BY TOM HARRIS AND DR. JAY LEHR
President Donald Trump is clearly on the right track on climate change. One of the strongest indicators of this is the mainstream media’s intense attacks on the president over the past month. After all, they would not be concerned if Trump were not attacking their most cherished, and vulnerable, asset—the supposedly “settled science” propping up the climate scare.
This is analogous to the experience of Air Force bomber pilots. An enemy won’t waste ammunition defending something unless they consider it both valuable and vulnerable.
In 2013, World War II Lancaster bomber pilot “Sandy” Mutch explained, “On bombing raids over Europe, we could tell we were closing in on the target when we started to get the most flak.” That was because important German assets were often surrounded by anti-aircraft guns that filled the sky with AAA fire. And, rather than being deterred by the resistance, it told Bomber Command exactly where the next wave of aircraft should concentrate their attack.
That is why we need to carefully examine media attacks on Trump’s climate policy, to help climate realists focus their efforts to win the war for the hearts and minds of Americans. So, let’s see what a couple of the more prominent recent media criticisms of the president’s climate stance can teach us.
While the June 11 CNN video, “Donald Trump vs. climate change,” was largely nonsensical, it was instructive nonetheless. Therein, Chris Cillizza labeled the president “one of the most prominent climate change deniers in the world.” Climate activists recognize that any point of view can be effectively discredited by making an analogy, even indirectly, with Holocaust denial. We can take advantage of this by pointing out that it is both irrational and offensive to Holocaust survivors and their families to equate the possibility of future climate problems with one of the most horrific events in history. Then we should point out that the president is the opposite of a climate change denier—he says that climate changes all the time, although he sensibly questions the degree to which it is caused by human activity.
The CNN video ridicules Trump for saying that global warming is “an expensive hoax.” We should respond by outlining the costs involved. Over one billion dollars a day worldwide is now spent on “climate finance,” according to the San Francisco-based Climate Policy Initiative, yet we see no impact on climate. In 2017, Dr. Bjorn Lomborg, president of the Copenhagen Consensus Center, explained that if the UN Paris Agreement targets for 2030 were met and sustained through the rest of the century, there would be 0.3 degrees Fahrenheit less warming in 2100, if the models relied upon by the UN were correct. He explains that the cost of the Paris pact would be $1 – 2 trillion every year. So clearly, CNN’s criticism tells Trump that he should continue calling it “an expensive hoax,” and cite the cost estimates and forecast results to illustrate his point.
Arguably the most significant of the recent attacks on Trump’s climate position appeared on May 27 in the New York Times in “Trump Administration Hardens Its Attack on Climate Science.”Therein, authors Coral Davenport and Mark Landler lamented the proposed creation of “a new climate review panel” to be led by Dr. William Happer, Cyrus Fogg Brackett Professor of Physics, Emeritus, at Princeton University, now senior director of the National Security Council office for emerging technologies.
Davenport and Landler, and indeed, many in the press, are clearly appalled that the panel would question the supposed “scientific consensus on climate change.” They write that the Trump “administration will seek to undermine the very science on which climate change policy rests.” Were the science as settled as activists claim, then they should welcome a thorough review so as to put to rest questions about the science. But, given the vast uncertainty in the science demonstrated by reports such as those of the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC), an independent review obviously frightens supporters of the status quo. The last thing they want is for the lid to be lifted off the Pandora’s box that contains the highly controversial and seriously flawed science of climate change.
Davenport and Landler cite Larry Kudlow, the president’s chief economic adviser, and Stephen K. Bannon, the former White House strategist, as being against the proposed panel, fearing the controversy that would inevitably result. Marc Morano, publisher of the influential Washington D.C.-based Climatedepot.com, agrees that the results of such a panel would be tumultuous. But that, says Morano, is exactly why the panel should go ahead.
“Activists want to silence any skepticism that would encourage the public to think about the huge problems in the science,” said Morano. “And some frightened Republicans want to avoid a conflict on this issue. But a conflict is inevitable if we are to have any chance of getting the best science used to inform policy makers.”
Morano continued, “We need an official report with the seal of the U.S. government that would lay out the arguments against the groundless climate change fears being promoted by Al Gore and the UN. Then, federal judges would have a solid foundation on which to base their deliberations in climate-related cases.”
Mutch would certainly have agreed. He said, “Anyone who wants to kill the dangerous and unfounded climate scare…should focus on exposing the shaky science behind climate alarm. That is the Achilles heel of the whole movement. Shoot it down and you win the war!”
No one is asking politicians to risk their lives as many in Mutch’s generation did. “But they must be strong enough to take the flak that always comes when you are directly attacking your enemy’s most important asset,” concluded Mutch. “In this case, it is also their most vulnerable asset.”
Media coverage like that of CNN and the New York Times informs White House strategists that the president must intensify his attacks against the flawed science underling the climate alarm.
_______________________________________________________
Tom Harris is Executive Director of the Ottawa, Canada-based International Climate Science Coalition (ICSC) and a policy advisor to The Heartland Institute which is based in Arlington Heights, Illinois. Dr. Jay Lehr is Senior Policy Analyst with ICSC and former Science Director of The Heartland Institute.
There is an old saying…..”You know you are on target when you start seeing flak”.
Write the President at
https://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/
Urge him to start the climate science review under Dr. Will Happer without further delay. It will take time and it is late in his term.
The science of catastrophic human-made global warming and wilder weather is hysterical false nonsense – it IS that simple.
Thank you, Allan
“administration will seek to undermine the very science on which climate change policy rests.”
Their mistake with this sentence is in labeling what they have done as science. If it were true science, it should expect to be attempted to be refuted.
If the proponents of this cause actually cared for humanity they should be saying, “I surely hope that I am wrong.”, as many of their prescriptions are worse than the supposed problem.
Rocket Scientist – you are correct. Furthermore:
The warming alarmists’ science IS wrong – there is NO credible evidence that climate sensitivity to increasing atm. CO2 is higher than 1C/doubling, and ample evidence that it is less, and probably much less. See Sect 9 from my latest paper, below.
Best, Allan
Reference:
CO2, GLOBAL WARMING, CLIMATE AND ENERGY
by Allan M.R. MacRae, B.A.Sc., M.Eng., P.Eng., June 2019
https://thsresearch.files.wordpress.com/2019/06/co2-global-warming-climate-and-energy-june2019-final-.pdf
[excerpt]
9. Even if ALL the observed global warming is ascribed to increasing atmospheric CO2, the calculated maximum climate sensitivity to a hypothetical doubling of atmospheric CO2 is only about 1 degree C, which is too low to cause dangerous global warming.
Christy and McNider (2017) analysed UAH Lower Troposphere data since 1979:
Reference: https://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2017/11/2017_christy_mcnider-1.pdf
Lewis and Curry (2018) analysed HadCRUT4v5 Surface Temperature data since 1859:
Reference: https://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/10.1175/JCLI-D-17-0667.1
Climate computer models used by the IPCC and other global warming alarmists employ climate sensitivity values much higher than 1C/doubling, in order to create false fears of dangerous global warming.
____________________________________
A major fault of the Republican Party in my experience is a tendency to go all squishy, which ruined GHW Bush in violating his “no new taxes ” pledge, along with his sucking up to gun control advocates. A belief that the Democrats can act in good faith has proven to be as much of a fantasy as believing in unicorns or “renewable energy”.
Having a “in your face” attitude is about the only reasonable response to the True Believers in CAGW, as most of the votes are not True Believers.
Did you know that GHW lost by over 200 electoral votes? ANY GOP candidate ought to take a real good close look at his “kindler, gentler” administration and run like wild away from it. Loser.
And H. Ross Perot ran to his right, which actually was what settled the election.
Do you realize Bill Clinton won with only a plurality in 1992?
Bill Clinton winning 43 percent of the vote to GHW Bush’s 37.4 percent and Perot’s 18.9 percent.
H. Ross Perot enabled Clinton to win. Perot took more Bush voters in the key states than he took from Clinton, allowing Clinton to take the “all or nothing” electoral votes in those key states.
The Democrats know this.
It can even easily be argued that Jill Stein as the Green Party candidate allowed Trump to win against Hillary.
“A review of the seven key states that made Donald Trump the president elect, shows that Stein’s vote total was higher than Trump’s margin in two of those states: Wisconsin and Michigan. In addition, in Florida, the combined vote total for Stein and Libertarian Gary Johnson was higher than Trump’s margin of victory.”
https://heavy.com/news/2016/11/jill-stein-gary-johnson-hillary-clinton-election-results-lost-lose-third-party-presidential-florida-michigan-pennsylvania-wisconsin-final-votes/
If those 3 states (FL, MI, WI) had gone Hillary, she would’ve been President.
It is why they are deeply fearful of a former Starbucks CEO Howard Shultz running as an independent. He would peel off a lot more Democrat voters from a Bernie Sanders or E Warren candidate than he would take from Trump. And that would be all it would take to ensure a Trump victory in Florida, Ohio, and Wisconsin again.
Run, Shultz, run!
+10
No, sorry. You can’t blame a Jill Stein voter for Hillary’s defeat.
First — Those people made a conscious decision. If any Jill Stein voters wanted to elect Hillary, they would have voted for her. It’s just as likely Jill Stein voters would have abstained if they could not vote for Stein.
Second — How many electoral votes to Jill Stein get? Trump won 304-227.
More than this, Gary Johnson got way more votes than Stein. These would be votes mostly taken away from Trump — not Hillary. You could argue Trump would have taken a few more states had it not been for Gary Johnson.
If Bernie won, the fun would only last the weekend and there would be lots of music playing when he’s around
An “in your face attitude” to the CCC/AGW crowd in general, and as response to their interminable use of the phrase “Climate Deniers” to refer to skeptics of an untested, highly dubious, scientific hypothesis, in particular, is appropriate given the 20th C history of the Eugenics movement in the US and Germany. The same political class who popularized Eugenics, advanced the cause politically, financed its adoption, carried out sterilizations in 29 states, many in California, and started research institutions (Cold Spring Harbor Institute) to carry out research based on the Eugenics pseudoscience were all so called “Progressives”, from both political parties, Democrats and Republicans. So ironic that The same bunch who are so anxious to refer to doubters of climate change, fear mongering as deniers uses a term that alludes to their own history of eugenics pseudoscience and disgraceful racial history. Eugenics united white racists in the Deep South and Anti Semitic WASP white shoe law firms and country club on Wall Street and the Ivy League Universities. This is why the term Denier should be thrown right back in their faces. Progressives are loathe to recall their own history. Both the Carnegie Institute and the Rockefeller Foundation supported the Nazi party for their pre war, racial cleansing operations that liquidated the physically, mentally, and morally deficient individuals in Germany that latter blossomed into an attempt to exterminate the Jewish population as a whole and other non Aryan racial groups in Germany, Eastern Europe, Russia, and Western Europe that came under their military control, by the building of an industrial network of concentration camps and poison gas chambers and furnaces which latter was called the Holocaust, with its 6-7 million victims. The Climate Alarmist is the same type of progressive assh0le who supported the Marxist-Leninist, Bolshevik Communist take over of the Russian Revolution in 1917 and the Stalinist farm collectivization program in the 1930’s which exiled, imprisoned, liquidated entire classes of people in the USSR and the Ukraine, those who opposed the Utopian dream to bring about Socialism in a Single State.
Trump needs to better lay out why Climate Change is a non-problem; that is something to be ignored.
The Democrats only see it as a means to more power and more taxes, more control of society and individuals by the government. Climate change is no longer about science, if it ever even was. The most powerful evidence of this is the video clip of Obama honestly admitting that “under his plans, electricity prices would skyrocket.” That clip needs to be played endlessly on TV ads in 2020 to remind voters what is at stake.
The economics of fossil fuel demand that the policy prescriptions being pushed by the Left are the real danger. Simple cost vs any benefit, even if the science is correct, as a few degrees of warming versus billions of hungry desparate humans. And even if the US commits economic suicide to enrich Tom Steyer and the GreenSlime, the warming can’t be altered anyway given the rise of emissions from China and the rest of the world.
“…They write that the Trump “administration will seek to undermine the very science on which climate change policy rests.”
My hope is that the administration will seek to undermine the very NON-science on which climate change policy rests.
“Global warming” and “Climate Change” alarmism was never about the environment – it was always about total control by the far-left – totalitarianism.
They need to follow the lead of alarmists.
1) Start hyping all the weather that does not fit the narrative. The massive snow still hanging around in CO would be one example.
2) The current El Nino appears to finally be fading. If this continues then the global temperature should be dropping over the next few months. Start making the public aware there’s a cooling trend. Alarmists used the 2015-16 El Nino to hype warming claims. Time to use it against them.
3) It would be great if Trump would quote some climate skeptics occasionally. For example, the great tweet by Dr. Maue. Start spreading the word that there are lots of scientists who do not accept there is a climate problem.
The current El Nino is fading quite fast now. Published forecasts still say they expect it to fade in the Fall, but it will likely be gone by end-August. A hard strong La Nina is the likely result by winter 2019-2020.
The latest weekly SST departures are:
Niño 4 +0.8ºC
Niño 3.4 +0.5ºC
Niño 3 +0.2ºC
Niño 1+2 -0.3ºC
The Nino 3 index is falling fast. The most recent pentad analysis, negative subsurface temperature anomalies have persisted at depth in the western Pacific and are strongest near and below the surface around 110º-90ºW.
See Slide #12 of:
https://gmao.gsfc.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/products/climateforecasts/geos5/S2S_2/current/index.cgi
NASA’s GMAO model is calling for a strengthening La Nina that will make the Nino-3 departure well negative by October, with Nino 3.4 following closely by December. Most of the other models have not yet shown this, but they will by mid-August is my hunch.
https://gmao.gsfc.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/products/climateforecasts/geos5/S2S_2/current/index.cgi
A cold winter is ahead. And it will not be favorable to Democrats irrationally screaming about climate change to cold weary Iowans and New Hampshire primary voters. Which is probably why the DNC strategists will try to continue to tone down the climate crazy talk through the 2020 election cycle. The Republicans trying to highlight how the Democrats are trying to muzzle their Climate Lunatics in the closet cannot let them get away with that, and must make them answer hard questions in debates and in interviews.
Should be slide #12 of this URL:
https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/lanina/enso_evolution-status-fcsts-web.pdf
I’ve got fed up waiting for this El Nino to fade and the La Nina and cooling to arrive … and last time I looked (a few weeks ago), there was no strong indicator of the El Nino disappearing anything soon.
See slide #16 of ENSO evolution pdf.
“In the last week, wind anomalies were weak over most of the equatorial Pacific Ocean.”
Westerly wind anomalies (linked to the SOI) through Spring 2019 have kept this weak Modoki El Nino running. Those appear to have finally abated, now the La Nina can appear by the start of winter as the El Nino rapidly fades by the fall.
“Which is probably why the DNC strategists will try to continue to tone down the climate crazy talk through the 2020 election cycle.”
If you want to hear Democrat crazy talk be sure to tune in to the Democrat presidential debates Wednesday and Thursday of this week. Two dozen Democrat candidates who all think they hold the moral high ground and who think they have all the answers. Unfortunately for the nation and the world, their “answers” are a horror show in the making.
I think people should watch these debates, even though it is painful, because we all need to see just how loony these Democrats who want to run our country, really are. And a lot of that crazy talk will have climate change as the subject.
The Democrats are trying to buy the college vote by introducing bills to cancel all college debt for those who make less than $100K a year, paid for by a tax on wealth. (Not income, wealth.)
“The current El Nino appears to finally be fading. If this continues then the global temperature should be dropping over the next few months.”
You should say dropping “even more” over the next few months, since global temperatures have been dropping for the last three years since Feb. 2016, down almost 0.5C since that time.
I just noticed the ENSO Meter took a big drop today.
“Start spreading the word that there are lots of scientists who do not accept there is a climate problem.”
I think that is a good tactic for Trump. In fact, he has done just that in the past, saying other scientists disagreed with the “consensus”. The reporters then were asking him which scientists he was referring to who disagreed. Trump can now point them at Happer, and Happer can then give the reporters and the people the details about why the science in not settled.
I think Trump should keep it simple like that. He doesn’t need to be the detail man. He has experts for that..
I and my 3 co-authors have a paper submitted to a climate journal, that basically states… well, here is the abstract:
Climate change is hotly debated in our society. One side claims the “science is settled” and CO2 is the controlling factor. The other side claims that the science is not settled and there are many driving factors. We believe that these arguments are the result of incomplete and inadequate science underpinning current climate models.
Many scientists have produced excellent work in various aspects of Earth’s oceans, atmosphere, geology and the physical laws governing their behavior. What is missing is an effort to tie all this science together.
A first principles model must be built, describing the Earth, its atmosphere, and how it varies over time, responding to stimuli, both man-made and natural.
This paper presents a systematic analysis of the entire thermodynamic system of the climate: all heat sources and heat sinks, together with their linkages, mappings, and transfer functions. The result is a requirements document that describes the need for an international effort to develop a complete thermodynamic explanation of the entire climate.
If an accurate understanding of Earth’s climate is important to the global community, then such a model must be built to replace the individual, poorly integrated and incomplete models that do not have a history of trustworthy prediction. If the science is wrong, any action taken based on it is likely to have catastrophic consequences.
Three of the authors have been involved in modeling, simulation and analysis since the 1970s, and the fourth was an AG-1 Aerographer Mate, the US Navy Rate for meteorology.
Newt – what kind of modeling, simulation and analysis? What does your Navy guy do now,? How long was he in meteorology, and what did he do? Meteorological models are pretty different from those you need to model the climate.
Do you have the biological factors in there? You don’t even mention CO2 and its sources and sinks. What makes your proposed model better than others? How are others “incomplete”? Would you model even be possible with the data and computing power available? Does it make sense to start over, rather than improve the models in existence?
Sounds like a tough sell. Good luck.
The UN IPCC family of models are modeling and simulation. I and my colleague, Steve were Technical Fellows of M&S. What are your credentials in M&S?
My female co-author Robin was the chief Areographer for the entire Pacific Fleet before she became a “mustang” officer of the line. She’s a bona fides “Weather Guesser.”
BTW, Anthony Watts is a meteorologist. I guess you need to lecture him on how weather is not climate.
> “Meteorological models are pretty different from those you need to model the climate.”
No duh, dudette. Wait for the paper to be published before you throw an ad hominen tantrum.
Everything you mention, and tonzoes more are covered in the paper. When it is published, you can critique it to your own happiness.
Newt,
“What are your credentials in M&S?” Mine? None! Well, I helped with a model of forest dynamics, but that was long ago.
No ad hominem here. Sorry if I stated the obvious.
I know Anthony is a meteorologist, and I’m pretty sure he knows there’s a difference between weather and climate.
As I said, good luck! I hope it is published, it would be interesting to see what you recommend.
Kristi, I posted only the 248 word abstract. The actual paper is a slosh over 15 pages. You are right that a whole lot more detail is needed to substantiate our assertion, and it’s in the paper.
It’s been at the climate journal that we chose for 3 weeks. That journal says that the editing process and publication steps (on average) take 90 days. I’m sure that when it is published, it will be reviewed on WattsUpWithThat.com, since Anthony Watts was the one that recommended the journal that we submitted to.
The physics isn’t known, Newt. No one can just jump to a complete physical theory of the climate.
Ocean models don’t converge, and drifting buoy experiments probing to pelagic depths have revealed no sign of the thermohaline current.
See the spaghetti drifter maps here
The physics is just not in hand for a comprehensive model of the terrestrial climate.
The basics of the global oceanic THC are sound. We do measure massive deep water upwellings in various places at continental margins. Mass balance in a non-compressible fluid tells us that what comes up, must also go down.
It’s just that the details are not known. And in climate… the details matter… hugely .
Because without them (the details), the modellers are unconstrained by data/observation and are thus able to do whatever their bias needs.
Drifter maps don’t seem to show the expected net currents, Joel. What’s the evidence of the coherent conveyor?
Agreed about the mass balance argument. The question is how exactly it’s achieved. THC implies a smooth continuous global flow. It doesn’t seem to show up.
Joel, I agree with you!
All that you mention (and more) are covered in our paper. You are right that more science must be developed, or the UN IPCC modelers can just do what ever they want, without a factual scientific basis for their conjectures.
I look forward to reading your analysis of our paper after it is published.
>”The physics isn’t known, Newt. No one can just jump to a complete physical theory of the climate…”
Yes, but a lot of what is needed is known. What is not yet known is articulated in the paper.
We state that the UN IPCC approach is fundamentally flawed, and should be discarded. Instead, a true science approach should be adopted, and the world governments fund a new model effort that has all of Earth’s heat sourcesa, heat sinks, and the heat transfer functions and mappings between them.
We, the co-authors, state that researching and building such a model will take at least a decade to develop what is not currently available. If scientific accuracy is important, then this needs to be done.
We can chat more after the paper is published.
re the proposed creation of “a new climate review panel” to be led by Dr. William Happer: When is it going to actually start?
“And some frightened Republicans want to avoid a conflict on this issue. But a conflict is inevitable if we are to have any chance of getting the best science used to inform policy makers.”
If Trump administration officials and other Republicans don’t have the intestinal fortitude to challenge the climate alarmist status quo, I would suggest that switch political parties and just go with the alarmist flow. Leave the path open for those who do want to challenge it.
I have to say that I lack respect for politicians in on either side of the political spectrum who display a lack of courage and an unwillingness to go after the Achilles Heel of those who have built an empire on a foundation of bad science and lies. Many have built their own little empires on a foundation of lies throughout history, and they still do so today in places like North Korea. If we didn’t do what needed to be done in WWII, we might all be speaking German or Japanese today.
I can only presume that Trump is a man of courage, and one can argue that he has shown some already. If indeed he is such a man, he should not lack the will to do this. If he has to give way to a liberal Democrat when he leaves office someday with the climate alarmist narrative still largely intact, the alarmists will have considerable reason to dance in the streets to celebrate. And they no doubt will.
“I can only presume that Trump is a man of courage,”
I think he is. One day Trump saw a man assaulting another man with a baseball bat and Trump had his limo driver stop and Trump got out, over the objections of his wife, and went over and put a stop to the assualt.
It just so happened that the man with the baseball bat recognized Trump and this caused him to deny he was attacking the other man, but Trump said, “I saw you”. Anyway, Trump stopped the attack. He had no reason to get involved and every reason not to, but he stopped and took action anyway.
That’s the kind of man Trump has shown himself to be.
“…analogy, even indirectly, with Holocaust denial.”
I really, really hate this. It’s such BS. Since when does the word, “denial” have anything to do with the Holocaust? “Do you deny that you were present at the Red Barn on Thurs, April 24, 2004?” “Your Honor, he’s accusing me of denying the Holocaust!” If the word were inherently associated with the Holocaust, people could just say, “denial” and the Holocaust would come to mind.
Stop playing the victim! Look at the context! If the subject is AGW, “denier” is about the evidence for AGW!
“Settled science” … I’ve seen plenty of people here who suggest that the whole debate is a “closed book” and there is no AGW – for them the science is apparently settled. Closed book=closed mind. “Settled” is very different from, “The evidence that humans have caused at least 50% of the observed rise in average global temperature is strong enough that we can accept that as a basis for decision-making.” But there’s plenty more to learn from research about AGW.
“Were the science as settled as activists claim, then they should welcome a thorough review so as to put to rest questions about the science. ”
The debate belongs in the peer-reviewed literature, not in the political arena. KEEP POLITICS OUT OF THE SCIENCE. You can’t possibly have a team of 5 or 10 or whatever people representing all of climate science. William Happer has very few peer-reviewed climate science publications under his belt, and should not be considered a climate science expert. Expertise requires a depth of understanding it takes decades of research to acquire. He’s an expert on optical molecular physics or something like that. He’s great at rhetoric, but that’s not science. It’s significant that they have him leading the “red team” (even the color is obviously political!) – it speaks to the lack of well-qualified people willing to take on the position.
“The CNN video ridicules Trump for saying that global warming is “an expensive hoax.” … So clearly, CNN’s criticism tells Trump that he should continue calling it “an expensive hoax,” and cite the cost estimates and forecast results to illustrate his point.” Oy vey. It doesn’t matter how fricking expensive it is – if it’s not a hoax, Trump is wrong. And it’s not a hoax. The very idea is absurd, considering all the scientists involved. Was Arrhenius in on this supposed hoax? Nils Ekholm? Exxon scientists back in the 1980s? Hundreds (or thousands!) of Chinese scientists? Oh yeah – that’s where it originated, according to Trump! What a lot of hooey.
…But all this is irrelevant. What the media say about Trump have nothing to do with whether Trump is “on the right track.” The media is not the scientific community. The media do not provide the evidence. Listening to the media (or think tanks) will get you nowhere in making an informed judgment regarding climate change.
“The debate belongs in the peer-reviewed literature, not in the political arena.”
The peer review process has become politicized and prevents requisite debate by excluding politically incorrect research.
KS: “The debate belongs in the peer-reviewed literature, … ”
Where is it then? Where has it ever been? Where have the contrarians been given a platform? The scientific journals are devoted to “findings” and review articles, not to debates. Debates sometimes occur in letters columns, but journals consider them distasteful. The few real debates only occurred on the Dutch “climate Dialogue” site, which withered from a reultance of warmists to participate.
KS: “not in the political arena. KEEP POLITICS OUT OF THE SCIENCE.”
That begs the question, Is current climate science politics-free? According to the findings of Donna LaFrambois, the membership of the IPCC was and is heavily biased in a green direction. Nearly half its bigshot-members in here “Juvenile Delinquent” book were affiliated in some way with green NGOs. Current IPCC members are nominated by the environmental departments of world governments, guaranteeing a green bias. Deep greens often tend to be activist types to seek and obtain positions of influence as gatekeepers and opinion-leaders. Peter Gleick is an example.
PS: I agree that “denial” is not intended by most warmists to allude to the Holocaust, but comes from Freudianism’s term for a psychological mechanism, and by the more recent popularization of the term to refer to denial of alcoholism, addiction, etc.
However, about five (?) years ago Anthony did extensive Google research and argued strongly, along with an apparent majority here, that “denier” was mostly rare until it was used in association with the Holocaust, and that some warmists were aware of this association and were deliberately taking advantage of it.
My interperetation is that “denier” would be used by warmists even if there had been no Holocaust, because it is a mot juste from their perspective. Therefore, we shouldn’t play the victim card. Instead, we should retaliate by calling warmists alarmists. (Nah, that would be descending to their level.)
“Therefore, we shouldn’t play the victim card. Instead, we should retaliate by calling warmists alarmists. (Nah, that would be descending to their level.)”
No, alarmist is a perfect description for someone who raises unsubstantiated alarms about the Earth’s climate.
And I don’t mind being called a Denier. I *do* deny that there is any evidence for CAGW. I do so because I see no evidence of it. And I’ve looked hard for evidence, for many years, but still no evidence. If there was any evidence then any alarmist could provide it to me in a reply to this post. But we all know that’s not going to happen because the alarmists don’t have anything to provide. They could prove me wrong. Just hit “reply” and lay it on us.
As soon as the Alarmists provide us with a little evidence that CAGW is real, even a little bit, then I’ll stop being a Denier. But not until then.
Roger (and icisil),
I think it’s a fallacy to assert that there is not debate in the peer-reviewed literature. I looked up just one contrarian, Willie Soon. He has plenty of climate science papers published, including “response” papers. https://www.researchgate.net/scientific-contributions/2080584864_Willie_Soon This is not a “debate” in the sense of those you see between electoral candidates, or what debate teams do. It has a different structure, one that is necessary in science to prevent it from devolving into mere rhetoric.
Roger, the IPCC reports are not the same as peer-reviewed research presented in journals. They are reviews specifically intended to help policy makers. Are they biased? Maybe, but “politicized”? What does that mean, really? They are used by groups that fall one way or another on the political spectrum to support a political agenda, yes, but that is not intrinsic to the reports. In any case, I’m not talking about them, I’m talking about the original science. Besides, I’m not denying the topic is political or that some scientists are politically active, I’m saying that the science and it’s interpretation SHOULD not be affected by politics, not that it isn’t.
What does “affiliated ” with an NGO mean? Someone donated to the Sierra Club, and is therefore a member by default? Big deal. Presumably they donated because they believe it’s important to maintain environmental health. Membership does not mean they are influenced by the group. On the other hand, if people attend or speak at conferences of the Heartland Institute, they may very well be influenced by what is said there. And of the vocal contrarian scientists, it seems to me quite a high proportion of them are affiliated with conservative think tanks as more than just donors.
Environmentalism doesn’t necessarily mean favoring environment over human well-being. Personally, although I don’t consider myself an environmentalist at all, I know that the economic, social and human health are often dependent on maintaining ecosystem function, and therefore on environmental health – and that, in turn, requires *a degree* of stability (i.e. ecosystem processes will return to equilibrium after slow or temporary change). Rapid climate change is a threat to the minimum requisite stability since organisms can’t always adapt, or adapt at different rates, upsetting the balance. Tree populations can’t adapt as quickly as insect herbivores do, for instance.
I’m glad you said that about “descending to their level.” There is far too much of that.
Some warmists are alarmists, just as some skeptics are deniers. It’s the generalizations and assumptions that are often erroneous and perpetuate bias.
BTW, I wrote a response to your longer post in another thread but had computer issues and lost it, and gave up out of frustration. Sorry. (Did reply to the shorter one.)
“I think it’s a fallacy to assert that there is not debate in the peer-reviewed literature. I looked up just one contrarian, Willie Soon. He has plenty of climate science papers published, including “response” papers. ”
To try to characterize the whole peer review process by mentioning only one scientist who does get published, while numerous others with non-CAGW views do not, is a straw man fallacy.
icisil,
“To try to characterize the whole peer review process by mentioning only one scientist who does get published, while numerous others with non-CAGW views do not, is a straw man fallacy.”
Nonsense. It may be weak evidence, but it’s not a straw man if the argument is that those who have “contra” views of AGW don’t get published.
If numerous others don’t get published, that doesn’t necessarily mean they were rejected because of their views. Maybe their research or write-up was weak. I’m not saying it’s true, I’m saying that it’s possible.
It’s actually rather a hard thing to provide evidence for either way, since it’s impossible to know without actually doing a statistical study how many rejections an author has had, why the papers have been rejected, and (easier, but I’m not going to do it) whether those that have been accepted were “contra” papers – all in relation to the acceptance rate and quality of those that are “pro.” I started with a list of contrarians supplied by Wikipedia, but that wasn’t much help. Taking some names more or less at random, some had several climate science publications that I found (e.g. Steven Koonin), some a few (Garth Paltridge), some appeared to be in different fields altogether (Robert Davis), some had many (Judith Curry), some had published mostly in non-peer-reviewed places (Joseph D’Aleo). I looked at a few other authors, too. At least two had contributed to an IPCC report.
However, as I said, it’s still hard to determine what the effect of a “contra” stance is. If you have solid evidence, feel free to post it. Until I see it, I remain skeptical.
One interesting thing I noted was how often authors were associated with the Heartland Institute, but this may be an artifact of the choice of those to post on Wikipedia.
Kristi, You underestimate Will Happer’s knowledge. Because of his work on the Laser Star Guide, few if any have the knowledge of the physics and chemistry of what is above our heads. The people you may admire as “climate scientist” are clueless. As far as peer-review is concerned, it is so broken. Temperature is nothing more than a proxy for measuring energy. There are over 30 climate zones around the world, each with their own drivers. What good is it to average them together? Why have four countries changed past temps? “Climate scientists” were very happy when we put up two satellites to measure temps in the atmosphere until the measurements did not show them what they wanted to see. Now they want to use land and sea temps which are a mess. Pay a man to find global warming and what do you think they will find?
Ric,
” Because of his work on the Laser Star Guide, few if any have the knowledge of the physics and chemistry of what is above our heads.”
That’s quite an assertion. On what evidence do you base it?
The reason to average the temperature change in the different climate zones is simply to show that the Earth as a whole has change temperature. There are also plenty of reasons to look at regional temperatures, which is also done, for different purposes.
Exactly. The thermodynamic temperature is a proxy for the internal kinetic energy of a defined sample of matter and *only* its internal kinetic energy. Sure you can transform energy from kinetic to potential to chemical to nuclear to radiant; but the processes are not necessarily symmetrical nor are they unconditional.
The measures are themselves proxies. For liquid in glass, it is the thermal expansion of the liquid; which is a complex function that can be linearized, to a certain extent. For thermocouples, it is the voltage. For thermal radiation, which is EMR solely from internal kinetic energy, it is an inversion from the measured flux or intensity using a mathematical relation. All of these have errors of various kinds. These errors are not always properly analyzed nor properly propagated when used for further analysis.
Semantics matters! An argument can’t get off the ground if people don’t agree on what the terms mean; and, with human languages, one must always be mindful of equivocation.
kristi, I hope you are not being just as disingenuous as AOC: “When I mentioned concentration camps I didn’t intend to refer to WWII death camps”. And then in the same rant she brought up “Never Again”.
Of course the use of the d-word has been intentional; some of the early critics of sceptical thinking about CAGW (e.g. Ross Gelbspan as well as a Boston Globe writer – I forget her name; and Google and Wikipedia have now buried all references to those articles) made the comparison explicitly at the time. It was then picked up by “warmists” as the preferred label for their “adversaries” because of the pejorative nature of the word.
You have to be kidding with that one. If you’re serious, tell that to Dr. Mann who was featured in an AOL lead article the other day complaining about the Trump administration.
George,
I’m not a fan of AOC. Please don’t associate my views with hers.
Nor am I a fan of Mann. To take his views and behavior as representative of climate scientists is general is not warranted. If he brings politics to bear on his science of the interpretation of science in general (which I don’t know is true; I’m not much interested in what he thinks, so I don’t know), that’s wrong, plain and simple.
Kristi,
The climate change ‘debate’ is intrinsically politic agenda, abetted by well funded political science. Statements such as ““The evidence that humans have caused at least 50% of the observed rise in average global temperature is strong enough that we can accept that as a basis for decision-making.” are political agenda assertions, not scientific fact. The hotly debated ‘evidence’ does not support the assertion or political decision making. Failing to acknowledge this is a denial of reason and fact.
If we follow the scientific method, we must start from the null hypothesis that all climate change is natural. Current political science starts from the premise that humans are causing climate change (“It’s not a hoax!” – your premise…) and then funds and generates data to support that political hypothesis.
Oy vey! There is none so blind as she who will not see. Stop playing the useful tool!
J Mac,
“The climate change ‘debate’ is intrinsically politic agenda”
Intrinsically? That is evidence that you bring politics to bear on science, not that others do.
“…abetted by well funded political science.”
The science is funded, sure. All science is. That shows nothing. There is also funding to spread the idea that the science is not trustworthy, or that it’s too uncertain to use for policy-making, as well as funding to convince people it is. That’s the political side, but that doesn’t mean it necessarily affects the science itself.
Statements such as ““The evidence that humans have caused at least 50% of the observed rise in average global temperature is strong enough that we can accept that as a basis for decision-making.” are political agenda assertions, not scientific fact.”
Again, you are injecting politics into the science. In my statement it is the judgment of the science that comes first, and based on that judgment, decisions are made.
This is an important issue, and your response is symptomatic of one of the main problems in the debate. I’m not suggesting that those on the “warmist” side don’t do the same, I’m saying that anybody who does so is wrong.
Of course the null hypothesis is that humans have not affected climate. Do you think that’s ignored? Most scientists are not fools, though some clearly are. There are fools in every field.
There is no evidence to suggest it’s a hoax, although some people will find evidence if they want badly enough to see it. In my experience, those who do so generally don’t know the reasoning behind what is done, or how it is done, or how it is checked statistically. Errors are part of doing science, and egos are part of being human, but they are not evidence that there is an intentional overall hoax. After decades of research all over the world, including by corporations that would potentially lose money from it, one would think that a conspiracy would have been revealed by now. Do you suppose that every single scientist out there has no integrity? Even most contrarian scientists don’t suggest there’s a hoax.
I’m not of much use to anyone, so it’s hard to see how I could be a tool.
I’ve participated on this site for years now, and have never done so in other climate science discussions. I’m not hanging out in echo chambers that support my views, I’m testing my views to see if I’m missing some key evidence or idea, and I have learned some things that have influenced my views. I almost never read media reports about climate change (unless they are presented here, which I doubt is a good cross-section, but I don’t really know) because I don’t want to be influenced by them. I instead read the original scientific literature, and try to understand it as well as I can, not being a climate scientist (my background is in ecology).
I suspect you don’t know what my ideas about policy are, and I know you don’t know my political ideas. Sure, I’m a Democrat, but we are not all the same any more than conservatives are.
We are all biased, and it takes recognizing that to try to counteract it.
If the climate review panel really does its job, it will discover there’s no science at all in any of the consensus position. Not the climate modeling, not the air temperature record and worst of all, not the paleo air temperature reconstructions.
The whole business is pseudo-science.
Climate modelers in particular have completely destroyed the discipline of climate physics.
With the help of the American Physical Society, I might add.
“Climate modelers in particular have completely destroyed the discipline of climate physics.”
Their snake-oil selling ways will ultimately affect many other science and medicine disciplines as well in public perception. From long-established vaccine efficacy to the urgency of avoidance of marijuana by teens and young adults, that science too will be more easily dismissed… with great detrimental societal impacts.
You mention the APS Pat, but it won’t be just the APS, but also the NAS and the AAAS as well. All infiltrated by partisan activists masquerading as scientists.
Agreed, Joel. I chose out the APS because they are the most influential society. But the ACS is just as culpable, and the AIT and all the rest.
Agreed also about the ruination of the reputation of science. Every nut case in the country, especially young-Earth Creationists, will get to argue — ‘See? They lied about the climate, and they’re lying about ____________insert nut-case cause here__________, too!
There’s going to be hell to pay.
President Trump can beat this Environmental issue. He has a technology of Carbon Capture Utilization that is affordable and it turns CO2 into good paying full time jobs and money. https://youtu.be/RQRQ7S92_lo
oh please… CCS as an End to itself is BS.
Sid, you put your money on bad horse. Stopping throwing good money after bad.
The captured CO2 would be useful for Enhanced oil recovery, but that is about it, and only where it can be delivered economically to oil fields that could use it.
The waste of additional fossil fuel energy to capture that CO2 is not justified when China’s and India’s emissions are beyond control and accelerating away.
People need to wake themselves up. The eyes do not see what the mind does not know. It is up to us to show the starry eyed cAGW believers that something is amiss. Once people can wake up that that something fundamental to the argument is wrong, then they can be woken up and have their lightbulb moment.
From the article: “They write that the Trump “administration will seek to undermine the very science on which climate change policy rests.” Were the science as settled as activists claim, then they should welcome a thorough review so as to put to rest questions about the science.”
That should be one of the first questions skeptics ask the alarmists: Why are you afraid of a review of climate science? What do you have to hide? What are you trying to avoid?
The Alarmists have a big problem: Lack of evidence of CAGW. The alarmists want to keep this a secret and Trump challenging them and their CAGW speculation is going to put the focus on their lack of even a shred of evidence that human-derived CO2 is having any effect on Earth’s weather.
NASA and NOAA and all the rest of the Alarmists say the temperatures go up, up, up. Hottest years evah!
Trump says the temperatures go “up and down”, “up and down”.
Trump is describing the real global temperature profile. The alarmists are describing a global temperature profile that is science fiction and does not resemble any other historic temperture profile: the bogus, bastardized Hockey Stick, which is unique in the world.
Here’s what Trump and the alarmists are talking about:
http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/briefs/hansen_07/
The chart on the left shows the temperatures cooling for a few decades like it did around 1910 and then warming for a few decades like from 1910 to 1940, and then cooling again from 1940 to 1980, where the cooling was near the same level of cooling as 1910, and then warming again from 1980 to the present, but getting no hotter than 1998, or 1934. “Up and down”, “up and down”, as Trump says.
The chart on the right is the bogus, bastardized modern-era Hockey Stick chart which was created by the Climategate conspirators to make the global temperature profile seem like it was getting hotter and hotter every year and was now at the hottest point in history. THIS is the only thing the alarmists have to hang their hat on when claiming CO2 is causing unprecedented warming, and the whole chart is bogus. CAGW has been built on this Lie.
The real global temperature profile is the chart on the left. Other unmodified charts from around the world look like this chart with the 1930’s showing to be as warm as today. What this means is there is no unprecedented warming taking place and CAGW is not happening.
No unmodified chart from around the world resembles the bogus, bastardized Hockey Stick chart on the right. It’s all made up out of the fevered imaginations of those trying to promote CAGW.
The Climategate conspirators should be punished for what they have done. They have decieved the world and brought great harm to humanity with their CAGW lies.
“That should be one of the first questions skeptics ask the alarmists: Why are you afraid of a review of climate science? What do you have to hide? What are you trying to avoid?”
Tom Paine: “It is not truth, but error only, that shrinks from inquiry.”
There has never been a CAGW debate as the unaltered data does not support it.
That is why there was climategate.
There is a cottage industry of government paid ‘scientists’ who are blatantly, obviously, altering past climate data and current climate data to push CAGW, as the data does not, support CAGW or AGW.
CAGW is well funded, its believers fanatical, and scientifically 100% incorrect.
Trump is doing what he can. He is a president in a system with fanatics, with corruption (fake science and CAGW political money), and with idiotic scientific beliefs.
https://notrickszone.com/#sthash.BlxTY2Yc.dpbs
It’s been long known that NASA GISS has been going through its historical temperature data archives and erasing old temperature measurements and replacing them with new, made up figures without any real legitimate reason.
This practice has led to the formation of new datasets called “adjusted” data, with the old datasets being called “V3 unadjusted”. The problem for global warming activists, however, was that when anyone looks at the old “V3 unadjusted” – i.e. untampered data – they often found a downward linear temperature trend. Such negative trends of course are an embarrassment for global warming alarmists, who have been claiming the planet is warming up rapidly.
The adjusted “unadjusted” data
So what to do? Well, it seems that NASA has decided to adjust its “V3 unadjusted datasets” and rename them as “V4 unadjusted”. That’s right, the adjusted data has become the new V4 “unadjusted” data.
And what kind of trend does the new “V4 unadjusted” data show?
You guessed it. The new V4 unadjusted data are now yielding warmed up trends, even at places where a cooling trend once existed.
It might also help if FOX news actually had a few “climate science” segments. Yes, several commentators are skeptical, but rarely do they do more than offer their own opinion. Appearances by skeptical scientists are few & far between.
We need a happy, engaging, and entertaining scientist who in a five minute segment can knock it out of the park.
(I know the science can be boring. but considering what is at stake, think of it as a public service.)
What happens in the newspapers is a steady “drip, drip” of alarmist articles under the weather section with the science already “settled.”
There is no more fundamental axiom than:
A Superpower’s military strength flows from economic power. Economic power flows from the ability to efficiently use and have access to energy resources, primarily fossil fuels.
The US of course. But Russia as well. The **only** reason Putin is still able to keep Russia’s declining population and military power significant on the world stage is due to its fossil fuel exports, primarily to Western Europe and the revenue that generates.
China is desperately poor with its own limited domestic energy resources considering its population size and economic output. That does and will drive strong Imperialistic tendencies. Indonesia and Australia need to be very worried long-term. Any leader of those 2 countries who doesn’t realize this is an imbecile.
As for any FoxNews info segment on Climate Change:
It would need to light on the science, and and heavy on the economics. That is the real $$ consequences to people’s household budgets if electric bills doubled, gas/oil heating bills doubled, and automobile fuel prices doubled in a short time under a carbon tax from Dumbocrats. Wind turbines marring the landscape, brown-outs and black-outs under insane 50%-100% renewable electricity mandates that only makes Tom Steyer and his ilk richer.
The tutorual would need to show:
1. China and India unconstrained in CO2 emissions,
2. the economic growth stunting that limits on the US would impose will put the US and the West in general at a serious economic weakness and thus military disadvantage by 2040 if we follow these suicidal CC energy policies.
3. The obvious “our ass handed to us” by a dominant China in Asia and the Western Pacific. Sayonara Australia. It was a good 200 year run you had as an Anglo outpost in Pac-Asia. And remember, the Chicommies are not too keen on the whole “human-rights” and individual dignity thing.
Trump rightly fired Bannon for such anti-China rants.
The G20 will involve Xi, Putin, Trump, and maybe Modi meeting on policy.
Various provocations to to derail that fade in idiocy beside CO2.
“It might also help if FOX news actually had a few “climate science” segments”
Isn’t that the truth! Fox News has Mark Steyn on the network all the time and they ask him about every subject except climate change! Maybe it has something to do with his lawsuit against Michael Mann.
They sometimes have Marc Marano on and Joe Bastardi, and Roy Spencer but they don’t have them on nearly enough. As the election process proceeds and climate change becomes a big topic then perhaps Fox News will cover it more. At least Fox News is seeking advice from the right people, when they do! 🙂
“But a conflict is inevitable if we are to have any chance of getting the best science used to inform policy makers.”
An impedement is that the ‘best science’ is considered to be the IPCC’s assessment defining what the ‘consensus’ believes and which itself is highly biased by the policy requirements of the UNFCCC.
The IPCC must either assess the science independent of the UNFCCC’s policy goals, or step aside, declare their assessment invalid and allow the science to correct itself.
I think we already know that CO2 is not the dominant control on atmospheric temperature just from the Pre Holocene geological ice core record where CO2 rise faithfully follows temperature rise, and also the human historical record where the Roman and Medieval warming events, that were hotter than the present, were not accompanied by appreciable CO2 rise.
Most atmospheric CO2 comes from warming ocean degassing, however their is little doubt that modern industrialisation has contributed significant CO2, but even so how much greenhouse warming this has this cause relative to the dominant water vapour control that modulates our climate?
It is quite evident that even with the corrupted ground temperature record, partly related to the HIE in cities, that in any detail the cyclic nature of historical temperatures at local and global scale do not closely match the CO2 rise especially since the slowdown in warming post 2000. Therefore, although atmospheric CO2 and temperature are somewhat related it is clear that temperature is the dominant control not CO2.
Let these facts be exposed to the media in a proper review of climate science and we will start to so the ebb of the modern CAGW meme.
But if you tell the truth you get a major drop in revenue from the sale of ads.
What to do?
Make all Government funded research* open and transparent…
Just mandate that ALL Government paid for research* MUST show ALL data, code, methods, etc., and must be made freely open to all members of the public to view & download.
All publicly funded research falling foul of this mandate will be immediately terminated, and if already published it will be rescinded. This mandate to stand even for joint research with charitable and commercial entities — if they want Government money, regardless of how small the Government funding is, they must be open about the research, To this end (openness and transparency) no research will be undertaken with outside the US entities that do not fully abide by this policy (e.g. UK’s University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU).)
Government funded research* will have gagging orders preventing researchers from taking court action to keep any part of their Government funded research* secret, or to prevent any public criticism of the research (but not the researchers). Government funded research* must stand on its merit not the authority, or hubris, of the author.
*Research deemed to be of National Security will be treated by separately.
As far as I know the Pentagon put “Climate” ahead of terrorism on its national security threats.
So there goes that exception.
Whatever, it is not a secret so no part of it should be hidden, especially the surface temperature records and how & why they are adjusted, and by how much.
It’s not government money – it belongs to the people.
Yep, but more importantly make all the ‘science’ open and available e.g. the surface temperature data and all the code, reasons etc., for adjustments to them.
Every part of Publicly Funded research should be open and available regardless of politics.
Do whatever it take to see what they’re doing to the surface temperature record.
The news media’s climate policy explained.
https://tambonthongchai.com/2019/06/24/cjr/
One of he cleverest thing that the Greens did was to change Global
warming to climate change.
So what about reversing itt. Keep saying Climate change, yes
remember when the Greens changed that from Global Warming, now
why was that, because Global warming such as it was had stopped,
its been cooling ever since 1997. .
As to climate change , it ha always changed, so lets simply prepare for
whatever nature sends our way.
Stop wasting money on fighting Global warming come climate change.
Instead lets spend it on real problems such as Health.
And as with all good propaganda keep on saying it, again and again. And
keep the message simple, no complicated explanations as to why the
Greens are wrong. Just say again and again that they are wrong and its
costing us billons in taxpayers money which is best spent elsewhere
such as on Health matters.
MJE VK5ELL
Actually, I think changing global warming to climate change shows how dumb they are. Climate change is natural and normal. I don’t know anybody who says the climate never changes.
The Overton Window has well and truly shifted. Tom’s Canadian fossil fuel sponsered views are so far out there that they form no part of rational discourse.
Simon, You have just claimed/implied that Tom Mason is paid by at least one Canadian Company or fossil fuel organization to express his opinions. Evidence, please, or abandon the accusation. An even better approach might be to discuss his ideas, instead of attacking the person.
Tony.
Simon & Anthony T Ratliffe
I must be close to the target if flack like this occurs …
“Tom’s Canadian fossil fuel sponsered views” … are just as profitable as your Soros sponsored comments. Or is ‘Simon’ just taking pot-shot at anyone with views he personally dislikes, either way it’s fun thanks for the laugh ‘Simon’.
So far the Canadian fossil fuel companies, in fact any and all oil companies have neglected to pay me. Not that I need their $$$s, not while they fool politicians with their foolish money-making schemes of getting the people to buy into solar/wind non-generators instead of reliable coal.
P.S. And before you type it, no coal company money supports me either.
Tom Harris wrote this article. His affiliations and sponsors are well documented on SourceWatch and others. I doubt he gets much funding these days, as his ‘there is no greenhouse effect’ views are well outside the Overton Window.
The question I’ve got to ask is this: if Trump cared even one Iota about the science – why didn’t he shut down the data manipulators at NASA within the first few days of office?
It seems to me that like the Climate Cult always promising something will happen in the future and never delivering anything concrete right now … all Trump has done is to talk about doing something about the Climate Cult, talked about a red team, talked about draining the Climate “swamp”, but in reality he hasn’t actually done anything concrete.
ya he’s slithering and it’s scary
“Climate activists recognize that any point of view can be effectively discredited by making an analogy, even indirectly, with Holocaust denial. We can take advantage of this by pointing out that it is both irrational and offensive to Holocaust survivors and their families to equate the possibility of future climate problems with one of the most horrific events in history. ”
================
to quote Eli:
Why are you stealing the sacrifice of those who died in the Holocaust?
denier is a word. It is not solely linked to the Holocaust
Correct, it is now also connected to climate, and in fact, calling someone a “denier” now has the default meaning of “climate denier”. But the connection to the original meaning “holocaust denier” still remains. It isn’t “just a word”; it is an epithet, and a scurrilous one.
The doomsayers have the advantage of TELEVISION. Climate disasters are spectacularly splashed, almost daily, scenes of utter destruction by hurricanes, floods,
earthquakes that gives the impressions of increase occurrences.
Those that debunk these doomsayers provide scholarly analyses, graphs and the like that really, only scientists and the learned understand.
To ordinary folks, which is more convincing????
I had to dig deep, but this quote (from a Boston Globe piece by a very influential writer) helped get the D-word “slam” started:
Note that was 16 years ago! Ross Gelbspan, another former Globe writer (and former Al Gore aide,
his “spin” expert) picked up the baton and wrote articles recommending use of that term as a weapon.
(Ross also promoted the switch in terminology from Global Warming to Climate Change.)
Progressives are very proficient at using language as a tool to deceive.
If the climate gets colder that won’t stop the climate alarmists. This is why they changed the name from Global Warming to Climate Change. That way they can blame us no matter what happens. If it gets warmer or colder, whether there is more rain or less its still climate change and it’s our fault.
After a while, since 1977 in my case, you realize it never had anything to do with real science or weather.
It was always political agenda, some odd bedfellows like pro-nuclear advocates, anti-coal-union activism in England, general disdain for mideast oil dependency in the West all helped it along with the hard core anti-Western self hatred collectivist Green agenda.
Even now there are piles of “skeptics” who refuse to face the political truths, focus on spaghetti charts and obscure problematic research. Their sensibilities can’t accept the underlying agenda as they may even share that agenda away from the climate topic. Some even act as Straw-men on obscure science details to be useful idiots in the broader debate. Consider what this site was like before President Trump was elected?
Climate alarmists for global control of energy and consumption are only half the issue. Pandering go along get along skeptics who pretend it’s a real science driven policy debate ignoring all the gatekeeper corruption obvious the past 50 years are as much the problem. Their spineless, fake, apolitical skepticism has only legitimized the would-be tyranny “Climate Change” policy really represents.
There may be no real lasting reforms under the Trump administration, it’s all in a holding pattern. A brief relief but the skeptic community is as dysfunctional as ever.
The GOP surrendered long ago on the “science” part of the debate. The President is in a long term “triangulation” strategy to make the Greenshirts appear extreme (not hard) and position as appeasing to co2 reduction but not socially and economically extreme. The President denounces left wing media but he doesn’t spend much energy on academia bias which is the root of the climate change cult formation. It’s disappointing but that’s how it is.
The Pruitt “Red Team” never really formed, we aren’t going to denounce and exit the UN Climate Framework as Dr. Lindzen advocated for.
The calculus is that the anti-warmers have no where to go with there votes, by encouraging the extremists a few more votes might be picked up in reaction but if he declared war on Green extremists (Full AGW rejection with organized scientist supporting the argument) he would be characterized even more successfully as anti-environmental and be at further risk of Green mobilizing efforts. I don’t agree but I’m sure they recall the Reagan effort to stand up to the Green machine.
The truth is the skeptics are badly organized, politically divided and many have their heads buried in the “about science” sand. Most of the meaningful mainstream science for public consumption is already bought off for generations now. You create a government funded cartel, you end up with a “consensus” that is politically very hard to deal with or reject.
Some might even argue that giving the Greens the rope of policy implementation might have an upside of losing support as they most certainly have a Green Tyranny in their hearts. They’ll hang themselves with that rope. Not until millions even billions suffer far more of course. Every time a massive plan, cap and trade being the last major policy thought, it collapses with some backlash. So the President is on defense with this issue. The “Green New Deal” is really a 2020 gift to the Trump campaign as the electorate is exposed to the fanatical social and political engineering in the design. This might be viewed as a better outcome then trying to convince a public whose eyes roll over on science details that climate change is a dog whistle for New World Order globalism, which sums it up rather well. Ordinary people can’t argue tax code details or co2 impacts, they aren’t interested. Being Green is a carefully cultivated messaging brand for over 50 years, the tactic will remain restraining them but not humiliating them. The energy sector and high end capitalism isn’t popular. I don’t agree with the President’s passivity against Greenshirt efforts but I understand why it’s going this way.
“FAKE SCIENCE” which damages the standing of the real sciences. The hucksters have taken over. But how do you communicate that in the face of the lockstep media?
the same way most thinking people understand “fake news” as being a very real social reality.
People understand the funding scam and can put up with some of that, what people don’t like is the junk science produced being used to establish a central planning tyranny. It’s about the level of corruption.
We’ve had a population explosion in academics who simply can’t justify their views and existence with verifiable “science”. Climate was the perfect abstraction both politically and funding wise. “Gender studies”, every psychological malady and field just the tip of the iceberg in the growing area of pseudoscience advocacy and agenda. Over a billion a day changes hands on “climate” related spending, they dream of 25 billion a day within reach. Of course some of it is nonsense on the face of it and unrelated to the new climate concept. I saw an banana with a “Gluten Free” label not long ago in a convenience store. Does that transaction count for gluten free spending calculations?
So people will but electric cars, call it green and “carbon free” even if it’s charged by a coal or gas fired source. Storm windows, insulation, more efficient kitchen appliances all marketed as “Green”. The blood and guts is when it comes to rationing and taxes. Fake science has always been with us.
First there is the issue of consensus. It is all just speculation. Scientists never registered and voted on the validity of the AGW conjecture. But even it they had such would be meaningless because science is not a democracy. The laws of science is not some form of legislation. Scientific theories are not validated by means of a voting process. If “consensus” is given as one of the reasons to believe, then there must be some real problems with the science.
At first the AGW conjecture seems to be quite plausible but upon closer inspection one finds that the AGW conjecture is based on only partial science and is full of holes. Based on the paleoclimate record and the work done with models, one can conclude that the climate change we are experiencing today is caused by the sun and the oceans over which mankind has no control. Despite the hype, there is no real evidence that CO2 has any effect on climate and there is plenty of scientific rationale to support the idea that the climate sensitivity of CO2 is zero. It is all a matter of science. Believing in the very flawed AGW conjecture has become a religion and is really anti-science.
The AGW conjecture depends upon the existence of a radiant greenhouse effect provided for by trace gases in the Earth’s atmosphere with LWIR absorption bands. The claim is that gases with LWIR absorption bands trap heat because they absorb, LWIR absorption band photons. What is ignored is the fact that good absorbers are also good radiators so that the radiation that gets absorbed also gets radiated away. In the troposphere the increased energy that a greenhouse gas may acquire is thermalized and shared with other molecules. Heat transfer in the troposphere is dominated by conduction, convection, and phase change and not by LWIR absorption band radiation as the AGW conjecture would have one believe. It is the so called greenhouse gases that radiate heat related energy away to space. It is the non-greenhouse gases that are more apt to trap heat energy because they are such poor LWIR radiators.
A real greenhouse does not stay warm because of the action of so called greenhouse gases. A real greenhouse stays warm because the glass limits cooling by convection. It is entirely a convective greenhouse effect. No radiant greenhouse effect has ever been observed. So too on Earth where instead of glass, gravity and the heat capacity of the atmosphere act to limit cooling of the Earth’s surface. As derived from first principals, the Earth’s convective greenhouse effect keeps the surface of the Earth on average 33 degrees C warmer than it would otherwise be. 33 degrees C is the amount derived from first principals and 33 degrees C is what has been observed. Any additional warming caused by a radiant greenhouse effect has not been observed. In fact a radiant greenhouse effect has not been observed anywhere in the solar system. Hence the radiant greenhouse effect is nothing but science fiction. Hence the AGW conjecture is nothing but science fiction as well.
But for those that still believe in a radiant greenhouse effect, the primary greenhouse gas in the Earth’s atmosphere is H2O and not CO2. Molecule per Molecule, H2O is a much stronger IR absorber than is CO2 and there is so much more H2O ( 2%) in the Earth’s atmosphere than CO2(.04%). So actions to reduce CO2 emissions have no significant effect upon the total amount of greenhouse gases in the Earth’s atmosphere and hence no effect on the total radiant greenhouse effect if there actually was such a thing. The AGW theory is that adding CO2 to the Earth’s atmosphere causes warming that causes more H2O to enter the atmosphere which causes even more warming which causes even more H2O to enter the atmosphere and so forth. The claim is that the positive feedback provided for by H2O results in amplifying CO2 based warming by roughly a factor of 3. But what the AGW conjecture totally ignores is that besides being the primary greenhouse gas, H2O is a primary coolant in the Earth’s atmosphere moving heat energy from the Earth’s surface, which is mostly some form of H2O, to where clouds form via the heat of vaporization. The overall cooling effect of H2O is evidenced by the fact that the wet lapse rate is significantly less than the dry lapse rate so that H2O provides a negative feedback attenuating any warming that CO2 might cause. If CO2 really caused warming than the increase in CO2 over the past 30 years would have caused at least a measurable increase in the dry lapse rate in the troposphere but that has not happened.
Climate change is happening so slowly that it takes networks of sophisticated sensors, decades ot even detect it. We must not mix up true climate change with weather cycles that are part of the current climate. But even if we could stop the Earth’s climate form changing, extreme weather events and sea level rise would continue because they are part of our current climate. Mankind has not been able to change one extreme weather event let alone alter global climate. But even if we could somehow change the Earth’s climate, we do not know what the optimum climate is so we do not know what climate to change it to. Spending huge amounts of money trying to alter the Earth’s climate is just a huge waste of money. We would be a lot better off improving the Earth’s economy so as to improve related infrastructure and to not have people living in dangerous areas. Extreme weather events are going to continue happening no matter what we do.
If we are really serious about conserving on the use of fossil fuels. solar and wind are a little help, but nuclear is the only serious alternative to supplying our energy needs. The rational approach is, as fossil fuel burning power plants become old and decrepit. they should be replaced by nuclear power plants.
If scientist could, they would conduct an experiment to prove that in 50 years we will find climate changed to an extent that damages “civilisation”, unfortunately a planet B is required and we need to keep “A” “safe” until the experiment concludes.
This is what you all demand but of course the experiment is impossible. so what can climate scientists do? they can look at the physics / chemistry/ fluid dynamics / etc. and make a scientific guess of what co2 is going to do if it doubles in quantity in the atmosphere.
This is of course not what they would like to do but it is the only option.
You could say prediction is not science. But you need to speak to bridge builders who predict how their design will react when traffic uses their structure. Sometimes they get it wrong and pay the price (foot bridge in London – they did not realise that as it starts swaying people will fall into step making it sway further but here a quick modification fixed the problem).
Scientists can only use what they know to make a prediction. A CONSENSUS of predictions is all that can be used to provide the most likely outcome. A quick fix is not a sensible solution if no action is taken but the scientists are right.
I do not understand why this is not acceptable when the result of getting it wrong is global warming beyond what society can safely tolerate and there is no quick fix. NOTE that NO climate scientist believes in a Venus-like outcome for the future over-co2d earth.
One of the best way to turn this ship around is for the government to provide a lot of funding for research into natural climate variability. Right now legitimate research into climate variability, aside from the ones which say it is unimportant, is viewed as denial propaganda. However, were the gov to pour money into such studies, universities and researchers will follow that money. Right now environmentalists and climate researchers are marching hand-in-hand after the government and foundation funds. If the money flowed the other way, we would begin to see a divergence and a healthy tension in academia between those who believe it is all man made and those who think they have other ideas. It was, after all, a stroke of genius when the IPCC was chartered to study MAN MADE climate change, not climate change in general.
Attacks by Climate Alarmists have really become rabid over the last 12 months. If I only count the number of times I have been attacked those last months, I assume they are growing desperate. And I get it, they see their options run away. More and more of their models get debunked, more and more evidence supporting much less dramatic developments in weather and climate pops up, and we are moving towards a cooling cycle. Plus, there is a political backlash already now and with mounting costs, this is going to intensify. But the Ponzi scheme called Climate Alarmism needs ever more cash and ever more young souls that can be fed to the grinder as soldiers for the cause. Time is running out and they know it. I would be petty desperate too in their place – but I am not in their place.
Climate scientists say there is a high probability that there will be a problem with AGW in the next decade or two.
Politicians say there is no problem now or in the future.
Who do you believe?? And why
The young green activated / on the road again :
https://www.google.com/search?client=ms-android-huawei&ei=Ky0WXcqdA6eZ1fAP7oChCA&q=New+green+c20+hamburg+burning&oq=New+green+c20+hamburg+burning&gs_l=mobile-gws-wiz-serp.
12 years left. For what:
https://www.dw.com/en/hamburg-g20-riot-damages-run-into-millions/a-39745157
Green riots G20:
https://www.google.com/search?q=g20+hamburg+krawalle&oq=g20+hamburg+&aqs=chrome.
It’s all a pleasant thought the President might take a more aggressive proactive skeptical posture to the contrived climate lobby.
The unfortunate reality is the President is committed to a triangulation strategy regarding the climate and Green voting sector. There is no alternative for skeptics with their votes and they remain divided and sadly ineffectual. The divide similar to those of establishment GOP and more conservative factions. Meanwhile to core Green movement is largely a monolithic block at the leadership level that make it worth the triangular approach if only to minimize their full mobilization should an aggressive challenge of the climate orthodoxy commence as policy. Hence no “Red Team” and certainly no exit from the UN Framework which would be the logical evolution if reason were the only guide.
Skeptics, in particular those of the weaker appeasement contingency pretending it’s some academic science dispute, remain remarkably obtuse to the political situation described. So many of the suggested sentiments in the post are worthwhile but wishful in thinking. I see no cleansing toward skeptic unity and the fractious resistance to Provocative climate agenda will remain not worth the President’s full commitment. It’s unfortunate from views but I see the calculation. Many skeptics remain politically obtuse and therefore marginalized in their lobbying efforts.
The Stupid Party revisited for many of us.
Is anyone else getting tired of reading and needing to comment on the same “pholish physics’ over and over again after >31 years? (or maybe it is just me.)
arationofreason