Guest “liar, liar, pants on fire” by David Middleton
Hat tip to Dr. Willie Soon…
America Misled: How the fossil fuel industry deliberately misled Americans about climate change
Over the past few decades, the fossil fuel industry has subjected the American public to a well-funded, well-orchestrated disinformation campaign about the reality and severity of human-caused climate change. The purpose of this web of denial has been to confuse the public and decision-makers in order to delay climate action and thereby protect fossil fuel business interests and defend libertarian, free-market conservative ideologies. The fossil fuel industry’s denial and delay tactics come straight out of Big Tobacco’s playbook. As a result, the American public have been denied the right to be accurately informed about climate change, just as they were denied the right to be informed about the risks of smoking by the tobacco industry. While fossil fuel companies attacked the science and called on politicians to “reset the alarm,” climate-catalyzed damages worsened, including increased storm intensities, droughts, forest damage and wildfires, all at substantial loss of life and cost to the American people.
This report explores the techniques used to mislead the American public about climate change, and outlines ways of inoculating against disinformation.
George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication
The authors of this malicious and defamatory pack of lies are:
- John Cook, Center for Climate Change Communication, George Mason University
- Geoffrey Supran, Department of the History of Science, Harvard University
- Stephan Lewandowsky, School of Psychological Science, University of Bristol, and CSIRO Oceans and Atmosphere, Hobart, Tasmania, Australia
- Naomi Oreskes, Department of the History of Science, Harvard University
- Edward Maibach, Center for Climate Change Communication, George Mason University
This reads like a particularly idiotic Skeptical Science blog post.
The 97% Consensus Lie
Cook 2014 and its cooked consensus
Cook 2014 was nothing but the second hand opinions of Skeptical Science bloggers. Most of the surveys listed in figure 1 are similar second hand opinion exercises. These sorts of papers consist of abstract reviews. The authors’ then tabulate their opinions regarding whether or not the abstracts support the AGW paradigm. As Legates et al., 2013 pointed out, Cook defined the consensus as “most warming since 1950 is anthropogenic.” Cook then relied on three different levels of “endorsement” of that consensus and excluded 67% of the abstracts reviewed because they neither endorsed nor rejected the consensus.
The largest endorsement group was categorized as “implicitly endorses AGW without minimizing it.” They provided this example of an implied endorsement:
‘…carbon sequestration in soil is important for mitigating global climate change’
Carbon sequestration in soil, lime muds, trees, seawater, marine calcifiers and a whole lot of other things have always been important for mitigating a wide range of natural processes. I have no doubt that I have implicitly routinely “endorsed” the so-called consensus based on this example.
The second largest endorsement group was categorized as “implicitly endorses but does not quantify or minimize.” Pardon my obtuseness, but how in the heck can one explicitly endorse the notion that “most warming since 1950 is anthropogenic” without quantification? This is the example Cook provided:
‘Emissions of a broad range of greenhouse gases of varying lifetimes contribute to global climate change’
By this subjective standard, I have probably explicitly endorsed AGW a few times in WUWT posts.
Doran 2009 was a 97% consensus among 79 respondents
Doran and Kendall Zimmerman, 2009 was a survey of Earth Scientists listed in the American Geosciences Institute directory. The AGI includes AGU, AAPG and numerous other Earth Science societies. . This survey sample was limited to academic and government Earth Scientists. It excluded all Earth Scientists working in private sector businesses. The two key questions were:
1. When compared with pre-1800s levels, do you think that mean global temperatures have generally risen, fallen, or remained relatively constant?
2. Do you think human activity is a significant contributing factor in changing mean global temperatures?
I am a member of two AGI affiliated societies, AAPG and SEG, but not in the directories of academic institutions or government agencies. So, there was as zero-point-zero percent chance of me and about 50,000 other geoscientists being surveyed.
Had I been surveyed, I would have answered risen to #1 and my answer to #2 would have depended on the meaning of “human activity is a significant contributing factor.” If I realized it was a “push poll,” I would have answered “no.”
Interestingly, government and academic economic geologists and meteorologists were the most likely to answer “no” to question #2…
The two areas of expertise in the survey with the smallest percentage of participants answering yes to question 2 were economic geology with 47% (48 of 103) and meteorology with 64% (23 of 36).
The authors derisively dismissed the opinions of geologists and meteorologists…
It seems that the debate on the authenticity of global warming and the role played by human activity is largely nonexistent among those who understand the nuances and scientific basis of long-term climate processes.
No discipline has a better understanding of the “nuances” than meteorologists and no discipline has a better understanding of the “scientific basis of long-term climate processes” than geologists.
The authors close with a “no schist, Sherlock” bar chart:
If a survey was conducted of active publishers of abiotic oil papers, it would probably also yield a consensus. The same could be said of UFO researchers. Doran 2009 was an example of expertise cherry-picking and a total non sequitur… The conclusion doesn’t follow from the survey questions.
Stenhouse 2014 was a 52% “consensus”
The 97% claim from Stenhouse et al., 2014 was also contrived via expertise cherry-picking. These were the actual survey results:
When self-described “climate scientists” and meteorologists/atmospheric scientists are segregated the results become even more interesting…
Only 45% of meteorologists and atmospheric scientists endorse the so-called consensus. Even self-described climate scientists only reach 78%.
The 52% overall “consensus” among the membership of the American Meteorological Society was explained away as being due to “perceived scientific consensus,” “political ideology,” and a lack of “expertise” among non-publishing meteorologists and atmospheric scientists…
While we found that higher expertise was associated with a greater likelihood of viewing global warming as real and harmful, this relationship was less strong than for political ideology and perceived consensus. At least for the measure of expertise that we used, climate science expertise may be a less important influence on global warming views than political ideology or social consensus norms. More than any other result of the study, this would be strong evidence against the idea that expert scientists’ views on politically controversial topics can be completely objective.
Finally, we found that perceiving conflict at AMS was associated with lower certainty of global warming views, lower likelihood of viewing global warming as human caused, and lower ratings of predicted harm caused by global warming.
So… Clearly, 97% of AMS membership would endorse the so-called consensus if they were more liberal, more accepting of unanimity and published more papers defending failed climate models. No schist, Sherlock!
On top of all that, Stenhouse didn’t even ask the right questions. The so-called consensus is that humans have caused more than half of the warming since 1950. Stenhouse asked about the past 150 years.
Why did the misleaders omit Maibach et al., 2016?
Maibach is one of the authors of the pack of lies, yet they failed to even mention his 2016 AMS survey.
This survey told us that atmospheric scientists were very divided about climate change since 1950.
The questions also eerily correlate with this infamous Tweet…
Ninety-seven percent of scientists agree: #climate change is real, man-made and dangerous. Read more: http://t.co/4lEEBYtVqf
— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) May 16, 2013
“Climate change is real”
“Man-made”
“And dangerous”
“And today, there’s no greater threat to our planet than climate change.”
So climate change can no longer be denied – or ignored. The world is looking to the United States – to us – to lead.
–Former (thankfully) President Barack Hussein Obama, April 18, 2015
Climate Change…
Why did the misleaders omit Stenhouse 2017?
Stenhouse et al., 2017 tells us that there is conflict within the American Meteorological Society on the subject of climate change.
This article analyzes open-ended survey responses to understand how members of the American Meteorological Society (AMS) perceive conflict within the AMS over global warming. Of all survey respondents, 53% agreed that there was conflict within the AMS; of these individuals who perceived conflict, 62% saw it as having at least some productive aspects, and 53% saw at least some unproductive aspects. Among members who saw a productive side to the conflict, most agreed as to why it was productive: debate and diverse perspectives enhance science. However, among members who saw an unproductive side, there was considerable disagreement as to why. Members who are convinced of largely human-caused climate change expressed that debate over global warming sends an unclear message to the public. Conversely, members who are unconvinced of human-caused climate change often felt that their peers were closed-minded and suppressing unpopular views. These two groups converged, however, on one point: politics was seen as an overwhelmingly negative influence on the debate. This suggests that scientific organizations faced with similar conflict should understand that there may be a contradiction between legitimizing all members’ views and sending a clear message to the public about the weight of the evidence. The findings also reinforce the conclusion that attempts by scientific societies to directly address differences in political views may be met with strong resistance by many scientists.
The #ExxonKnew Secret Science Lie
Apart from the bit about defending “libertarian, free-market conservative ideologies”, this is a pack of lies:
Over the past few decades, the fossil fuel industry has subjected the American public to a well-funded, well-orchestrated disinformation
Cook et al., 2019
campaign about the reality and severity of human-caused climate
change. The purpose of this web of denial has been to confuse the public and decision-makers in order to delay climate action and thereby protect fossil fuel business interests and defend libertarian, free-market conservative ideologies 1. The fossil fuel industry’s denial and delay tactics come straight out of Big Tobacco’s playbook. As a result, the American public have been denied the right to be accurately informed about climate change, just as they were denied the right to be informed about the risks of smoking by the tobacco industry. While fossil fuel companies attacked the science and called on politicians to “reset the alarm,” climate-catalyzed damages worsened, including increased storm intensities, droughts, forest damage and wildfires, all at substantial loss of life and cost to the American people 2.
The cartoon of a climate model is from the 1978 Black presentation:
The fossil fuel industries couldn’t have denied the American public “the right to be accurately informed about climate change” if we had tried.
Everything oil companies allegedly knew came from publicly available government and/or academic sources
One of the allegedly most damning documents was the 1968 Robinson Report for the American Petroleum Institute (API).
In 1968, scientists with the Stanford Research Institute reported to the American Petroleum Institute about their research on atmospheric pollutants of interest to the industry. Summarizing the available science, the scientists saved their starkest warnings for carbon dioxide (CO2). They cautioned that rising levels of CO2 would likely result in rising global temperatures and warned that, if temperatures increased significantly, the result could be melting ice caps, rising sea levels, warming oceans, and serious environmental damage on a global scale.
1968 “THE ROBINSON REPORT”
A page reproduced from this damning report referenced Möller (1963) as the source of a 1-7 °F rise in temperature due to a 25% increase in atmospheric CO2…
Unless Exxon owned the American Geophysical Union back then, Möller (1963) was not a secret document…
On the influence of changes in the CO2 concentration in air on the radiation balance of the Earth’s surface and on the climate
F. MöllerAbstract
Journal of Geophysical Research
The numerical value of a temperature change under the influence of a CO2 change as calculated by Plass is valid only for a dry atmosphere. Overlapping of the absorption bands of CO2 and H2O in the range around 15 μ essentially diminishes the temperature changes. New calculations give ΔT = + 1.5° when the CO2 content increases from 300 to 600 ppm. Cloudiness diminishes the radiation effects but not the temperature changes because under cloudy skies larger temperature changes are needed in order to compensate for an equal change in the downward long-wave radiation. The increase in the water vapor content of the atmosphere with rising temperature causes a self-amplification effect which results in almost arbitrary temperature changes, e.g. for constant relative humidity ΔT = +10° in the above mentioned case. It is shown, however, that the changed radiation conditions are not necessarily compensated for by a temperature change. The effect of an increase in CO2 from 300 to 330 ppm can be compensated for completely by a change in the water vapor content of 3 per cent or by a change in the cloudiness of 1 per cent of its value without the occurrence of temperature changes at all. Thus the theory that climatic variations are effected by variations in the CO2 content becomes very questionable.
From the full paper…
In this case, we must distinguish between the assumptions that the water vapor content (in cm l.e.) remains unchanged in spite of heating (cooling) of the atmosphere and that it increases (decreases). Constant absolute humidity means that the relative humidity (f) decreases from 75 to 70.34 per cent with a 1° or lowered by 4.66 per cent per deg. According to the above-mentioned calculations, an increase in CO2 from 300 to 600 ppm gives us a temperature change ΔT = +1.5° for Δf = -4.66 per cent per deg, and a temperature change ΔT = +9.6° for Δf = 0.
[…]
We recognize that for Δf = 0.8 per cent per deg the temperature change becomes infinite. Very small variations effect a reversal of sign or huge amplifications.
It is not too difficult to infer from these numbers that the variation in the radiation budget from a changed CO2 concentration can be compensated for completely without any variation in the surface temperature when the cloudiness is increased by +0.006 or the water vapor content is decreased by -0.07 cm l.e.
[…]
These are variations in the cloudiness by 1 per cent of its value or in the water vapor content by 3 per cent of its value. No meteorologist or climatologist would dare to determine the mean cloudiness or mean water content of the atmosphere with such accuracy; much less can a change of this order of magnitude be proved or its existence denied. Because of these values the entire theory of climatic changes by CO2 variations is becoming questionable.
Möller (1963)
So, as far back as 1963, Exxon knew exactly what we know today:
“The entire theory of climatic changes by CO2 variations is questionable.“
The infamous 1978 Black presentation was just a review of government and academic publications on the so-called greenhouse effect.
Here’s what Exxon knew in 1978…
Black’s allegedly proprietary climate model was just another cartoon based on publicly available literature.
I added HadCRUT4 to highlight how Hansen-ian it was in its wrongness.
This allegedly proprietary Exxon climate model is a cartoon derived from a 1979 National Research Council publication…
I plotted HadCRUT4 and MLO CO2 on it at the same scale… The models were wrong back then and are not much better now.
By 1978, Exxon knew that Gorebal Warming was 97% horst schist and that future climate models would fail miserably.
By 1982, Exxon’s “brilliant climate modelers” (/SARC) predicted that, apart from the recent El Niño, HadCRUT4 would remain within the “range of natural fluctuations (climatic noise) for at least the next 40 years.
An amazing feat, considering that “the first-ever synthesis of land and marine temperature data – i.e., the first global temperature record” didn’t exist before 1989.
References
Cook, J., Supran, G., Lewandowsky, S., Oreskes, N., & Maibach, E., (2019). America Misled: How the fossil fuel industry deliberately misled Americans about climate change. Fairfax, VA: George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication. Available at https://www.climatechangecommunication.org/america-misled/
Cook, J., Nuccitelli, D., Green, S. A., Richardson, M., Winkler, B., Painting, R., et al. (2013). Quantifying the consensus on anthropogenic global warming in the scientific literature. Environmental Research Letters, 8, 024024.
Doran, P., & Zimmerman, M. (2009). Examining the scientific consensus on climate change. EOS. Transactions of the American Geophysical Union, 99, 22–23.
Legates DR, Soon WW-H, Briggs WM et al. (2013) Climate consensus and “misinformation”: a rejoinder to “agnotology, scientific consensus, and the teaching and learning of climate change”. Sci Educ. doi:10.1007/s11191-013-9647-9.
Maibach, E., Perkins, D., Francis, Z., Myers, T., Englbom, A., et al. (2016). A 2016 National Survey of American Meteorological Society Member Views on Climate Change: Initial Findings. George Mason University, Fairfax, VA: Center for Climate Change Communication.
Möller, F. (1963). “On the influence of changes in the CO2 concentration in air on the radiation balance of the Earth’s surface and on the climate”. J. Geophys. Res., 68(13), 3877–3886, doi:10.1029/JZ068i013p03877.
National Research Council. 1979. “Carbon Dioxide and Climate: A Scientific Assessment”. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. https://doi.org/10.17226/12181.
Stenhouse, N., and Coauthors, 2014: Meteorologists’ views about global warming: A survey of American Meteorological Society professional members. Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc., 95, 1029–1040, doi:https://doi.org/10.1175/BAMS-D-13-00091.1.
Stenhouse, N., A. Harper, X. Cai, S. Cobb, A. Nicotera, and E. Maibach, 2017: Conflict about Climate Change at the American Meteorological Society: Meteorologists’ Views on a Scientific and Organizational Controversy. Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc., 98, 219–223, https://doi.org/10.1175/BAMS-D-15-00265.1
Further Reading
What did ExxonMobil Know and when did they know it? (Part 1)
What did ExxonMobil Know and when did they know it? (Part Deux, “Same as it ever was.”)
What did ExxonMobil Know and when did they know it? (Part 3, Exxon: The Fork Not Taken
“Smoke & Fumes”… The dumbest attack on ExxonMobil evah’
Even dumber than the dumbest attack on ExxonMobil evah’
What Did Shell Know and When Did They Know It?
HuffPost: The Dumbest #ExxonKnew Article… EVAH!
NY Attorney General Defies Judge’s Order in Exxon Case
ExxonKnew Epic Fail: Oil Companies DID NOT build “their rigs to account for sea-level rise”
Defending Mann’s Hockey Stick because #ExxonKnew
Kamala Harris Lied About #ExxonKnew Lies
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David Middleton
“No discipline has a better understanding (of?) the “nuances” than meteorologists and no discipline has a better understanding of the “scientific basis of long-term climate processes” than geologists.”
Another great post….
Guess I haven’t been paying attention. I thought Cook and Lewandowsky were discredited Years ago for their antics.
Not sure why Harvard’s History of Science department is involved.
The article quoted is from George Mason so a call to Maibach for comment seems logical but I doubt the University nor Harvard are likely to comment in the face of pending litigation.
What a mess!
From the quoted article:
https://www.climatechangecommunication.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/America_Misled.pdf
Reference section cites:
7, 16, 17, 26 footnotes are Cook
7, 11, 12, 17, 22, 23, 27 are Lewandowsky
1, 7, 17, 18, 25 are Oreskes
25 Supran
4, 6 Maibach
* 4 van der Linden, S., Leiserowitz, A. A., Feinberg, G. D., & Maibach, E. W. (2015). The scientic consensus on climate change as a gateway belief: Experimental evidence. PLOS ONE, 10(2), e0118489.
* 6 van der Linden, S., Leiserowitz, A., Rosenthal, S., & Maibach, E. (2017). Inoculating the public against misinformation about climate change. Global Challenges, 1(2), 1600008
* 25 Supran, G. & Oreskes, N. (2017). Assessing ExxonMobil’s climate change communications (1977–2014). Environmental Research Letters, 12(8)
Why did George Mason publish this article?
Middleton,
Dig a bit deeper and you’ll find the causes of the ignorance.
Regards,
John
“I thought Cook and Lewandowsky were discredited Years ago for their antics.”
They were, and decisively. Just as Mann’s hockey shtick, IPCC apocalypse reports, NOAA magical data and the whole “tree ring circus” as Steyn might say. Yet they persist, like the walking dead.
The 97% consensus is argumentum ad nauseam – endlessly reiterated by climate zealots until it seems true – and the imaginary climate apocalypse is self-evident truth (argumentum ad populum) as defined by a made up mass of scientific elites (argumentum ad verecundiam).
Post modern relativism and logical fallacy on steroids – posing as science and reason.
Dear Mr. Middleton,
Thanks for your ongoing efforts to debunk this (and other) climate alarmist nonsense with data, logic and reason.
However… and I hate to say this, as no one likes to have their prose style criticised – could you please, please stop deploying the puerile “schist” pun? I would dearly like to be able to forward your articles to friends who really need to see your analysis, but who are typical middle-of the-road professionals that will be put off by this kind of thing. Your overall snarky tone pushes your writings to the borderline of normie acceptability; the “schist” and “horst schist” puns put it over the edge. I know content should trump form, but for many people, they can’t see past the form. And much as we’d like to discount their prejudices, they do get to vote. So we need to be able to persuade them.. and that means persuding them to analyses such as yours.
I understand your anger. I understand your contempt. I share both. But please keep these in check when you write so they do not undermine the excellent quality of your analysis.
I want to share your writings, far and wide. But I don’t feel I can. And I suspect many other people feel the same way.
“The second largest endorsement group was categorized as “implicitly endorses but does not quantify or minimize.” Pardon my obtuseness, but how in the heck can one explicitly endorse the notion that “most warming since 1950 is anthropogenic” without quantification?”
Another Doh!
Tree Rings : )
/sarc
David,
excellent work. Someone had to do it.
According to a 2015 bombshell dropped by Naomi Oreskes, a decade earlier she’d asked 928 wads of paper written by climate scientists whether they agreed with the UN’s opinion that global warming was mostly anthropogenic.
And you know what she’d found, back in 2004? Of those 928, every single ream said “yes.”
That means Naomi Oreskes herself had spent a decade manufacturing doubt about the true strength of the consensus, systematically deceiving America into thinking she’d found “very few” endorsements of the UN’s position.
Either that, or she’d been telling the truth for a while, then realized that wasn’t cutting it, so decided to brazenly exaggerate the unanimity of the papers instead.
Details: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/12/23/oreskes-harvard-and-the-destruction-of-scientific-revolutions/
I can’t remember if this was from a WUWT post lately but I’ll repeat it anyway.
It’s notable that a Lawyer or Doctor exposed telling lies would both be struck off their respective registers.
Scientists and politicians get promoted.
Which is explained because the MSM does not hold them to account instead it aids them.
A cartoonist, a shrink and someone claiming to a historian walk into a bar…
…and it appears they are still there, through several happy hours.
Seriously: NOT science. At all.
Oh, come on! Calling Lewandowsky a “shrink” is an insult both to clinical psychologists and to New Guinea’s traditional cranial taxidermists.
The former try, at least, to help people move forward with their lives—whereas the only people Lewandowsky encourages to move forward are those standing on the ledge of mental illness. Remember the paranoiac advice he gave to the already-troubled Alene Composta (before he’d figured out she was a made-up character): “Bear in mind that a proportion of those comments is orchestrated and for all we know there are only a handful of people with multiple electronic “personas” each, who are paid to create disproportionate noise”
And the latter… well, at least they’re not as superstitious or prone to magical thinking as the Unflushable Lew.
Excellent 🙂
Most of that is not new, but good to be repeated.
Could you publish something similar in some journal, please?
Makes it easier for us to quote the study 🙂
I copied almost all of it from previous posts I have written.
I don’t know of any journals that publish factual rebuttals to their scurilous lies.
Why fight it?
If they want to confess to consensus science, why not let them have it?
https://tambonthongchai.com/2018/05/06/consensus-science/
I have had a good number of “discussions” with Skeptical Science” and in the end they banned me.
They are a joke.
I am also familiar with the papers mentioned above. Who was that who peer reviewed them again?
If anyone tries to introduce them to https://rogerfromnewzealand.wordpress.com/2018/05/09/ever-been-told-that-the-science-is-settled-with-global-warming-well-read-this-and-decide-for-yourself/ it should be interesting.
I cant do I because
1. I am banned.
2. The page is too hard for their poor minds to cope with.
Cheers
Roger
I have had a good number of “discussions” with Skeptical Science” and in the end they banned me.
They banned me in December of 2012
My close friend (and anagram) Sady Berkeley was banned from SkS after a total of one comment. Or rather, zero comments, since Sady’s was deleted before COB.
For the crime of quoting the #DistractinglySexy Naomi Oreskes, apparently.
https://cliscep.com/2018/03/01/well-that-was-quick-sks-now-offers-same-day-blognic-cleansing/
I believe I hold four ban-speed records.
I think a lot of us are tied for the record of one comment, immediately deleted, on SKS.
I’ve rarely been so glad to have my expectations disconfirmed. Congrats to everyone who’s tied on the zero-comment SkS ban-speed record.
Those who took 1 or 2 comments to get exiled shouldn’t feel bad either—as long as you got there in the end, that’s what counts.
It’s not a race. OK, it is, but there’s no shame in a bronze medal.
My first post on WUWT, back in 2010 or 2011, generated a lot of Internet buzz. It was about plant stomata and the fact that they indicate higher and more variable CO2 levels than Antarctic ice cores. The SkepSciBots immediately published several logically fallacious “rebuttals”. I entered into a generally cordial discussion in the comments section. I don’t think any of my comments were deleted. But it was like having a discussion with a flock of retarded parrots.
That post also led me to Yahoo Answers where I spent a few months as the only scientifically literate skeptic. However, SkepSci’s Dana Nuccitelli and another pack of retarded parrots would try to drown out the discussion. Many of my answers were removed by Yahoo because the retarded parrots would file complaints. I would have to file appeals to have most of my answers restored.
I eventually decided to almost exclusively limit my discussions to WUWT, because I have a real job and the Internet has an endless supply of retarded parrots.
BTW…I was banned from SKS days prior to discovering this site for the first time.
So for herding me in this direction, I have nothing but praise for them.
Never have so few prevented so many from wasting so much time while expending so little effort.
Nicholas McGinley
The first site I found to satisfy my craving for information on climate science was sks. As a non scientist I was only interested in asking some straightforward questions. I was attacked for even having the audacity to do so.
More importantly, I was puzzled that every single subject had an definitive answer. Nothing is left to question because it’s all bundled up into nice neat little packages, and that’s just not possible in any walk of life.
So, not knowing what I was getting myself into, I pitched up here. No idea if it was an alarmist or sceptical site but started asking questions, expecting precisely the same aggressive reaction I had on sks.
Instead, I had numerous regular contributors including the more educated and prominent patiently explain to me the science of the situation. Interestingly, few of them stated the alarmists were wrong, they just let me figure that out for myself, which is how science is supposed to work, isn’t it?
What I learned over and above anything else is that no one really knows what’s going on, all we can do is trust the empirical data we have so far e.g. satellite observations tell us that global temperatures are bumping along the bottom of the computer predictions, and the planet has greened by 14%.
We also know, with almost absolute certainty that Cold kills a lot more people than Heat e.g. in the UK winter 2017/2018 there were 50,000 (fifty thousand) Excess Winter Deaths according to the Office For National Statistics (ONS). According to the NDMA (India’s National Disaster Management Authority), during the 2017 ‘unprecedented’ heat wave 222 (two hundred and twenty two) people suffered heat related deaths. Since 1992 India has suffered 22,000 heat related deaths, not even half the UK suffered in a single, unremarkable winter, over 27 years.
Interestingly, the UK is a technologically advanced western nation with a population around 60m. India is a country of around 1.3Bn, with around 10% (from memory, don’t quote me on that) living in Extreme Poverty. The lancet and the British Medical journal also published a study stating that the relationship between deaths from Cold and Heat was around 20:1 globally.
There are innumerable other examples of the ridiculous alarmist scares promoted by our politicians and the media I have heard of here, but gone off to check details myself.
So thank you to all at WUWT. I can talk reasonably knowledgeably (as a layman) about the subject of climate change and use my knowledge, as far as I can, to educate people within my social circle.
And yes, David Middleton has been one of those who has in the past had the patience to explain things to me in layman’s terms.
The final observation I have on the matter is that the alarmists have been so spectacularly successful so far, because they have used over simplistic, usually untrue/out of context sound bites that the public get and can trot out e.g. 97%, melting Arctic, SLR, extreme weather etc.
In my opinion, the sceptical community need to be communicating in these simple terms with the layman, after all, there are less that 10% of scientists in the world and every one of those layman have the same single vote (in Democracies of course) that a scientist has.
Sceptics need to communicate better with the biggest 90% of the audience, then the alarmist scientists don’t matter.
Thanks folks. Sorry to go on.
I was banned for saying inter-glacial periods were warmer.
I mean, serial?!
“What I learned over and above anything else is that no one really knows what’s going on, all we can do is trust the empirical data we have so far e.g. satellite observations tell us that global temperatures are bumping along the bottom of the computer predictions, and the planet has greened by 14%.”
The bottom line for me isn’t whether it’s warmer or cooler than some arbitrary time period, it’s the fact that so-called extreme weather hasn’t gotten more intense or extremier. And that sea level (almost as much a chimera as “global average temperature”) has been rising monotonously since the end of the LIA.
If we can’t adapt to these minor changes, we are surely doomed when some REAL change shows up, like another glacial.
HotScot:
“What I learned over and above anything else is that no one really knows what’s going on, all we can do is trust the empirical data we have so far e.g. satellite observations tell us that global temperatures are bumping along the bottom of the computer predictions, and the planet has greened by 14%.”
Jeff (Really) Alberts:
“The bottom line for me isn’t whether it’s warmer or cooler than some arbitrary time period, it’s the fact that so-called extreme weather hasn’t gotten more intense or extremier.”
Really, (and I do mean, “really”) why would I not rely on the IPCC’s own admission encompassing both your propositions (and more) to reject the notion of CAGW:
“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 page 774, section 14.2.2.2 from here: https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/03/TAR-14.pdf
Let me guess, their herding came in the form of “Kindly stop repeating zombie memes from wattsupwiththat.com. Go back to wattsupwiththat.com, where the wattsupwiththat.com regulars have a higher tolerance for already-debunked, repeatedly-disproven questions, you wattsupwiththat.com flying monkey!”
I think it was an indirect form of herding, although to be honest I do not recall the exact sequence by which I found WUWT.
I do recall that this was not the first blog I tried after being bounced from SKS.
And it was rather more of a carom than a herding. If they had demonstrated only a normal amount of warmista hostility to skepticism, I might have hung around arguing there forever.
I can say that what HotScot relates regarding his experience was also what I recall finding upon happening along and dropping in some comments here.
I had already made some comments at Tony Heller’s blog, Jo Nova, and a few others.
I was mostly ignored at all of them, except I also found that Jo Nova had deleted my first comment, as had whoever moderates Climate Audit.
I never have made a single other comment at either of those sites, and have rarely even bothered looking at the sites again. I mean, rude is rude.
After a few comments, I began to get encouraging responses at Tony’s blog.
Here at WUWT, I found I had questions answered, people being helpful, nothing deleted, and many engaging conversations, pretty much right from the start.
I think my first comment here was to ask how exactly satellite temperature measurements of the atmosphere worked. And someone explained it to me right away.
“This reads like a particularly idiotic Skeptical Science blog post.”
A recent study (not published yet) shows that 97% of Skeptical Science blog posts are “particularly idiotic”.
“America Being Misled by Cook, Oreskes, Lewendowsky and Maibach”
And backed by Obama.
Climate change alarmists hold all the cards. 🙁
Any thoughts I had to the credibility of (1) reversible, (2) man-made, climate (3) change were destroyed when Obama the Politician said “The science is settled.” As a geophysicist and someone who studied under the team responsible for the discovery of sea floor spreading, I know science is never settled. Whether in my field of geophysics or in my hobby fields of archaeology and astronomy, the “study of” something is never settled.
My interest came about in a similar way, but back in 2001. That was when AR3 and the hockey stick were published. Prime Minister Tony Blair and others then started claiming the 1990s were the hottest decade in a thousand years, that the science was settled and that there was a consensus.
Like you I am a geophysicist. The trigger words are “Science is settled” and “scientific concensus”. Those are political not scientific statements. By BS filters automatically deployed and I started to investigate for myself. By the time McIntyre & McKitrick 2005 was published I was convinced the hockey stick was nonsense. Now convinced more than ever that the hypothesis is pretty weak and there are no reliable climate predictions. Also convinced we are living throh of mass hysteria over this.
Hopefully with XR we are now reaching peak hysteria and normal service may be resumed over the next few years!
From 1981-2006, my business card said “Geophysicist.” From 2007-2012 it said “VP Exploration” and since then it’s said “Sr. Geologist”… As near as I can tell, all three jobs were the same… Except when I was VP, I had to not only do my own work, but stay on top of everyone else’s too.
I remember the “debate” back in the 1970’s. The Reid Bryson camp was concerned about aerosols and dust blocking the Sun and dropping us into an ice age. The other side was concerned about CO2 and global warming. At the time, in college, we were taught that Earth was still in an ice age, year-round ice at the poles was the geological exception, rather than the norm, most of the Holocene had been warmer than it was in the 1970’s and that CO2 had very little to do with paleo-climate.
When Al Gore invented AGW in 1988, I thought he was a kook. But… the late 1990’s were very hot in Dallas… They began publishing the Antarctic ice core reconstructions that appeared to demonstrate a correlation of CO2 and temperature and Mann’s Hockey Stick was published. At that point, I started to think, maybe there’s something to this.
Then it stopped warming and cooled a bit, the Hockey Stick was revealed to be a fraud, and it was demonstrated that the CO2 lagged temperature in the ice cores. At this point I became a hard core skeptic and started digging into the science… Which ultimately lead me to WUWT about 10 years ago. Over the past 10 years, I’ve become more of a “luke warmer.” Only about 97% of AGW “science” is fraudulent.
“Over the past 10 years, I’ve become more of a “luke warmer.” Only about 97% of AGW “science” is fraudulent.
LOL. 🙂
David Middleton,
There have been efforts by others to debunk the 97% claim. This is one. It was presented to the UK Parliament.
Written evidence submitted by Robin Guenier (IPC0024)
This evidence is a response to the Energy and Climate Change Select Committee’s inquiry concerning the 5th Assessment Review (AR5) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
Written evidence submitted by Robin Guenier (IPC0024)Written evidence submitted by Robin Guenier (IPC0024)
http://data.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/committeeevidence.svc/evidencedocument/energy-and-climate-change-committee/ipcc-5th-assessment-review/written/4191.html
http://bit.ly/2MKoahR
It, like yours, is excellent. Also, here.
97 Articles Refuting The “97% Consensus”
(link: http://www.populartechnology.net/2014/12/97-articles-refuting-97-consensus.html?m=1)
populartechnology.net/2014/12/97-art…
I thank you for your outstanding article on this and hope and pray it penetrates the brains of the Believers who continue to quote these thoroughly debunked “surveys”.
Yeah, Tarot cards.
Greta as the Death card.
Climate alarmists always quote this link;
https://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/
But when you go to the sublink;
https://climate.nasa.gov/scientific-consensus/
The first references are;
“J. Cook, et al, “Consensus on consensus: a synthesis of consensus estimates on human-caused global warming,” Environmental Research Letters Vol. 11 No. 4, (13 April 2016); DOI:10.1088/1748-9326/11/4/048002
Quotation from page 6: “The number of papers rejecting AGW [Anthropogenic, or human-caused, Global Warming] is a miniscule proportion of the published research, with the percentage slightly decreasing over time. Among papers expressing a position on AGW, an overwhelming percentage (97.2% based on self-ratings, 97.1% based on abstract ratings) endorses the scientific consensus on AGW.”
J. Cook, et al, “Quantifying the consensus on anthropogenic global warming in the scientific literature,” Environmental Research Letters Vol. 8 No. 2, (15 May 2013); DOI:10.1088/1748-9326/8/2/024024
Quotation from page 3: “Among abstracts that expressed a position on AGW, 97.1% endorsed the scientific consensus. Among scientists who expressed a position on AGW in their abstract, 98.4% endorsed the consensus.”
W. R. L. Anderegg, “Expert Credibility in Climate Change,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Vol. 107 No. 27, 12107-12109 (21 June 2010); DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1003187107.
P. T. Doran & M. K. Zimmerman, “Examining the Scientific Consensus on Climate Change,” Eos Transactions American Geophysical Union Vol. 90 Issue 3 (2009), 22; DOI: 10.1029/2009EO030002.
N. Oreskes, “Beyond the Ivory Tower: The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change,” Science Vol. 306 no. 5702, p. 1686 (3 December 2004); DOI: 10.1126/science.1103618.”
I know J. Cook and N. Oreskes are NOT climate scientists.
Cook has a doctorate in philosophy and was apparently trying to keep the lights on as a web designer when SKS finally landed him a job as an assistant professor of climate change *communication.*
That his “research” could pass any peer-review is a direct indictment of the peer-review system. The only way his research could pass peer review is by having friendly reviewers.
+1000
Hit the nail nearly on the head.
Why does George Mason University have a “Climate Change Communications” department? Is it to to communicate disinformation on behalf of the Cook et. al. Rejects?
The Cook et al 97% paper boils down to this. Of those that agree with us, 97% of them agree with us. It’s one stupid paper.
The 5 authors are from:-
Center for Climate Change Communication, George Mason University
Department of the History of Science, Harvard University
School of Psychological Science, University of Bristol, and
CSIRO Oceans and Atmosphere, Hobart, Tasmania, Australia
Since it is Lewandowsky who is associated with CSIRO their credit as meaningful contributors is just launghable.
John Cook and Stephen Lewandowsky . A cartoonist and a psychology academic with a shonky history of “research”. Climate sceptics are, inter alia, moon landing conspirators. After “leaving” the University of Western Australia, the pair bolted. The psychologist to Bristol and the cartoonist to the University of Queensland where he was a “science communicator” working under Ove Hoegh-Guldberg , a climate alarmist specializing in corals. Notably, the Great Barrier Reef off Australia’s east coast.
The CSIRO has, in my opinion, become a “business” and is no longer devoted to original, beneficial research.
This link gives some history.
https://csiropedia.csiro.au/achievements-by-decade/
What is worrying is the CSIRO’s Legal Notice and Disclaimer.
That happened way back in 1935.
I do not know how the fossil fuel industry has been lobbying governments, as a shareholder I rather hope they would have been; I do not know how many climate sceptics get funding from Big Oil, the alarmists don’t seem to have given proof of this; I do know that the alarmist campaign has been based on distributing misinformation, suppressing criticism, claiming consensus, pressurising the media and staging publicity stunts. I may not understand the science but I can recognise the manipulation of public opinion when I see it.
“Big Oil” does a lot of lobbying, as do “Little” and “Medium” Oil. However, it’s almost entirely regarding legislation and regulations relevant to the industry.
Absolutely correct, you do not need a phd in clever stuff to recognise BS when you see it. You just need common sense and a fairly coarsely tuned BS filter
“…I do know that the alarmist campaign has been based on distributing misinformation, suppressing criticism, claiming consensus, pressurising the media and staging publicity stunts. I may not understand the science but I can recognise the manipulation of public opinion when I see it…”
Yup. I like to call it taking their cues from George Orwell’s 1984. If it worked in the novel and in the movie, then it might work in real life too. Our mobile devices, computer monitors and TV’s serve as the real-life substitutes for the telescreens in Orwell’s dystopia.
As long as Orwellian Climate Big Brother still has control over much of what is disseminated about the climate change scare narrative, I continue to feel somewhat like Orwell’s Oceania and Airstrip One have come to life. Attacks on skeptics are from the thought police, and any refutation of the climate scare narrative is treated as thought-crime. The Ministry of Love is alive and well.
Youth leagues have been put into the playing field as well.
Religion and peoples personal beliefs, i.e. religion, are not influenced by rational scientific discussion. The facts and proofs showing the falsehood of their core beliefs, are simply ignored, dismissed by them as deniers refusing to accept belief in global warming being caused by humankind.
With that as the position adopted by the Greens and seen recently presenting itself as XR all we can do is stay true to rational study and continue to offer up questions the believers do not want people to ask.
Good work putting all of this together, David. Big tobacco? I was in the first grade in Burbank (suburb of Los Angeles) in 1952 and watched a short educational movie about the dangers of smoking cigarettes. David, you’re doing a great job assembling rational comments, but the useful fools (probably the actual 97%) think if they drove past your house they would see a new Ferrari, with the personalized license plate reading BIG OIL GAVE ME THIS AS A THANK YOU, parked in your driveway. Just saying. Great ht to Dr. Willie Soon, who is an American Treasure.
They would see a big house that looks like the Alamo, with a 2013 Jeep Wrangler Rubicon, with a personalized Gadsden Flag “DRLTDY” personalized license plate parked in the driveway. DRLTDY stands for “drill today” because DRLNOW was already taken.
Willie sends me lots of material. When he sent this to me, he asked why our industry isn’t pushing back against this trash. I replied that I doubt many people in the industry are even aware of it and that “the industry” doesn’t really act collectively. I just really hope that ExxonMobil has the cojónes to slap some of these cretins with RICO suits.
Very good post. Thank you.
It would have been even better without the partisan comment on Obama and other snarky remarks. Without them, it would be easier to get climate alarmists to read this.
Bair, never imaging climate alarmists read anything that challenges their position. I would also suggest naming the core advocates such as Obama, is valid. He and others, have driven the USA into the impossible position where every corrective, sensible energy activity, that tries to stop climate alarmist nonsense, is immediately pushed into the courts. They are doing massive ongoing damage to the USA. The AOCs Warrens, Sanders, Pelosi’s and other political activists, must be called out and named, they are doing constant damage to humanity.
I don’t communicate without snark.
OK, I laughed. Keep it up.
Thank you David Middleton- well done! I very much appreciate your posts and your diligent work on this subject.
It is accurate to state that “every scary global warming prediction by the IPCC and its CAGW acolytes has proved false-to-date” – the warmist cult have a perfectly negative predictive track record and thus perfectly negative credibility. Nobody should believe them.
To their credit, the warmists’ masterful use of deceitful Goebbels/Alinsky propaganda tactics have deceived gullible fools around the world, including most politicians and their minions.
The CAGW hypothesis has been falsified many ways over the decades – some of those falsifications are described here:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/06/15/co2-global-warming-climate-and-energy-2/
The warmists have strategically moved their false rhetoric from “catastrophic human-made global warming” to “climate change”/”wilder weather”, which is a non-falsifiable hypothesis. The warmists have again deceived the gullible public, but competent scientists know that a non-falsifiable hypothesis is non-scientific nonsense.
“A theory that is not refutable by any conceivable event is non-scientific.” – Karl Popper
These climate fraudsters should really be the subject of ridicule – they are the world’s greatest bullsh!tters, even greater than Goebbels and the Third Reich.
“THE END OF THE WORLD” – “Beyond the Fringe, 1962.
I doubt that many of the politicians have been fooled.
Most politicians approve of anything that will increase their power and wealth.
All of the “approved” solutions to the so called global warming do that, in spades.
You are at least partially correct Mark.
The CAGW hypothesis has been falsified many ways over the decades – some of those falsifications are described here:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/06/15/co2-global-warming-climate-and-energy-2/
I’ve concluded that nobody could be this stupid for this long, and therefore the actions of the warmist leadership must be deliberately destructive.
The global warming/climate change scare-scam was never about the climate – it is a smokescreen for the financial and political objectives of scoundrels and their imbecilic acolytes.
Why is it necessary to divine what scientists believe from journal articles? Why is there no ‘consensus list’ where scientists can go and sign up with their name and credentials on their own. If man-made climate change is 99% certain and an existential threat, what scientist who believes this wouldn’t want to put their name on such a list?
There are many petitions signed by competent scientists that refute the runaway global warming/climate scare.
Here is the September 2019 European Climate Declaration – it is well-written and highly credible.
https://clintel.nl/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/ecd-press-briefing.pdf
THERE IS NO CLIMATE EMERGENCY
A global network of 500 scientists and professionals has prepared this urgent message. Climate science should be less political, while climate policies should be more scientific. Scientists should openly address the uncertainties and exaggerations in their predictions of global warming, while politicians should dispassionately count the real benefits as well as the imagined costs of adaptation to global warming, and the real costs as well as the imagined benefits of mitigation.
Natural as well as anthropogenic factors cause warming
The geological archive reveals that Earth’s climate has varied as long as the planet has existed, with natural cold and warm phases. The Little Ice Age ended as recently as 1850. Therefore, it is no surprise that we now are experiencing a period of warming.
Warming is far slower than predicted
The world has warmed at less than half the originally-predicted rate, and at less than half the rate to be expected on the basis of net anthropogenic forcing and radiative imbalance. It tells us that we are far from understanding climate change.
Climate policy relies on inadequate models
Climate models have many shortcomings and are not remotely plausible as policy tools. Moreover, they most likely exaggerate the effect of greenhouse gases such as CO2. In addition, they ignore the fact that enriching the atmosphere with CO2 is beneficial.
CO2 is plant food, the basis of all life on Earth
CO2 is not a pollutant. It is essential to all life on Earth. Photosynthesis is a blessing. More CO2 is beneficial for nature, greening the Earth: additional CO2 in the air has promoted growth in global plant biomass. It is also good for agriculture, increasing the yields of crops worldwide.
Global warming has not increased natural disasters
There is no statistical evidence that global warming is intensifying hurricanes, floods, droughts and suchlike natural disasters, or making them more frequent. However, CO2-mitigation measures are as damaging as they are costly. For instance, wind turbines kill birds and bats, and palm-oil plantations destroy the biodiversity of the rainforests.
Climate policy must respect scientific and economic realities
There is no climate emergency. Therefore, there is no cause for panic and alarm. We strongly oppose the harmful and unrealistic net-zero CO2 policy proposed for 2050. If better approaches emerge, we will have ample time to reflect and adapt. The aim of international policy should be to provide reliable and affordable energy at all times, and throughout the world.
Wasn’t there an open letter by alarmist scientists in support of climate-action demonstrations within the past 12 months? Wouldn’t that, or some similar petition, serve as a proxy? (But a consensus list would be better. Maybe the GWPF would set up a site for it.))
Meanwhile, we have this:
https://dailycaller.com/2019/10/22/scotus-baltimore-energy-lawsuit/
Yooper
Its getting silly now, everybody is out to sue oil companies. What happens if the companies stop drilling for oil?
https://www.vox.com/2019/5/13/18282438/fossil-fuel-divestment-climate-finance
OH, well, gee whiz, they have to do this – crank out more paper – so that they can get more grant money and so forth and so on. Apart from that and the need to feed their silly egos, they’re mostly useless, in my view. What do they do besides complain and make stuff up?
Aside from the simple fact that a true change in the climate planetwide is not going to happen overnight, but take many decades and probably many lifetimes to happen, this summary of “all things climate change” makes it clear that these people are money-grubbing control freaks who don’t have a real clue to the meaning of genuine climate change. And when it does happen – and it will, because that’s part of the cycles of this planet – they won’t like it at all. It won’t fit their “meme”.
They should be worrying about tempestuous WEATHER taking the crop seasons off a “normal” schedule, because that’s where their food comes from. When I went for a drive through the cornfields this past weekend, I saw corn that was still partly green – NOT ready for harvesting – but that was just local plantings. I didn’t go out to the west, away from the ‘burbs full of manicured lawns. Maybe I should have. The planting/harvesting cycle is different from one place to another.
Phenology;
https://www.usanpn.org/data/maps
Where is the question:
“Is warmer better than colder?”
Lots of Earth’s creatures knew the answer to this question, but their opinion was buried with them under two miles of ice.
The simple fact that birds fly south for the winter is all the answer you need.
Especially Snow Birds.
In their “Common Fallacies” section there is “Conspiracy Theories” :
Projection of the highest possible order ?
Maybe they should see if they happen to know anyone with a psychological / psychiatric background and discuss this option with them …
Without projection, they would have little to say.
Anything a Warmist Cult Member (or a Democrat or a progressive) says is EXACTLY what THEY are doing. Now, that didn’t take a bunch of words to explain, did it????
This is a very poorly written article. Take some of the figure captions. Fig 9 caption ‘only’ 50% think clim ate change will be harmful. But the figure shows only 31% think it will be beneficial or mixed! Fig 10 caption says 18% think it worth destroying the economy, but that phrase does not appear in any of the category labels in the figure. Fig 10 caption also says 41% think climate change can be ignored, but that number belongs to Fig 11 which doesn’t have a full caption. I’m not going to waste my time on the rest of it.
Why on earth, if you want to demolish another argument on the grounds of sloppy work, do you use sloppy work yourself? Maybe your audience doesn’t care as long as you are on the attack.
It’s called humor and the captions were geared toward readers familiar with arithmetic. The “Family Feud” meme and matching the questions to Obama phrases should have served as hints regarding the humor.
Regarding your math impairment:
Figure 9. Only 50% of “scientists” characterized climate change as being dangerous (primarily or exclusively harmful impacts) over the next 50 years.
47% + 3% = 50%
Figure 10. Only 18% of “scientists” thought that there was any point in destroying our economy in order to prevent the weather from changing. Fully 41% of “scientists” indicated that climate change might as well be “ignored.”
18% + 1% = 19%… This group thinks that most or all additional climate change can be averted. The effort to do this would destroy our economy.
25% + 9% + 6% + 1% = 41%… This group thinks that only a small amount, at most, of additional climate change can be averted… So it might as well be ignored. Or, more appropriately, adapted to as it occurs. The only questionable thing is in counting the 6% who said they don’t know. I gave them the benefit of the doubt that they wouldn’t want to destroy our economy on the basis of “I don’t know.”
I just realized I forgot to include Obama’s Tweet. I’ve now added it to the post.
Tom Foley,
Nobody should “waste time” considering a post such as yours which consists entirely of attempted nit-picking that only demonstrates its provider cannot do simple addition.
The caption of Figure 9 is correct because 47% plus 3% equals 50%.
The caption of Figure 10 is correct because
(a) 17% plus 1% equals 18%
and
(b) its 41% is correct because 25% plus 9% plus 6% plus 1% equals 41%, and this sum is confirmed by the survey result reported in Figure 11.
Please do better when making carping criticism in attempt to denigrate good work.
Richard
Hey Tom Foley –
Please go to the Skeptical Science website and apply that same level of attentiveness and post on their blogs your observations of what you see as their mistakes.
We’ll wait here to see how well that goes.
/LOL
I want to know who’s crystal ball people are using to determine the percentage of warming caused by humans. It’s like logic leaves the room when these questions are asked.
If the climate sensitivity was 1.2 K per doubling of CO2, humans would have caused 70% of the warming since 1976.
Yeah for us!
The “Climate Wrecking Industry” says, “You’re welcome.”
A small nitpik on your “Natural Forcing Only” chart: That temperature record is not from “observations” it is computer-generated and the computer generation eliminates the warming of the 1930’s and the cooling of the 1970’s.
I know you are aware of the circumstances of the chart but I think it is valuable to point out that it is not representative of reality, if we go by the temperature profile of regional temperatures charts worldwide that show the 1930’s as being as warm as it is today.
Great post, David. You should offer to serve as an expert witness for Exxon in their lawsuit. You would have the jury spellbound, I think. That ought to be worth a lot of money to Exxon. 🙂
It’s the IPCC’s graph.
The allegedly anthropogenic bit is post-1976. The satellite data more or less indicate similar warming.
Exxon would not want me in the courtroom. Remember Delta House’s “trial” in Animal House? Picture a more obnoxious version of Otter (Tim Matteson) with Bluto’s (John Belushi) manners.
Farting in the courtroom might get you gaveled, among other things.
So let me get this right.
1. AGW science has taken over the universities.
2. All these guys and gals are on the dole and refuse to question AGW
3. This group wont let any skeptics publish.
4. If we really counted heads of all the climate scientists, only a small fraction would actually support the science.
5. in other words they are all secretly dis believers in AGW
Try reading the post.
David Middleton,
Please refrain from assuming the mentally challenged can read.
Richard
I know you are skeptical of this, but you are not really in any better position to evaluate it. Let’s toss out #4 and #5 on your list as they seem to be your paraphrase of the essay.
1. If you were on a campus you would know that AGW is just one of a list of linked issues for many academics — by linked I mean that stance on any one item in the list is sufficient to determine stance on the remainder. Academics are generally left, modestly so to greatly so, in their political leanings. Not all schools will punish people for their stance on any topic in the linked list, but a distressingly large number will. Administrators and their staff are part of the university too, as are graduate students, and they are probably even more in the AGW camp. There is no hard evidence about what percentage of any campus group is pro AGW, but one does not have to search far to find these folks.
2. Many of these guys and gals, and others, are involved in research funded by some item on the list I mentioned. Even if they are not strong believers in any item on the list, they will nod to something to indicate their bona fides, because they do not wish to be mistakenly thought as a member of a dissenting group.
3. Even lowly me has had proposed research and reports squashed by a reviewer, who could offer only modest factual complaints about the paper, but was incensed by my tack of pointing out “fly in the ointment.” By the way, I have had a terrible time getting some pretty solid research on another, but even more controversial, topic published for the past five years. All controversial topics have a clan of gatekeepers who defend doctrine on topics by subjecting contrary publications to a far higher standard of evidence and polish. There is no reason and no evidence of climate science being different.
2.
Regarding #1, the fact that at some point between 1980 and 1990, CO2 became the “control knob” for paleo-climate in academia, despite the nearly 100% falsification of this concept, should serve as a pretty good clue. Although, this subject was not addressed at all in the post.
#2 and #3 aren’t addressed at all in the post.
#4 and #5 aren’t a paraphrase of the essay. Nothing in the essay supports either point. The actual surveys indicate that a majority of atmospheric scientists think humans are the primary drivers of recent climate change. The point is that the majority is way below a 97% consensus and that they are very divided on the potential effects and what to do about it.
“So let me get this right.”
Try harder.
Wow, a StrawMosh flyby extravaganza. Can’t get enough of those.
The poor innocent facts that get gunned down in them are mounting up. Hey never let the truth get in the way of a good drive by.
Mosh: Let me help you by changing AGW to “Leftism”:
1. Leftism has taken over the universities – I think ALL agree that to be the case;
2. All the leftist guys and gals are on the dole and refuse to question Leftism – we see this situation daily (ask Ridd, etal);
3. Leftist won’t let any skeptics publish – Holy Cow! Does anyone question that truth?;
4. If we really counted heads of all the people dealing seriously with climate, only a small fraction would actually support the present “science” – You betcha! Why do so many need to wait until they retire before feeling comfortable to fully discuss the issues?;
5. In other words, they are all secretly dis-believers in Leftism – Nope; religion triumphs …
1) Activists, not scientists. The vast majority of them aren’t scientists and almost none of those that are, have degrees in relevant fields.
2) Nobody said all, however the fact that government spends billions every year on scientists who produce results the government likes is documented.
3) This statement is amply demonstrated.
4) David already did the counting for you. As an english major, you may well be math challenged, but all you have to do is read the article.
5) Does not follow from your previous points. Looks like you are logic challenged as well.
For an English Lit degree Mosher seems to struggle with reading comprehension. I guess the other option is he is so used to making stuff up it has become a habit.
His writing is equally poor, with grammar and spelling errors galore.
Gotta love it when Mosh weighs in, and so succinctly encapsulates an, at best, herd of cats.
Cats hold no secrets, they’re all about reaction time.
“So let me get this right.”
And then proceeds to get it wrong.
New concept, hmmmm?
A Climate ‘Scientist’ is an expert in averages and using models to see where those averages will be in the future which can be 50 or 100 years in the future.
If there’s anything the Climate Liars are good at, it’s lying. They’ve had years of practice.
They certainly know HOW to lie.
Not so sure this counts as being good at lying.
A good liar is very persuasive and convincing.
Child development specialists long ago noted that deception is a skill some kids learn as early as age two, and that their deceptive skill increases sharply through adolescence.
Also noted is a strong correlation between precocious cognitive development and deception at a young age.
But kids are terrible at lying, as a general rule, even as they get better at it. Parents have long noted that their attempts are so transparent that many actually find it cute, charming even, when a small kid tries to evade responsibility for something they did that they know they should not have done, and have been caught red handed. Most will continue their evasion even when it has zero plausibility, twisting themselves in knots with ever changing stories, plainly guilty body language and facial expressions and general behavior.
Most people grow up to recognize when it is useless to continue to insist their lies are true, once they are found out, and that in fact doing so only makes their situation worse and destroys any remaining shreds of credibility for the perpetrator.
Warmistas may be prolific liars, and certainly have plenty of practice, but they are toddler-like in their cogitation on the particulars.
What parent of a teen is fooled by evasiveness, changing stories, shifting blame, refusal to discuss the subject at hand, etc?
These are hallmarks of a liar, and everyone knows it.
Except, apparently, for the climate liars, their lickspittle dupes, and their ever-credulous sycophants.