Guest essay by Eric Worrall
h/t Dr. Willie Soon. Reproduced with permission from Professor Sharp.
How I changed my mind… about global warming
Byron Sharp
Oct 7Most, if not all, people would consider themselves to be open-minded. Yet, if you ask someone to name an important belief that they have changed their mind about, in response to evidence and/or logic, most struggle to give even one example.
This is the first in a series of blogs where I describe how and why I changed my mind about something. I hope to encourage myself to change my mind more often. And to encourage others.
Short summary: I now worry less about global warming than I did, the scientific evidence is that it’s not going to be catastrophic. PS Our best course of action is to adapt to the effects and to invest in R&D to develop new low carbon energy.
I’ve been a “greenie” since I was a child. I raised money and marched to save the whales. I searched out all the pockets of native bush on our New Zealand farm. I became a vegetarian (although the original motivation was nutritional, not for the environment). As an adult I bought hundreds of acres of Australian bush (mallee) land and have set it aside to regenerate. When I learnt that greenhouse gas emissions were causing the climate to warm I put solar panels on the roof of my house, I sold my car and lived without one for years (until having a new baby made that impractical so I bought a small car and ran it on bio-diesel (I couldn’t afford a Prius)).
When Al Gore’s 2006 movie came out about global warming I used it to to rally my colleagues in the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute — “how could we contribute to the solution?” I asked. Being a complex problem I didn’t think it was likely it would be solved simply by legislation or technology, and I thought that we might contribute insights into consumer behaviour as well as mass communication effectiveness. Some of my colleagues pushed back (we have a culture of questioning, and not just accepting things that the director says). They said that Al Gore was exaggerating, that he sounded more like a religious zealot than a scientist, and pointed out the numerous errors he presented. I agreed, but I said he is a (religious) politician with good intentions, he’s inflating things to get attention. I quoted them more technical accounts of global warming from people like Tim Flannery (a mammalogist, author of The Weather Makers (2005)).
But then the forecasting scientists in the Institute told me that the forecasts of global warming were not to be trusted. They pointed out that climate scientists were not forecasting scientists, that climate scientists were ignorant of the established principles that help improve the very difficult business of making forecasts (ie predicting the future) in complex conditions, and that their forecasting approaches were a very long way from best practice. It’s common for experts in a field (finance, politics, physics) to assume that their expertise means they can make better forecasts than non-experts. However, research on forecasting accuracy has shown over and over that this is not true, experts are merely more sure of their forecasts, but no more accurate.
So now I had a dilemma. I respected the forecasting scientists, but I also respected the climate scientists. And emotionally I really like the idea that this global challenge might be discovered by science and then solved in a globally coordinated manner — it would be a sign of how advanced human civilization had become, and a real feather in the cap of science.
“But look at your own field”, said the forecasting scientists… “what do you think of the consensus of views among marketing academics, do you think this represents real knowledge or rather “group think?” Ouch.
Plus I knew that complex multivariate models in marketing (and elsewhere) have a miserable track record in making predictions, even in quite stable environments.Oh dear. They certainly gave me doubts… but time will help decide things I thought, as we would see the prediction of the climate models borne out at a global scale. Indeed, in 2007 Professor Scott Armstrong challenged Al Gore to a 10 year global warming forecast competition. The losing forecaster would make a donation to charity. Al Gore declined to participate but the competition went ahead regardless. Based on the forecasting principle of “be conservative” Scott Armstrong proposed a ‘no change’ forecast, which was a bit radical given that everyone knew the climate was warming slowly. The competition wasn’t compared to Al Gore’s dramatic “tipping point” forecast, but instead to the more accepted IPCC forecast of 3 degrees of warming over the next 100 years. Ten years later and Scott Armstrong’s forecast turned out to be more accurate.
Now ten years isn’t long enough to be definitive, but it’s important because it was a predictive test. Modellers love to play with their models, tweaking this and that, trying to get better and better fits to historic data (achieving lots of academic publications and grants along the way). This sounds sensible but there is a very high risk of “over fitting” where the model is modelling noise/error in the data, so the fit to historic data is better but it’s even worse at predicting the future, and therefore not correctly telling us what really causes what. The IPCC’s has done an assessment of climate models, which is a bit like marking your own homework but even they reported that almost every model failed to predict the slowdown in warming that occurred after 1998, in other words the models predicted more warming than occurred.
Climate scientists are now working out why their predictions were wrong, and how to improve them (some climate scientists claim that with a better understanding of multi-decade variations in speed of warming “the long-term warming trend in response to human emission of greenhouse gases is found remarkably steady since 1910 at 0.07°–0.08°C decade”).
Time will tell, but for now it’s clearly good news that the climate doesn’t seem to have reacted to greenhouse gases quite the way we feared.
Meanwhile there is other evidence that has changed my mind about the seriousness of global warming and the best courses of action to take to mediate its effects. It’s not that global warming isn’t a problem, but the problem has been misrepresented, and over-hyped (by people with good intentions). And simplistic, unfeasible solutions have been embraced, while more feasible zero-carbon solutions such as nuclear power are mostly ignored. Most concerning is how preoccupied people are about “what side you are on?” rather than wanting to discuss facts.Global warming is not a existential threat. Global warming means the world is getting hotter (milder winters, hotter summers). Which is of most concern for those who already live in hot places (like Adelaide or Dubai) but probably quite welcome if you live in Northern Europe, China, or America. Each year far more people die due to cold than from heat, even in Australia six times more deaths are due to cold than heat. And most of this isn’t from extremes but rather simply cold winters, and global warming means warmer winters (that’s something the climate scientists all agree upon).
Contrary to reports in the popular press, climate scientists have not been reporting more hurricanes, flood, fires and so on due to Global Warming. There are concerns that extreme weather events might increase but not for a long while yet, and maybe not. Equally importantly United Nations data shows that deaths due to extreme weather events have declined a staggering 96% over the past century, and that’s in spite of population growth. Why? How? Largely due to better buildings and infrastructure, better emergency services, better hospitals and so on. In other words, human technology and wealth levels, both of which continue to improve. So even predictions of increased deaths due to a warmer planet seem far fetched, while the idea that global warming means “the end is nigh” is sheer apocalyptic fantasy.
This is pretty important to know because there are many things we’d like to fix (literacy, poverty, antibiotic resistant bacteria, cancer, clean water, endangered species etc), and efforts and money put into one problem often does nothing for another. We need to have a proper sense of the magnitude of each threat, each problem, and then the options to solve the problem and what their costs and feasibility are.
Anyway, decide for yourself, be open-minded. Here are a few important climate science articles that don’t get much coverage in newspapers (which prefer bad news):
The world is getting substantially greener. This is a positive effect of CO2. Also as the world become richer (and cleverer) people stop cutting down forests, and start planting trees.
Wildfires are not increasing, “Instead, global area burned appears to have overall declined over past decades, and there is increasing evidence that there is less fire in the global landscape today than centuries ago”. Globally, the total acreage burned by fires declined 24 percent between 1998 and 2015. It appears that changes in agricultural practices are more than offsetting the increased fire risk now that they world is 1 degree warmer.
The world’s beaches are not disappearing. Most are stable, some are shrinking, but slightly more are growing. And Pacific and Indian Ocean atolls aren’t shrinking.
Oceans are rising. This article says the trend is less than 2mm a year (or 20 centimeters per Century). Here is an articlewhere a climate scientist explains the error of newspapers of reporting the very unlikely forecast of a one metre rise this Century.
There has been no increase in North Atlantic tropical cyclone flooding. Nor tornadoes in the USA. Tropical cyclones in Australia tend to also show a small declining trend.
NASA says that an increase in Antarctic snow accumulation that began 10,000 years ago is currently adding enough ice to the continent to outweigh the increased losses from its thinning glaciers.
And even though most Australians believe that there are more droughts, there is actually no drying trend over the past hundred years, according to Bureau of Meteorology data. Professor Andy Pitman (Director of the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Climate Extremes, and a Lead Author for the IPCC) says there is no reason to think global warming will cause more droughts in Australia (at 1hr, 11 minutes).
Source: https://medium.com/@ProfByron/how-i-changed-my-mind-about-global-warming-f603a8aca3da
So because of the evidence, I’ve gone from being a climate alarmist to a climate realist. I hope that both ‘alarmists’ and ‘deniers’ will do likewise. Then we can all move on to working out feasible solutions that don’t harm people and the environment while trying to save them.
I base my assessment of climate change not on models and predictions, but on observed, recorded data over recent decades.
From which it is perfectly plain it is warming and that there are already climate impacts.
but do note:
“deaths due to extreme weather events have declined a staggering 96% over the past century, and that’s in spite of population growth. Why? How? Largely due to better buildings and infrastructure, better emergency services, better hospitals and so on.”
some here in these columns have used this evidence to claim a decrease in extreme weather must be taking place – rather it is our improved response to it which is saving lives
Prove it!
Show us extreme weather is getting worse. If you do not you are worse than a fraud..you are a deplorable
It’s well documented that weather was worse in the US in the early part of the 20th century, and before that, than it was in the latter part of the century until now. Storms, heat, floods, drought, you name it, were worse when CO2 was lower.
That it has warmed over the last 150 years was never in doubt.
That CO2 caused it isn’t proven by just noting it has warmed.
That goes double for the claims that CO2 is going to cause massive warming some vague time in the future.
That there is a decrease in extreme weather is not documented by fewer deaths, it is documented by fewer extreme weather events.
Perhaps if you ever managed to find your way out of your echo chamber, you would have known that already.
No Ms Griff you do not. You base your assessment based upon ideology that kills the poor. Period.
If you cared about humanity, you would not keep supporting this anti-human, poor brown people hating scam.
Gator October 11, 2019 at 3:42 pm
No Ms Griff you do not. You base your assessment based upon ideology that kills the poor. Period.
If you cared about humanity, you would not keep supporting this anti-human, poor brown people hating scam.
—————
Just how much electricity grid have you built for these “poor brown people”?
How many cookers have you provided for these “poor brown people”?
how many fridges have you provided for these “poor brown people”?
how many roads/factories/ hospitals/schools have you built for these “poor brown people”
how much cash have you given to for these “poor brown people” to pay for the bounty you have provided?
How much of your excess food have you sent to these “poor brown people” ?
Have you actually stopped exploiting these “poor brown people” and stopped claiming their resources as your own?
I have made a monthly’s donation to feed poor brown people for decades now. I never miss a payment. So yes, I have built infrastructure and supplied food for these people you hate.
I also work tirelessly to educate people on just how deadly climate alarmism is, and how it kills millions annually.
Thanks for asking!
My turn.
Why do you hate poor brown people ghalfrunt?
yes. good on you I have donated monthly to MSF more than I should
perhaps you need to convince the world to stop wasting money on useless cosmetics, buying vehicles bigger than needed, buying new phones, “the poor brown people” would then be able to live happier lives. But of course you also need to force the public to buy shoes and clothes so that the “poor brown people” making their luxuries can get a living wage.
Nice strawman argument ghalfrunt! But there is not a single government that uses billions of tax payer money to buy useless cosmetics, buy vehicles bigger than needed, or buy new phones for us. What an incredibly stupid case you have tried to make, a case against saving human lives.
This is exactly why I enjoy this line of debate, because some of you ninnies are too stupid top know when to shut the Hell up. I simply use your crazy comments to show people just how far out of touch with reality you loons are. People do not want to associate with movements that are anti-human.
But please do us all a favor, and argue against wisely using resources, and for sacrificing millions annually to your leftist pipe dream. It makes you look so noble and smart! LOL
“perhaps you need to convince the world to stop wasting money on useless cosmetics, buying vehicles bigger than needed, buying new phones, “the poor brown people” would then be able to live happier lives. But of course you also need to force the public to buy shoes and clothes so that the “poor brown people” making their luxuries can get a living wage.”
Rubbish. “poor brown people” are poor largely due to corrupt governments, but also due to age-old, pervasive superstition, internal ethnic wars, etc. They need to pull themselves out of their own perpetual dark ages. Only then will they live happier.
It matters not what we do with our lives, but what they do with theirs. They don’t need handouts, they need to come to their senses.
They need cheap and efficient energy. Imagine your life cooking over a fire with zero modernity. How would your kids fare under the same circumstances? Would you want help?
Gator October 12, 2019 at 9:29 am
They need cheap and efficient energy. Imagine your life cooking over a fire with zero modernity. How would your kids fare under the same circumstances? Would you want help?
———————–
poor brown people are by definition poor
You suggest they need a cooker – £100 min
you suggest they purchase electricity
I assume your modernity would include a refrigerator £50
fridge would consume 230watts/24h = 84kWh= £6.3/year
Whole builds the infrastructure (grid/transformers/policing of same) and who pays?
To improve “poor brown people” living will require money – simple as that. Just saying let them build coal burning power stations will not help “poor brown people”
———
g
But there is not a single government that uses billions of tax payer money to buy useless cosmetics, buy vehicles bigger than needed, or buy new phones for us.
——–
gh
you seem to be saying that it is ok to throw money at useless product rather than send it to help the poor? your beef seems to be about the government using your taxes to help the poor. a strangeness
Wow gahlufrunt! You are as stupid as Genocide Jim! So I guess I will have to spell it out for you too. What tipped me off was your idiotic argument against helping millions who starve to death annually. Only an extremely moronic self absorbed arsehole would do that.
These were the bad projects. As you might see the bottom of the list was climate change. This offends a lot of people, and that’s probably one of the things where people will say I shouldn’t come back, either. And I’d like to talk about that, because that’s really curious. Why is it it came up? And I’ll actually also try to get back to this because it’s probably one of the things that we’ll disagree with on the list that you wrote down.
The reason why they came up with saying that Kyoto — or doing something more than Kyoto — is a bad deal is simply because it’s very inefficient. It’s not saying that global warming is not happening. It’s not saying that it’s not a big problem. But it’s saying that what we can do about it is very little, at a very high cost. What they basically show us, the average of all macroeconomic models, is that Kyoto, if everyone agreed, would cost about 150 billion dollars a year. That’s a substantial amount of money. That’s two to three times the global development aid that we give the Third World every year. Yet it would do very little good. All models show it will postpone warming for about six years in 2100. So the guy in Bangladesh who gets a flood in 2100 can wait until 2106. Which is a little good, but not very much good. So the idea here really is to say, well, we’ve spent a lot of money doing a little good.
And just to give you a sense of reference, the U.N. actually estimate that for half that amount, for about 75 billion dollars a year, we could solve all major basic problems in the world. We could give clean drinking water, sanitation, basic healthcare and education to every single human being on the planet. So we have to ask ourselves, do we want to spend twice the amount on doing very little good? Or half the amount on doing an amazing amount of good? And that is really why it becomes a bad project. It’s not to say that if we had all the money in the world, we wouldn’t want to do it. But it’s to say, when we don’t, it’s just simply not our first priority.
http://www.ted.com/talks/bjorn_lomborg_sets_global_priorities/transcript?language=en
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dtbn9zBfJSs
You see moron, I didn’t just come up with this on my own. And yes, I am name calling, as it is well warranted.
But again, feel free to continue to prove me right. LOL
Gator you lack of knowledge astound me as does your dh claims. Its the end of this!!! DH
Gator you lack of knowledge astound me as does your dh claims. Its the end of this!!!
DH
Right! Me, Lomborg, the world’s population, and a panel of Nobel Laureates are all wrong and you are right. LOL
Yeah, what were we all thinking? Let’s spend trillions on something that helps nobody, or spend billions and help millions? Hmmmmm…. what a dilemma! I just can’t figure out what to do! LOL
Gator you lack of knowledge astound me as does your dh claims. Its the end of this!!!
DH
So you’re saying the science is settled and there is no debate? Sounds strangely familiar.
Just why do you hate poor brown people?
griffy sez:
I live in my mom’s base
my assessmentFixed ‘er, griffy. 🙂
“…articles that don’t get much coverage in newspapers (which prefer bad news)”
The author seems to be under the illusion that both sides are honestly assessing the issue. If that were true, you would have warmists taking on skeptics in head to head debates, trying to convince them that the facts are on their side. But there are no such debates. In fact, his own change of mind illustrates exactly why they will not debate: the facts favor the skeptics.
As for the news media, the reason you don’t see news of the sort the author mentions is not because they “prefer bad news,” but because most of the media has chosen to represent one side.
Frankly, littering has become a bigger problem.
Knowing about the dry adiabatic lapse rate, I was partial to the “Sky Dragon” argument. This post on “WUWT” by Robert Brown convinced me that I was wrong:
wattsupwiththat.com/2012/01/24/refutation-of-stable-thermal-equilibrium-lapse-rates/
This guy’s really confused. He may call himself a “climate realist” but to the true believers, he just firmly established himself as a denier.
Welcome to the club.
Oops…
“Greta Thunberg Denied: Ethiopian PM Abiy Ahmed Wins Nobel Peace Prize”
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2019/10/11/greta-thunberg-denied-ethiopian-pm-abiy-ahmed-wins-nobel-peace-prize/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&fbclid=IwAR30Mgf_yJ6Iw-YJwNYE83Bmq07TfXJ_P9w78awVFsYNuATiHi-0ssTELKc
Cool.. I’m especially pleased that it has been given to someone I’ve never heard of.
I have long thought that farmers should lay CO2 emitting pipelines on the windward side of their fields. When the breeze is right, open the valve and give the potato plants some nutrition!
Greenhouse operators do this as a standard. Of course greenies arriving there to buy a few lush beefsteak tomatoes, would not know what that white, frost covered tank contains!
Byron, I take issue with this statement “It’s not that global warming isn’t a problem, but the problem has been misrepresented, and over-hyped (by people with good intentions).” You can’t possibly know their intentions and assuming that all these people have good intentions ignores the real world. Many of these climate scientists are wholly owned by globalist and socialist politicians, just look at climategate emails, peer review buddy systems and groupthink, emeritus scientists describing being bullied while in academia. Look at NGO’s and their funding, Greenpeace and Extinction Rebellion and others. Most of the people you are attributing “good intentions” to are very smart and very sophisticated, they know they are misrepresenting and over-hyping and are doing it for a purpose. People with truly good intentions would not use the methods currently being employed in order to achieve the end results they desire.
A great article, by a thoughtful man who stopped to consider the evidence (which is what real science is all about) before jumping on the scaremongers’ bandwagon.
The article mentions the decline in deaths due to extreme weather events. In addition to the reasons mentioned in the article, another reason for the decrease is the use of weather satellites which can spot and track tropical cyclones while they are far out over the ocean, and give people living along the coast several days’ warning to get out of their way. The residents of Galveston in 1900 had no such warning, which is why thousands of them drowned in the hurricane.
“So because of the evidence, I’ve gone from being a climate alarmist to a climate realist. I hope that both ‘alarmists’ and ‘deniers’ will do likewise. ”
Can you please refer us to evidence that the Professor was once an “alarmist” as he claims. Presumably he wrote some articles as he is now doing for a site widely recognized as being in the “denier” domain.
I suspect this is a fake conversion story. But I am willing to be proved wrong….
If you read the article, you already know what his “alarmism” consisted of.
and for him writing for “a site widely recognized as being in the “denier” domain”, what are you talking about? Medium (the site that he wrote the article for) is not “widely recognized as being in the denier realm” (honestly I don’t think it’s all that recognized as being the in realm of covering climate, one way or the other, period). If you search Medium for articles on climate change you’ll actually find articles from all perspectives both for and against.
If you are going to bash the guy and the site he wrote for, at least get your facts straight first, otherwise you just show yourself for the troll that you are.
I was born into a pacifist Quaker family. It took me into my 20’s to realise that you have nothing if you cannot defend it, and sometimes this includes violence – police with truncheons or guns, boarder guards, locks on doors, and an army. 50 years later, I still cannot talk to my family about this, despite the fact that they also expect their property to be theirs.
The problem of defending what you have extends from keeping brothers out of one’s space (they will harass and take unless sanctions exist) to having a nicer house than some of the community (policing and locks necessary) to having a nice country. I do not feel we should feel guilt about this and invite all the world to share, but that we should do whatever possible to improve the lives of those who have not. Hopefully what I have was not taken from others, but the fruit of my labours – of this no one can be 100% certain.
Signed The Redneck of the Family
Climate changes over irregular intervals. The range is unknown, but inferred from physical myths, folklore, etc. However, in the near-domain (i.e. science), the range is known to be wide, with fast transitions. That’s not in question. That said, the issue is anthropogenic causes, including, and especially, minority carbon dioxide emissions, and the so-called “greenhouse effect”, which was characterized in isolation, and has failed to live up to its potential in the wild. The issue is also models or hypotheses, that have demonstrated no skill to hindcast, let alone to forecast without regular injections of brown matter. Denier has a colorful history.
That was very interesting article by Byron Sharp. He may be missing something in his explanation of decreasing deaths due to weather.
In his article he says: “deaths due to extreme weather events have declined a staggering 96% over the past century, and that’s in spite of population growth. Why? How? Largely due to better buildings and infrastructure, better emergency services, better hospitals and so on.”
If you follow the link, it shows the largest decreases in death were decreases in the extremely large deaths due to draughts and floods. What should be first on his list of helping factors is better transportation which is primary do to use of fossil fuels.
The ability to transport food and water to draught stricken areas is the major reason for decreases in deaths along with ability to irrigate the land to prevent loss of crops again using fossil fuels for pumping water (maybe with some electrical pumps using wind and solar electricity). The transportation of food and water could be included under “emergency services”, but why are emergency services now “better”? Could it be the use of fossil fueled vehicles?
As for flooding again the major decrease in death is better transportation to evacuate the people at risk coupled with better forecasting. Again, fossil fuels are responsible for better transportation.
It might be a good idea of keeping some of these fossil fueled means of transport around in case of emergencies, instead of relying on electric trucks, boats, airplanes, ambulances, and helicopters to deliver help with weather disasters.
Thanks for the story. Fact checking takes many forms and time frames. Some never get it and get more thrill from not getting it.
I did not believe in global warming at first, then I changed my mind about 15 years ago to believe in it, and few years ago went back to not believing in it.
My thoughts are that co2 warms the earth by small amount, nothing to worry about and it’s probably a net positive due to better crop yields.
I’m am open minded that I could be wrong and it is a big problem but I think if it is, we can solve fairly cheaply with geo engineering.
I believe most of the greens don’t actually care about the temperature but really only care about destroying industry.
Professor Byron Sharp states that he was a “greenie” in his younger days on the farm back in NZ. I too can make that claim as a city kid who joined the ‘Values Party,’ as an 18 year old. The Values Party was the forerunner to the Greens in New Zealand back in the 70’s & 80’s. Back then our concerns centred around real pollution of the air and waterways.
As I grew older I retained those concerns, but I also moved toward a pragmatic outlook. I could clearly see that it would take money to fix those problems. This has been dramatically shown by the way the US has successfully cleaned up its act over the past 45 years, not that the current greens ever acknowledge this fact. This is in contrast to developing nations striving to get to the so called, first world status. Until that goal is achieved those countries will continue to live with real pollution. Thanks to the greens those developing countries are being denied the chance to lift themselves up on the back of fossil fuel prosperity as we have. That is the real hypocrisy of the modern green movement.
Getting back to the professor and his journey into the light, that most of us here have been standing in for some time, and given all of the evidence of the failings of the models and modelers, Professor Sharp still gives them the benefit of the doubt as in, “It’s not that global warming isn’t a problem, but the problem has been misrepresented, and over-hyped (by people with good intentions).” Many of us might dispute the ‘good intentions’ of those involved.
Most readers here will be somewhat bemused by the professors conclusion here, “Most concerning is how preoccupied people are about “what side you are on?” rather than wanting to discuss facts.” Haven’t WE been saying this from the start? Nice of you to catch up Professor!
One of Professor Sharp’s final statements leaves me a little cold though, “I hope that both ‘alarmists’ and ‘deniers’ will do likewise. Then we can all move on to working out feasible solutions that don’t harm people and the environment while trying to save them.” A noble sentiment spoiled by the ad hominem slur of ‘denier.’ If the professor is really interested in creating a climate (pun intended) more suited to constructive dialogue, then perhaps he could start a trend by calling us by our real descriptors, “Man made climate sceptics?” Despite all of the points the Professor makes about there being no climate scare, he still sees the need to spend time and effort fixing the non-problem.
The professor is getting there, but he is not there yet.
This is the first in a series of blogs where I describe how and why I changed my mind about something. I hope to encourage myself to change my mind more often. And to encourage others.
I think this and future articles by Prof. Sharp could be a Change My Mind, Change My Life!™ event for a great deal of humans. At least I hope so, and I’m encouraged by that. Whatever works I guess.
According to me personally, in my own Truth-World that no one else but I can see, hear, or understand, I’ve endured for years an internal struggle with the idea of CAGW simply on this admission by the IPCC:
“In sum, a strategy must recognise what is possible. In climate research and modelling, we should recognise that we are dealing with a coupled non-linear chaotic system, and therefore that the long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible. The most we can expect to achieve is the prediction of the probability distribution of the system’s future possible states by the generation of ensembles of model solutions. This reduces climate change to the discernment of significant differences in the statistics of such ensembles. The generation of such model ensembles will require the dedication of greatly increased computer resources and the application of new methods of model diagnosis. Addressing adequately the statistical nature of climate is computationally intensive, but such statistical information is essential.”
See p. 774, section 14.2.2.2, here: https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/03/TAR-14.pdf
From the above, I just couldn’t (and still can’t) seem to get past the admission that: 1) as yet everyone knows nothing very predictively useful about the physics of earth’s climate; 2) the statistically [in?]significant ensemble results of a plethora of software models coded with all of the assumptions against that nothingness define “Climate Change;” 3) the hardware required to run the plethora of software models that might (but as yet, don’t) offer anything very predictively useful regarding the climate still doesn’t exist; and 4) even if we had 1), 2), and 3), we don’t have a method of diagnosing the plethora of software models that can’t be run because there isn’t any hardware to compute the physics we don’t yet know.
But that’s just me. I’m encouraged at the hope that one day I’ll be a brighter bulb in the box.
Statistics derived from unknown processes is cargo cult science. Mathematics applied to garbage is garbage, no matter how “sciency” it sounds.
Dave:
Thanks for your encouragement. As a layman, I can only hope that you’re right.
Thanks for an excellent article and comments.
Would it be possible to add a graph plotting CO2 and world temperatures since 1880 please?
And another graph with world population and CO2? Use NOAA data even though it is corrupted. World temperatures up about 1 degree C since 1880.
And the list of planned and under construction power stations too.
USA =0. Russia = 8. Germany = 2. UK= 0.
https://endcoal.org/global-coal-plant-tracker/
My experience is probably unique.
I was totally unaware of the “global warming” issue until I attended a luncheon lecture in 1998 by an emeritus Professor (who was apparently a revered academic “Jack of all trades” in various science fields).
He was asked to give a lecture to a group of retired corporate managers (most with advanced science degrees, e.g. Chem PhDs). Fishing around for a topic he decided to talk about the work he was currently engaged in as a favor to a friend at MIT, a guy named Richard Lindzen (who meant nothing to me at the time.)
We were told Prof Lindzen was alarmed at what was being advanced by some of his colleagues under the label of “Global Warming” and asked his friend for just a little assistance (since he now had some free time smile).
The approach they were following combined an analysis of the science (including general modeling of which our lecturer was also an expert) with logic. Overly simplified (which the good Prof had to do in a short talk to old corporate types who just had had a good country club lunch) they were laying out a logic tree (if you accept this, then you have to accept that, and then……) and using hard data to assign probabilities to each of the branches. The probability of a harmful outcome was looking like it would be extremely low.
The talk was sufficient to awaken in me an interest in the subject with an initial assumption of “How could any rational person believe otherwise?”.
So, I was initiated as a skeptic*, and nothing I have learned since has convinced me otherwise.
* As I constantly argue with my academic son, being a skeptic does not mean I deny any of the “consensus” outcomes; only that they have not yet convinced me that those outcomes are worthy of destroying our economy; or even that the “outcome” will be a warmer world rather than a cooler (or colder) one.
The reality is that the Earth’s climate has been changing for eons yet the change is so small that it takes networks of very sophisticated sensors, decades to even detect it. One must not mix up true global climate change with weather cycles that are part of the current climate. Based on the paleoclimate record and the work done with models, the climate change we are experiencing today is caused by the sun and the oceans over which mankind has no control. Despite the hype, there is no real evidence that CO2 has any effect on climate and there is plenty of scientific rationale to support the idea that the climate sensitivity of CO2 is zero. It is all a matter of science.
AGW is not a proven theory but rather a conjecture. AGW sounds plausible at first but upon a more detailed examination one finds that the AGW conjecture is based on only partial science and is full of holes. For example there is the idea that CO2 acts as a thermostat and the increasing CO2 in the atmosphere causes warming because CO2 has LWIR absorption bands that cause CO2 to trap heat. CO2 based warming causes more H2O to enter the atmosphere which causes even more warming because H2O also has LWIR absorption bands and hence causes H2O to trap even more heat. So according the ths AGW conjecture H2O acts to amplify any warming that CO2 might cause. Al Gore in his movie, “The Inconvenient Truth” presents a chart showing CO2 and temperature for the past 650.000 years. There is an obvious correlation between CO2 and temperature which Al Gore claims shows that CO2 works as a thermostat and that more CO2 in our atmosphere causes warming. But a closer look at the data shows that CO2 follows instead of leeds temperature. It is higher temperatures that cause more CO2 to enter the atmosphere because warmer water does not hold as much CO2 as does cooler water. Contrary to what AL Gore claims, there is no evidence that the additional CO2 causes warming. On the plot, Al gore included where CO2 is today. CO2 is much higher than one would expect form the warming of the oceans and the proximate cause of the increase in CO2 is mankind’s burning of fossil fuels. According to the chart, if CO2 were the thermostat of global warming then it should be a heck of a lot warmer that it actually is but it is not. If anything, Al Gore’s chart shows that CO2 does not cause global warming as Al Gore claims.
H2O is actually a stronger absorber of IR than is CO2 on a molecule per molecule basis. According to he AGW conjecture, the idea is that CO2 warming causes more H2O to enter the atmosphere which causes even more warming which causes even more H2O to enter the atmosphere which causes even more H2O to enter the atmosphere and so forth. This positive feedback effect does not really require CO2 based warming but will operate on H2O based warming alone. This positive feedback effect, if true, would make Earth’s climate very unstable with H2O based warming causing more H2O to enter the atmosphere causing even more warming causing even more H2O to enter the atmosphere until all the bodies of water on Earth boiled away. Such an event would cause the barometric pressure and temperature of the Earth’s surface to be much higher than it is on Venus but such has never happened. What the AGW conjecture ignore’s is that besides being the primary greenhouse gas, H2O is a major coolant in the Earth’s atmosphere moving heat energy from the Earth’s surface to where clouds form and where heat energy is more readily radiated to space. The over all cooling effect of H2O is evidenced by the fact that the wet lapse rate is significantly less than the dry lapse rate in the troposphere. So instead of providing a positive feedback amplifying any warming that CO2 might provide, H2O provides negative feedback and retards any warming the CO2 might provide, Negative feedback systems are inherently stable as has been the Earth’s climate for over the past 500 million years, enough for life to evolve because we are here.
The AGW conjecture depends upon the existence of a radiant greenhouse effect in the Earth’s atmosphere caused by trace gases with LWIR absorption bands. A real greenhouse does not stay warm because of the action of heat trapping gases but rather stays warm because the glass limits cooling by convection. It is entirely a convectime greenhouse effect that keeps a real greenhouse warm. No radiant greenhouse effect has been observed, So too on Earth where gravity and the heat capacity of the atmosphere acts to limit cooling by convection. Derived from first principals, the Earth’s convective greenhouse effect causes the surface of the Earth to be roughly 33 degrees C warmer than it would otherwise be. 33 degrees C is the amount derived from first principals and 33 degrees C is what has been observed. Any additional warming caused by a radiant greenhouse effect has not been observed. The radiant greenhouse effect has not been observed in a real greenhouse, in the Earth’s atmosphere no on any planet in solar system with a thick atmosphere. The radiant greenhouse effect is nothing but science fiction so hence the AGW conjecture is nothing but science fiction as well, This is all a matter of science.
Then there is the “scientific” consensus argument. But there is no real consensus. It is all is all just speculation. Scientists never registered and then voted on the validity of the AGW conjecture. But even if they had it would be meaningless because science is not a democracy. The laws of science are not some sort of legislation. Scientific theories are not validated by a voting process. The AGW conjecture must really be on shaky ground if “consensus” is one of the reasons for us to believe in it.
But even if we could somehow stop the Earth’s climate from changing, extreme weather events and sea level rise would continue unabated because they are part of the current climate. We do not even know what the optimum global climate is let alone how to achieve it. The previous interglacial period, the Eemian, was warmer than this one with more ice cap melting and higher sea levels yet no tipping points ever happened. In the past, the Earth’s CO2 levels have been much higher than they are today and no tipping points ever happened. There is no real evidence that a climate emergency exists. It is all a matter of science.
I’ll stop being a “denier” when NASA and the Climate Cognoscenti stop BLEEPING with the data.
Until then, I give no quarter, not even a nanometer.
As a Yukoner living in the Canadian north, I am very interested in the repeated claims that the Arctic/North is warming XX times faster than the rest of the planet. I find these declarations to be extremely suspicious on their face, given the paucity of measurement stations in the north and particularly in the Arctic – a problem only worsened the further one goes back in time.
Official records for the Yukon hardly exist at all before the building of the Alaska Highway. Even today, official weather monitoring stations in the Yukon number in the low double digits, and are usually sited in (small) communities due to convenience rather than representative locations. And, above the Arctic Circle there are almost no monitoring stations whatsoever. The situation certainly does not improve in Canada’s other northern territories (Northwest Territories and Nunavut).
I suspect that most all northern/arctic areas, regardless of country, are subject to these problems.
Recently, Canada’s Minister of the Environment claimed warming in Canada (2x global mean) and accelerated warming in the North (3x global mean), but much of the historical data was based on models – not actual observations – because, historically, there weren’t enough stations. The link to Environment Canada’s document is here:
https://www.nrcan.gc.ca/sites/www.nrcan.gc.ca/files/energy/Climate-change/pdf/CCCR-Chapter4-TemperatureAndPrecipitationAcrossCanada.pdf
I would be very happy if WUWT members would critique this document. The Whitehorse City Council, the Yukon Legislature, and the Canadian Parliament have all declared a “climate emergency” – it would be very useful to have some informed counters to this ongoing clown show.
Sorry – I should have given this link instead, rather than a link to a specific chapter:
https://www.nrcan.gc.ca/maps-tools-and-publications/publications/climate-change-publications/canada-changing-climate-reports/canadas-changing-climate-report/21177
Some coverage by WUWT here:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/09/19/goldstein-feds-scrapped-100-years-of-data-on-climate-change/
Regarding the temperature, Adelaide is not too bad, as it has a strong sea breeze .
But inland, away from that sea breeze it does get hot, here in the town of Gawler we ling in a retirement village, and it get up to 45 C on the odd few day in the summer. But we elderly residents adapt, we retire into our units and turn on the air conductors.
So no one here has died of the heat.
So apart from very high electricity bills, part die to 40 % of renewable , we are all comfortable.
MJE VK5ELL
I have little interest in conversion confessions from so-called scientists, because no competent scientist should have ever been to the Green side. Those who have are merely demonstrating a weakness of the mind. An acceptance of messages sold by advertising.
There has never been a scientific reason to go along with global warming theory because its fundamentals have never been validated. Therefore, there is no point in reading about forecasts and hindcasts because they are synthetic constructs, cardboard ideas rather than hard steel.
You need go little further than the century-long failure to prove a quantitative link between atmospheric temperatures and CO2 concentrations. It is a fraudulent science that refuses to accept failed hypotheses. Geoff S
$200 Trillion (through 2100) wasted on the global warming fraud WOULD HAVE SOLVED EVERY OTHER real PROBLEM encountered by mankind.
Opportunity costs never enter the Climate Crisis Fraud equations.