The Irish Climate Science Forum (ICSF) in cooperation with CLINTEL hosted a lecture by the world-renowned climate scientist Richard Lindzen. The online lecture was attended by around 200 people from around the world (including a group of climate activists who disturbed the talk. The recorded talk can be viewed here.
Professor Lindzen kindly agreed that his written speech could be posted here at CLINTEL. It follows below.
Richard S. Lindzen, Professor Emeritus of Atmospheric Sciences, MIT
For about 33 years, many of us have been battling against climate hysteria. We have correctly noted
The exaggerated sensitivity,
The role of other processes and natural internal variability,
The inconsistency with the paleoclimate record,
The absence of evidence for increased extremes, hurricanes, etc. and so on.
We have also pointed out the very real benefits of CO2 and even of modest warming. And, as concerns government policies, we have been pretty ineffective. Indeed our efforts have done little other than to show (incorrectly) that we take the threat scenario seriously. In this talk, I want to make a tentative analysis of our failure.
In punching away at the clear shortcomings of the narrative of climate alarm, we have, perhaps, missed the most serious shortcoming: namely, that the whole narrative is pretty absurd. Of course, many people (though by no means all) have great difficulty entertaining this possibility. They can’t believe that something so absurd could gain such universal acceptance. Consider the following situation. Your physician declares that your complete physical will consist in simply taking your temperature. This would immediately suggest something wrong with your physician. He further claims that if your temperature is 37.3C rather than between 36.1C and 37.2C you must be put on life support. Now you know he is certifiably insane. The same situation for climate (a comparably complex system with a much more poorly defined index, globally averaged temperature anomaly) is considered ‘settled science.’
In case you are wondering why this index is remarkably poor. I suspect that many people believe that there is an instrument that measures the Earth’s temperature. As most of you know, that is not how the record was obtained.
Obviously, the concept of an average surface temperature is meaningless. One can’t very well average the Dead Sea with Mt. Everest. Instead, one takes 30 year annual or seasonal means at each station and averages the deviations from these averages. The results are referred to as annual or seasonal mean anomalies. In the following figures, we see the station data in black and the mean anomalies in orange. The spread of anomalies is much larger than the rather small range of change seen in the average. While the average does show a trend, most of the time there are almost as many stations cooling as there are stations warming. The figure you are familiar with omits the data points, expands the scale by about an order of magnitude (and usually smooths the curve as well). The total change in the mean is much smaller than what we experience over a day, a week or over any longer period. This is illustrated in the fourth figure. The residue we refer to as the index is pretty negligible. It may not even be a good measure of climate at all. Instead of emphasizing this, we look for problems at individual stations. This, I would suggest, is somewhat myopic.
The fluctuations show why changes of +/- 0.2 are meaningless.
The thickness of the black line represents the total change in global mean anomaly over the past 120 years. Although this change was accompanied by the greatest increase in human welfare in history, we are told that its increase by about 30% will represent doom.
If this weren’t silly enough, we are bombarded with claims that the impacts of this climate change include such things as obesity and the Syrian civil war. The claims of impacts are then circularly claimed to be overwhelming evidence of dangerous climate change. It doesn’t matter that most of these claims are wrong and/or irrelevant. It doesn’t matter that none of these claims can be related to CO2 except via model projections. In almost all cases, even the model projections are non-existent. Somehow, the sheer volume of misinformation seems to overwhelm us. In case, you retain any skepticism, there is John Kerry’s claim that climate (unlike physics and chemistry) is simple enough for any child to understand. Presumably, if you can’t see the existential danger of CO2, you’re a stupid denier.
And, in case this situation isn’t sufficiently bizarre, there is the governmental response. It is entirely analogous to a situation that a colleague, Bruce Everett, described. After your physical, your physician tells you that you may have a fatal disease. He’s not really sure, but he proposes a treatment that will be expensive and painful while offering no prospect of preventing the disease. When you ask why you would ever agree to such a thing, he says he just feels obligated to “do something”. That is precisely what the Paris Accord amounts to. However, the ‘something’ also gives governments the power to control the energy sector and this is something many governments cannot resist. Information is unlikely to change this despite the fact that even the UN’s IPCC acknowledges that their warming claims would only reduce the immensely expanded GDP by about 2-3% by the end of the century – something that is trivially manageable and hardly ‘existential.’
Feeblemindedness
In trying to understand the success of this claim that climate change due to CO2 is an existential threat, I propose to look at an analogous scare: the widespread fear in the US in the early 20th Century of an epidemic of feeblemindedness. I will also return to C.P. Snow’s two-culture description in order to see why the alarmist scenario appeals primarily to the so-called educated elite rather than to the common people.
Over twenty five years ago, I wrote a paper comparing the panic in the US in the early 1920’s over an alleged epidemic of feeblemindedness with the current fear of cataclysmic climate change. ((1996) Science and politics: global warming and eugenics. in Risks, Costs, and Lives Saved, R. Hahn, editor, Oxford University Press, New York, 267pp (Chapter 5, 85-103))
During this early period, the counterpart of Environmentalism was Eugenics. Instead of climate physics as the underlying science, we had genetics. And instead of overturning the energy economy, we had immigration restriction. Both advocacy movements were characteristically concerned with purity: environmentalism with the purity of the environment, eugenics with the purity of the gene pool. Interestingly, Eugenics did not start with a focus on genes. It was started around 1880 by biometricians who used statistical analysis to study human evolution. Among them were some of the founders of modern statistics like Pearson and Fisher. Given the mathematically sophisticated origin of the movement, it should come as no surprise that it didn’t really catch on. It only became popular and fashionable when Mendelian genetics was rediscovered around 1900, and things like feeble mindedness were suggested to be associated with a single recessive gene. It is pretty clear that such movements need an easily understood, allegedly scientific but actually pretty absurd narrative. The people needing such narratives are not the ordinary citizen, but rather our educated elites. Prominent supporters of eugenics included Theodore Roosevelt, Margaret Sanger, the racist founder of Planned Parenthood, the Bishop of Ripon, George Bernard Shaw, Havelock Ellis, and many others. The supporters also included technically adept individuals who were not expert in genetics. Alexander Graham Bell for example. They also need a policy goal. In the early 1920’s, Americans became concerned with immigration, and it was argued that America was threatened with an epidemic of feeblemindedness due allegedly to immigrants from Eastern and Southern Europe.
Details of this situation are in my paper which you can request by email. The major takeaway points are the following:
- Elites are always searching for ways to advertise their virtue and assert the authority they believe they are entitled to.
- They view science as source of authority rather than a process, and they try to appropriate science, suitably and incorrectly simplified, as the basis for their movement.
- Movements need goals, and these goals are generally embedded in legislation.
- The effect of legislation long outlasts the alleged science. The Immigration Reduction Act of 1924 remained until 1964.
- As long as scientists are rewarded for doing so, they are unlikely to oppose the exploitation of science.
In the case of eugenics, government funding was not at issue, but private funding did play a role, and for many scientists, there was the public recognition of their relevance.
For example, Jennings, a professor of genetics at Johns Hopkins University, in his 1930 book, The Biological Basis of Human Nature states: “Gone are the days when the biologist … used to be pictured in the public prints as an absurd creature, his pockets bulging with snakes and newts. … The world … is to be operated on scientific principles. The conduct of life and society are to be based, as they should be, on sound biological maxims! … Biology has become popular!” Privately, Jennings opposed the political exploitation of genetics.
Educated elite
C.P. Snow’s discussion in 1959 of the two cultures suggests why it is the educated elite that is most vulnerable to the absurd narrative. Snow was an English physicist, novelist, government advisor.
Here is his description of the non-scientific educated elite.
A good many times I have been present at gatherings of people who, by the standards of the traditional culture, are thought highly educated and who have with considerable gusto been expressing their incredulity at the illiteracy of scientists.
Once or twice I have been provoked and have asked the company how many of them could describe the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The response was cold: it was also negative. Yet I was asking something which is the scientific equivalent of: Have you read a work of Shakespeare’s?
I now believe that if I had asked an even simpler question – such as, What do you mean by mass, or acceleration, which is the scientific equivalent of saying, Can you read? – not more than one in ten of the highly educated would have felt that I was speaking the same language. So the great edifice of modern
physics goes up, and the majority of the cleverest people in the western world have about as much insight into it as their Neolithic ancestors would have had.
What C.P. Snow failed to note, I think, is that the group he describes is actually aware of their scientific ignorance, and this leaves them very insecure. This accounts for their need for simple narratives, however wrong. It allows them to believe that they actually do ‘understand’ the science, and, as we see, they become arrogantly proud of their alleged accomplishment. Of course, they forget that their ignorance extends to understanding what science actually is. They forget that the opposite of Science is ‘The Science’. The situation is compounded when one comes to climate where most scientists are also ignorant, but where their support for the narrative comforts the non-scientists. On top of all this, I suspect that in a long period of wellbeing, this elite feels the need to show that they too have met challenges – even if the challenges are purely imaginary. This seems particularly true for young people who are confronted with stories of the courage of the ‘greatest generation’.
One should note again that most ordinary people don’t have these problems.
Our task is to show the relevant people the overall stupidity of this issue rather than punching away at details. In focusing on the details, we are merely trying to showcase our own specialties. My use of the word ‘merely’ is probably unjustified; the details can, in fact, be scientifically important. However, we are not considering either our target audience or the intrinsic absurdity of the issue. It is likely that we have to capitalize on the insecurity of the educated elite and make them look silly instead of superior and virtuous. We must remember that they are impervious to real science unless it is reduced to their level. When it is reduced to their level, it is imperative that we, at least, retain veracity. Whether we are capable of effectively doing this is an open question.
Change the message?
How ’bout this?
More albedo and the Earth cools.
Less albedo and the Earth warms.
No albedo and the Earth cooks.
That is NOT what RGHE theory predicts.
The earth is cooler with the atmosphere/albedo not warmer.
The “extra” warming energy downwelling from the GHGs originates with the surface upwelling that “extra” energy as a BB. As demonstrated by experiment, that is not possible.
https://principia-scientific.org/debunking-the-greenhouse-gas-theory-with-a-boiling-water-pot/
If either of these points stands, greenhouse theory fails and man caused climate change collapses.
Version 1.0 040721
& btw +1.5 C in the GMST anomaly over 140 years is noise in the data, UHI, natural variations in the albedo, inconsequential.
Mentioning albedo means you already have some alignment with “greenhouse effect”.
The simplest and obvious way to discredit the “greenhouse effect” is to recognise the tropical ocean surface temperature is limited to 30C. Cloud formation above 30C ocean water simply prevents further heat uptake.
On the cooling side, sea ice reduces heat loss and forms at a precise temperature near -2C.
The resulting average surface temperature is 14C within the error of our ability to produce a meaningless number.
A radiating temperature of 255K is the result of surface temperature control not the other way around. Albedo will be whatever is needed to limit ocean surface temperature to 30C.
Radiation balance is just one Parameter of global temperature. Latent heat is a huge factor that ought to be considered, due to the fact that almost three quarters of this planet’s surface is covered by water which holds 99.9% of the heat. The reason Earth is not like Mars or Venus is the water- in all three states, due to an ideal atmospheric depth and density coupled with the planet’s relative magnitude and orbit characteristics.
My conjecture-
Changes in radiative balance are absorbed by nature through ocean circulation produced by wind, generated by pressure imbalances which are influenced by diurnal or weather generated changes in the radiative balance on a local to global scale.
Radiation balance is set by two surface temperature controlled processes that limit ocean heat uptake above 30C and limit ocean heat loss below -2C.
Both processes have high gain with negative feedback so produce sharp temperature limits. There is literally NO ocean water surface cooler than -2C because it becomes solid. The Persian Gulf is the only sea surface that annually exceeds 30C because the location prevents high level convective cloud formation. All tropical ocean warm pools regulate at 30C with some overshoot to around 31.5C evident before convergence sets in whereby resulting precipitation adds to the local cooling – per attached chart; a near ideal temperature regulator. Same thing happens in every warm pool in all three tropical oceans.
Any ocean water that gets to 31.5C will be covered in cloud 80% of the time. That means it will then cool because the net heat input actually goes negative.
And the only radiation that can penetrate the ocean surface to warm it comes from the Sun. Radiation from CO2 can not do that so it doesn’t matter how much CO2 you put above the ocean it can not heat it.
Maybe it even cools the atmosphere by radiating more energy out to space
Radiative balance? What proven law of science requires there has to be radiative balance (which is a very different thing from the First Law of Thermodynamics)?
With all due respect, Nick, the science has been made irrelevant by the lefty elite polits, innumerate activists and marxy billionaires. Lindzen’s new approach is is a better idea than pounding the science. Tell The warming boogeyman has been thoroughly debunked and every debate has been won by sceptics (that’s they don’t why the clime syndicate won’t engage in debate any more.)
I believe a better, more pragmatic campaign to curb the idiocy of politicized science and give ordinary people something simple and unequivocal they can use to reject the costly and disruptive policies of their governments is to point out at every opportunity that even if the West spent the 90 trillion ‘needed’ CO2 émissions into the atmosphere are going to accelerate over 21st century.
The developing world is building over 5,000 new coal fired power plants over the next decade for their econ development and this will continue to expand over the century. They will also be doubling and tripling up and more on new cement plants and iron and steel for infrastructure, etc.
We will be seeing more than 500ppm CO2 by 2100. We will be doing the big CO2 experiment regardless of our silly self immolation efforts in the West. We will know to several decimal points what its ‘Climate Sensitivity’ is. Also give them the good news. I’m looking forward to the Garden of Eden Earth geeening and the end of poverty and hunger as population peaks and probably declines a bit thereafter to ~8.5 – 9B. That’s the science to give to the people.
(that’s … why the clime syndicate won’t engage in debate any more.)
Any more? The Climate syndicate never engaged in debate. If they did, I missed it.
I wish the Oxford Union offered a forum for a debate. The warmists couldn’t dodge that challenge.
As I recall, the Oxford Union did indeed hold a debate on climate change some years ago. The sceptics, led by Christopher Monckton, won both the debate and the vote.
Chris
Gary,
I think you illustrate well something that Prof Lindzen is alluding to. The alarmist cause prospers precisely because it will not engage in rational debate, and utters ever more vigorously the same clear falsehoods which, by repetition alone, people are expected to accept, and very many do.
You say to tell ….. ” every debate has been won by sceptics (that’s why the clime syndicate won’t engage in debate any more.)”. I know that latter to be true, and I do not recall alarmists winning any major point in a debate even two or three decades ago. Alarmists may disagree but they would have to give examples, rather than mere assertions. We should ask – when is it you have debated us seriously, and won?
So I think we would be in excellent shape if we could build a mantra based on your observation…. and repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat. If enough of us use the same phraseology to convey this, it will be ignored at first, but if we persist, the catastrophic community will have to break cover, and a more open and even-handed discussion can evolve.
…………………….
I think we in the UK are just a little encouraged by a new tv news channel that is to launch soon. No small project, it has some big names which are refugees from the BBC and similar, including its prime mover, Andrew Neil, who has promised it to be anti-woke, and I suspect it will be much more open to climate sceptics than any of the established channels.
https://inews.co.uk/news/media/gb-news-presenters-new-anti-woke-tv-channel-andrew-neil-927718
Lindzen’s talk raises the interesting comparison between the elites current climate obsession and it’s previous enthusiasm for eugenics – both linked to their Malthusian hatred of humanity. The policies being pursued by Western governments are obviously going to lead to de-industrialisation the question I have struggled with over the years is who benefits from this policy?
The obvious answer is the ruling elites. The rulers no longer need the masses – in fact with the huge costs of the welfare systems that have been established the masses are now a huge financial burden – the richest 1% pay 30% of all taxes in the UK. Countries only ever needed large populations in the past to provide a supply of soldiers to fight wars – Israel demonstrated in 1967 that small armies could prevail, so vast numbers of soldiers were no longer a guarantee of victory.
De – industrialisation will inevitably cause the population to contract in size and reduce the financial burden on the elites. It will also reduce the demand for food production allowing agricultural land to be used for re-wilding – another obsession of the elites.
The elites have pursued depopulation strategies in the past – the Highland Clearances being a good example – why should we doubt that this is their objective again?
I think you and others probably make too much of conspiracy theory. Sure, there are some very committed people with a far-reaching but subtle, globalist agenda who are benefiting greatly from this, and many in the climate science community who recognise that their salaries and grants need the alarm call to flourish, and many others who have nailed their flag and their money to the renewables mast, but the great bulk of those who influence the political side of it all genuinely do believe that humanity is in need of rescue from the climate, It is, if you like, an accidental conspiracy, and a coalition of the willing. It will not help us to portray the CAGW steamroller as an intrigue of the left, and it isn’t fair to many sceptics from the left (for example regular contributor M. Courtney, on this blog) to paint it so. We must tackle the problem head on, upon its merits, or lack thereof.
Conspiracy Theory? De-industrialisation is a certainty – ( or call it the 4th industrial revolution if you prefer) The UK government have acknowledged – albeit reluctantly – that the automotive industry is doomed, the steel industry will not be able to survive much longer nor will other energy intensive industries such as cement and glass manufacture. What will happen to all those who are left permanently unemployed by these policies – we all know that “Green jobs” are only viable with huge amounts of subsidy – so they will never be viable in the long term. The question has to be who benefits from de-industrialisation? Why are Billionaires like Sir Christopher Hohn and Jeremy Grantham, among others, pouring vast amounts of money into promoting the Climate Change agenda ?
I don’t disagree with most of that, though I think you should recognise that there is a convergence of purpose, rather than a conspiracy, between the activists/conspirators, and those who merely feel they serve a greater god. And I certainly don’t think that pointing to a conspiracy when trying to convince the general public is the way to go.
“Why are Billionaires like Sir Christopher Hohn and Jeremy Grantham, among others, pouring vast amounts of money into promoting the Climate Change agenda ?”
Answer: Control
so given we have now much less Arctic sea ice in summer, we have a lower albedo, which will warm the planet, right?
which is just as good an argument as your invented science.
The albedo effect is actually low in the far North due to the angle of sunlight.
It will warm the warm water up some but it also lose warmth more rapidly too having low ice cover for part of the summer.
You don’t make a case for anything here as usual.
Tell us about the Polar Bears, Griff. We’re all ears.
Way too complicated for the “unscienced” elite. Comparing the miniscule 1.5°C warming over the past 140 yrs and the current similar trend showing up in the satellite data, to the normal temperature range experienced on a daily basis should be enough to ridicule the idea that the world is on fire. I also like to bring up the Vikings, known for farming in Iceland and even Greenland, to remind people we have proof of it being warmer in the past and sea levels have been rising for thousands of years as we are still coming out of the last ice age, to cancel the idea that present conditions are unprecedented.
I quite agree. However I think the most obvious thing to show are the photos of tree stumps and logs emerging from underneath melting glaciers from around the world. These must have an impact on even the most feeble minded and unscientific.
How about, “The notion that humans control the climate is absurd.” That should be simple enough for most people to understand, and impossible to refute.
Need to get the mainstream media on side.
Unfortunately, they are dominated by the authoritarian left and sell more product with alarmist material.
Follow the money and you’ll see why the left controls the MSM, along with the current “leaders” of the free world.
He who owns the media owns the minds of the consumers thereof.
Hitler knew that well.
There are any number of right biased media outlets. Half of UK newspapers trend that way.
In the U.K. yes. Not so in the U.S. where roughly 90% of “journalists” that donate to political parties donate to the (left wing) democrats.
Why is that a bad thing, Griff?
Arrhenius, “father” of CO2 warming was part of the eugenetic movement in Sweden/Europe.
When I used to work in reliability and degradation, the common rule-of-thumb for activation energy that was often assumed led to Arrhenius being given the nickname “Erronius”.
Arrhenius being given the nickname “Erronius”.
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! First chuckle of my day (-:
There was an old man named Arrhenius
Whose physics were rather erroneous
He recycled rays
In peculiar ways
And created a “heat” most spontaneous!
Timothy Casey, 2010
Could you give me some links showing Arrhenius was wrong about activation energy?
Don’t confuse us with the facts.
You want the truth? You can’t handle the truth. (I recently found out that isn’t what he said.)
About all we can do is try to change one mind at a time. Maybe if we could do that once a week we could make a dent in the debate.
You can’t open a closed mind
You can’t argue facts against sacred beliefs
“About all we can do is try to change one mind at a time.”
I have a better idea. Let’s put a guy in office who doesn’t believe in all the CO2 hype.
That guy would be Donald Trump.
There’s now a movement building to elect Donald Trump as the new Speaker of the House of Representatives, after the upcoming 2022 elections.
The scenario goes that Trump will campaign for members of Congress who support his agenda, from now until the next election in 2022, at which time it is expected that Republicans will take control of the House, and then the Republican House members can vote Donald Trump as their Speaker. The House of Representatives can elect anyone they want to be Speaker. It doesn’t have to be a House member.
You just can’t imagine how much I would love to see this scenario come to reality. So much payback, so soon. So many anguished Democrat Socialists! The destroyer of their socialist agenda is back! 🙂
And then after Trump gets things back under control, he will run for president in 2024, and really get things heading back in the right direction.
https://www.wnd.com/2021/04/odds-increasing-trump-become-u-s-house-speaker/
TraitorTrump as Speaker, then prez candidate?
Nah. He might try running for dogcatcher. Doubt he’d win, though.
You are assuming that Trump has the necessary intellectual/rhetorical chops to lead a movement that is coherent. He demonstrated pretty conclusively during his presidential term that he does not have that ability. Further, you are assuming that getting involved in the left/right political fight is useful and can lead to necessary change. Historically, both sides of the two party system serve the elites, especially by distracting the proles from doing anything really useful.
To get any useful changes in public policy, we must stop playing the two-party political game and focus on how to get those changes. We are going to need people from both sides of the political spectrum to band together and cooperate toward common goals. The two party system is designed to prevent this. Trying to reform one side or the other will fail–the party hierarchies will prevent change to the institutions that nurture them. A social movement that can transcend this false division will be needed. I don’t know how we get there, but staying with the old formula certainly will not work.
“You are assuming that Trump has the necessary intellectual/rhetorical chops to lead a movement that is coherent”
Yes, I am.
Their foundation is not a stable 3 legged stool…it is an unstable one legged stool – CO2. I have been chopping away at CO2 for years. Time will likely show cooler temps ahead, but if we have a few years of unusually hot weather, I fear all sorts of bad laws will be passed.
Don’t you know…global warming causes cooling. We’re all doomed!
Cost Benefit Analysis appears to be a thing of the past when it comes to “climate change”.
It costs us and it benefits them
They don’t want to listen because their message is psychological warfare.
And they’re attempting to do it to the world population again via COVID.
A brilliant deposition of how the elite use “nudging” techniques on us without our consent, to implement their whim
https://thecritic.co.uk/a-year-of-fear/
The parallels to the “climate change” message is uncanny.
Lindzen certainly has not lost his edge. I spent a memorable day with him in his office and at the MIT faculty lounge for lunch, weeks before he retired. I had asked him to critique the long climate chapter in Arts of Truth a few months before it went to the publisher. But sent him the entire draft manuscript because the climate chapter referred to ideas developed in earlier chapters. To my great surprise, he critiqued the rest of the book and said could not add much to the climate chapter at my laymen’s level discussion. It was OK. Of course, I had researched all his papers and incorporated many in the extensive footnotes to the chapter, which he undoubtedly had checked.
Engagement of Global Warming Advocates
If you are serious about engaging Man Made Global Warming advocates the first point of engagement is to see what you agree on. Only then can you propose points for discussion that have as their starting point some agreed fact or point of view.
1. We want to live in a clean non-polluting environment.
There is a living, active ecosystem around us in which we can breath the air, grow plants in the ground, and have fish in the waterways. Earlier in the Industrial Revolution it was a Fail for all three. Our common values has meant that accumulated wealth has been spent on cleaning the environment.
No people want to live in pigsty environments. As soon as there is an excess of wealth, one of the first things this wealth is spent on is to clean-up the immediate environment.
2. The climate is getting warmer.
The Global Climate has seen overall warming for the last 200 years. Within that period there has been cooling trends and warming trends but overall the trend has been a warming one.
3. Some of the climate warming is Man Made.
The man made variables impacting the climate are, in no particular order:
· Land clearing – Trees
· Land Overuse – Desertification
· Urbanisation
· Air Pollution – with sulphides in the atmosphere having a cooling effect, same as for volcanic eruptions.
· Air Pollution – Carbon dioxide having a warming effect in comparison to if there was No Carbon Dioxide in the atmosphere.
This simple question is how the 97% consensus was achieved and then misused to exclusively point the finger at Carbon Dioxide and also exclude possible non-man made variables as part of the discussion.
4. Having Electricity is good.
Having electric lights, power for machines, cooking, air conditioning, heating and communications has all been to the betterment of people around the world. Going primitive or camping is great but usually on return everybody is appreciative of a nice hot shower.
Our current wealth is based in the past with having cheap reliable electricity. At the current state of technology, you cannot use Solar and/or Wind power to make and install further Solar Panels or Wind Turbines.
5. Carbon Dioxide is a vital component in the air.
Plant based life extracts CO2 and uses it to grow. This is converted by the trees and the carbon is stored as wood. At an atmospheric CO2 level of 150ppm plants stop growing as the energy used to extract Carbon dioxide for growth is greater than the energy returned.
Most life on earth is directly or indirectly dependent on Carbon Dioxide, including us.
During the 20th century Carbon dioxide got to a low point of around 300ppm. Antarctic ice cores indicate Carbon dioxide got to a historic low of 180ppm. During the Jurassic period the level was around 1,900ppm.
Current carbon Dioxide levels are around 440ppm. If you think this is a big scary number then please use 0.4 parts per thousand or 0.004%.
“This simple question is how the 97% consensus was achieved”. It was never achieved, it was a subjective literature survey, nothing more. There was no vote so how can there have been a consensus.
And based on wrong numbers
On April 6, 2021, Mauna Loa reported 418.64 ppm CO2. It is not scary to me….it is just 0.04% of the atmosphere. The 97% consensus figure has never been close to the truth – it was a contrived number by people who think like Mikey Mann. I could point out some more errors that you have but what’s the point?…people like Mikey and Al Gore and John Kerry and Joey Biden , et al are not interested in anything except actions for and against the windmills…they are all Don Quixote’s.
The atmospheric co2 is about 1.5% of the total global carbon balance.
IPCC AR5 figure 6.1.
400 per million = .04 per hundred = 0.04%? IPCC tries to exaggerate CO2 because without it, who ever heard of the IPCC?
While I enjoyed reading your very good post John, this statement is incorrect:
“· Air Pollution – Carbon dioxide having a warming effect in comparison to if there was No Carbon Dioxide in the atmosphere.”
It’s not NO carbon dioxide in the atmosphere (we would never have evolved). It’s levels above 280 ppm. Don’t fall for the climate hoax claptrap. Carbon dioxide’s ability to warm anything further above 280 ppm has never been shown to be something other than zero using real scientific methods, and that even includes the temperature record faked data. It doesn’t exist.
BS….CO2 is NOT AIR POLLUTION.
There is no evidence it causes warming.
A very good summary apart form the CO2 is ‘air pollution’ bit as others have noted. Thank you.
“The Global Climate has seen overall warming for the last 200 years. Within that period there has been cooling trends and warming trends but overall the trend has been a warming one.”
Here’s a point of disagreement. All the regional surface temperature charts show it is no warmer today than it was in the Early Twentieth century. The United States, for example has been in a temperature downtrend since the 1930’s.
So no, the trend has not been a warming one in the last two hundred years. That’s what the alarmists want you to think. That’s why the alarmists created the bogus, bastardized, computer-generated, instrument-era Hockey Stick “global” “temperature” chart.
Actual temperature readings put the lie to the Hockey Stick temperature profile of a warming trend. Regional charts don’t show what the “global” chart shows.
Regional charts are real temperature readings taken by unbiased human beings. The computer-generated “global” chart profile is the figment of the imaginations of those who programmed the outcome.
Just to elaborate a little. At the end of the Little Ice Age, temperatures started warming up. The temperatures warmed up to the 1880’s where they reached a highpoint. Then the temperatures cooled for decades until we reached the 1910’s, and then the temperatures started warming again, and warmed up right through the 1930’s, where temperatures again reached a similar highpoint to the one reached in the 1880’s.
Then the temperature cooled again from the 1940’s to the late 1970’s, where the temperatures were just as cool as they were in the 1910’s, and then the temperatures started warming again in the 1980’s and warmed all the way up to the present day where again temperatures reached a similar highpoint to the highpoints in the 1930’s and the 1880’s.
Temperatures are currently cooler than the highpoints of the 1880’s and the 1930’s, which means the temperatures are in a downtrend and have been since the 1930’s.
There have been periodic warmings during the period from the Little Ice Age end to today, but it has not been a straight line from Little Ice Age cooling to today’s warming, which is what is implied when you hear someone say “there has been warming since the Little Ice Age. Well, yeah, but the warming is periodic and the warming today is no warmer than the recent past so there is no unprecedented warming today even though CO2 levels continue to climb.
I think the chart of the AMO illustrates this very well:
So when you hear people say it’s been warming since the Little Ice Age, that’s true, but is really a distortion of reality the way it is used. The truth is it has warmed since the Little Ice Age, but the warming reached a peak in the 1880’s, and it hasn’t gotten any warmer on Earth since that time. So the proper way to describe it is it has been warming since the Little Ice Age, reached a peak in the 1880’s, and has flat-lined since that time, up to the present day.
Your ignorance is tiresome Griff, there are several factors on why areas of the world were slow to electrify, civil wars, famines, weak economies and in recent decades environmentalists resisting the use of “fossil fuel” development plans and Nuclear Power.
Back about 2006 I was hearing the glaciers have been melting since 1840, and it is all our fault. I decided to investigate, as we went on a trip to Alaska including Glacier Bay, where we were given maps showing the melting of the 65 mile long Glacier Bay glacier. We calmly cruised up into the bay on our 140 passenger cruise ship while I studied the maps. That glacier had started melting prior to the year 1800. By 1860 the widest part of the bay was free of ice. By 1900, an estimated 90% of the bay was open.
In 1800, when the melting had started, the population of the entire earth was a fraction of today and transportation was by horse, foot, and wooden sailing vessel. At the start of the year 1900 population was still far less than today, the airplane had not yet been invented, and it would be another dozen years before Henry Ford would start mass production of the automobile.
I am still waiting for a forthright, sensible explanation of how we are going to stop all this terrible global warming and glacial melting today, given the above facts. Although I have not checked on it, I suspect that the Glacier Bay maps I have copies of are no longer available to the general public, having been deemed politically incorrect.
Well yes – but the RATE of melt has sharply increased in recent years, since the 90s.
Your endless pessimistic outlook doesn’t help you to be objective to the science.
You wouldn’t be able to assert anything would you griff, if it wasn’t for evidence-free assertions?
That’s an interesting comment but I’ve not seen any credible evidence that that applies and certainly not worldwide. However, that’s your opinion and you’re entitled to it but it would be nice to see some evidence if you have it.
<blockquote>Indeed our efforts have done little other than to show (incorrectly) that we take the threat scenario seriously.
</blockquote>
Richard Lindzen (above)
Yes. And, sadly, since around 2016, WUWT, once a bold teller of truth, has done more to promote than to refute AGW.
Robust presentation of <b>science</b> has been largely replaced by articles (regardless of what truth they incidentally contain) whose main purpose is to promote the controversy, not end it.
Why?
Answer: examine the profit (and or professional) motives of those who influence the content of WUWT.
<i>cui bono</i>
One of them has already commented on this thread. He promotes/is invested in “carbon storage,” i.e., battery tech. Another hocks a “criged” surface temp. data product.
LUKEWARM = keep the AGW monster alive. HOT or COLD will kill it.
For years, now, several of us have urged WUWT to return to promoting truth.
Result: snarls such as, “Who do you think you are? It’s his website — who are you to complain?”
Response:
<blockquote>… it is imperative that we, at least, retain veracity. Whether we are capable of effectively doing this is an open question.</blockquote>
Lindzen (above)
<b>LISTEN TO HIM.</b>
(and to Pat Frank and to Hal Lewis and to Bill Gray and Fred Singer and William Happer and Richard Feynman and Galileo and…..)
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“Is [money] so sweet and [reputation/professional advancement] so dear as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God!”
Patrick Henry (paraphrased)
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Before you “minus 1” me, please bear in mind that I am writing this only because <b>I care deeply</b> about FREEDOM. <b>Hard science = Liberty.</b>
Lukewarm prevaricating = chains, i.e., “the road to serfdom” (F. Hayek).
I have read WUWT for some years and noted that WUWT prints both alarmist reports and comments and more reasoned reports and comments concerning climate issues as any good news organization should – and WUWT is a news organization. We all learn by studying the pros and cons and the informed and misinformed regarding the climate issue. That is why it is such an important site. Perhaps a change in your outlook would help.
I gave you a down vote Janice, sorry. People have a right to be lukewarmers, even though they can’t back up their lukewarmicity with a number. It’s not their fault really that they can’t shake “it’s simple physics” from their heads. They don’t all handle real scientific data 24/7.
It is very difficult to determine what it is you’re trying to put across, apart from your disappointment with WUWT. I suppose it would hell if your piece wasn’t so broken up with whatever it is you’re trying to do with quotes.
About using the slogan IT’S THE CO2 STUPID for all sorts of crazy things
I agree with the methodology here, short and to the point – it never was about climate. There is a consensus about that even from the elites in private as has been slipped numerous times.
This is a full frontal assault on capitalism and nothing else. I regret to say that spending time debunking their junk science is a ploy on their part and seems to be effective.
In my humble opinion the resultant argument should always be to point out the facts- that warming is a smokescreen for activism just as the “peaceful demonstrations” were a smokescreen, oh and by the way the warmists have a 100% accuracy record in failing with predictions and in not knowing history- willingly.
…. well except it’s a phony, pretend assault on capitalism. The free-market system is where they steal the money from. There are probably some of the idiots who don’t know that, but the ringleaders like Clinton, Pelosi and the other vile anachronistic has-beens know it quite well.
Yeah, this has bugged me forever! Capitalism and the Free Market are systems that work and have worked for as long as people have been around to notice that other people have things that are pretty/useful/unavailable/desirable. Trading around the world has gone on for millennia, much to the betterment of all. These clowns that think this is somehow unfair or racist and that a Socialist or Communists system would be more fair are just self-loathing products of a society that has continued to give more and more folks more and more! Maybe they honestly don’t believe they deserve what they have but I don’t see any of them giving up their stuff or money so that others can have it.
Excellent. +1000
It’s not an assault on capitalism.
There is no grand conspiracy led by “elites”, “lizard people” or Jewish Bankers”.
It’s just a useful idea that helps many groups that have, purely coincidentally, become mutually-supporting.
Climate Science is funded disproportionately well because the subject is life and death. Arguing it isn’t is arguing for fewer climate scientists. If one were to argue yourself out of your own job, how could you face your graduate students. The narrative must be maintained.
Academic science in general needs to be important as the Cold War has ended. Funding to keep us safe from the Reds has ended. There needs to be a reason to fund research over roads, for instance.
Politicians want to be successful. That means a good economy. But they cannot control the economy (it keeps crashing). So they want to be able to point to something else that’s more important that they are achieving. Preferably something that they will all be dead before they are assessed on it. Saving the planet! Climate change is very useful.
The media are bankrupt. The internet has stolen all the revenue streams and given lots of news away for free. Big new stories are needed. Saving the planet! The end of the world is NOT nigh is not news.
Activists want something to rail against. Apartheid’s gone. The Clean Air Act and the like have made the real difference. The latest civil rights issues are very obscure (like trans-people… how many people are there to be discriminated against). They need something big to make the activist institutions worthwhile. They aren’t going to persuade Japan to stop whaling. They have persuaded France to stop nuking. It’s almost time to say “good enough”.
Most people just want to have a quiet life and be respectable. Paying lip service to the bete noire of the media is a social pass to respectability. Like being in the WI in a a 1950s rural village. It doesn’t mean they have to lose a car or skip a foreign holiday. It’s politeness not reality.
There is no conspiracy. It’s just useful to people.
To end it you don;t need to break the conspiracy. You need to make it less useful. The way to do that is to persuade the politicians that there actions will cost them votes – that is that the media have no residual influence. Watch the funding dry up then.
I like arguments that DO NOT rely on science understanding:
3000 years ago, there was the Minoan Warm period. Man did not emit CO2, but it was warmer than now.
Then 1000 years later, there was the Roman warm period. Man did not emit CO2, but it was warmer than now.
Then 1000 years later, there was the Medieval warm period. Man did not emit CO2, but it was warmer than now.
Then 1000 years later, came our current warm period. You are claiming that whatever caused those earlier warm periods suddenly quit causing warm periods, only to be replaced by man’s CO2 emission, perfectly in time for the cycle of warmth every 1000 years stay on schedule. Not very believable.
The entire climate scam crumbles on this one observation because it shows that there is nothing unusual about today’s temperature and ALL claims of unusual climate are based on claims of excess warmth caused by man’s CO2.
Also. Vikings farmed Greenland, in areas still under permafrost. That means it was warmer than now WITHOUT man’s CO2.
And: Melting glaciers are uncovering artifacts and vegetation from Roman times. That means it was warmer than now before those glaciers formed WITHOUT man’s CO2.
Citing historical precedents doesn’t preclude CO2 being a current influence on the climate, in fact it probably is to some extent.
Theoretically, increasing CO2 atmospheric concentration is not a necessary condition for a rising (supposed) global average temperature but, all else being equal, it is a sufficient cause.
It seems to me that increasing CO2 is not a sufficient condition for rising temperatures because the rising does not include at least two requirements of the CO2 theory 1) that atmospheric humidity will increase along with the CO2 – it isn’t as NOAA data clearly shows and 2) that the warming will be accompanied by increasing temperatures in the lower Troposphere, the so-called hot spot – no hot spot has ever been detected.
The so-called ‘hot spot’ is ostensibly a response to ‘enhanced greenhouse warming’, in other words positive water vapor feedback but it is correct that it doesn’t exist or at least hasn’t been discovered.
Let Richard Lindzen himself explain:
“… the greenhouse effect operates by inhibiting the cooling of the climate by reducing net outgoing radiation. However, the contribution of increasing CO2 alone does not, in fact, lead to much warming (approximately 1 deg. C for each doubling of CO2). The larger predictions from climate models are due to the fact that, within these models, the more important greenhouse substances, water vapor and clouds, act to greatly amplify whatever CO2 does. This is referred to as a positive feedback. It means that increases in surface temperature are accompanied by reductions in the net outgoing radiation – thus enhancing the greenhouse warming”.
The so-called ‘hot spot’ is ostensibly a
response tosign of ‘enhanced greenhouse warming’And its totally NON-EXISTENT. !
And after a little bit of H20 increases the IR absorption by a couple of watts per sqM, the H2O causes low level CLOUDS that can reflect about 800 Watts per sqM……
But don’t forget that the increased cloud cover then blocks the Sun, the prime mover of the climate system, which counteracts the co2 effect. It’s better to say that increased co2 slows down the cooling of the Earth to outer space, as it doesn’t add heat from itself.
I simply don’t care who says otherwise, positive feedback *always* results in runaway. A_t = A_0 / (1-BA_0). You can make B as small as you want, the output will still grow. it might grow slower but it will still grow. The system will either destroy itself or will reach a saturation point where the output can go no higher.
If CO2 is a positive feedback then when the earth had an atmosphere much higher in CO2 it would have eventually become a cinder as temperatures went up and up. Either that or the water vapor (i.e. clouds) would have caused a saturated condition limiting further growth in temperature.
What Lindzen said is that MODELS (GIGO) predict positive feedback, but NOBODY has measured it. That is why we have the exaggerated warming forecast.
Complete total lack of understanding of the scientific null hypothesis Chris.
Go stand in the corner with the dunce cap on.
He’s already doing that !!
First you must falsify the null hypothesis then set about collecting evidence for an alternative cause. Good luck with that. If you find some you’ll be the 1st.
I’m not referring to empirical data but the greenhouse hypothesis hence: ‘Theoretically …’.
The “theory” is actually SCIENTIFIC NONSENSE. !
Maybe you should read some Mills and Boons…. and compare
Sooner or later one must realize the inadequacy of the greenhouse conjecture and come to grips with the fact that if has no supporting evidence. The thing is; all else is never equal, particularly with climate.To believe in AGW one must cast aside far too much that we do know. Rising CO2 comes nowhere close to being “a sufficient cause”.
“doesn’t preclude CO2”
TOTAL LACK OF ANY EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE, DOES !
Apparently a lot of readers would agree with this proposition:
If the Earth can warm without a precursor of increasing CO2 therefore increasing CO2 cannot warm the Earth.
Astonishing.
No. The set of prepositions that are challenged are:
1) A warmer Earth releases more CO2 from the oceans.
2) If the Earth has warmed in the past that means that CO2 in the atmosphere must have increased in the past.
3) If increased CO2 in the atmosphere warms the planet then go to 1.
Yet the world did not burn up on the first forest fire.
It cannot be that simple.
No, its just that there is ABSOLUTELY NO EVIDENCE that CO2 causes warming.
You can “believe” the equivalent of Grim Bros fairy-tales, doesn’t mean they are real. !
Apparently you would agree with this: Even if the earth can warm without space alien’s help doesn’t mean that space aliens didn’t cause it this time.
Correlation is not proof of causality. Warmer periods in our planet’s history correlate with increases in living organisms. Some life consumes CO2 and other life produces CO2. Plant life which consumes CO2 benefits from higher CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere. This also benefits animals which consume plants and produce CO2.
CO2 would most likely cause mass extinction of both plant and animal life if the atmospheric concentration drops too low. I have heard that 180 ppm is the level below which photosynthesis is negatively impacted.
The historical record indicates that CO2 concentrations increase after, not before temperature increases. The result of an action can’t occur before the cause. Therefore, CO2 can’t be a cause of historical temperature increases, let alone be a sufficient condition for such increases
A further complication is that, all else being equal, increasing CO2 can not only be a cause of a rise in the G.A.T it can simultaneously be an effect as warming oceans out-gas CO2 as can be seen in the ice core record where rising CO2 follows rising temperature by about 800 years.
.
NO…. there is ABSOLUTELY NO EVIDENCE for that fantasy conjecture.
It is a SCIENTIFICALLY BASELESS CONSTRUCT.
So we have a number of natural cycles (and BTW the Roman empire did emit a lot more CO2 than previous civilisations) … but now we have a new, additional cycle, on top of and dominating the other processes, we have human produced CO2.
surely it is possible to have a new cause of climate change?
clearly we have more CO2, the CO2 comes from fossil fuels and the physics show how CO2 works in the atmosphere.
That might be the biggest pile of guff you’ve ever posted on here griff – congratulations.
Yes, it is possible to a new cause of climate change, but we know now that it ain’t CO2 above 280 ppm because it can’t be measured.
Show us your math on the Roman empire quote. Please.
Griff, could you provide a link showing that the Romans emitted more co2? You can’t make such an amazing statement without providing evidence.
It was burning all those christians in the Colloseum in Rome that no doubt released climate – altering CO2. In fact you could make the 100 pounds or so of CO2 released by burning one christian into a new unit of anthropogenic CO2 release – the “christian”. Or nowadays I guess “megachristians” or “giga christians”.
You point out the problem with the scientologists, that they have no faith.
If they truly believed CO2 was the knob they wouldn’t indulge in all this proxie hockey stick garbage trying to “prove” it has never been this warm before, despite endless physical evidence that it was indisputably warmer.
They only do this because their case is weak
I just keep saying it, absorb the insults of the faithful, mock them for their stupidity and move on
Here’s the lecture video. I love me a good Richard Lindzen lecture. 30 minutes well spent.
Constantly depict climate obsession as a religion.
Demand that people commit and bear witness.
Revere idols such as solar panels and wind turbines.
Worship deities such as Greta, Al Gore, David Attenborough.
Assess ordinary people a $$$ tithe to fund the proselytizing and missionaries.
Declare a permanent state of lent for believers.
Such a religion would die off in a matter of months.
The Church of Climate Scientology is born. St. Greta, like Joan of Arc, will lead us on our crusade. Monasteries and nunneries will be founded where believers can live their lives of poverty and deprivation as examples to the rest of us.
you can’t talk someone away from an irrational belief …
This is the worst part, for me, “As long as scientists are rewarded for doing so, they are unlikely to oppose the exploitation of science.”
Lindzen is too polite. These scientists are not exploiting science. They are betraying science.
They’re generating and exploiting pseudo-sciencet to their personal benefit and to the corrosion and impoverishment of society.
the major calamity of our age is the widespread betrayal of professional integrity among officials; political, judicial, police agencies, the whole lot. It’s a psycho-ethical pandemic of ruination.
Exactly right. To go back a bit, both Jefferson and Madison agreed it would be a good idea if the federal government could build roads – they just though it would require a constitutional amendment to obtain the necessary powers to do so.
Fast forward to the Eisenhower era, and the feds are not only building roads (without said constitutional amendment), but are rapidly becoming the 800 pound gorilla with respect to the funding of science. This in turn makes all government-funded science political science to some degree.
The main danger of government-funded research occurs when such research “identifies” an effect that the government can seize upon to intervene in the economy and greatly enhance its powers. This is what has been driving government climate alarmism for decades and more recently, the government’s response to the pandemic.
Yes, there’s been a betrayal of science by some scientists. But as you rightly point out, with respect to the concept of limited government, the betrayal has been going on for a long time and in many realms besides science.
It’s as if the moral fabric and ensuing trust are gone
Pat, Methinks that we have perhaps too narrowly estimated the place of harlotry in all of history, a realization that invites the personally courageous to examine the motivations in our own conduct against those ethical standards that have long lay beneath our upturned noses.
And as one who is unfortunate enough to have been born without the gene that allows direct visualization of CO2, I have greatly benefited from the education I have received here from many in their fashion (perhaps second only to Dr. Lindzen’s decades of historical observations of men and their environment) that has even continued recently despite bikinied babes suddenly appearing over the legends of even more revealing graphics as the informational window has lately narrowed in favor of intrusive overlying adverts.
Yes, it’s an imaginary climate crisis, because the leftist environmentalists and global Marxists at the U.N. IPCC have been feeding it with imaginary physics, which pretends that 5500C photons from the Sun have the same heating power as -80C photons from atmospheric CO2.
Their big con is to turn the Stefan-Boltzmann Law inside-out by claiming that just because a Planck black body at some temperature T radiates a power-wavelength curve that has a total power proportional to T^3, atmospheric “back radiation” can raise the body’s temperature no matter how long/cold these wavelengths are, just based on total power. In reality, only photons at a temperature hotter than T can raise the body’s temperature, and only if there enough of them. Hence, CO2’s weak puny 15 micron photons have no heating power no matter their power.
The IPCC gets away with its trillion-dollar hoax by taking advantage of mass ignorance of thermal physics, even among physicists. Take my free Climate Science 101 course and join my new woke generation:
http://www.historyscoper.com/climatescience101.html
Quote:””In the introduction I asked: What is the total emissivity of carbon dioxide?
In this note I have calculated the real total emissivity of the atmospheric carbon dioxide at its current partial pressure and instantaneous temperature to be 0.002.
Clearly carbon dioxide is not a nearly blackbody system as suggested by the IPCC and does not have an emissivity of 1.0. Quite the opposite, given its total absorptivity, which is the same than its total emissivity, the carbon dioxide is a quite inefficient – on absorbing and emitting radiation – making it a gray-body.
Accepting that carbon dioxide is not a black body and that the potential of the carbon dioxide to absorb and emit radiant energy is negligible, I conclude that the AGW hypothesis is based on unreal magnitudes, unreal processes and unreal physics.””
From here
IOW Carbon Dioxide simply does not emit ANY radiation at the temperatures an pressures of Earth’s atmosphere
Back (downwelling) radiation from CO2 is a complete farce.
It Does Not Happen
That soooooo many folks, calling themselves scientists good grief, go to such lengths to claim that it does, is The Problem Of Our Time.
what went wrong here. what really has gone wrong with this world
Now consider an Oxygen & Nitrogen gas mixture.
Put an emissivity figure of 0.02 into Stefan’s equation and see what you get.
Use both the surface temp of +15 Celsius (288Kelvin) and or average Troposphere temp of minus 15 Celsius (258Kelvin)
OK, Water Vapour is supposedly a strong Green House Gas
Yes, it has an emissivity of 0.99
Lets say it is 1% of the atmosphere
Do we say a combined Emissivity of 0.0297?
Do a Stefan calculation with that number
Bear in mind that as El Sol rises in the morn, on its way up the sky and at this time of year at this place, the solar incoming power is changing (rising) by nearly 3 Watts every 60 seconds and apres solar noon is decreasing at the same rate
By comparison, how significant is/are the numbers you’ve just calculated?
Here’s a photo of some bare soil from what was last year.season a (renewable energy) corn-field
You should see my little thermocouple differential thermometer with one probe sticking into the top inch of soil and the other probe supported by a glass jam-jar about 4 inches above the first.
The ‘big’ number of 17.4 is the temperature of the soil.
The small number lower-left of 10.5 is the temp of the air
The small number lower-right is the difference
The air is 6.9 Celsius colder than the soil
Is the air heating the soil or vice-versa?
Explain that in light of the Green House Gas Effect…….
Our task is to show the relevant people the overall stupidity of this issue rather than punching away at details.
Yes. Keep it simple. Every single study claiming dire consequences is based on climate model projections, not observations of the climate. Almost all of the studies use the most extreme RCP8.5 scenario.
RCP8.5 projected temperature for 2100: +2.6 to 4.8 C, mean of 3.7
Observed temperature trend projected for 2100: +1.4 C (RCP2.6 range)
RCP8.5 projected sea level rise for 2100: +0.45 to 0.82 meters, mean of 0.63
Observed sea level trend projected for 2100: +0.2 to 0.33 meters (RCP2.6 range)
-RCP8.5 is the “business as usual” scenario.
-RCP2.6 is the “do everything we can to stop human CO2 emissions” scenario.
Humans are doing almost nothing (RCP8.5), but temperature and sea level trends are solidly in the “do everything we can to stop human CO2 emissions” range of projections from the computer models. The models have been proven to be utterly wrong numerous times, even in the IPCC reports, but they form the basis for all public policy on climate change.
Stop arguing minutiae and just point out that:
There is no excuse for the stupidity of setting economically disastrous public policy on ridiculously exaggerated claims that have no scientific basis.
It’s going to be a slow process but it has certainly started. Calling these F-wits cretins and/or climate liars at every opportunity, laughing at the no-nothings that say “polar bears” or “arctic sea ice” is working for me, and I get to have a laugh too.
What makes it easy to rebuff common sense arguments for the elites is falling back on “NOAA says” or “NASA says” or “NAS, IPCC says” arguments.
In my opinion we will never win the argument as long as these government bodies can perform their poor quality (i.e. highly manipulated Peer Reviews) science. Until they are challenged on their substandard quality control they will remain as cover to elites so they can continue believe in their scientific acumen.
If you look at OMB requirements on quality assurance, it is obvious that NOAA, NASA and NAS give it nothing but lip service. What is really needed is a team to challenge their abuse of quality assurance they have a legal obligation to adhere to. OMB requirements specifically warn the problems of peer reviews when improperly applied as we know from Climate Gate is standard IPCC practice.
On John Kerry’s claim that climate (unlike chemistry and physics) is simple enough for a child to understand,here is Michael E. Mann from his book,“The Madhouse Effect” (2016), “Climate Change,The Basics”, Ch.2-
“The basics of Climate Change are actually very simple and always have been.Carbon in the atmosphere traps heat, and we are adding more CO2 to the atmosphere. The rest is details.”
How can you parody this?
Did Mann really say “carbon”?
What else does CO2 do in the atmosphere, Mr. Mann? Moller seems to think it results in net cooling of the atmosphere.
Tom,
Thanks for picking up my typo!
He said “Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere traps heat and we are adding more CO2 to the atmosphere.The rest is details.”
His quote of course is similar to the idea inherent in John Kerry’s quote that climate science,unlike Chemistry and Physics, is so simple that a child can understand it.
I was reminded of the Groucho Marx quote,“A child of five could understand this.Fetch me a child of five.”
Herbert, what’s funny is I assumed Mann actually said “carbon” as a substitute for carbon dioxide. So many people do nowadays.
I read a recent editorial in Astronomy magazine where the editor used carbon and carbon dioxide interchangeably, even though he definitely knows they are two different things.
When someone calls carbon dioxide, carbon, they are showing their ignorance, or in the Astronomy editors case, I can’t explain the reasoning for calling the name of one substance by the name of another substance, since the guy does know the difference. Maybe he will read this and explain himself in a new editorial. He’s a big believer in Human-caused Climate Change. There’s no evidence for anything like that, so how smart is this guy?
I was assuming Michael Mann was showing his ignorance, but not on this occasion I guess, as he actually used the words carbon dioxide, according to you, so I don’t get to call Michael Mann ignorant on this occasion. I’m sure more occasions will present themselves in the future. 🙂
Thanks for clearing that up.
Dr. Lindzen is correct in all particulars, as usual, but perhaps understates a couple of points.
First, we Realists (“skeptics” is too timid) have not adequately expressed the dangers to humanity from the “absurd narrative of climate alarm”. Lindzen’s example of the Eugenics movement is apropos. The consequences include the Holocaust and persistent racism. Millions died because of the Eugenics movement. Millions will die from climate alarmism. It is no less an evil.
Calling climate alarmism “absurd” is speaking the truth, but not quite strong enough condemnation.
Second, the adoption of climate alarmism by governments is not merely “to control the energy sector”. Like Eugenics, climate alarmism is a fascist/authoritarian/totalitarian narrative. It is embraced by would-be tyrants for the purpose of controlling all wealth and property and to enslave the masses.
I am not exaggerating. The proponents have ulterior motives which are not hidden or subtle. This is well-recognized by many commenters here, but the sheer magnitude of the evil being perpetrated escapes most observers in the general population. It also intimidates (or seduces) many “leaders” in the public, private, and academic sectors.
Mocking such evil is not an adequate defense against it. I regret that I don’t have any easy solutions, but recognizing the dangers of climate alarmism in their full array should be the first step.
I dunno, some guy some years ago wrote a funny series of short stories, utterly prophetic on today’s nonsense, and his whole philosophy behind that was: ” The only thing that ever gets the Devil’s gall, is when you mock him, the rest is grist for his mill.”
I wildly paraphrase of course, I don’t go around memorising soundbites, like the three dozen readers right now itching to correct me on that quote.
So, I say we mock the Hell out of these little Satanists! If we have to go down, let’s at least have some fun…
Don’t forget to roll your eyes when you hear “climate climate climate”, but be sure not to be subtle, these twerps don’t do subtle.
Is there no video link to this? Further down there is an audio link and graphs are displayed.
If sceptics and realists want to win against the alarmists they have to present the evidence more clearly and in a video format. Little wonder the alarmists are winning a propaganda war that is being lost because of the cost of a camera.
video link (30mins)
https://youtu.be/GD8SXP02h4c
BEST use all the crappiest data they can find, then manically “adjust” it using regional expectations and other homogenisation fallacies to try to get a match the all the other crap data mal-adjusted series.
It is a load of statistical FARCE, with no evidence that it even slightly resembles reality in any way what so ever
Using Hockey Stick charts, like BEST, for anything, is useless. It’s just perpetrating the “hotter and hotter” climate Lie.
I wonder if I will live to see the day when school children giggle at the utter silliness of the “greenhouse effect”.
Myriad ocean warm pools currently across two tropical oceans regulating to 30C and Atlantic very close to reaching 30C for the first time in 2021:
https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/ocean/surface/currents/overlay=sea_surface_temp/orthographic=-26.11,-8.77,376/loc=-19.211,5.134
The radiating temperature of Earth is whatever it is as a result of the ocean surface temperature control of the tropical oceans. Taking the radiating temperature and albedo as givens is the blindspot that “greenhouse effect” creates. Both albedo and radiating temperature are a function of the thermostatic limit on ocean warm pools. The surface temperature limiting process is a consequence of water vapour above the freezing level in the atmosphere, catapulted to great altitudes during convective cloudburst then taking 30 to 40 hours to deposit as reflective ice due to radiative cooling. There is only a brief period of clear sky before the next cloudburst and the cycle starts again.
It will be interesting to see their response to the coming cold.
Only sufficient cooling can change the message.
The past four months of cooling, if extended, will do that (fingers crossed).
To use a parable,
It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to change the message. With men this is impossible; but with God all things are possible.
Really? A warmer world with more rain, longer growing seasons, more arable land and CO2 augmented agriculture is a problem?
As hard sells go, “Selling an ice box to an Eskimo” pales in comparison.
But the hard sell has been accomplished and stands as testimony to the power of the media and propaganda.
Yes, the whole issue is absurd.
The really crazy aspect of all this can be seen in the comments section of Ars Technica stories on climate. There is one today about the possible Biden Administration plan to set mileage fuel economy requirements so low that no ICE engined automobile will be able to meet them. Thus making ICE cars unlawful by the back door.
Well, glance through the comments. Regular readers will know that all dissenting voices are regularly banned from commenting. But the chorus of approval and alarm is still very striking.
And the totally crazy thing is that all these people really seem to think that moving to all electric cars IN THE USA will somehow save the planet. Its not just that they are under the delusion that we are all doomed unless we ‘do something’ about CO2 emissions. Its not even that they seriously think that moving cars to electric power trains will lower emissions.
The complete madness is that, even conceding that, they all really believe that if the USA moves to all electric cars, this will make a measurable impact on global emissions. They all really believe that this must be done to save the planet, have a viable environment for our children, this kind of thing. It never occurs to them that the soaring rate of emissions in other countries make any reductions the US makes by way of regulating cars invisible. Even on the most optimistic estimates if the US manages totally to eliminate vehicle CO2 emissions, the reduction would be eaten in a couple of months by the increases in China, India, Indonesia etc.
It will be totally pointless, even if the crazed assumptions trumpeted as obvious truth by the commentariat were true.
Its unbelievable. The Ars readership and commentariat must be among the more technically educated and intelligent in the country. Why on earth do they not see that the proposed possible measures cannot rationally be described as ‘tackling climate change’?
Or is it possible that the commenters are all astroturfers in pursuit of some unacknowledged political agenda having nothing to do with climate? And that this agenda is being pursued and endorsed by the editorial team and the owners, Conde Nast?
It has to strike any objective observer as complete mass hysteria. Lindzen is right to compare it to the Eugenics mania, or indeed many other waves of mass delusion which have swept across humanity in recorded history.
As one of the protagonists in Arthur Miller’s play, The Crucible, says, as the town starts to come to its senses after the madness and the killings, “There are no witches”.
No, there really are not.
One good push-back argument is to point out that 90% of the outspoken warmists are Democrats (and members of various Green pressure groups). They are not the avatars of disinterested observation and reasoning the word “scientist” connotes. Such biased persons, plus careerists, are disproportionately recruited into climate siience.
Another good push-back argument is to propose adoption of nuclear power instead of renewables. The disputed issues here are fairly few and comparatively clean.
A third good push-back argument is that rushing into renewables has been a disaster for the most aggressive pioneers (Spain, Ontario, and Germany), and a pending disaster for the rest.
Nassim Taleb has a chapter about the educated elite.
Worth reading. “The Intellectual Yet Idiot”
Professor Lindzen’s comparison of Imaginary Climate Crisis with eugenics is very apt. The German NSDAP leadership was heavily (and gratefully) influenced by the American theories on race. As we all know that led to catastrophe. Today, the “Elites”, by following the false climate “science” are leading the world to a new catastrophe.
…and while Hitler signed off on a eugenics programme in 1942, he rescinded it four months later. America’s official eugenics programme ran until 1957. England never stopped theirs, as far as I can see, same with the Netherlands. Only they call it gender equity now.
Neither Snow nor Lindzen fully grasp the ‘elites’ in regards to Science.
To ‘elites’ Science is a faith. An infallible one at that.
It’s practitioners are treated as priests. (It is not uncommon for arrogant scientists to write books saying their fellows studying their narrow discipline are High Priests.)
Scientific Theories are treated as revelations. Elites are eager for such pronouncements. And they are constantly using and abusing them to back up their current view of the world.
After eagerly asking you to confirm their errors, they quickly close their ears the moment you point out said error.
Relativity doesn’t mean all things are relative. It even has an absolute, the speed of light.
The Uncertainty Theorem doesn’t mean you can’t know anything. It says there is a very very small limit to how well two coupled things can be known and that the more precisely you know one, the less knowledge you have of the other. But the limit is so very very small that for large things, we can for all practical purposes know both things.
On and on, theorems are deployed as philosophical and metaphysical ‘truths’ to back up the tenets of the ‘elites’ faith.
The same people who use science to justify their elite status are themselves ignorant. They know they are ignorant, but they refuse to accept instruction. They wield science to attack others. And they use it to justify their actions. And they do both fully aware of their ignorance and absolutely refusing to learn.
Science has been perverted into a faith. Remember that the next time they question your belief in science.
George Orwell: “there are some ideas so absurd that only an intellectual could believe them”.
Nothing will change until their lunar prescriptions fail. Most notably the failure of electricity grids with unreliables. When the lights go out or rather the rolling blackouts begin in earnest there’ll be no place to hide. They simply cannot create a reliable system from unreliable componentry and electrochemical storage won’t cut it particularly trying to run transport with it at the same time. The Groupthink idiots are getting more desperate by the day with their lunatic notions-
Infrastructure Victoria panel calls for end of new petrol car sales, amid slow take-up of electric vehicles (msn.com)
Change the message, are you kidding?
If Dems can roll out an infrastructure stimulus with a straight face with only 5% ($115 B) going toward highways and bridges, they can do anything. And for good measure most of the media uses the photos from this 5% of bridges and highways under their headlines to support them with generalizations and pressure tactics to approve it. If they can pull that off again after doing the same 5% deal back in the Obama stimulus, then surely they can stay on course with a climate narrative where the math and science are more complicated for public misdirection plays.
That would be their carbon neutral GND infrastructure stimulus would it?
Great material, and great message. It’s too bad there is no forum where this is ever seen by the average person. It does not matter how good a message you have if it is repressed and censored by every communications platform out there.
I personally think the biggest problem we have in getting our skeptical views accepted is that most people, especially the younger ones, have no sense of ‘deep time’. All geologists understand this and that is why most are skeptical…the others are mainly in government funded jobs/careers. Astronomers understand even deeper time.
Politicians understand 3 or 4 year election cycles at best and most people only understand time scales on a century or so comparable to their lives. But you do need to be able to grasp deep time to see the longer and very important cycles that rule our world and climate. Most people think that ice ages were unimaginably long ago that they aren’t important any more. They don’t grasp that the Little Ice Age was really only yesterday, nor do they grasp that ice ages have always come and gone and will continue to do so unrelated to any CO2 changes.
Better science education would be a big help but the trend seems to be going the wrong way, at least here in NZ.
This is an incredibly important message from the most significant thinker in the subject of climate and the political climate alarmist movement.
Among the rivers of verbiage on the subject Richard Lindzen’s clear analysis reduces the issue to its essential core – the elite’s need for a story reinforcing their superiority, and simultaneously their power.
Seeing this is indeed much more important than just “punching away at the details” and everyone showcasing their own speciality.
It really is about exposing the nakedness of the emperor class.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Professor Lindzen´s article is more than actual. The climate realist side should also convince ordinary people (american Joe and Jane in US, Otto Normalbürger in Germany) that climate alarmismus would be eventually a hoax. However, ordinary people are not scientists, and the overwhelming majority of articles, contributions, etc. from the climate realists (even at WUWT) are simply not understandable for ordinary people. On the other side the climate alarmists could indocrinate the ordinary people (especially the youth) very successfully by simple marketing methods and easily understandable messages. Why not to learn from the other side? The first steps in this direction have already been taken, however we should do more. An excellent example would be the presentations from Dr. R. Spencer on the climate crisis (one in February 2020 in Pasadena, the other one on 19. January 2021 for “Friends of Science” in Canada). However this is not enough. As am not a native speaker, and one picture tells more than thousand words, let me illustrate my points on some references from Germany: How will be indoctrinated for example young people in Germany. Although the text is mostly in German, it is felt that everbody reading this thread will understand the situation. So the first item is a link for a major climate alarmist web page in Germany: https://www.klimafakten.de/fakten-statt-behauptungen/basiswissen The web page advices climate activists how to argument in favour of climate alarmism and how to argument agains climate “sceptics”. Some examples for posters:
How to argument against climate sceptic:
Even a version in English would be available:
Basic course against climate realist disinformation: https://www.klimafakten.de/meldung/p-l-u-r-v-dies-sind-die-haeufigsten-desinformations-tricks-von-wissenschafts-leugnern
A poster even in English: https://www.klimafakten.de/meldung/p-l-u-r-v-dies-sind-die-haeufigsten-desinformations-tricks-von-wissenschafts-leugnern
List of “facts” (from climate alarmist point of view) and the answers (a similar first experiment could be found now on the WUWT page (“climate fail files”, “everythingclimate”, “reference pages”)). However this is not enough.
Additionally you can find detailed advices ho to deal with different age groups even in the pre-elementary school age. The most methodologies are rather well known from marketing and sales trainings: How to sell something to different customer groups.
Do we like or not, also we should follow this track. Otherwise we (climate realists) shall be treated as a somewhat excentric and mentally ill “elite science group” with exotic theories in an ivory tower. To work out dokuments, methodologies, stories, understandable messages, etc. as above is not easy, and a cooperation with good graphical guys would be necessary. However, we dont have any other choice, and we don´t have too much time.
It is felt that the world approaches a real Seldon-crisis due to climate alarmism. The to-be-or-not-to-be question would be: How to cope with this crisis. It is felt, that Professor Lindzen and Dr. R. Spencer have already done the first steps in the right direction. Maybe we should follow them with the right contributions.
I’ve spelt out an ethical implication of Lindzen’s argument here
https://cliscep.com/2021/04/09/ethical-implications-of-an-argument-by-richard-lindzen/
The reality is that these arguments will change nothing.
Climate has become a policy vehicle for any and all issues that would not normally get public support. The biggest of which is creating a global fiat currency of monetized CO2 emissions. Argue against that.
https://www.lse.ac.uk/GranthamInstitute/publication/the-economics-of-climate-change-the-stern-review/
Its main findings of The Economics of Climate Change: The Stern Review included:
etc etc
Let’s really change the message. I was thinking about oxygen. The atmosphere is 21% oxygen yet only plants can make oxygen. How is it that a compound that is only .004% of the atmosphere can maintain an oxygen level of 21% or are we all doomed because cutting back on co2 will deplete oxygen and then we are dead. We therefore need more co2 not less.