Guest whatever by David Middleton
This Quillette essay by Dr. Patrick T. Brown of San Jose State University is interesting…
Published on July 30, 2019
Empiricism and Dogma: Why Left and Right Can’t Agree on Climate Change
written by Patrick T. BrownAs a climate scientist, I often hear puzzled complaints about the political polarization of the public discussion about anthropogenic global warming. If it is an empirical and scientific matter, such people ask, then why is opinion so firmly divided along political lines? Since it tends to be the political Right that opposes policies designed to address and mitigate global warming, responsibility for this partisanship is often placed solely on the ideological stubbornness of conservatives.
This is a theme common to research on political attitudes to scientific questions. Division is often studied from the perspective of researchers on the Left who, rather self-servingly, frame the research question as something like: “Our side is logical and correct, so what exactly makes the people who disagree with us so biased and ideologically motivated?” I would put books like Chris Mooney’s The Republican Brain: The Science of Why They Deny Science—and Reality in this category.
Works like The Republican Brain correctly point out that those most dismissive of global warming tend to be on the Right, but they incorrectly assume that the Left’s position is therefore informed by dispassionate logic. If the Left was motivated by pure reason then it would not be the case that liberals are just as likely as conservatvies to deny science on the safety of vaccines and genetically modified foods. Additionally, as Mooney has argued elsewhere, the Left is more eager than the Right to deny mainstream science when it doesn’t support a blank-slate view of human nature. This suggests that fidelity to science and logic are not what motivates the Left’s concern about global warming.
[…]
Quillette
On the one hand, Dr. Brown “gets it”…
Those on the Right are more likely to see the wealth of developed countries as rightfully earned by their own industriousness, while those on the Left are more likely to view the disproportionate wealth as fundamentally unjust and likely caused by exploitation. The idea that wealthy countries must therefore be penalized and made to subsidize poor countries is one that aligns well with the Left’s views about rebalancing unfairness. An accentuating factor is the Right’s tendency to favor national autonomy and therefore to oppose global governance and especially international redistribution.
[…]
Global warming is a tragedy of the commons, in which logical agents act in ways that run counter to the longterm interests of the group. These types of “collective-action problems” usually call for top-down government intervention at the expense of individual action and responsibility. Furthermore, the longterm nature of global warming demands acquiescence to collective action across generations. This natural alignment of the global warming problem with collectivist themes makes the issue much more palatable to the Left than the Right.
Quillette
- The “Left” embraces Gorebal Warming because it appeals to collectivism.
- The “Right” laughs at the “climate crisis” because it appeals to collectivism.
On the other hand, Dr. Brown “doesn’t get it”…
So, it should really not be particularly mysterious that opinions on global warming tend to divide along political lines. It is not because one side cleaves to dispassionate logic while the other remains obstinately wedded to political dogmatism. It is simply that the problem and its proposed solutions align more comfortably with the dogma of one side than the other. That does not mean, however, that the Left is equally out-of-step with the science of global warming as the Right. It really is the case that the Right is more likely to deny the most well-established aspects of the science. If skeptical conservatives are to be convinced, the Left must learn to reframe the issue in a way that is more palatable to their worldview.
Quillette
It’s impossible to reframe Enviromarxism in “in a way that is more palatable to [our] worldview”…
“This is probably the most difficult task we have ever given ourselves, which is to intentionally transform the economic development model, for the first time in human history”, Ms Figueres stated at a press conference in Brussels.
“This is the first time in the history of mankind that we are setting ourselves the task of intentionally, within a defined period of time to change the economic development model that has been reigning for at least 150 years, since the industrial revolution. That will not happen overnight and it will not happen at a single conference on climate change, be it COP 15, 21, 40 – you choose the number. It just does not occur like that. It is a process, because of the depth of the transformation.”
UNRIC, 2015
At an ECS of 3C there is no civilisation to have an economy.
At an ECS of 3 °C, the observed temperatures would consistently track the model mean. At an ECS at or below 1.5 °C, the observations would be at or near the bottom of the 5-95% band.
http://www.remss.com/research/climate/
How do you post a picture here?
As an editor, I can post images in comments using HTML. Post a link to the picture.
Yeah, but nobody clicks the links. Not even if it is a single chart falsifying the whole GHE story.. 😉
@ leitwolf
And that, in a nutshell is why the tropics will not get warmer in a “warming world”. It also explains:
1) Why it rains every afternoon during some seasons.
2) Why tourists looking to get glorious sunset pictures get disappointed as low clouds on the horizon spoil the sunset at the last minute.
3) When it rains, you get wet, but you do not get cold.
Leitwolf:
Communication is the responsibility of the sender. You made an extraordinary claim. Then dropped the ball.
Ja, well, kind of. Next to the negligible little detail, that clouds are warming the planet rather than GHGs (cough)..
I found that people prefer to look at a single picture, rather than reading 23 pages of unedited (my fault, did not get to it yet) text. But here it is..
https://de.scribd.com/document/414175992/CO21
Leitwolf:
From your link:
“4. GHGs, and specifically CO2, are not irrelevant just because there is too little of it. 10 meters of water exert the same pressure as the atmosphere, which means 10m below the surface there will be 2 atmospheres of pressure obviously. With CO2 having a concentration of “only” 400ppm, its mass could be reflected by 4mm of water. Compare that to the thickness of a sheet of paper to understand, that alayer of 4mm is easily enough to be opaque to any kind of radiation.”
GHE 33 C
Water vapor 12,500 ppm
CO2 350 ppm
CO2/Water vapor = 3%
CO2 by ppm is 3% of 33C or 1 C
CO2 is relevant
1 C for a doubling of CO2 seems about right
?
In the tradition of Jeopardy… What is a random image posted on a PBS website?
If the models yield a sensitivity of 3.0 °C +/-1.50 °C… The actual sensitivity is no more than 1.5 °C.
At an ECS of 3 °C, the observed temperatures would consistently track the model mean. At an ECS at or below 1.5 °C, the observations would be at or near the bottom of the 5-95% band.
http://www.remss.com/research/climate/
Could you post the image?
Not until I have a meaningful reference for it. The notion that the so-called consensus estimate is 3°C +/-1.5°C is not novel or relevant. This climate sensitivity range is derived from climate models, which overestimate the warming.
Here’s an interesting factoid:
At TCR of 3.0 °C, 100% of the warming since 1976 is due to CO2. Since we know the Pacific Climate Shift of 1976 was real and the cause of some of the warming… 3.0 °C is demonstrably wrong.
At a TCR of 1.25 °C, about 70% of the warming since 1976 is due to CO2. Since we know the Pacific Climate Shift of 1976 was real and the cause of some of the warming… 1.25 °C is not demonstably wrong.
Since the observations consistently track near the bottom of the 5-95% band of the model ensembles, the TCR can’t be above 1.5 °C.
Like almost every other IPCC/so-called consensus pronouncement, the real world worst case or most likely case, is at or below the IPCC/so-called consensus best case scenario.
That graph is just another way of displaying Knutti et al 2017, how is it any different from Scafetta 2017? (Apart from the fact that Scafetta dubiously only selected low ECS that is.) https://www.nature.com/articles/ngeo3017
Here is another version showing a compilation of 5 different source types.
The vast majority of the recent instrumental ECS estimates are between 1.5 and 2.0. This would make the TCR, the value that matters, between 1.0 and 1.5.
The instrumental estimates, largely drawn from satellite-measured radiation balances, are the only observation-based estimates.
I digitized the instrumental (observation-derived) ECS estimates…
TCR is approximately 2/3 of ECS.
Average ECS = 2.29 σ = 0.93
Average TCR = 1.53 σ = 0.63
Thank Zeke for proving my point.
Low sensitivity would track better. Natural variability is the flip side of sensitivity. The low sensitivity of the Russian GCMs output is more steady and boring.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/07/warminginterrupted-much-ado-about-natural-variability/
Swanson teamed up with a guy named Tsonis.
Loydo,
You wanna bet? Because when you put some money in, you will start thinking reasons why you would not be right. I really want to bet on this.
David,
Brown said
This is an interesting way of expressing this. What follows goes quickly off-topic, but I say this to disagree with Brown.
The Right seems to prefer seeing sex as a binary male-female thing. This is an evolutionary, stable fact, but not really a law, just true almost everywhere. This is a cnon-blank-slate approach.
The Left does NOT think sex (or gender as they say) a thing to be drawn on an empty slate, but rather a feature of the brain strongly hardwired and independent of genitals.
Some at the right seem to think while sex is a binary thing, parents can mix it up while raising children (so they think the brain IS a blank slate after all).
This is something I have been thinking a lot and while I do think there are mostly (like 99.999%) only men and women, there are some people whose genitals are not expressing clearly one sex, and how they feel about being a man or a woman should be listened to — while remembering that you can’t really take seriously what a child says — and while remembering that doing electable surgery based on just what people want to surgically cut off, is not a good approach.
Repeat: while trans-activists seem to think the patient is the king, there are people who should not be operated because they say so. And this is a hard fact about people regretting what they got when they were operated.
Hugs, Brown’s statement is convincingly substantiated in Steven Pinker’s The Blank Slate, The Modern Denial of Human Nature. Not to say that the gender dysphoria (I’m not sure what the accepted terminology is) issue couldn’t be an exception.
I’m sure I could do some reading. Thanks for a hint.
Time and again, they have expressed their belief that sexual identity is purely a social construct: hence, when born, a blank slate.
I don’t think it is so simple. I believe the keywords are individual rights and system responsibility. So when a leftist supports trans activism, it is based on the rights of the individual to define one’s identity and the society’s responsibility to provide tools to implement it.
The Right believes is one’s responsibilities and only accepts rights as self-implemented goods. The Right believes in human right of living life without depending on others, where the Left believes certain things should be provided free of charge by the society, i.e. by others.
Instead of believing in an empty slate, the left believes the society writes the slate (= social construct) but humans have the right to decide on what they allow written.
The Right believes in empty slate in a way people decide what to write on their slate and therefore are responsible to the society.
The order is different – are you writing or are you written on. Are you resposible to and of the society, or are you entitled to things from society.
The slate thing is just not consistent, it varies caseby case depending on the responsibility question.(at this point I’m sure nobody gets my idea, but so what)
Hugs
It’s all about entitlements. The more fortunate need to share some of their wealth for the common good”. Constant struggle between the two polar groups and always will be about what’s too much vs too little. My concern is about how congress handles this natural unavoidable struggle. Dems want more programs and republicans want tax cuts. They compromise by simply increasing the deficit. In the absence of a balanced budget amendment and government spending limited to a set percentage of GNP this strategy can only end badly and it will. People like to spend money they do not have, especially when it’s collected from someone else. We haven’t seen our last “1929”.
“It’s all about entitlements. The more fortunate need to share some of their wealth for the common good”. Constant struggle between the two polar groups and always will be about what’s too much vs too little.”
Far too many leftists have learned their economics from Donald Duck comic books featuring Scrooge McDuck! They think the rich steal money from the poor and then keep it in basement swimming pools so they can swim in it – thus keeping the money from being returned to the poor. Elizabeth Warren is a perfect example of this. She wants to tax all that wealth the rich are keeping.
In fact, the rich *do* return that money into the economy. They spend it or invest it. Except for the permanent government dependent underclass the “poor” are constantly in flux. People earn some of that money the rich spend or invest and move away from being poor while others lose their way and become poor. The government can’t change this no matter how much money they spend. The permanent government dependent underclass will so no matter how much money the government spends. And the government won’t change the constant flux of people moving up and down the economic ladder.
The left is blinded by emotion. They want to help. But all they do is hurt with their attempts to help.
The Left believes slavery is superior, morally superior. Hence, in the 1850s, apologist George Fitzhugh wrote “Slavery-The Only Practical Form of Socialism.” And Democrats continue to fail to learn from failure, much less failed Civil War.
At the current rate of change, how long until the climate reaches the ideal temperature?
That sounds like a skiing/boarding issue. Water or snow?
That line of reasoning just doesn’t make sense. Civilization thrives now in places that are 3C hotter than other places. If temps went up 3C everywhere, places that are too cold now would be much more liveable. Humans are extremely adaptable.
… especially if they have cheap, reliable energy at their disposal.
In almost every place the temperature varies by more than 3C daily. And as for annually…
“If temps went up 3C everywhere, places that are too cold now would be much more liveable.”
Maybe, but you didn’t quite complete your thought experiment.
… and places that are almost too hot now would be…unlivable.
To those billions of people live in hot places you say what? Move?
…… and places that have marginal rainfall… what? They can just move too right. Well guess what: they’re already on the move.
quote: “Well guess what: they’re already on the move.”
Please supply the extraordinary proof for your extraordinary claim.
Except that we know that isn’t true. Global Warming ISN’T globally even warming. So the daytime Highs in the Tropics stay the same while the nighttime winter Lows near the Poles rises the most.
Global Warming is a Boogeyman, and the Climate Crises is a colossal fraud. I only wish I believed that those profiting from it would one day be held accountable.
~¿~
When you look at the actual temperatures in the residual, the warming appears to mostly be overnight low winter temperature increases. The number of hot days and even heat spells have decreased in the best measured area of the world for the past 100 years.
I think all this talk about averages does not accurately depict what the nature of the changes are. If most of this residual is actually the result of warmth retention due to urban heat islands or even if it has to do with warmth retention overnight during winter — that does not imply that the world is going to end anytime soon or even in your great grandchildren’s lifetime.
People have been predicting catastrophe since long before I was born and every date for the eschaton comes and goes — with the faithful still holding fast to their faith that THIS TIME the world will end.
Our species survived ice ages. We survived the Holocene thermal optimum. I think we will survive the modern warm era and also bring the standard of living for people in the third world to first world standards as well. That will decrease their birthrates without anything as arcane as sneaking them infertility treatments or demanding 1 child policies.
It is a well known fact that most of the increase in average temperatures is due to the Tmin increasing, not Tmax. This is not a bad thing at all; in fact it is quite a good thing.
Back that up with the actual numbers Paul.
Loydo is clearly a comedian there are lots of countries that are 4 degree warmer than other countries and they all have a civilization. There may be some places in the world that become hard to inhabit at 3deg warmer but if you think civilization dies out at 3 deg warmer you are an idiot.
LdB
Dubai seems to be doing quite well at the upper extreme of Earth temperatures. But, instead of burning their oil, they convert it into gold.
Civilization started in southern Iraq-Khuzistan (Sumer and Elam) which is just about the hottest place on the planet with sustained 50 C temperatures in summer.
Yes, not to mention that a few hundred thousand years before THAT, humans started in Africa.
The idea that “hot = death” doesn’t pass the sniff test.
Tty
You are correct course, but it was much hotter in those days. I presume that higher temperatures initiate the thunderstorm cycle in the Sahara and the whole region into the ME turns into grassland filled with herd animals.
If the climate keeps warming for another century I fully expect that rainfall pattern to be reestablished. Even the desert will bloom.
Crispin,
I watched a documentary on the Sahara, the Sahara is on a 20k year cycle between wet and dry due to how prevailing winds blow across Africa. The winds have a north-south oscillation changing where the rain falls. Documentary was years ago so memory is a bit fuzzy but I believe they said we are 5k years into its dry cycle. I imagine the Sahara was a much more pleasant place to live as man first started developing civilization.
The difference in “average” temperature between a region in the tropics and northern america/europe/asia …is more like 20C. And the animals in those norther regions that (supposedly) “can’t adapt fast enough” sometimes have to deal with a difference between winter lows around -35C and summer highs around +35C. Of course, their ranges are more a result of competition between species than the level of adaptation to the climate. And while they ramble on like morons about the mass extinction under way, everyone seems blissfully ignorant of the fact that those delicate northern micro-climates they’re fighting to protect were buried under a kilometer of ice littler more than 12000 years ago…and probably will be again in a few thousand years.
There’s an old joke northern Europeans use to describe their southern neighbors: “Civilization ends where the palm trees start growing.”
Perhaps Loydo has been taken in by that old chestnut?
We’re just about due for the return of glaciation. My money’s on that for the real prospective disaster. Global Warming is mild, beneficial and mostly natural. We’ve barely recovered from the LIA.
If you’re really scared, Loydo, move North! There is plenty of cheap land in Northern Canada. What ate you waiting for?
Mods. My posts still not making it.
This article is full of #&*$. I’ll tell you what the difference between the left and right is. The right is individualist. They can live alone and lift their own weight. They know that they’re smart enough to form their own opinion. Look at who build small businesses in America and look at who are successful after avoiding university. The left is collectivist. They’re generally incapable of living away from a collective, or university. The most left amongst us are seemingly always stuck in university. They never really fall far away from that tree and are always activist. The right is always the furthest away and work instead of protest or join movements. That’s why true movements like 2016 and the tea party were so rare and incredibly significant. I wonder who would have supported Alfred Wegener in the 1920s and 30s and 40s when the breadth of academia rejected him? People who are incapable of not being collective certainly wouldn’t have. You’ve seen how quickly the collective perpetuated gender identity just like it did antinuclear power two generations ago and antiGMO, MONSANTO!!, a generation ago.
You’ve got it right, Jim.
The Enlightenment was a speciation event. Homo individualis emerged then. They went on to deduce individual rights and to produce every principle of value in our society.
The Romantic reaction was, and is, the attack of Homo collectivus, the prior dominant species. The most extreme of them are psychologically incapable of living outside a collective. Slavery to the normative is their fond desire.
The political conflict going on now can be seen as a war between competing species for the same ecological territory, which is human culture. It’s waged at the visceral level because people consciously gravitate to the ideas that are most attractive to them.
So, political behavior is excused in terms of ideas but is driven by the visceral attachment to collectivism or individualism.
It may be a war to the death. If collectivists win, their society will stagnate, as such societies always do, because all the free thinkers get weeded out. In that case, the end will come when the next big bolide descends.
So, really, the conflict is all about whether humans inherit the stars, or are obliterated on Earth.
Pat
You should stick to physical chemistry, about which you are extremely well informed.
Cheers
SR
Great vacuous criticism, SR
Is there some sort of Chicken Little competition going on in the loony left that I’m not aware of?
The lines and points on your chart, Loydo, are not “constrained by different lines of evidence.”
They are, instead, expressions of different sets of assumptions.
Thus far, there is no evidence at all that CO2 emissions impact global air temperature. The geological perspective implies air temperature impacts CO2 levels.
The whole AGW thing is climate models all the way down. And climate models have no predictive value.
The fact that you and all the consensus folks insist on interpreting events in light of their assumptions in no way makes their conclusions objectively viable.
“At an ECS of 3C there is no civilisation to have an economy.”
How do you figure that?
My guess is that he assumes the equilibrium climate sensitivity is 3C per doubling and the RCP8.5 is “business as usual.”
Atmospheric CO2 levels are 414ppm and actually accelerating, and as David noted in a recent post with the high probability of fossil fuel use continuing for decades, it is almost inconcievable we won’t reach 600+ppm.
With a CO2 increase of less than 50% we’ve already left a 1C increase in our dust. Factor in a 10 year lag (https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/10/3/031001) and 1.0 °C aerosol masking (https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/jgrd.50192) there is 2+ already baked in. The most recent studies suggest an ECS of 3C is probably conservative.
A 3C rise measured in decades is going to going to be a rate too fast by an order of magnitude for food production systems to adapt. All that is assuming a linear reponse – good luck with that.
Even though observed CO2 is currently close to RCP8.5, we can achieve 600ppm comfortable at RCP6. (https://www.usgs.gov/media/images/comparisons-among-4-ipcc-scenarios-greenhouse-gas-emissions).
I don’t think many realise how fragile this ‘civilised’ house of cards is. To think it can withstand such a massive, unprecedented disruption to the atmoshere’s thermal equilibrium is beyond wishful thinking.
But that’s ok its all just a political scam, carry on.
I don’t think you realise that you don’t know what you’re talking about, Loydo. And you’re bound and determined to never find out.
If you say so.
To extend Frank’s answer to Loydo, which Loydo sheepishly avoids with “If you say so” (SEE below): Loydo is guilty of assuming the consequent, a logical fallacy. Proof that adding CO2 to the climate system is an assumption based on destabilization from the Bern Model of the Carbon cycle – a destabilization that is itself contradicted by actual best measurements.
The result is circular reasoning – yet another fallacy – which isn’t science but belief. AGW is a cult and Loydo is clearly within its grip and cannot think through falsifiable tests that would bring him back to reality.
You never respond to science-based criticisms of your claims, Loydo.
It’s not that I say so. It’s that you demonstrate so.
“science-based criticisms of your claims”
If you were to make one I would. A snide “you don’t know what you’re talking” about is a bit different.
OO, “Proof that adding CO2 to the climate system is an assumption” does not make sense…’
Where is my affirming the consequent fallacy?
Loydo August 4, 2019 at 12:14 am, wrote, “If you were to make [a science-based criticism] I would. A snide “you don’t know what you’re talking” about is a bit different.”
A very disingenuous reply, Loydo, considering all the science and linked evidence I’ve confronted you with over your time here.
Here’s a set for you again, full links this time: The pseudoscience that is the entire AGW corpus: “Negligence, Non-science and Consensus Climatology”: http://eae.sagepub.com/content/26/3/391
The incompetent neglect of systematic measurement error in the global temperature record: http://meteo.lcd.lu/globalwarming/Frank/uncertainty_in%20global_average_temperature_2010.pdf (900 kB pdf)
Also here: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/04/19/systematic-error-in-climate-measurements-the-surface-air-temperature-record/
Global air temperature projections have no physical meaning: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/05/20/do-climate-projections-have-any-physical-meaning/
Climate modelers are not scientists and are not even competent to evaluate the accuracy of their own models: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/02/24/are-climate-modelers-scientists/
Proxy air temperature reconstructions do not reconstruct air temperature: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/04/03/proxy-science-and-proxy-pseudo-science/
Pointing out that you don’t know what you’re talking about isn’t a snide remark, Loydo. It points out a fact.
Patrick,
A set of scholarly treatises on why we don’t know what months or years are hotter than another. It is simply not able to be determined from the instrument results using land and/or sea based temperature measurements.
Nice work!
Thanks, Tim.
Hard as it is to believe, the people who compile the air temperature record don’t even know to account for the resolution limits of the historical instruments.
The scientific competence of all these people is somewhere around the naive freshman level.
You don’t even need to be able to do the math you did to understand the issue. I keep using the example of 1000 steel girders. You will find that some are longer and some are shorter, i.e. an error bar for the production process. You can measure these all you want and average all the measurements to find a mean but it simply won’t provide a more accurate measurement for for the lengths of the girders. The error bar for their length remains remains just as it was. When you design a structure using these girders you damn well better factor in that error bar.
It’s no different with thousands of thermometers measuring different temperatures. The error bar for those measurements simply can’t be wished away by calculating an average!
I’d put the chances more like 50/50. Approximately 13 years ago, I estimated the 50/50 value at 558 ppm. That was based on global peak emissions occurring in 2030…but at approximately a 20-30 percent lower level than the actual peak emissions will be.
https://markbahner.typepad.com/random_thoughts/2006/04/complete_set_of.html
But let’s say emissions exactly match RCP 6.0, and the concentration in 2100 is approximately 720 ppm.
With an ECS of 3.0 degrees Celsius per doubling, 720 ppm would represent approximately 4.1 degrees Celsius warming than the pre-industrial temperature that occurred at approximately 280 ppm.
https://scied.ucar.edu/climate-sensitivity-calculator
Do you really think that civilization is going to collapse from 4.1 degrees Celsius temperature rise from what the temperature was essentially in the “Little Ice Age”?
I ask because economists don’t see that as happening:
https://markbahner.typepad.com/random_thoughts/2017/07/gdps-with-and-without-climate-change.html
Even under the RCP 6.0 scenario, we’re talking about more than 8 decades for a 3C rise from the present global temperature.
Do you really even think most people will be eating meat from dead animals 8 decades from now? After all, look at Impossible Foods (of the “Impossible Burger” fame) and its competitors. They’re all booming, in terms of stock valuations and employee counts:
https://craft.co/impossible-foods/competitors
And do you really think that conditions of elevated CO2 levels and year-round elevated temperatures will be a big problem, since that is essentially the conditions that greenhouses deliberately operate at?
“I’d put the chances more like 50/50.”
Fair enough, although the captain of the Titanic should immediately stop accelerating and begin sharply turning the bows.
“Do you really think that civilization is going to collapse from 4.1 degrees Celsius temperature rise from what the temperature was essentially in the “Little Ice Age”?”
Civilisation? A rise of 4C is the end of the Pleistocene and local extintion is on the table.
“that is essentially the conditions that greenhouses deliberately operate at”
If, like a controlled greenhouse, nothing else varied then yeah maybe. The tropics would probably become uninhabitable but that’s only “home to 40% of the world’s population, projected to reach 50% by the late 2030s (wiki), so yeah probably still plenty of us left. But plenty of other things ARE going to vary.
Mark Bahner,
We actually agree almost 100% on this.
Here are the percentage increases in global CO2 emissions (not including land use changes) for the last several decades:
1961-1970 = 57 percent
1971-1980 = 26 percent
1981-1990 = 19 percent
1991-2000 = 9 percent
2001-2010 = 32 percent
2011-2020 = unknown, but will probably be about 10-15 percent.
So what happened? Emissions were sharply and continuously decelerating for the four decades prior to 2001-2010. Then, in 2001-2010, China went ballistic on coal-fired power plants. But that’s a one-off event. Coal use in North America is headed down. Coal use in the EU is headed down. Coal use in China has plateaued, or will within the next few years. Coal use in India is increasing, but that won’t do much more than make up for the declines in North America and the EU. Africa will go solar. So the world was sharply decelerating until the one decade of 2001-2010, which will never be repeated. Global CO2 emissions will probably peak before 2030, and will certainly peak before 2050.
From 1992 to 2018, global cumulative photovoltaics (PV) production increased from approximately 0.1 gigawatt to approximately 500 gigawatts (GW). That’s a factor of more than 5000 in 26 years. Assuming a 25 percent capacity factor, that 500 GW of capacity produces about 125 GW of continuous power (i.e., averaging 125 GW, 24/7/365). Total global energy consumption (not just electricity, but all energy) is about 20,000 GW continuous. So we’re about a factor of 160 away from being able to power the whole world with PV, after PV increased by a factor of 5000 in 26 years. Of course, the whole world will never be powered with exclusively with PV, but I don’t think it’s unreasonable to predict that by 2050, PV will supply more electrical energy in the U.S. than any source except natural gas:
https://markbahner.typepad.com/random_thoughts/2019/07/lets-see-who-knows-what-theyre-talking-about-part-deux.html
So the world is decelerating CO2 emissions and turning to new technologies.
“Local extinction?” Of human beings?! If you’re referring to “local extinction” of human beings, look at photographs of Abu Dhabi, Dubai, and Bahrain. There are millions of people living in those places, which are just about as hot and dry as it’s possible to get on earth.
Again, look at photos of Abu Dhabi, Dubai, and Bahrain. Those places are incredibly hot and dry, but the populations of three places are dramatically increasing, not decreasing…let alone are those places being totally abandoned. So I simply don’t understand how you think the tropics could become “uninhabitable.”
+42×1042
Loydo, please relax and go outside on a nice day, appreciate how wonderful it is to live in a climate that is, for most people, most of the time, between the freezing and boiling points of water, which has a lovely biosphere that feeds you, and the plant life at the bottom of the food chain, with life-giving CO2. I wish it was in your power to appreciate the fact that, even though it is mostly accidental, humans burning fossil fuels helps that life-giving CO2 become temporarily freed from sequestration, as humans also enjoy the main benefits of efficient energy to make their lives more easy and more productive. Consider the natural vector of CO2 sequestration by an environment that continually sucks it out of the atmosphere and deposits it for very long duration in places where it is essentially lost to the biosphere. CO2 is Good (with a capital G). We will all be far better off if we can manage to get atmospheric concentrations to 600 ppm than at 415, and better still at 1200 ppm than at 600. But it’s doubtful that human activity related to fossil fuels would ever be able to cause the atmosphere to attain 1200 ppm. The optimal concentration level that commercial greenhouses try to attain for their plants is even higher still, around 1500 ppm. Instead of fearing CO2, you should be rejoicing. But seeing CO2 for the resource, nay, the miracle that it is, appears to be beyond your power to imagine.
You have to wonder about the integrity of some of the trolls. They spend significant amounts of time reading this website, more than enough to realize that there are major flaws in the climate catastrophe narrative. However instead of seeing the forest instead of the trees, they keep searching for ways to undermine aspects of the skeptics position.
So what’s their motivation? Could it be it’s to defend the impending disaster narrative? Although they have little chance of converting any skeptics who are regular WUWT readers, they may be able to come up with something that might deter or delay some uncommitted visitors from joining the skeptics ranks.
It’s a dirty job, but someone has to do it.
. . . they may be able to come up with something that might deter or delay some uncommitted visitors from joining the skeptics ranks.
Occam’s Razor:
Nope. Loydo is true believer.
Ralph, I’m not sure it is an issue of integrity in many of them. There are probably a spectrum of trolls or the devoted believers. The underlying issue today is the use of catastrophes and fear as a controlling mechanism for the purpose of forcing world socialist government. These people believe that the world problems as they see them must be corrected by some global/regional/national totalitarian government entity. $oro$ organizations, Club of Rome, etc represent this belief. (Note “belief”) They simply cannot accept that a free society can solve these perceived problems. Others in this want to be the ones in that totalitarian structure and want power and the wealth it offers. For all of these the way to their objectives is to create endless fears and instability in societies. I think Michael Crichton described this well in his book “State of Fear”. So they create fear and frame themselves as the only savior to the masses from that fear.
The masses (and likely the majority of the trolls) fall into line and FEEL they need to follow this belief system. This group includes a wide variety denominations with their individual worries. Mother earth will take revenge; humans always destroy their environment; eating meat is hurting animals; someone has more than me and I deserve what they have; THOSE people hate me and prevent me from getting my fair share because I’m a xxxxx (fill in the blank) minority or other deserving subgroup. Any questioning of their belief system drives them into cognitive dissonance. These people FEEL before any other logical functions are engaged. Since they FEEL they are right they must be the most intelligent in the room and any disagreement shakes their belief system at the very core of their existence. Since they are the intelligent ones anyone that questions them can’t be at their level and must be shown to the world as of low mental capability and should be publicly if not physically destroyed.
How do we even open a discussion with these people? I really don’t have a good answer to that. I frequent this site because of the discussions and articles give me an insight into many different views and actual data. I want to evaluate the data and see how others analyze it also. If someone else has a better view or analysis then I want to incorporate that into my perspective. I classify myself as an analyst type of personality. For people who “analyze” things through feelings or belief systems being faced with contradictory data cannot be tolerated and they tend to lash out irrationally at whoever suggests they might be wrong. Data, no mater how convincing, will never change their perspective. The argument must be one that changes their emotional perspective and I really don’t think that way. OK, I admit to an unwillingness to change my perspective but when the data and argument are ultimately found to be valid and reasonable I change my perspective.
I come to WUWT on an almost daily basis for the information and usually don’t comment much since I feel I walk with giants here. Thank you all for your perspectives. Thank you Ralph for your comments.
Well, Loydo, an ECS of 9C is just as likely as 3C, in other words, we will not see it.
Try, -1 to -3 C.
1) ECS is closer to 0.2C.
2) Even if it were 3C, no big deal.
Particularly since the the only model that comes close to the observations yields no big deal even with RCP8.5.
There was an article recently about the future projection reality on NCA IV can’t see to find it. HELP!!
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/11/28/having-fun-with-the-fourth-national-climate-assessment-report/
From NCA IV…
From reality…
That wasn’t the article. You were not the author David but I dis enjoy your presentation. Someone ran the numbers with all the travesties considered and in 2090 the financial impact to the GDP was less that 1%— 0.7%. Hey mods how about some help I’m trying to put a Politician to shame as he sights this report in proposed legislation.
As always, ask yourself who ‘we’ is.
It is not the Chinese, the largest emitter of CO2, double the next biggest. And the miners and users of more coal than the rest of the world put together. And the nation that is on track to raise its emissions by 50% in the next few years. And one that is likely going to install prodigious numbers of coal fired power stations in the next few years.
https://unearthed.greenpeace.org/2019/03/28/china-new-coal-plants-2030-climate/
https://unearthed.greenpeace.org/2019/02/28/china-coal-renewable-energy-2018-data-trends/
(Greenpeace is a useful source, though there are plenty of others, because finally after years of excusing or minimizing Chinese emissions and plans are finally accepting reality, and they cannot be accused of being so called ‘deniers’.)
This growth is now going to happen faster than expected, according to a study that is being laughably reported as showing this rise is meeting their alleged commitments to tackling climate change earlier than expected:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-019-0339-6
In fact, if its even valid, it shows the exact reverse: that they are on track to raise their emissions by 50% well ahead of their previous target of 2030 for that admirable goal.
If the rest of the world were to do as much as China to tackle climate change from CO2 emissions, we too would have to increase our emissions by at least 50%. For many of us it would take a Manhattan sized project to even figure out how we could do it. Some heroes of the climate revolution would probably have to do far more, to compensate for the lazy and obstructive who refuse to do their share.
And don’t give us per capita. China is already doing per capita the same as the EU. After they get through with this, they will be at 150% of the EU.
“We” are the progressives. Unfortunately, they want to suck me into their craziness. Please leave me out. Move to Cuba or Venezuela, and see people – pardon, progressives – immigrating from all over the world.
Research shows academia is overwhelmingly (like 97%) biased toward the left. The political bias in the area of climate is nothing to do with sceptics and instead stems from the political bias and consequent groupthink of academia.
It is now common knowledge that science is corrupt.
As a side note to the above, Big Pharma is, in addition to being a corrupting influence, also responsible for pointing out the fact that the vast majority of biomedical papers can’t be replicated. link
Anyone who isn’t seriously skeptical of modern science is ill informed or maybe willfully ignorant or maybe just stupid.
The vast majority of social psychology papers can’t be replicated either. Which private industry is responsible for that? Big Advertising? I put it to you that careerism and rent-seeking (AKA grant-seeking) have more influence on the non-replication of social psychology ‘findings‘.
Brown hints at the problem:
In fact, activists go out of their way to distort the science when it disagrees with their dogma. The mantra of trans activists is, “a woman trapped in a man’s body”. If your research contradicts that, they will go after your job and maybe try to get you tossed into jail to boot. link That certainly has a corrupting influence on the research.
Are you kidding? Every HR and Diversity and Inclusion department is filled with people that got degrees in what amounts to intersectional feminism and sociology. These people have created an industry for themselves in the same way the “climate scientists” have. There is a mountain of public funding out there for this nonsense.
Why Some of the Worst Attacks on Social Science Have Come From Liberals
http://nymag.com/scienceofus/2015/12/when-liberals-attack-social-science.html
commieBob
The Lancet evidently did a study which found 50% of peer-reviewed science could not be replicated. Bayer put that number at 75%.
Being that medical science is likely to be far more rigorous because of the implications of faulty research, I expect climate science to be north of those figures as:
1) Much of it is speculation.
2) Much of it is computer simulation
3) No one will suffer the consequences of dodgy research making 50 and 100 year projections.
And if the left believe in the ideology of socialism/Marxism they most certainly have a screw loose, so why should we trust their science?
“3) No one will suffer the consequences of dodgy research”
The developing world is missing out on a huge scale. Were it not for the IMF prohibition on funding cheap power (coal/gas) in developing countries over the last 30-40 years, then these countries would not be suffering the way they do. Internal open fires for cooking is just one of a myriad ways that “dodgy research” actually kills people.
RS
MORE HUMAN COSTS OF ECO-CULTISM: Tens of millions of brown and black children killed by lack of DDT to control malaria. (The vast Reality of human suffering is lost to the Cort of Believers in Nature Worship.)
Their preferred mode of thinking produces a disconnect from reality that mimics schizophrenia. link
What is medicine’s 5 sigma? Science has taken a turn towards Darkness
Richard Horton
“The case against science is straightforward: much of the scientific literature, perhaps half, may simply be untrue. Afflicted by studies with small sample sizes, tiny effects, invalid exploratory analyses, and flagrant conflicts of interest, together with an obsession for pursuing fashionable trends of dubious importance, science has taken a turn towards darkness.” As one participant put it, “poor methods get results”.
http://www.thelancet.com/pdfs/journals/lancet/PIIS0140-6736%2815%2960696-1.pdf
I like that. Succinct and to the point.
Back when I was in school, not that long before the invention of dirt, we were taught that the scientific method required skepticism. It was not until after every bit of the hypothesis was tested for possible mistakes or problems and no mistakes could be found: It was not until after all the data was tested and retested both for reproducibility and calibration of the data gathering methods and no mistakes were found that the hypothesis could be accepted. Even the presenter of the hypothesis stated in his predictions of what would happen if his hypothesis was correct would say how the hypothesis could be proven incorrect.
Modern science, too many times just does not follow the scientific method.
I recently read an article about astronomers confirming Einstein’s General Theory using a star orbiting the big black hole at the center of our galaxy. It’s amazing we are still collecting data to use in confirming that theory.
The scientists and author went out of their way to point out that this doesn’t “prove” the theory, but only confirms it.
Settled science is a joke!
Yes the background to that is there is a chance GR will break because you still can’t join it seamlessly with Quantum Mechanics.
Or Quantum Mechanics will break, or more likely both. Both GR and QM have seemingly overwhelmingly strong empirical support, yet both can’t be strictly correct in their present form.
tty
August 2, 2019 at 12:30 pm
——-
Just saying…
I see no problem in the concept and the principle of GR.
But unless M in QM considered as only and simply in colloquial,
QM just happens to be a lose lose subject.
I can’t see how Q and M could be considered compatible in the prospect of QM outside of the colloquial term of explanation.
There is no any mechanics or mechanisms explaining or ever going a be able to explain the condition or any approximate condition outside the space-time frame, unless in the colloquial approach.
Trying to seriously add Mechanics to Quantum is like trying a adding mechanics to an attempt of trying a measure the weight of a “ghost”, literally… in an attempt to make the hypothetical approach seem real and with some real value there.
Again, just saying.
cheers
Whitten nothing in your comment makes any sense and it’s like gibberish.
LdB
August 2, 2019 at 7:55 pm
Whitten nothing in your comment makes any sense and it’s like gibberish.
———
Fair enough LdB… you have a point there.
And I am not holding my breath that ppl like you could see it differently…
Consider this, there is no way to properly consider Quantum in physics,
or somehow consider Quantum physics in the physical science without and in absence of GR, mate.
Is the point where physical science matures to the level of GR, that the Quantum clause comes to proper consideration.
It iss GR in physics science that actually fully triggers, unleashes, demands and accommodates the proper consideration of Quantum,
but you see, do not let you spoil your own understanding of Quantum.
Simply put all of physical science up to GR is basically within the realm of mechanics, Quantum not so much mate.
In my understanding Quantum is all about an assumed higher upper level of physical science application,
that of the pure principia approach.
Ok, thanks anyway, no hard feelings there…
cheers
I disagree.
Many effective scientists start out with scepticism as a given. It is not often an emergent property over time. Scepticism is not an optional property either, here today, gone tomorrow.
Beware of clever phrases composed by the inexperienced or ineffective.
Geoff S
Succinct, to the point and wrong.
Anyone who isn’t seriously skeptical period is illinformed is more accurate. You’re just mentioning “modern” science because some of the findings of climate science don’t accord with your world view. Skepticism doesn’t stop with “I don’t buy it” thats only where it begins. But the vast majority are just way too lazy to seek out the research and check the claims for themselves.
I read so many comment on these pages that show zero skepticism of some of the crazy claims that get made here every day.
So called skeptics.
“You’re just mentioning “modern” science because some of the findings of climate science don’t accord with your world view.”
What “findings”? You must be talking about speculation, since climate science has found nothing that shows CO2 is affecting Earth’s weather.
What’s the number, Loydo? How much net heat does a given amount of CO2 add to Earth’s atmosphere? If you don’t know this number then what are you basing your speculation on anyway? Answer: Guesses. Climate Science is just a series of guesses. They guess that the ECS might be 1.5C and they guess that it might be 4.5C. Funny, they never guess that it might be zero. Yet it might be zero and noone to date can show evidece otherwise. That includes you, Lyodo.
CommieBob,
What a bleak view you portray about medical and other Science.
Can I suggest that a broader view, one that relies on your own observation, can be much more positive?
When you look around, objectively, you will see from results that study overall health and well being, that the excellence of such science is better than for any previous decade.
You are living in privileged times. What made you so bitter that you dendgrate this privilege? Geoff S
Ask yourself this, how much grant money is available to climate scientists to either disprove CO2 as a temperature control knob or to replicate published studies.
I think the answer will tell you how serious climate science is in finding “the answer”.
AKA, The File Drawer Effect. It affects all science to some degree, i.e. String Theory, but when the globalist radical left hijacks an entire discipline of science, you get climastrology.
What makes you think I’m bitter?
I often point out that we’re living in something akin to an Earthly Paradise. I have a better life than most of the kings of yore. My good fortune is not lost on me.
I also do not take my good fortune for granted. “The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance.” link
Most science is doomed to be useless. We profit mightily from that which isn’t. It’s a huge net profit. On the other hand, the inverse incentives I linked above make the useful science much less likely. It amounts to a huge waste of treasure and talent.
inverseincentivesperverse incentives
The natural selection of bad science
This paper argues that some of the most powerful incentives in contemporary science actively encourage, reward and propagate poor research methods and abuse of statistical procedures. We term this process the natural selection of bad science to indicate that it requires no conscious strategizing nor cheating on the part of researchers. Instead, it arises from the positive selection of methods and habits that lead to publication.
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rsos.160384
There is an observed phenomenon known as “the Conservative Advantage”.
In a nut shell a conservative (Righty) is more likely to guess how a non-conservative (Lefty) would react in a given situation and why, than a non-conservative understanding a conservative.
When you consider what the core beliefs of a Right and a Left actually are then this phenomenon makes even more sense.
A Right is deep down somewhat selfish in that they tend to want what is best for themselves and their immediate loved ones. They generally don’t seek to change others provided said others do not have a direct affect on them. What this means is that not only can they ‘shop around’ for the best ideas that best suit them, they are also very content to allow others to be ‘different’ provided they don’t actively cause trouble. Conservatives – paradoxically from the name – are usually much more broad minded when it comes to ideas and also, because they don’t usually see others are direct threats, more likely to embrace them and provide help when they truly need it. Got to a true community group and play spot the leftie.
Left types think differently. They are about being Fair. They believe that basically everything would be better if only THEY were in charge because the world is selfish and unfair. True they may have a point, but a Leftist believes the world needs to be made fair. They want change, but they want change where they are making the rules because they know best and they are right. People who disagree with them, by extension, are wrong. Not different. Wrong.
So while a conservative will see a different person, muse over it and find it amusing before moving on, a Left will see a wrong person. They will see them as a challenger because they are right and this other person is wrong. They will rarely attempt to understand why because what is there to understand. They are right and the other person is wrong. Simple as that.
As a result Lefts are actually more close minded than conservatives. Sure they will push people to be more open minded, but only in the sense of ‘why do you not agree with ME you close minded fool?!’ They are also more insensitive to others. To them there are people who agree with them within the echo chamber, people who are victim minorities they believe they should be championing (regardless of what the ‘minorities’ actually want), and people who disagree (aka – the enemy).
They also lack the ability to change their mindset because they have already established that they are right. Their whole view exists based around the concept that They Know Best. So for them to accept that they were in fact ‘wrong’ about something they are required to re-think their entire world view. If they were wrong about ‘x’ then what is to say they were not wrong about EVERYTHING else. Where as a conservative would accept they were wrong about what is a small part of their lives, change their world view to suit and move on, a Left is forced to question everything they have ever believed. Most can’t and instead reject it outright, often with hostility.
Put simply, not only do Lefts fail to understand Rights, they are actually mentally unable to.
And if you need an example of this, we have Dr Brown above 😀
Socialism, always just one more murder away from utopia…..
…or Ten Million murders, as the late Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm agreed, approvingly.
That is an interesting secular way of characterizing it. I need to ponder this presentation.
Yet I’m trying to square their narrow variance totalitarian impulses with their stated Post-Modern ideology.
PoMos love to remind the Normals that everything is a social construct and thus “we” must question everything. Basically, PoMos spend their free time bulldozing Chesterton’s fences.
So why be an absolutist on what can only be yet another social construct?
I’m thinking that PoMo is a head fake, using it as a weapon to disarm and harass their opponents while building their entrenchments.
“A Right is deep down somewhat selfish in that they tend to want what is best for themselves and their immediate loved ones. ”
According to Adam Smith it is the combined effect of all these individuals wanting the best for themselves and their family that makes up the “invisible hand” that pushes the economy toward providing the best outcome for the most people. It is when “government” attempts to modify this invisible hand that bad things happen. Collectivism in and of itself is not bad when formulated and practiced by the people, i.e. a result of the invisible hand. It is a *bad* thing when it is imposed by a government led by those who think they are Priest-Kings that know what is best for the people.
I was a leftist all my life up until about March of 2016. I thought exactly the way you were describing in that I assumed I was right. I assumed the media was telling me the truth (how could they all lie about something). I assumed that the people on Twitter that I followed were correct, etc. I watched John Oliver and laughed. I watched Trevor Noah and felt uncomfortable but laughed — I could not put my finger on why I was uncomfortable. I watched the protests and this evil Trump. I knew Trump was a monster – he made fun of people for their disabilities. I SAW this on TV. How could anyone support that.
Then someone pointed out that Trump does that same hand waving thing to everyone when he is mimicking them. I was being shown half information and lied to about its implications. I could not believe all the media would align on the same lie. But that was just the first hint of the total red pilling.
After taking a deep dive into everything I thought I knew about the left and the right — it became very clear that I was being lied to all my life by these people that I trusted. Then I would see these people I trusted flat out lie — I know they know they were lying — about things. Then I would raise these issues to my friends and I would get called names and get yelled at. There was a violent reaction to just questioning the ideology. Eventually the scales all fell away and I could see clearly. I was hoodwinked and lied to all my life.
There were not two political parties. There was one party and they bat control back and forth between these insiders in the Democrat and Republican parties — but no matter what both groups worked for the benefit of the uniparty. This uniparty seemed to be more interested in dismantling the US and making it impossible to manufacture here, making it impossible to thrive here, but was also interested in promoting wars in a ring of countries around southern Europe while at the same time pumping America full of the proletariat from Latin America. It was clear the media and the establishment politicians were working in concert to dismantle the US and the west for the benefit of internationalists — the same people calling for carbon caps while China builds coal power plants and nuclear is off the table.
At this point – the red pill has dissolved completely and I see what the larger strategem is. With global warming – it seems like some very powerful people saw a feature of climate that was not unusual in the bigger picture of a fluctuating climate system — and they decided to use it to further their goals of deindustrializing the west – and massively increasing their personal wealth in the process.
Then I read about Maurice Strong and read his own words.
I think the left are largely the result of a lot of brainwashing. You get it from the moment you step foot in a public school. You get it in the mainstream media. You get it in movies and video games. You get it in music. Its is the matrix.
Once you see it for what it is — there is almost a revulsion and disgust at it. You can see the strategy in their support for everything they support. You can see how supporting the destruction of the family makes brainwashing easier. It makes people more dependent on government. You can see how the encouragement for children to be gay these days undermines their ability to reproduce. You can see how abortion on demand does the same thing. You can see how they encourage irresponsibility. You can see how they encourage hedonism. You can see that these people are primarily interested in undermining and destroying western civilization but they are so brainwashed they don’t realize that the promised utopia at the end is a gulag.
Interesting story. I doubt there is a coherent thought process involved though, but a natural desire for an easier life. Capitalism requires effort, as your success consists of helping others meet their needs/wants. That’s hard! Socialism gives the illusion that people can be ‘guided’ to do the same, and socialist elites will of course be in charge and that means easy street for them.
Spot on. The globalists are literally trying to force the human species into a Brave New World type of existence, and have been publicly doing so since 1992, but doing so behind the curtain for over 100 years. Crashing the global economy is the disaster they need to get the ball rolling.
xenomoly, you give this conservative skeptic hope that people will wake up to the lies they are being told. Thanks for that post. 🙂
WOW! about 300 words it must have taken about an hour to create something so discombobulate, but it can be neutralised with a single word.
DELUSIONAL
Disagree. Socialism sells because it promises free stuff. This involves taking from somebody else to give to them. Socialism preys on people’s selfishness and greed that is inherent in all human beings. Being fair is just the lie they tell themselves to justify the theft.
Craig you nailed it as far as I am concerned, I am happy to put my hand up and say you describe me … I am selfish … I protect my own first.
Craig from Oz – I disagree with your assertion that the right is deep down somewhat selfish relative to people on the left. I have lived in Portland, Oregon for 25 years and it is a bastion of uber-leftism. On the other hand, I grew up in a very conservative area of Southern California. My observation from having spent significant time in both heavily right and heavily left regions is that selfishness is one of the core drivers of the leftist ideology. Far more so than it may be a driver for the right. People on the left support government programs that serve their own wants and needs. Obamacare is a fantastic example of this. For those of you non-Americans that do not know what that is, Obamacare was the healthcare “reform” pushed through by President Obama. Every leftist I talked with thought it meant that they were going to get free or really cheap healthcare because the “wealthy” were going to have to pay for it. There was a lot of outrage by that same group when they found out that this was not true.
I have so many examples of how selfishness is the single largest driver of leftist beliefs that I’ve actually thought about writing a book on the subject.
I also think there is a difference in what people think is “fair”. To a leftist, it is not fair that I have become financially and professionally successful far beyond what I was born into, and well beyond the average person. They think that I owe them something for my financial success and that they are somehow personally responsible for what I have achieved, just because we exist in the same society. They use this belief to justify forcing me to subsidize their housing, health care, groceries, etc. They tell me that I had a “privileged” upbringing, otherwise there is no way I could have been successful. There was nothing privileged about my upbringing. Conservatives that I meet do not have this same attitude. They think that I have fairly worked and sacrificed my way out of a relatively poor upbringing.
I would characterize this difference in view of what is “fair” by saying that liberals think that equal outcomes are fair, meaning that everyone has the same outcome. Conservatives believe in offering a fair playing field where everyone has the same minimum baseline to start from, such as a K-12 education. But what you do with that baseline is up to you.
Dr Brown lacks the notion that actually checking the “science” should be done, that credentialism actually ensures meaningful results. He is also too trusting of other fields, when he probably does not have the same view of his own narrow slice of academia. He did get the politics fairly close, but GMO opposition is driven by the groups behind “organic” farming, and is quite opposed to science. The left will buy into that, and not check out the backround. Having the left buy into a useful theory is normal, but the theory should be judged on it’s own lack of merit.
yup,Craig sums it up nicely.
A conservative can consider another point of view and adapt what they like.
our Progressive Comrades cannot, for they deny the existence of any other valid view.
As Craig nicely sums up above.
Following the CRU Email exposure there was an interesting comment from the “Team”, as to how sceptics were “Holding up progress addressing Global Warming”, because we were hung up on the science.
Sceptics obsession with science was considered a “problem”.
Dr Brown is only a mugging away from grasping the reality that so far eludes him.
Craig from Oz
Nice job. The one outstanding characteristic of the near and dear liberals that I know and love is they will not allow themselves to be exposed to anything that might change their world view. For example, one such person strongly favors more women in politics. But refuses to read any of Margaret Thatcher’s speeches claiming to be able to get balanced information elsewhere. Her two favorite sources are CNN and NPR.
” If skeptical conservatives are to be convinced, the Left must learn to reframe the issue in a way that is more palatable to their worldview.”
This conclusion reveals a lot about Dr. Brown and others on the left. That he thinks skeptics can be persuaded by posing an argument in a more palatable manner tells me he can be persuaded merely by choosing the “correct” wording.
I did not see him suggesting an argument that would persuade me. He seems not to comprehend that evidence is what matters in a scientific discussion, not word choice.
SR
Appeal to authority, appeal to consensus, for the greater good, everyone is equal.
You’re right, he is projecting his own arguments and believing that we must also be just like he is. The Left truly can’t imagine another point of view, let alone accept that it could be ok to have it.
Yes except many of us don’t care about everyone else, they don’t like us and we don’t like them as has been the case throughout history. We may help the others in need if we have excess resources and see a problem we might be able to help with but if it comes down to a choice between our people and the others .. sorry the others are on their own.
This seems to be a circular argument where the definition of ‘left’ is believing anthropogenic climate change and of ‘right’ is not believing anthropogenic climate change. I wonder if everyone agrees that climate does actually change, from multiple causes?
Can you be ‘right’ on other indicators, and still think that human activity is having some effect on climate along with other factors?
Do allegations of corruption in science apply to all scientists? Or just to those who think that human activity is having some effect on climate?
Pretty much all of science is corrupted by perverse incentives. If you want a career in science, you play the game according to the ‘rules’. Does that make you personally corrupt?
Actually, “left” believes that Anthropogenic Climate Change (aka “Global Warming”) is 1) entirely driven by human CO2 output and 2) entirely one-way, towards disaster. The “left” believes – in the face of all evidence to the contrary – that there was some point at which the climate was stable and optimal, always at a lower “global temperature” than at present. Furthermore, their entire argument rests on completely invalid assumptions regarding certain computer models of the climate and their ability to predict future climate states.
The “right”, on the other hand, acknowledges that the climate changes, has always changed, and will always change for reasons that have nothing to do with humanity and its CO2 output. As has been pointed out in many articles here at WUWT, the climate is a highly complex, nonlinear, chaotic system. As is evident by a perusal of the paleoclimate reference page, it seems to have broad patterns that depend on solar dynamics, orbital cycles, and continental drift. It also is pretty evident that while human CO2 emissions have some effect, that effect is very small and approaches the background noise level.
This last is important. To a liberal, it is inconceivable that human activity can simply not matter. To a conservative, one must always ask “is any human-induced change significant? Also, if it is significant is it necessarily dangerous?” People on the “right” will insist on a cost-benefit analysis. Those on the “left” want a restoration of some ideal norm (again, one that never actually existed) regardless of cost or actual benefit.
I would also say some of us on the right are pragmatic and don’t give a rats about what the cause of climate change is because human kind isn’t going to stop development. All we can do is control what happens within our own country and deal with the changes as best we can.
This lecture of Richard Feynman popped up in my YT suggestions. The first minute tells it all.
link; YT dot com/watch?v=EYPapE-3FRw
Per this video.
Anthony did an experiment where he changed the amount of CO2 in jars. His experiment showed that as the amount of CO2 went up the temperature did not increase.
His experiment is backed up by the specific heat of air as opposed to CO2.
Given the same input as CO2 increases it takes more energy to cause an increase in temperature.
>>
The first minute tells it all.
<<
It’s interesting to find that many people think laws in physics are “proven” theories. The first 10 seconds of the above video shows how mistaken that idea is. When Feynman explains how to look for a new law, the first word he writes on the blackboard is “guess.” A guess places a law at the hypothesis level–not much proven there.
Jim
Right wing people are allowed free-thought on this issue but lefties have to comply with the wokish, PC position which is the modern left. Because they’re allowed free-thought non-lefties correctly conclude that man-made climate change is mostly cobblers, bad measurement, and authoritarianism.
I’ve not yet found one lefty who’s studied this topic enough to understand why they believe in it. Climate change truly is religion for people who don’t believe in religion.
To what is he referring exactly when he uses “Climate Change” in the title? If he thinks we’re all supposed to nod along to leftist parrot code, guess again with me.
The models historically running hot vs observed temperatures creates the most skepticism.
If the models were wrong before, why can’t they be wrong now ?
Feynman’s approach is a perfect exposition of Karl Popper’s view on scientific discovery although Richard Feynman never heard about Karl Popper (1902-1994) and he had undisguised contempt for both philosophy (as he saw it) and also the soft social sciences. When Popper’s ideas are taught to all students from highschool upward the situation re dodgy science may improve. For some introductory texts http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=rafe+champion
In addition the left to right spectrum is completely useless to summarise the range of beliefs, there is a third school of thought that is not midway on the spectrum, as Hayek explained in his essay Why I am not a Conservative. The third point of the triangle is non-socialist (classical) liberalism.
I believe the underlying cause of climate science being divided down political lines is the beliefs that draw people to either side.
Those with a left bias believe in a social justice that sees capitalism, the west and human nature as being inherently evil, so they desperately want climate variation to be a bad thing and want to believe that humanity is responsible. Those of the right believe that capitalism, the west and human nature are inherently good, they want to believe climate variation is natural and as such cannot be bad for the planet or humanity and it is outside of our influence.
So David,
Just to get things straight you are perfectly happy to let the world burn if the only other
alternative would be to change your preferred economic system?
There’s not one shred of evidence that 500-600 ppmv CO2 will cause the world to burn.
And… Up until the collapse of the Soviet Union, causing the world to burn, rather than being subjected to Communism was our national policy.
Just because your pants are on fire doesn’t mean the World is burning.
“let the world burn”
1.5C
I’d better stay inside since it will be much more than 1.5C over average today. Here in Maine when the temp reached 90F last weekend everyone was told to stay inside. Meanwhile, on TV, golfers were playing in 90F degree weather and the commentators were saying what a beautiful day it was.
“Let the world burn” does little for you credibility.
Today, here, daily minimum +9C (48F). Burn is not really the word.
Izaaak Walton , do you really think that the world is gonna burn ?
There is no, not ,none nothing ; no proof that the doubling of CO2 will cause any more warming than .6 C of warming .
What dont you get ? point six of one degree Celsius.
That is what has been calculated and that calculation has never been proven wrong.
The problem started when a theory was theorized that if the temperature of the atmosphere warms up then the warmer atmosphere would hold more water .
And then the theory thought that more water vapour would warm the atmosphere more and this might never stop and suddenly we would have runaway global warming .WOW
The problem with this theory is that it depends on the locating the tropical hot spot which has not been located ,and proving that a small increase of water vapour will warm the earth which has also not been proven .
Where is the hottest place on earth? In a desert and why is that ?Because it is very dry and the sun beats down .There are no clouds and no tropical showers to cool down the afternoon ,there is no water vapour
in the air .
Water vapour is far the most dominant green house gas and if a small rise in water vapour could trigger more water vapour it would have happened well before now .
I have met and talked to many skeptical climate scientists but if they put their heads above the parapet they get abused by people like you .
Graham
You just brought a plastic spoon to a gunfight. See Jordan Peterson dismantle Cathy Newman.
Izaak, where’s your evidence that
1) “world burning” is something that will happen
2) that Changing economic systems will have a positive impact on this assumed “world burning”.
or to put it another way:
So Izaak
Just to get things straight you are perfectly happy to let the unicorn hordes slaughter humanity if the only other alternative is to consider the change to the economic system that you prefer to happen isn’t/wouldn’t be a good thing.
@Izzak
If I play devils advocate with you, yep let the world burn because my local area isn’t going to and I am not going back to the dark ages on a hail marry to save the burning parts of the world. Call me a bad person but I do not accept I am my brothers keeper in religious terms.
That’s such a cogent statement that demonstrates your deep thinking – would you please enlighten us with some more Deep Thoughts by Izaak Walton.
Marxism is not an economic system. It is war on civilization.
Classic “False Dichotomy” fallacy! Good work Izaak.
Better dead than Red, as the saying goes.
On that subject, the ChiComs are the greatest emitters of CO2.
So, Izaak, are the Chinese perfectly happy to let the world burn if the only other alternative would be to change their preferred economic system?
Which economic system is superior? Which system pollutes less, USA or China? The answer is obvious.
If skeptics were saying “the science may be right but we nevertheless think nothing should be done” his arguments would be right. But skeptics are not saying that! They are saying that while CO2 is a greenhouse gas and greenhouse gases do cause warming the extent of the effect is being massively exaggerated and there is in fact no problem to address. This is a scientific issue which needs to be debated and explored but it is the left that refuses to debate and explore, claiming instead that “the science is settled” and everyone should believe their view. That is the true denial. If the left wants to convince skeptics and if they are so sure they are right then all they have to do is dispassionately debate the science. If they are sure science is on their side, why do they refuse to debate? Loss of time? Surely the gain of getting skeptics on side with a scientific debate would vastly accelerate action which would more than make up for the time taken by the debate. There must be another reason and its not too hard to see what it is.
Well said.
Michael Hammer says: They are saying that while CO2 is a greenhouse gas and greenhouse gases do cause warming the extent of the effect is being massively exaggerated and there is in fact no problem to address.
Nope. I say per Anthony’s experiment that CO2 will have no effect.
I can’t speak to the cause of the left- right division but, as you stated so well, it is the understanding of the science that is the basis of the disagreement on what to do or even if doing anything will effect the climate. See https://edberry.com/blog/climate-physics/agw-hypothesis/stand-for-climate-truth/ for a discussion of science used to evaluate the point that supports the whole alarmist position: human CO2 is the cause of the increase in atmospheric CO2 so is the cause of any problems that may arise from that rise. This assumption fails scientific analysis so the whole house of alarmist cards falls down. Even if CO2 were capable of warming the planet dangerously we are not the cause and cannot “fix” it.
Because if you agree to debate you validate the skeptic’s view as possibly credible…and worse yet, you might lose the debate.
The Left does not like people, they like rules and control. Their newest scam is of course Global warming, albeit the term lost its attractiveness due to the non abiding reality. The Right likes people, especially entrepreneurial individuals who can control themselves to a very great extent. The big divide in my opinion is the culture in which one is brought up. One side plays the permanent victim, the other side the thinking actor trying to develop a sense for individual responsibility.
Quillette has abruptly changed to a subscription-based, left-leaning, prolix academic outlet.
This article by Dr Brown is typical of the sudden change. I suspect Quillette’s original appearance as an open, centre-right forum was in fact a marketing ploy to gain audience share.
There is an incredible naïveté in the statement in here that ‘science is dispassionate, logical and always accurate’.
We’ll if every scientific investigation were designed correctly, that might be true. Sadly, many are not.
If every data collection exercise were carried out rigorously and accurately, that might be true. Sadly, many are not.
If every data collection exercise led to correct interpretation of the data, that might be true. Sadly, many see wildly over exuberant interpretations lacking caution and rigour.
The facts are that ‘science’ is often perverted by parties interested in pursuing certain commercial activities.
‘Science’ performed by interested parties is liable to bias due to having skin in the game. That is why all Regulatory Bodies should only accept science from disinterested third parties. Tobacco companies are not going to forward data shoeing that their products cause cancer….similar arguments are applicable to vaccine companies, GM crops producers and other corporate entities.
The fact is: hysteria sells. In climate debates you have alarmists and ice age now proponents, each side twisting and distorting. The assumption is that cool heads and judicious skeptical analysis leads to inertia, so extremism is necessary to move forward.
It simply is not true.
Here is the secret to convincing “deniers”:
1. Show actual evidence instead of personal attacks.
2. Stop pretending that evidence of warming is evidence that man is guilty.
3. Note that evidence includes explanation of inconvenient historical facts.
Thanks
JK
The “secret” is to simply admit that they were wrong about the magnitude and severity of the “problem” and that a gradual reduction in the carbon intensity of our energy mix over the next hundred years or so, will pretty well nullify the potential problem.
Since we are already doing this due to the “Shale Revolution”… these occasionally United States have already done our part.
Craig from Oz
Nice job. The one outstanding characteristic of the near and dear liberals that I know and love is they will not allow themselves to be exposed to anything that might change their world view. For example, one such person strongly favors more women in politics. But refuses to read any of Margaret Thatcher’s speeches claiming to be able to get balanced information elsewhere. Her two favorite sources are CNN and NPR.
David Middleton,
Not complicated is it. shale gas now and for the next 40 years or so with a small percentage of Small Modular Reactors replacing less than worthless wind and solar. As oil and gas reserve depletion forces up prices the pace of SMR additions can increase. A hundred years from now it really will be a good idea to electrify the transportation sector, but in response to the “invisible hand of the market place” not government subsidies and mandates.
Milton Friedman gets us there eventually.
AOC crashes and burns the economy right out of the starting gate.
I would add stop insisting on select solutions AKA renewables and emission control.
How the world solves a problem is as much more about politics and economics than anything to do with science.
The IPCC was politically charged with finding manmade global warming – which it did, but that is easy to do when you know the desired outcome
The IPCC disseminated a political report to influence policy makers – which it did, to bring about social change towards ‘equality’ in the name of environmentalism.
The only crisis they actually uncovered absolutely depends on the sensitivity to the climate equilibrium that minor trace gases impact global temperature – that they, themselves, cannot find a consensus for within the scientific community.
Yet the public are constantly being told about some 97+% consensus.
One of the current superstars of the climate discussion ( Wunderkind Greta Thunberg) is reportedly to be able to see a colourless & odourless trace gas that makes up .04% of the entire atmosphere – yet this Empress appears to the believers as fully clothed.
The Political Left trumpets that the planet/people/whatever have 12 years left to avoid total catastrophe, after multiple, preceding, similar claims of single decades going back some 40 years.
But apparently people who oppose such obvious tripe can all be persuaded if only they just changed their language.
To what? Pig English or Pig Latin?
Beliefs cannot be argued with. The whole leftist spiel is a belief in how the world works. They don’t depend on ideas that can be analyzed, parsed, or disproved by experiment(Feynman). They can be argued with logic, but logic can prove any consistent set of statements true, logically.
One can say God exists. Someone else can say there is no God. It can’t be proven one way or another because God is not in the world we live in.
Likewise, the Left can say socialism works, but they can’t prove that statement true. It is an idea that is believed and not subject to proof.
Bloody experience should convince most people that socialism doesn’t work. The body count is outrageously high.
“Modern science” is overwhelmingly not-science (i.e., science not faithfully, competently, and honestly conducted per the scientific method), making Dr. Brown’s essay a nonsensical and un-helpful word-salad.
Up until the last paragraph, it was very constructive.
The left has created a religion and they will kill off the human race before they admit their religion is a lie.
Why? Conservatives, in general, do not believe in “Broken Window” economics let alone in subsidies “Broken Window” economics. Nor do we believe in a “Welfare programs” for other counties with no end in sight. Nor do we believe in “Transforming our Capitalism Model” to the China’s Government/Private Business Model” (Government X Model).
Notice the bait and switch.
Climate Change and Global Warming are two different things.
The analysis explains the predispositions of left and right toward the climate issue, but stops short of recognizing that doubters are motivated to seek contrary facts and information that contradict the climate suppositions. Those on the left already have massive social proof of their position, so little or no consideration of the technical facts is needed. On the other hand, surveys show doubters tend to be more informed on the scientific research, having seen studies and findings not readily available in the biased mainstream media.
https://rclutz.wordpress.com/2019/08/01/left-right-predisposed-to-believe-doubt-climatism/
I am a properly educated scientist, BS in Geology and MS in Economic Geology, who is very introspective (I fact-check myself at least a dozen times a day), and who has economically benefitted from being a scientist functioning at a high-level (interpret this as making provable correct judgements, like drill here and you will discover a valuable metal deposit which was previously unknown). I wish the above commentators would stop lumping all scientists together, like 50% falsify reports, or 75% can’t replicate their results, etc. The tendency of liberals to believe in CAGW is because it fits their construct of what selfish and dishonest white guys in suits are up to, which somehow includes stealing from Africa, Baltimore, Detroit, whereever, to line their own pockets, and dooming the whole planet in the process.
Is there anything left to steal in Baltimore and Detroit?
The economic geology analogy:
You work up resource distributions for 30 prospects. All of the prospects are “geological successes”… But… 8 fall below p99, 20 barely scratch p90 (minimum case) and 2, barely scratch p50 (most likely case)… Would you claim that the observations were consistent with your model? Or would you schist can the model?
Here’s a reality bite for you David (and I bet you can relate to it vis a vi the oil business). There are two ways to make money off mineral exploration, one by hyping/selling stock and getting out at the right time, and the other by simply drilling a world-class mineral discovery. With respect to the prospects looking like the model, I never relied on a model, I always worked out the details of what the geology directly in front of me was showing. And a final comment to both you and Geoff, a real scientist must be introspective, that is, they must re-examine all of the mixed data and ideas they allow into the formulation of an opinion, because reality is really complicated.
Ron Long,
Like you say.
The conduct of science is heavily dependent on a little-discussed factor””, “accountability”. As in, if your future income is linked to your success in your science, the science is better.
In assessing accountability, you need to look at the purpose of science. Here, we find contrasts. Accountability is easier to measure when, as in mineral exploration, the objective is to find more ore deposits. In environmental work, the objective can be purposely undefined, ill defined or a blank space to be completed if by accident, a useful result pops up.
When the science is closely structured about accountability, operators quickly realise that there is either negative or nil value in making up stuff, doing math things like homogenisation, adverse extrapolations, concealment of proper error bounds and so on.
In mineral exploration science, the target is an entity of fixed properties that is completely opaque to data fiddling. The record shows that environmental work, where there is a set scientific target, is quite amenable to data fiddling because it is often impossible to do the equivalent of “Let us drill an infill hole to cross check our grade assumptions”.
This difference in accountability, in the firmness set for scientific targets, is hugely influential on the quality of the final scientific outcome.
As you note, Ron. Geoff S
“This is probably the most difficult task we have ever given ourselves, which is to intentionally transform the economic development model, for the first time in human history”, Ms Figueres stated at a press conference in Brussels.
Well, other than communist, socialist and national socialist attempts – yes. Hide the decline.
The biggest stupidity I see from the global warmists is their opposition to nuclear power. All of their supporting scare stories hark back to a Communist Russian meltdown of a poorly designed nuclear reactor. The future of nuclear is NOT conventional , massive, costly light water reactors ,but intrinsically safe molten salt small modular reactors that can produce power as cheaply as any other technology. And my calculations show that the U.S. could, by retaining current nuclear capacity (20%) and hydro generation (10%) , enough molten salt reactors could be built (fairly quickly) to obtain 100% carbon free emissions and also power a totally electric transportation fleet, for roughly one trillion dollars. This solution should satisfy everyone, aside fromthe brainless anti-nuclear folks , who aren’t worth paying attention to.
I have been hearing about molten salt for a while now. So far nothing. I hope it becomes a reality, but I feel it is going to be like the sterling engine and the battery revolution. Always 5-10 years off.
From the article: “If skeptical conservatives are to be convinced, the Left must learn to reframe the issue in a way that is more palatable to their worldview.”
The way to reframe the issue so conservatives will accept it is to provide EVIDENCE that CO2 is doing what the Alarmists claim it is doing. To date, NO evidence has been presented that shows CO2 is having any effect on the Earth’s weather or climate.
I’m not a skeptic because I’m conservative. I’m a skeptic because CAGW is pure speculation and no evidence of its existence has ever been produced by anyone on this planet.
Climate scientists were just as sure we were going into another Ice Age back in the 1970’s, as they are that we are now going to an overheated Earth. Their certainty in the 1970’s didn’t make a bit of difference to reality. The same thing applies to CAGW now. Just because you are certain it is happening is not evidence that it really is.
I need evidence, not speculation, and all climate science is at this stage is pure speculation. It has absolutely nothing to do with politics, as far as I’m concerned, and everything to do with evidence or the lack thereof.
These vaunted alarmist climate scientists can’t even tell you how much net heat human-derived CO2 adds to the atmosphere. They do not know this number. Yet they are so sure of themselves.
Here’s a good experiment: Ask your favorite alamist climate scientist what this number is. Don’t be surprised when they tell you they don’t know the number, because they don’t. Not one person on this planet knows this number. So if they don’t know this number, and they don’t, then how can they calculate the effects of CO2 on the atmosphere? How can they be so certain? Answer: They can’t, they are just blowing smoke (speculating and exaggerating).
Tom Abbott
“The way to reframe the issue so conservatives will accept it is to provide EVIDENCE that CO2 is doing what the Alarmists claim it is doing. To date, NO evidence has been presented that shows CO2 is having any effect on the Earth’s weather or climate.
I’m not a skeptic because I’m conservative. I’m a skeptic because CAGW is pure speculation and no evidence of its existence has ever been produced by anyone on this planet.”
Interesting… so the planet is warming, the ice is melting, the sea is rising as is the level of CO2 (provably, primarily caused by mans actions). Tell me specifically what evidence you need to convince you the CO2 we are putting in to the air is having an affect? I would seriously love to know. There is not a climate scientist on this planet who does not accept we are in part responsible for the recent warming. Not Spencer, not Christie, not Curry not even Mr Watts. They are convinced, so what will it take to change your mind?
“These vaunted alarmist climate scientists can’t even tell you how much net heat human-derived CO2 adds to the atmosphere. They do not know this number. Yet they are so sure of themselves.”
If this is what it takes to convince you the science is real… a number… then you will be waiting a long time. You (should) know it is not possible to give an exact figure for the warming, which is why the IPCC works in levels of confidence.
Simon wrote: “Interesting… so the planet is warming, the ice is melting, the sea is rising as is the level of CO2 (provably, primarily caused by mans actions).”
Yes, the Earth is doing all those things but that doesn’t mean CO2 is responsible. The Earth did the same thing back in the 1930’s, and the IPCC says CO2 was not a significant factor in that warming. So if we have the same magnitude of warming in the 1930’s without CO2’s help, then why should I assume that today’s warming is caused by CO2? I won’t assume such a thing until some evidence of such is provided, and that has not occurred. Speculation about what CO2 might do in the atmosphere is not evidence of anything.
Simon wrote: “Tell me specifically what evidence you need to convince you the CO2 we are putting in to the air is having an affect? I would seriously love to know.”
What I see is evidence to the contrary. I see that the 1930’s were just as warm as today without the benefit of high CO2 levels. So I don’t see any reason to think today’s similar warming has to be related to increased CO2 levels. Mother Nature raised the temperatures in the 1930’s and as far as I’m concerned, Mother Nature is doing the very same thing now, and I will continue to think that way until some evidence is shown to refute that position. Speculation will not refute that position.
Simon wrote: ” There is not a climate scientist on this planet who does not accept we are in part responsible for the recent warming. Not Spencer, not Christie, not Curry not even Mr Watts. They are convinced, so what will it take to change your mind?”
They are also making guesses about CO2 and the climate. Educated guesses, but guesses none the less. None of them say definitively what the ECS is. They don’t know the number either, and if you don’t know the number, then you are guessing. Ask them if they know the number, Simon. You know what they will say. Yet you are so certain of CAGW being real. I don’t see a case to be made for certainty.
Simon, would you agree that there is a possibility that CO2 adds zero net heat to the Earth’s atmosphere? If not, why not?
Tom Abbott
I’m wondering what evidence you have the 30’s were as warm as today “globally.” Because I have never read or seen any proof of that. If you can provide that, then that would be a good starting point to convince me I could be wrong.
“Simon, would you agree that there is a possibility that CO2 adds zero net heat to the Earth’s atmosphere? If not, why not?”
Anything is possible, but right at this point the chances are almost zero that CO2 is not playing some part in the warming. This graph from Berkley demonstrates the link, and also calls BS on your “30’s were warmer” fiction.
chrome-extension://oemmndcbldboiebfnladdacbdfmadadm/http://static.berkeleyearth.org/pdf/annual-with-forcing.pdf
Sorry I didn’t reply sooner, Simon, my internet connection was out all day yesterday.
Simon, I have unmodified surface temperature charts from all over the world, both hemispheres, which show the 1930’s as being just as warm as today. I have posted examples numerous times and I’m sure you have seen them.
There are also Tmax charts from all over the world, both hemispheres, that also show the 1930’s were just as warm as today.
All of these temperature charts have the same profile: The 1930’s were just as warm as today.
So, how can you ignore this information? Willfully, I think.
As for your Berkeley Earth link: Don’t make me laugh. Berkeley Earth is a bogus, bastarized Hockey Stick chart which is shown to be BS by the unmodified regional charts of the Earth which look nothing like the Hockey Stick chart. None of the unmodified charts look like the bogus Hockey Stick chart.
The problem is that some of the adjustments are necessary, particularly for time of observation.
The thing that really annoys me about series such as Berkeley earth, or noaa for that fact, is the concept of “necessary adjustments” – if a station changes thermometer, is moved 50 feet to the left, or anything similar, we shouldn’t be applying “corrections” to make the data before the change match the data after the change. The moment a change happens in equipment or location, a new series should start, period. If that means that we don’t have contiguous data for a specific location so be it. If that was the case I would trust the data. Short of that it’s just useless, and any report from it is just as useless. I see that at my own work all the time, changes made everywhere, no data lineage kept, no way that anyone who gets a report can be truly sure that the report they are using to make decisions are in fact based on correct, unmodified source data. And these reports are used to make decisions that can have immense effect in the area I work in. It’s an endemic problem, and it always amazes me that people who are otherwise very smart are happy to trust numbers on papers to make very consequential decisions without ever asking themselves how accurate such numbers actually are.
If you want to rob me (that is, if you are a Leftist), I’m not listening to any justification you give me. Cloak your criminal designs in the robe of !Science! all you want, but until you give up violence as a means, I don’t really care what your ends are.
If skeptical conservatives are to be convinced, the Left must learn to reframe the issue in a way that is more palatable to their worldview.
Yet again the old if only we can communicate the message in the right way we’ll get them on our side canard. What they don’t ever get is that we’re getting their message loud and clear already, the problem isn’t with how you dress up the message, the problem is the message itself and it’s appeals to authority and emotion lacking in any real substance. If the science really did support their position, they’d be able to convince us with the science, but actual empirical hard facts (not computer game models and projections/predictions of imminent disaster that don’t match the real world) doesn’t support their narrative hence why their messages fall on deaf ears.
It’s not the skeptical conservatives that need to be ‘convinced’ but it’s the alarmists that need to be convinced about how wrong the pseudo-science promoted by the IPCC actually is.
Given how transparently corrupt the IPCC/UNFCCC is and how obvious the errors in their pseudo-science are, it should be easy to convince alarmists how wrong they are, unfortunately, partisan politics has the power to override truth when that truth doesn’t support the desired political goals.
Lefties have never moved beyond the conditioning they received in the first few years of elementary school. This is why they seek to conform to a group, and why they demand that every one else also conforms. It is a failure of secondary and higher education to teach people to think for themselves. Rather the higher education systems continue to punish people who do not conform to the group think. Greater value is placed on conformity, even if it is illogical and clearly wrong, than on discovering.
The argument based on the Tragedy of the Commons (TotC) is insightful in a couple of ways and not completely in ways the essayists intend. I can accept that pollution laws address a TotC scenario. When industrial pollution causes rivers to catch fire (Cuyahoga River, 1969) or air to become difficult breathe (I lived near LA in the early 1960’s) then laws are needed to prevent destruction of a common resource.
But the essayists miss that the worst destruction of the commons has occurred in nations with leftist collectivist governments. Witness the horrible pollution in the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact nations. In today’s China the industrial pollution from refining exotic metals is far in excess of anything permitted in the western world. It’s noted above how much CO2 China emits. And, air pollution in China is legendary.
Meanwhile, here in the USA, the green industry, created by leftist policies, gets breaks from laws meant to otherwise protect the environment. Wind farm and solar array construction destroys what would be considered pristine land and protected forest should another industry want that land. We know the wind turbines are killing birds and bats that are otherwise protected.
While “the right” is criticized for ignoring climate scientists, the left is totally blind to the destruction caused to the commons and the environment by their own policies and practices. Hypocrisy, thy name is “leftist”.
I have learned to understand the left as a prophetic religious movement.
Marx? The world is going to end for workers unless we act now.
Civil Rights? We are all going to racist hell unless we act now.
Climate? We are all going to burn unless we act now.
Note that there is a case for moderate, balanced action. But that is not enough for True Believers that want to save the world.
I do not buy the Left vs Right as if climate is a psychology problem.
The Left wing parties picked up CAGW as a political weapon and they lost control of it, the idea.
The political elite have turned off all thoughtful critical discussion about policy which is why we are in chaos now.
CAGW is the excuse the Left have used to use Little Hitler tactics such as taking over the courts and ignoring the constitution, as if CAGW is the equivalent of a time of war, justifying extraordinary measures such as forced spending of trillions of dollars on green stuff that does not work.
The reason politics will never resolve the climate science controversy is because there’s no overlap between sides. The sensitivity claimed by the IPCC is between 0.4C and 1.2C per W/m^2 of forcing, while the sensitivity theorized and measured by skeptics is closer to 0.3C which is below the lower limit claimed by the IPCC, moreover; the entire range presumed by the IPCC can be precluded by Conservation of Energy which requires the next Joule to have the same impact as the average Joule when it comes to warming the surface. This is because the work it takes to warm the surface is measured in Joules and temperature is linearly proportional to stored Joules. The IPCC considers the temperature to be linear to the rate that Joules are delivered and/or emitted by the planet which is a source of many errors as this relationship is not linear, but emissions are proportional to temperature raised to the forth power and in the steady state, the emitted Joules are equal to the solar Joules incident on the planet which makes them proportional to temperature raised to the forth power as well.
The gap is so large, only one side can be correct and it just happens that political objection to the futility of the proposed remedies is a valid enough reason, even if the IPCC was right about the science which they have made misleading and obtuse in order to diffuse objective analysis with confusion and redirection.
Politics is subjective while science is objective. The political left chose the wrong side owing to emotional arguments pushed by its radical green elements, while the political right chose the other side for rational economic reasons. Unfortunately, the correct reasons to oppose alarmism is how wrong the pseudo-science support for the alarmists actually is and the corrupt bias at the IPCC who established what is and what is not climate science. This is why subjective political or religious faith must not play a role when it comes to a controversy that can be resolved objectively.
In my case, the division in beliefs about global warming is far more simple. The more I catch one side of the argument lying to me, I assume it’s because the truth doesn’t support their position. Once I found out the truth about the “97%”, I knew which side I was on.
I resent the political classifications that assume that _IF_ I agree with a diagnosis, I must _THEREFORE_ support (pay for, advocate, punish opponents of) the prescribed therapy.
I deny that windmills provide useful electricity to the current grid. I deny that battery technology can solve this problem. I deny that electric cars reduce carbon dioxide emissions. I deny that tax subsidies to solar, wind, and car companies are good use of public funds. I deny that the United Nations has EVER solved ANY problem it has tackled. I deny that government programs are flexible enough to deal with new data as such becomes available. I deny that fears regarding nuclear waste are justified. I deny that conserving electricity will significantly affect fossil fuel use in industry, heating, transportation, chemical processing … I deny a whole shop-pit load of prescriptions about “what we should do” about “the crisis” of global warming — in depth and in detail.
But frankly, it’s easier just to declare myself in denial about the whole “warming” thing. Saves EVER so much time. Yeah, call me denier. Why not?
Surely it is obvious why right and left wing do not agree. The actions that result are all left wing agenda so left wing will start from the premise of belief and need proof the science is total and utter cr@p or in most cases will probably not even accept proof. The right wing will disagree with the actions proposed and will start from the premise the science must be 100% proven beyond question before they will accept any actions.
Unfortunately no one is willing to accept the rational premise the science should be proved in a court with a proper defence and prosecution and the scientists merely considered witnesses and any expertise claimed open to questioning by experts from other fields often far better trained and used to being examined to far higher standards than mere peer review by their quality assurance departments.
In the UK we have a situation where the BBC are openly allowed to promote the scam without even the right to have it questioned.
The consolation prize is learning a lot about the flaws at the BBC and other institutions in the process. Such insights are invaluable and not soon forgotten–somewhat like national defense lessons after the Battle of Britain.
Wanting science to be settled and having BBC police scientific thought are two sides of the same coin. The origin of science to be settled stems from politics. Bernie Lewin has a good book “Searching for the Catastrophe Signal: The Origins of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change“, 2017 explaining how this happened: politics ruling over science. In IPCC early years politicians were frustrated with scientists. People like Hansen warned about the end of the world yet early IPCC reports were full of, what seemed to them, fudge phrases. Initially scientists couldn’t even agree that CO2 was shown to cause climate change! Over time the IPCC solution was to establish a consensus, so all countries would agree on a course of action. The science is settled just means we agreed a consensus. They’re both political terms invented by politicians in charge of the IPCC via UNFCCC. In the early 1990s IPCC came close to abolition because politicians wanted more certainty from the uncertain science. Then Ben Santer came along and gave us false certainty in 1995 with his cherry-picked study showing the CO2 signal. It fooled enough people for long enough to save the IPCC. Everyone should read Lewin’s book.
The problem is not when left and right can not agree but when the left refuses to engage in a civil and well thought out discussion on topics that may expose their lack of logic and reliable sources. This was illustrated in a Trump rally poll from Ohio.
I do not share Trump’s world view and I find his stand on certain matters disconcerting but, but, but he is certainly not wrong on everything. Indeed on some matters he is right and his critics wrong but one would not think so from the response from his opponents as revealed in the following clip. Only dishonest people refuse to give credit where credit is due. Trump may have a superficial understanding of climate but his rejection of the Paris Climate Accord may be more than justified.
https://www.foxnews.com/media/pollster-voter-dials-immigration-trump-rally
Perfect example:
https://www.blogto.com/city/2019/08/toronto-new-rainfall-record-2019/
Notice how they have to stretch to find a “record”?
“It really is the case that the Right is more likely to deny the most well-established aspects of the science.”
It’s so refreshing to have a scientist finally take an impartial look at the problem. /sarc
Personally, I just lump such drivel into the same liberal consensus that suddenly holds that men can be women and women can be men without the need for any real (and fearless) scientific scrutiny.
The right has more incidence of questioning the Climate War and the left has more incidence of piling on to broaden the front for the “fun” of it and maybe some self gain like tenure and promotion, notoriety, and chicks. Besides you could get fired (Google) for not playing along in lockstep with virtue signaling marching orders.
While reading these comments I had a vision of the scientific battle over “continental drift”, Alfred Wegener’s proposal of the possibility of the continents were floating slowly across the globe in 1912. It wasn’t until technological improvements in measure geomagnetism and the discovery of seafloor spreading in the 1950s and 1960s revived and confirmed the idea, which became known as plate tectonics.
My vision was of a “Catastrophic Anthropological Global Drifting” crisis arising, blaming the drift and its attendant earthquakes and volcanoes on human activity, namely oil and gas exploration. Only by ending the deprivations against Mother Earth and the draining of her life’s blood could humans prevent stop the impending disasters.
Luckily, in those days scientists amused themselves by insulting the other side of a scientific conflict, e.g. the 40-year battle over the origin of the Channeled Scablands in Washington State, rather than by proposing civilization-shattering changes to the world’s economies.
Why can’t the scientists who post articles or comments, nip the idiots and those wicked intent, refer to the climate as “” current climate change” or “climate changes(plural)”.
The folks that dont understand the 4000,000,000 history of our Earth may then realise it is just the time that they live in, pretty small!
I categorically reject the premise that the issue can or should be settled in a court with a trial. T further reject that your premise is even rational.
A court trial is no place to seek the truth. A trial as an adversarial proceeding, the point of which is to WIN, not seek truth. As such it has more in common with a football game that with the truth. I have seen your argument advanced many times, always by people who align with the Liberal Arts as opposed to the sciences. Perhaps they choose the courts because that is what they are familiar with.
In the sciences, we know that the laboratory is the place to settle things.
Theory Guides, Experiment Decides
“Theory Guides, Experiment Decides”
But climatology is an observational, not an experimental, science.
“It’s impossible to reframe Enviromarxism in “in a way that is more palatable to [our] worldview”… ”
Give money to farmers to put their land into prairie grass for 20 years. Is that compatable to Red State Rednecks worldviews? I say yes. It restores the soil, improves watersheds, stores carbon and gives deer hunters more deer to shoot.
Deerhunting on prairies?
Deer are about everywhere in Minnesota. Some of my Dad’s land is program land. 3 deer stands on about 300 acres. The stands are not in heavy woods. More out in the open. Clean shot.
https://www.deerworlds.com/deer-habitat/
I am depressed to the point that when I have thoughts that I want to release from my mouth that I play them over in my head before the moment of speech and give them a good dose of the P.C. facture as I look around at the crowd to see if it is ok.. This is brainwashing at it’s finest and it directly relates to this climate warming-change global thing. We must stay strong and not be afraid to speak our minds on things we feel strongly about. What hat did I put on before leaving the house today?
One thing I always love is something like a heat wave, “Highest temperature since 1962!” So, explain 1962 for me then… how was it so hot then without all this extra CO2?
In novels and movies when people learn the end is near they have block buster parties.
Our lefties tell us the end is near and that we must huddle in the dark as we starve.
I don’t know what’s worse, that they are so wrong or that they are such buzz kills.
Brown wrote; ” It really is the case that the Right is more likely to deny the most well-established aspects of the science.” I’d like to question him on this point, specifically how is he defining ‘the right’ and what well defined aspects those people deny. I feel there is perhaps a perception that those of us not in favor of the policy recommendations are lumped in with some who deny the every single aspect of the AGW hypothesis, vs those of us who simply think its magnitude is projected much too high; ie: even as the basic qualitative theory is sound, its quantitative projections are not.
Well I haven’t seen the left manage to change the climate in the right direction yet. If anything according to them it’s getting worse. Seems a lot like trying to disprove a fundamental axiom of engineering with electricity grids, namely that you can’t build a reliable system from unreliable componentry.
The reason that believers (progressives) and skeptics (conservatives) don’t agree can be summed up by Zip Code.
The believer demographics are concentrated in urban heat islands–areas of the country where hot asphalt bakes peoples brains and trees are chopped down to build more asphalt, reducing the assimilative capacity of the environment to uptake the massive quantities of CO2 that these people puke out daily.
The skeptic demographics are concentrated outside of urban heat islands–under the cool shade of forests and farmlands that are under-represented in the calculations of daily temperatures, but which over-represented in the assimilative capacity in uptaking the relatively small quantities of CO2 produced by people in these areas.
Spending your days on hot asphalt will turn anybody into a raving lunatic.