go figure the energy wasted in lifting a heavy machine up the hills , and the renewed studies of soil damage due to field traffic ….. all stuff been researched 40 yrs ago ( and now forgotten ?)
It’s not just scientific institutions, government, religions , academia and the media, but also big business both the corporations and the institutional memberships. I thought it would be good to join the Australian Institute of Company Directors . However any discussion about climate change was based on the assumption that it is happening it’s dangerous , it’s mans fault and if your a director you better make sure your company makes plans for it. Needless to say one year of membership was more than I could stomach.
The unscrupulous conduct is reinforced by a symbiotic relationship between the science industry, represented by scientific institutions, and government agencies, which dole out public funds to promote the non- and often anti-scientific activity. See for example:
https://edberry.com/blog/climate-physics/agw-hypothesis/what-is-really-behind-the-increase-in-atmospheric-co2/ near 1:18:00
Unless the loop is broken, the taxpayer funded corruption will steadily carry the public and science into the abyss.
Aye, it’s that you ‘must have a hunger for compliance’ nowadays to get on.
I’ve lost track of the number of trolls who have proclaimed that the fact that most of these professional societies are drinking the climate change kool-aid, is proof that climate change is real.
Yes, it’s a powerful aphrodisiac to their belief. And it’s impossible to counter such a belief when almost all of the science organisations publish support for it.
One has to have a critical mind not fooled by bluffery to see behind the curtain of deceit.
It is deceit too, as some have pointed up above; the members do not support the statements put out by their institutions. So they find workarounds to put out statements that their members don’t support, and refuse to entertain any discussion on the matter. For what purpose? They no longer represent their members. What are they thinking?
The January 2002 issue of Scientific American ran a hit piece on Bjørn Lomborg’s “The Skeptical Environmentalist.” I don’t really agree with Lomborg’s view of climate change, but I agreed less with Scientific American’s view. That’s when I canceled my subscription to SA for their bogus hit piece. They wouldn’t even let Lomborg respond.
It’s interesting, but one would think the magazine “Skeptical Inquirer” wouldn’t buy into this global warming nonsense–but they do. It was easier to cancel my subscript to SA than SI.
Jim
From the start, the ready endorsement of global warming hypotheses by the learned societies provided strong reason for uncertain people to accept global warming without doing their own inquiry and validation. Thus, many people were quick converts with little reason to doubt.
In time, history will not be kind to the societies. In the several cases where a society has given some details of how it did or did not plumb the attitudes and science of its members, it is suggestive that few if any of the societies researched the issues adequately to honestly represent members.
I am particularly concerned by the dogmatic Royal Society of London actions. Aces strong personalities, some with undoubted achievements in their fields, leaned on reputation to advance their views in the climate field, sometimes irrespective of their climate understanding.
In this way, proper science was debased. Badly, hopefully not irreversibly. Shame.
Long ago, the Royal Society was informed of global warming.
http://www.john-daly.com/polar/arctic.htm
LONG POST WITH PHOTOS submarines and ice etc
“It will without doubt have come to your Lordship’s knowledge that a considerable change of climate, inexplicable at present to us, must have taken place in the Circumpolar Regions, by which the severity of the cold that has for centuries past enclosed the seas in the high northern latitudes in an impenetrable barrier of ice has been during the last two years, greatly abated.
(This) affords ample proof that new sources of warmth have been opened and give us leave to hope that the Arctic Seas may at this time be more accessible than they have been for centuries past, and that discoveries may now be made in them not only interesting to the advancement of science but also to the future intercourse of mankind and the commerce of distant nations.”
President of the Royal Society, London, to the Admiralty, 20th November, 1817 [13]
*13 President of the Royal Society, Minutes of Council,
Volume 8. pp.149-153, Royal Society, London.
20th November, 1817.
When the history of this scam is written, and it can’t come too soon, people will marvel at how supposed “science” lost it’s way at the behest of the CAGW Godfathers,Maurice Strong whose formal education was limited to high school and a British Diplomat, Crispin Tickell who read history at university (and is the younger cousin of Aldous and Julian Huxley)
Live & Learn: Maurice Strong
I never aspired to be in business. I went into business because I only have a high-school education, and I couldn’t get jobs that required higher qualifications. I went into business quite reluctantly, because it was the only place I could get a job.
http://www.canadianbusiness.com/business-strategy/live-learn-maurice-strong/
Maurice F. Strong Is First Non-U.S. Citizen To Receive
Public Welfare Medal, Academy’s Highest Honor
WASHINGTON — The National Academy of Sciences has selected Maurice F. Strong to receive its most prestigious award, the Public Welfare Medal. Established in 1914, the medal is presented annually to honor extraordinary use of science for the public good. The Academy chose Strong, a Canadian and the first non-U.S. citizen to receive the award, in recognition of his leadership of global conferences that became the basis for international environmental negotiations and for his tireless efforts to link science, technology, and society for common benefit.
http://www8.nationalacademies.org/onpinews/newsitem.aspx?RecordID=12032003
Strong’s “contribution” was as a “promoter” (snake oil salesman), and those who benefited from the money and prestige lapped it up
It’s one of the most fascinating subjects: how will the future write up the history of the scam. There’s no doubt, that even with constantly meddling with data to try to make it fit their cult, that eventually the data from the actual climate will beat this cult into submission. However, how will that be written up? That’s a bit unknown.
There are two ways that these kinds of cockups by academia usually get dealt with:
1. Blame previous generations: That our generation get moulded into the future equivalent of “flat earthers” … that whenever anyone refuses to believe the evidence they get likened to our generation which will be portrayed as ALL global warming climate cultists.
2. Blame scapegoats outside academia: That academia controls the narrative (as they have historically) and that the blame for the climate cult gets pinned on small groups outside academia, with academia doing as it always does … stealing the role of “the enlightened ones guiding society”.
But, something new has happened with the internet. Academia no longer control history. They might still write historical books, but today any researching interested in history is now able to publish and in many ways on a equal footing to academics. This means that rather than academia writing up the scam in order to cast (the then present) academia in the best possible light, we are likely to see a more realistic version of history being written in the future. They will not be able to write out their blatant lunacy from history as they have with so many other incidents from Piltdown to the Ether.
As a result, academia will find it is impossible hide its direct role in creating the scam and as such its reputation will be severely dented, even fatally demolished. And personally, I think that may be the most dramatic change we ever see in our lifetimes. It certainly could fundamentally change the structure of our society and who is considered to be “authorities” on subjects.
Astute comments Mike,
In this earlier presentation Lindzen comments sardonically
“By the way I should mention at the beginning of the 20th century, the counterpart of the environmental movement was eugenics. All the best people displayed their virtue by supporting that”
Alarming Global Warming: What Happens to Science in the Public Square. Richard S. Lindzen, Ph.D.
https://tinyurl.com/pkd7w7q
After WWII, by uniquely demonizing Germans, the support for Eugenics which was broad amongst elites in all the Western countries was politically conveniently overlooked.
Before any history can be written, we need to win the war. We need the good UK citizens to honour and remember the leadership they have provided in the past, because we badly need another Finest Hour
But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science.
https://winstonchurchill.org/resources/speeches/1940-the-finest-hour/their-finest-hour/
I don’t want another Scientocracy
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/03/27/why-i-dont-believe-in-science/#comment-2666378
Best Regards
brent
Physicians, Climate Change and Human Health
The theme of the World Health Organisation (WHO) initiated 2008 World Health Day, held on 7 April 2008, was Protecting Health from Climate Change.1 Communities and organisations around the world hosted activities to establish greater public awareness of the health consequences of the climate changes that we are experiencing. WHO has specifically put a great effort into increasing awareness of the effects of global warming and other climate related factors that impact on human health. We, as physicians, also have an important and potentially major role to play in this exercise.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3074818/
Please oh please guys just take the time to examine the evidence yourselves. Theres no question that carbon dioxide is opaque to infrared. Take a moment to look at how the amount we emit compares to any time in earths geologic history. I suggest starting with the paleocene-eocene thermal maximum or the triassic extinction. And sure science can have an agenda, especially privately funded research, but governments, universities, and other research organizations worldwide agree that this is a serious problem. Besides, think about who benefits from people believing that all of this is false. Im no expert, and i hate being lied to as much as the next guy. But it seems that those who have business interests in the remaining fossil fuel reserves are misleading the public to an extortionate degree, at a great disservice to humanity as a whole. Also, if approached in a sensible way (unlike the unrealistic Green New Deal), solving the greenhouse gas problem can boost the economy, create more jobs, give us national energy security, and a cleaner and more healthy environment. Its a complex issue that is difficult to understand, but i mean the world has already warmed by a large margin in just the past 30 years or so. And changes for the worse have already become apparent and will continue unless we take the initiative to work together and solve this. Think about why you crack your car windows on a hot summer day. Its the greenhouse effect. We are essentially rolling up earths windows by increasing the heat trapping capacity of the atmosphere.
The leftward march of institutions is well-documented and previously summarized as “O’Sullivan’s Law” named after the British journalist John O’Sullivan. O’Sullivan’s Law holds that “all organizations that are not actually right-wing will over time become left-wing.” I believe this to be correct and it applies equally to professional societies (AMA, ABA, and many of the scientific societies described in this article and comments) but also to governmental organizations , academic institutions, and large public or private corporations (think Silicon Valley). It is truly amazing, and in a way reassuring, that despite the overwhelming pressures brought to bear by all these left-leaning institutions, so many clear thinking individuals remain. As they say, the truth will out.
Great Blog
This website wants everyone to believe that every science organization in the world is corrupted by money for science research? There is not one science organization that shares the view that climate change is not happening. That is a major coincidence or a massive scandal that every science organization is lying and is corrupted to support climate science.
https://blog.sfgate.com/gleick/2010/03/15/climate-change-deniers-versus-the-scientific-societies-of-the-world-who-should-we-listen-to/
You answered your own question.
It is telling that (1) the endorsement of human caused climate change by science organizations is universal, yet (2) the preponderance of those organizations have no expertise on the subject – their only connection is aspirational: Climb onto the Bandwagon.
CatB, you state that the preponderance of the science organizations that all support the consensus that man’s activities are causing climate change “have no expertise on the subject.” However, you do not address the fact that every science organization that does have direct expertise on climate issues agrees that man is causing climate change. It is a mighty big bandwagon. There are no legitimate science groups that have not joined the bandwagon?
Tripp Funderburk wrote, “CatB… every science organization that does have direct expertise on climate issues agrees that man is causing climate change. It is a mighty big bandwagon…”
That’s like saying, “all the major American political parties support prosperity, that’s a mighty big bandwagon.” It lumps climate alarmists and skeptics of climate alarmism together, pretending that they agree, just as the “prosperity issue” lumps Keynesian Democrats and Supply-Sider Republicans together.
Pretending that the climate debate is over whether man causes climate change is straw-man argumentation:
straw man n. a weak or sham argument set up to be easily refuted.
The climate debate has never been about whether human activity affects climate. The Earth’s climate certainly does change, and mankind certainly does affect it. The debate is over its scale and attribution (how much of it is caused by mankind), and whether the net effects are beneficial or harmful.
There’s no scientific consensus that anthropogenic climate change is harmful. That’s why climate activists resort to bludgeoning straw men. It’s also why, when climate activists survey scientists about their opinions on climate change, they don’t ask whether climate change is catastrophic, or even merely harmful: because if they did then their surveys would not show a consensus.
If you learn more about climate change, you’ll discover that the best evidence shows that manmade climate change is modest and benign, and higher CO2 levels are beneficial, for both mankind and natural ecosystems.
Over the top: the sad case of Tripp Funderburk & the Coral Restoration Foundation International
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/04/13/over-the-top-the-sad-case-of-tripp-funderburk-the-coral-restoration-foundation-international/
Why I don’t ‘believe’ in ‘science’
I believe in science’ is an homage given to science by people who generally don’t understand much about it. Science is used here not to describe specific methods or theories, but to provide a badge of tribal identity. Which serves, ironically, to demonstrate a lack of interest in the guiding principles of actual science.” – Robert Tracinski
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/03/27/why-i-dont-believe-in-science/
Climate Scientist Michael Mann Congratulates Identity Thief Peter Gleick for Receiving his Carl Sagan Award
Identity thief Peter Gleick, who impersonated a Heartland Director while serving as AGU Ethics Chairman, and whose swag of rather boring stolen Heartland emails somehow got spiced up with a a nasty forgery, has just been congratulated by Michael Mann for receiving his Carl Sagan Science Popularization Award.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/09/02/climate-scientist-michael-mann-congratulates-identity-thief-peter-gleick-for-receiving-his-carl-sagan-award/
Peter Gleick created the nasty forgery.
There is no reasonable doubt about that fact. In fact, the only reason Gleick got caught at the identity theft is that some astute observers (including Steve Mosher) first recognized the distinctive idiosyncrasies of Gleick’s own writing, in the text of the nasty forgery.
DeSmogBlog then distributed the stolen documents and the forgery, on Gleick’s behalf.
Details here:
https://tinyurl.com/fakegate
I’m not surprised that Michael Mann wasn’t bothered by it. The Gleick/Fakegate scandal was helpful for Mann: Gleick’s dishonesty probably helps distract attention from Mann’s:
https://tinyurl.com/climategate4
Thanks Dave,
I don’t like to give up on anyone. However quite frankly I do triage very quickly now with CAGW true believers. That Mr.TF would show up here again considering his past conduct, and referencing none other than Gleick as an “authority” to be “trusted”,( and considering Gleick’s past conduct) is really quite disappointing.
Brent, so sorry to disappoint you. Since you reference my past conduct, let’s review that. I have had a public disagreement and debate with Jim Steele, a former Jr. High Teacher and “past Director Sierra Nevada Field Campus.” Apparently, the Field Campus is a camp where anyone can take a class in bird calls, butterflies to bats to landscape painting in the summer months. Mr. Steele has no published peer-reviewed science. However, he publishes long, non-peer-reviewed essays on blogs that question climate science. Amazingly, all of his essays are about how melting ice does not effect polar bears to hot water not being a problem for coral reefs. All of his essays conclude that climate change is not the cause of any of the environmental challenges facing the world experiencing rapid increases in CO2 and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
Mr. Steele wrote a couple of essays on this blog and others claiming that coral bleaching was not a concern, and that coral bleaching is a magical adaptation that allows instant adaptation by symbiont shifting and hence climate change is no problem for coral reefs. He also wrote an essay highlighting that there were some coral reefs in Indonesia that experienced stress and bleaching due to abnormal high tides and some how this proved that the massive, global coral bleaching that killed half the corals on the Great Barrier Reef was somehow not due to climate change or global warming.
These articles were transparently wrong and silly if they weren’t exploited by skeptics to try and pretend that global coral bleaching was not a devastating and obvious result of climate change and global warming. We are losing ecosystems and some write essays to pretend it is not a concern. To pretend that low tides in Indonesia had something to do with 2 years of coral bleaching on the GBR is beyond parody. Corals were bleaching down to 80 feet. Half the corals on a 1500 miles of the GBR died due to heat stress. It was not 2 years of low tides. Also, if bleaching provides miraculous instantaneous adaptation, why did half the coral on a 1500 mile stretch die?
I tried to call Mr. Steele to explain to him that I have witnessed and studied coral bleaching in Thailand, Florida, and Honduras. It is clearly due to hot water that was exacerbated by rising global temperatures. NOAA can predict bleaching with precision based on temperatures and forecasts for hot conditions. This is relatively straightforward. The globe is getting hotter and heat waves start at a higher baseline so bleaching is more commmon which is evident from all peer-reviewed science and reality.
Mr. Steele had an official website on the San Fancisco State website that listed his office phone number. I called this number to talk to him about the problems with his essays. I got no answer and called back a few days later and again got no answer. I called a third time and left Mr. Steele a rude message. That was a mistake and I apologized to Mr. Steele for that inappropriate message.
Instead of accepting this apology, Mr. Steele posted on this website that, “Trip is now calling my house, dropping F bombs and launching insulting rants.” Mr. Steele also included the phone number and email for all of the viewers of this website to call my employer. I did not intend to call Mr. Steele’s house. I called the office number listed on his former employer’s website.
So, I left Jim Steele a rude message that ended up with multiple belligerent calls and messages to my employer and to me, and feature article on this website : https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/04/05/falling-sea-level-the-critical-factor-in-2016-great-barrier-reef-bleaching/
In this article accusing me of going over the top, Mr. Watts quotes an email from Jim Steele that stated,
“Hi Anthony,
Thanks for pushing back on Trip Funderburk. He has been relentlessly stalking and denigrating me at WUWT and Climate etc. He called my house again last night to verbally assault me.” Again, I called his office number 3 times. Twice no answer and once I left a rude message that I apologized for doing. I refuted Jim Steele’s silly essays in the comment section of various blogs, but that is not stalking, that is refuting erroneous propaganda.
I freely admit it was a mistake to leave a rude message on Mr. Steele’s office voicemail. However, is this offense worthy of the largest climate skeptic website to dox my employer, my former employers, my academic and professional career, and encourage readers to contact my employer and get me fired? And now this article is still near the top when my name is searched on the internet.
I wonder what is worse? One rude voice message, or doxing someone’s identity and actively campaigning to encourage/incite readers to get me fired for leaving one rude message?
I am spending my life to figure out why coral reefs are declining, and what we can do about it. Unfortunately, coral bleaching caused by climate change and global warming is becoming more widespread, more often and more lethal. This is personal to me. Lying about the cause of coral bleaching offends me and I seek to inform the readers of skeptic websites about the peer-reviewed science on the subject.
The IPCC projects that Coral reefs will decline by 70-90 percent with global warming of 1.5°C, whereas virtually all (> 99 percent) would be lost with 2°C. The earth has already warmed 1 degree C since the industrial revolution. So, we are watching coral reefs die and disappear and the best scientists in the world agree that man’s greenhouse gas emissions are causing the increase in temperatures that are killing coral reefs.
Publishing essays that say that corals can instantly adapt to hot water, or that low tides in Indonesia are the cause of half the coral on the GBR dying, is frankly offensive and damaging. If the deniers of climate change and deniers of the harm caused by global warming on coral reefs want to demonize me, then so be it. I regret leaving a stupid voice mail message that allowed Jim Steele and this website to avoid an honest discussion about hot water causing coral bleaching and death, and instead try to demonize me and make the debate about my “conduct”.
Tripp Funderburk wrote, “There is not one science organization that shares the view that climate change is not happening.”
Who do you imagine thinks that “climate change is not happening”? That’s just crazy-talk.
25,000 years ago the sites of present-day Boston and Chicago were under a sheet of ice, which is believed to have been about a mile thick! So you can bet your sweet bippy that climate change happens!
The climate debate has never been about whether climate change is happening. That’s a straw man. The debate is over its attribution (how much of it is caused by mankind), and its effects (beneficial vs. harmful).
There’s no consensus that it is harmful. In fact, the best scientific evidence is that manmade climate change is modest and benign, and higher CO2 levels are beneficial, for both mankind and natural ecosystems.
Here’s a National Geographic article, about the real, measured effects of manmade climate change, as opposed to the hypothetical harms hyped by climate activists, which never actually happen:
https://tinyurl.com/NatGeo2009
Here’s a century-old Scientific American article, about what anthropogenic CO2 does for crops:
http://tinyurl.com/1920sciamCO2
CO2 is “plant food.” Do you remember when terrible famines were often in the news, in places like Bangladesh? Famine used to be one of the great scourges of humanity, the third Horseman of the Apocalypse.
But famines are becoming rare, and one of the reasons is rising CO2 levels, which have increased worldwide agricultural productivity by about 20%, and made crops less vulnerable to drought.
Those benefits are well-measured, by thousands of agricultural studies. The supposed harms are just hypothetical.
Direct impacts of global warming are obviously negligible. We’re on track for at most about one degree Celsius of warming by 2100, probably less. That’s hardly even noticeable. It’s like moving about 70 miles south. Farmers can compensate for it for by planting about six days earlier. It’s just not a problem.
So folks promoting solar and wind boondoggles hype other supposed harms, like sea-level rise, or extreme weather, or polar bears.
But those problems are not actually happening. CO2 has been rising steadily for 2/3 of a century, yet sea-level rise has not accelerated, hurricanes are not worsening, strong tornadoes actually declined, and the polar bears are fine.
If you want to learn more about climate change, here’s a good list of resources:
https://tinyurl.com/learnmore4
Dave Burton writes, “The climate debate has never been about whether climate change is happening. That’s a straw man. The debate is over its attribution (how much of it is caused by mankind), and its effects (beneficial vs. harmful). There’s no consensus that it is harmful. In fact, the best scientific evidence is that manmade climate change is modest and benign, and higher CO2 levels are beneficial, for both mankind and natural ecosystems.”
With all due respect, the best scientific evidence does not state that manmade climate change is modest and benign. And higher CO2 levels are not beneficial for mankind and natural ecosystems.
Half the coral on the Great Barrier Reef died in the last 3 years due to hot water. That is the opposite of benign.
Higher CO2 in the atmosphere also leads to increasing acidification of the ocean, which makes it more difficult for oysters, corals, lobsters, etc to form their calcium carbonate skeletons. That is the opposite of beneficial.
More CO2 just makes the carbonate compensation depth (CCD) a little shallower. Oysters and other marine calcifiers had no difficulty forming their calcium carbonate skeletons when CO2 was far higher than it is today. The Austin Chalk is contemporaneous to the White Cliffs of Dover. It can be more than 1,200′ thick. It outcrops in the Dallas, Texas area. In South-Central to South East Texas, it is buried to depths >7,000′ below sea level and is a significant hydrocarbon source and reservoir rock. It was deposited at a time when atmospheric CO2 concentrations were 800 to 1,000 ppmv in a water depth of about 800′.
By Joshua Doubek [Public domain], from Wikimedia Commons
Robert J. Stern at the University of Texas at Dallas, Wikipedia
Lower Cretaceous CO2 levels ranged from 1,000 to 2,000 ppmv and the seafloor not only didn’t dissolve, but 1,000’s of feet of carbonate rocks were deposited in the in northern Gulf of Mexico basins…
<
Lower Cretaceous stratigraphy (Dennen & Hackley, 2012), CO2 (Berner 3003).
Carbonate lithology is colored blue.
The notion that CO2 partial pressure influences the pH of seawater isn’t a new concept. We even studied it in college way back in the Pleistocene (1976-1980); however the phrase “ocean acidification” never appeared in any of my college textbooks, because it was fabricated out of thin air in 2003.
My Stratigraphy & Sedimentation (Spring Semester 1979) textbook, Principles of Sedimentology by Friedman (yes, that Friedman) and Sanders features an entire section on the relationship between CO2 and pH and how if affects calcium carbonate precipitation and dissolution…
A very thorough, easy to read, description of the relationship between CO2 and seawater pH… However, the phrase “ocean acidification” is notably absent from the entire 300+ pages. How is this possible?
The depth below which CaCO3 ceases to precipitate is called the Carbonate Compensation Depth (CCD). Below the CCD, seafloor sediments consist of siliceous rather than carbonate oozes.
David,
Great post. I sincerely appreciate it.
I live in the southern DFW area. Being 15 miles due south of downtown Dallas, I suspect I am located in the Austin strata area.
I live on a creek line and have dark clay “bottom land” soil. Literally across the street, my neighbor hits solid limestone just a couple of feet below the surface. I have many 70+ feet tall pecan, cedar elm and cottonwood trees. My across the street neighbors have difficulty growing any tree over 20 feet tall.
The creek behind my house feeds into a much larger creek which eventually dumps into the Trinity River. This creek has 15 to 20 feet tall limestone walls.
We live about 1/4 mile east of White Rock Lake… lots of Austin Chalk outcrops here in the creek beds. We have Austin Chalk bedrock near the surface and have less foundation issues than the Mid-Cities because they have Eagle Ford Shale as bedrock. The transition is fairly abrupt in the Las Colinas area if I remember correctly. When they dug the DART rail tunnel along Central Expressway, it was through the Austin Chalk and they had serious methane issues.
Tripp Funderburk wrote, “the best scientific evidence does not state that manmade climate change is modest and benign.”
Sure it does. Perhaps you didn’t peruse the link I gave you?
https://tinyurl.com/learnmore4
If recent rates of warming continue, we might see another 1°C of warming by 2100. (A continuation of the last forty years’ trend, if CO2 emissions continue to grow exponentially, is what should be expected under climate alarmists’ assumption that most recent warming is due to rising CO2 levels, since exponential CO2 level growth asymptotically approximates linear growth in warming effect.) Of course, resource constraints, unfortunately, are likely to curb the CO2 emission growth rate before 2100, but that just means warming is likely to be even less than the modest trend of the last forty years.
That 1°C is about the same as the warming we’ve already seen, since the “pre-industrial” Little Ice Age, which just about everyone agrees has been modest and benign. (Please tell me you don’t think the LIA’s chillier climate was preferable to our current milder climate!)
For most annual crops at temperate latitudes, 1°C of warming adds about twelve days to the growing season, and it can be fully compensated for by planting about six days earlier:
As a rule of thumb, 1°C of warming shifts growing zones & isotherms poleward by perhaps 60-80 miles. That’s all. It’s barely noticeable. That’s a distance dwarfed by the ranges of most flora and fauna.
What’s more, anthropogenic CO2 helps to warm extreme latitudes much more than the tropics, so it mostly helps to make harsh climates a little bit milder, which is a good thing.
Tripp Funderburk wrote, “higher CO2 levels are not beneficial for mankind and natural ecosystems.”
Wrong. Higher CO2 levels have increased agricultural productivity by about 20%, and as CO2 levels rise that number continues to increase. It also makes crops more drought-hardy and water-efficient. Those are two of the important factors which are helping to make famines rare, for the first time in human history.
You might not be old enough to remember when severe famines, in places like Bangladesh, were often in the news.
Rising CO2 levels are among the reasons you no longer hear such news. Bangladesh and India now have food gluts, every year.
You might not appreciate just how deadly famines used to be. Famine was the “third horseman of the apocalypse.” The global drought and famine of 1876-78 killed about 3.7% of the worlds population, when CO2 levels were at only about 289 ppmv.
For comparison, WWII killed 2.7% of the world’s population, and the catastrophic 1918 flu pandemic killed about 2% of the world’s population.
Fortunately, with CO2 levels 120 ppmv higher, the effects of drought are significantly mitigated, and agricultural productivity is much improved. So, truly, there can be no doubt about the fact that higher CO2 levels are beneficial for mankind!
They are also benefical for natural ecosystems. Did you bother to click on this link?
https://tinyurl.com/NatGeo2009
The Earth is greening, because of higher CO2 levels. Surely you must agree that that is a Good Thing, right?
https://www.sealevel.info/greening_earth_spatial_patterns_Myneni.html
Tripp Funderburk wrote, “Half the coral on the Great Barrier Reef died in the last 3 years due to hot water. “
Oh, good grief, that’s what Terry Hughes was claiming, a few years ago.
His claims are disputed by Prof. Peter Ridd, a genuine expert:
https://www.thegwpf.com/peter-ridd-crying-wolf-over-the-great-barrier-reef/
Hughes’ claims are also disputed people who make their livings diving on the reefs:
https://cairnsdiveadventures.com.au/2016/10/coral-bleaching-update/
https://cairnsdiveadventures.com.au/2017/11/coral-bleaching-cairns-reef-recovering-coral-spawning-2017-far-northern-dive-expeditions/
EXCERPTS:
Lots of things impact coral, including disease outbreaks, starfish infestations, storm damage, damage from boats dragging anchors, and perhaps even sunscreen from bathers. Disentangling the effects of all those factors is challenging, and speculation that manmade global warming causes damage is weakly supported by evidence.
Here’s a map showing the worldwide distribution of coral reefs. What do you notice about their distribution?
Obviously, they are clustered around the equator. In general, the warmest water basins have the most coral reefs. Even the very warm Red Sea is peppered with coral reefs.
Water temperatures in the Red Sea vary from one end to the other. The north (Mediterranean) end is cooler, on average by about 2°C in the winter, and by about 4°C in the summer. But reef-building corals thrive at both ends. Even the very warm southern end of the Red Sea has many healthy coral reefs — and the cooler Mediterranean Sea has hardly any.
There are many thousands of species of corals, and different species occupy different ecological niches. Some inhabit temperate zones, and don’t do well in warmer water. But most prefer the tropics, and, where there are seasons, corals generally grow fastest in the summer.
Note that the Eritrean (southern) end of the Red Sea is the warmest end. From 7:20 in this BBC video, hear how wonderfully healthy the coral are there, in that unusually warm water:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P5URF1Bzbus
Here’s some very lovely photography of Red Sea corals:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RoApX7xGtTc
I’ve giving you good news, Tripp! So, are you glad to hear it? If not, then some self-examination is in order!
Dave,
I don’t have time to refute the multitude of your misinformed views, but just to highlight a couple of the big ones:
You say that increasing another 1 degree Celsius is benign. That would be 2 degrees Celsius or 3.6 Fahrenheit hotter. The IPCC says that, “Coral reefs would decline by 70-90 percent with global warming of 1.5°C, whereas virtually all (> 99 percent) would be lost with 2°C.” It is not benign or modest to lose 99% of a vital ecosystem no matter how many words you write.
Terry Hughes and 28 other well-respected scientists contributed to the most comprehensive documentation of the bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef in the journal Nature, perhaps the most respected scientific journal. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-04660-w
Despite linking a dive shop trying to sell good news, the GBR is not recovering wonderfully as you describe. In fact: “According to a new study in Nature, the Great Barrier Reef — the world’s largest coral system — experienced two widespread coral bleaching events in 2016 and 2017 that did more than just damage thousands of miles of corals.
The bleaching and subsequent coral death, caused by unusually warm water, also impaired the reef’s ability to replenish and repair its architecture. The study found that afterward, the number of newly born corals landing on the reefs dropped 89 percent below average historical levels.
Moreover, these recent replacement baby corals weren’t the table-shaped or big branching species that provide the most “city” architecture. Even if the reef is someday covered in coral once again, the structure itself won’t be the same, with consequences for the reef’s biodiversity. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/how-global-warming-is-permanently-reshaping-the-great-barrier-reef
I trust peer-reviewed science in respected journals. You trust dive shops trying to sell tours and a single man, Ridd, whose views are counter to the overwhelming majority of marine biologists.
The IPCC is full of horst schist.
All of the warming since 1850 plus another 1 °C of warming won’t even break out of the Quaternary noise level.
horst schist Ha ha ha! Made my day, Makes a change from Muckin oot Geordie’s Byre ( cleansing of George’s cow shed) Horst! Hörst du auch zu? so’n Mist! Schaumal: ( Enjoy !)
Noo whan Ah-want-ta lauchin Ah think of the scene
Whan aa’body roon cam ower tae clean,
An claarted themsel’s richt up-ta the e’en
At the muckin o Geordie’s byre.
Wi Robbie the Rochie an Willie the Doo,
The officer fell fur Jeannie McGrew;
And aa’body else that hud hud a capoo
At the muckin’ o’ Geordie’s byre.
Och! siccan a sotter wis aa’body in,
Five mile awa ye cud hear the din;
Even the verra-coo hud to grin
At the muckin o Geordie’s byre.
Noo the bobby cam roon tae quell the fowks doon
The cratur gat loast whaur the ricks hud thur foon
He fell in the midden, wis like tae droon
At the muckin o Geordie’s byre.
The wecht o him syne sends the barrow in bits,
The wheel cairries oan an the officer hits;
Losh ye shud hiv seen hoo she did the splits
At the muckin o Geordie’s byre.
Och! siccan a sotter wis aa’body in,
Five mile awa ye cud hear the din;
Even the verra-coo hud to grin
At the muckin o Geordie’s byre.
Oh the whisky gaed roon, Tammy’s fleein the doo
An aye as they drank, the mair they gat fou
The only yins sober, the calf an the coo
At the muckin o Geordie’s byre.
Tammy roars oot, “Ring the bell fur mair”
Syne he tuggit the coo’s tail, an pult oot a hair;
She kickit oot he gaed up in the air
At the muckin o Geordie’s byre.
Och! siccan a sotter wis aa’body in,
Five mile awa ye cud hear the din;
Even the verra-coo hud to grin
At the muckin o Geordie’s byre.
Oo-oh such a stanache was there to see
Five miles away you could hear the melee
Even the domesticated animals were consumed with glee
At the cleansing of Georges cow shed
Och! siccan a sotter wis aa’body in,
Five mile awa ye cud hear the din;
Even the verra-coo hud to grin
At the muckin o Geordie’s byre.
Songwriters: Traditional / Willie Kemp
Tripp wrote, “You say that increasing another 1 degree Celsius is benign. That would be 2 degrees Celsius or 3.6 Fahrenheit hotter.”
That’s gibberish, Tripp. Increasing the temperature by 1°C would make the temperature 1°C hotter.
That’s no more than the warming we’ve already seen, since the “pre-industrial” Little Ice Age — which just about everyone agrees has been modest and benign.
You do agree that that warming is modest and benign, don’t you? Please tell me you don’t think the LIA’s chillier climate was preferable to our current milder climate!
Tripp continued, “Despite linking a dive shop trying to sell good news, the GBR is not recovering wonderfully as you describe.”
You are accusing the people who make their living diving on the GBR of lying about the condition of the reef. That is reckless and unprofessional.
You have no evidence that they are lying, and they have no motive for lying. If 50% of the GBR were really dead, they’d obviously notice it, and you can bet that they’d be sounding the alarm, to save their beloved reef and their livelihoods. But what they say is, “It is in tremendous condition, most of it is still pristine and the rest is in full recovery… The discrepancy is phenomenal… Everywhere we went we found healthy reefs.”
In other words, Terry Hughes is refuted, and Peter Ridd is vindicated, by the people in the best position to know.
Tripp wrote, ”
According to this source on the GBR, “water is always pleasant with ocean temperatures ranging from 23 degrees Celsius in Winter and 29 degrees Celsius in summer.”
The Red Sea is warmer. I just looked up today’s water temperature at Port Sudan, which is about midway between the north and south ends of the Red Sea. The water temperature today is 31°C, and we haven’t even gotten to the hottest part of the summer.
Yet the Red Sea is dotted with healthy coral reefs, even in the southern end, where temperatures are warmest.
How can you reconcile those facts with the crazy speculation that just 1°C of additional warming would kill off 99% of all corals in the world?
The EU Parliament has no power to introduce legislation. That’s about all you need to know about EU “democracy”. But still, the members get excellent pay and benefits and pay tax at a special reduced rate.
Could this be a reasonable question to give to climate “alarmists” ? If we take the premise to be true, that the fossil fuel deposits are formed from organisms that extracted CO2 from the atmosphere long ago, if we use those deposits for fuel, and so on, aren’t we returning the CO2 concentration back to normal ?