By Robert Bradley Jr. — September 30, 2021
“I realize lots of people don’t like government regulation, but the alternative is an out-of-control climate.” (A. Dessler: March 23, 2019)
Andrew Dessler, the climate alarmist’s alarmist and Michael Mann ally, is shifting from (highly uncertain) physical climate science to climate economics and policy analysis.
Dessler’s web page states:
My work has shifted towards the intersection of climate change and human society, with the goal of helping us better cope with the impacts of climate change. This includes work quantifying climate extremes and how climate change can alter them, as well as analyzing how climate change will stress crucial energy, water, and other infrastructure and human systems. This is a new area for me, so my ideas are still evolving.
Mark my words: this professor is eager to model the most extreme scenarios in his scare campaign. And don’t expect him to model the benefits of the human influence on climate (warmer nights, warmer winters, longer growing seasons, CO2 fertilization, etc.). It’s all costs, no benefits, from the human influence on climate–the deep ecology view that nature is optimal and we humans cannot think and plan for ourselves in the face of climate change. (People are just not buying the alarm, another story.)
Dessler fancies himself as an expert on energy choices (see here and here). He rejects the fundamental notion that energy density is game, set, and match for mineral energies relative to dilute, intermittent ones. (Just assume that cost does not matter, and he is half right.)
So, not surprisingly, Professor Dessler on Twitter announced he was going to teach the economics side of the climate-change debate and was looking for a free market economist to guest lecture on Zoom. He linked to a site that alleged that Milton Friedman “endorsed” a price on carbon dioxide (CO2).
I jumped on this in an email sent to Dessler (and John Nielsen-Gammon, his colleague at Texas A&M) on July 29, 2021.:
This interpretation [of Milton Friedman] is wrong.
Milton Friedman did not ever consider CO2 to be a pollutant. It is an emission, but not a pollutant causing demonstrable damage in a tort situation. https://www.masterresource.org/friedman-milton/milton-friedman-climate-realist/
Also, even when Friedman did not talk about CO2 or energy, his worldview worked against the whole climate agenda. I have a live post on this here:
It is interesting that you are branching out into free market economics and public policy. Keep an open mind! I think the more you study it, the more you will realize the limits to government planning and the importance of market forces and civil society. In fact, I think the continuing, open-ended boom in each of the fossil fuels makes adaptation, not mitigation, the easy choice for the climate dollar.
P.S. I cover Friedman’s energy views here (all of my MF posts are here. He endorsed my co-authored book Energy: The Master Resource with the back cover blurb: “This splendid book effectively debunks the widespread predictions of energy doom. Its factual base is comprehensive, its exposition clear and straightforward, and its economic reasoning sound.”
He and I also exchanged emails that I summarize here.
Final Comment
Professor Dessler did not respond to my email. I am part of his ‘cancel culture,’ no surprise there.
He knows he cannot win a debate with a reasoned critic of climate alarmism/forced energy transformation. Even E-mail exchanges with me leave him vulnerable.
“Angry Andy” stoops low to discredit his intellectual opponents, from physical climate science to climate economics to public policy (see here). I will continue to report, and let you decide.
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My previous posts on Andrew Dessler can be found here.
Dessler’s 2010 positive cloud feedback paper purported to find the effect via a regression analysis with an r^2 of 0.02! Not very bright in his previous field of ‘expertise’. He will be completely lost and embarrassed outside it. That is a good thing, as he will be providing more targets for ridicule.
Attempting a discussion of climate change is more futile than discussing politics with a communist. Communists are rather more likely to actually try to defend their views, rather than just dismissing any disagreement as coming from. “Denier”.
From this past Monday’s Weekly Climate and Energy News Roundup:
“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.”
One of the definitions of the big lie:
The German expression was coined by Adolf Hitler, when he dictated his 1925 book Mein Kampf, to describe the use of a lie so colossal that no one would believe that someone “could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously.” Wikipedia
2020 showed that stopping all flights, emptying roads, closing down whole industries and staying indoors under voluntary house arrest had no discernible impact on atmospheric CO2 concentration. Check Mana Loa for the evidence.
out-of-control climate.” (A. Dessler: March 23, 2019)
Government regulation is a good thing if the evil it prevents is less than the evil it causes. An obvious example would be anti-slavery laws.
But as we know now, since 2020, that any meaningful lockdown must be far harsher than 2020 every year for ever and ever, like a boot stamping on your face…
We now know that meaningful mitigation is more evil than adapting to climate change.
The hubris is great in this one. He imagines that he has the power to control the climate!
“Andrew Dessler, the climate alarmist’s alarmist and Michael Mann ally”
Ably supported by climate lukewarmists at WUWT amongst other websites.
The evidence for whether anthropogenic CO2 has a major or minor effect on the climate, if either position were valid, comes from the same source. It is all a matter of degree.
If you believe in either then you are just being swallowed whole by the media or by IPCC reports or by weird ECS statements. You have to take a step back.
Choose from the options below:
a. Unicorns are causing enormous damage in the world’s forests.
b. Unicorns only cause some damage in the world’s forests, most of it is natural.
c. Unicorns don’t exist.
Me? I’m a c but you already knew that, eh, MarkW?
How about if we round up all these folks who are convinced that they can control the weather and have them give a demonstration. COP 26 in Glasgow would be an excellent venue as it is likely to be cold and snowy. Let them cast out the cold and snow, If they succeed they will become heroes forever to their peers.
“… He rejects the fundamental notion that energy density is game, set, and match for mineral energies relative to dilute, intermittent ones …”.
# Europe asking Russia for more coal to survive winter energy crunch (Bloomberg, 30 September 2021).
# Britain’s energy sector in meltdown as leading energy supplier faces collapse (The Guardian, 30 September 2021).
# Renewable energy output drops almost a third (Financial Times, 29 September 2021).
# China braces for a chilly winter as its home-grown energy crisis intensifies (The Sydney Morning Herald, 30 September 2021).
# Kate Andrews: Britain’s weak energy security puts net zero in doubt (The Daily Telegraph, 29 April 2021).
# Allysia Finley: Climate policy meets cold reality in Europe (The Wall Street Journal, 28 September 2021).
# Streets go dark and lifts grind to a halt as China cuts power to meet climate targets (The Daily Telegraph, 28 September 2021).
# China desperate for more coal as energy crisis cripples large section of industry (Reuters, 28 September 2021).
# Surge in UK wholesale gas prices fuels winter energy crisis fears (The Guardian, 28 September 2021).
# Monica Showalter: Green energy leaves Europe in the cold — the freezing cold (American Thinker, 28 September 2021).
(Via The Global Warming Policy Forum).
I would love to follow him around for a week and keep him from using or benefiting from fossil fuels. What a hypocrite he is!
Must be higher pay in economics.
You cannot control the climate by using science based remedies.
You can only control the climate by using legislation.
You ban extreme weather events and mysteriously they go away.
It worked with unicorns.
Does anyone know if NOAA ever printed a retraction or correction of their July 2021 “Hottest July Ever” report? I know they altered their August 0.93 to a 0.92 value in September, but I can’t find any news from the “media” about the change.
“I realize lots of people don’t like government regulation, but the alternative is an out-of-control climate.” (A. Dessler: March 23, 2019)
Think about this statement for a second. He’s saying that humans can control the climate through government regulations. Absolute hubris. The implication is that the climate was in control until we started burning fossil fuels. The idea promoted by these clowns that climate can be brought under human control shows an unbelievable level of magical thinking and conceit. Even if it were somehow possible to control climate who would trust politicians, academics or business tycoons to do the controlling? Or would the UN have an on-line voting site where we could all vote on tomorrows temperature and amount of precipitation? I don’t think we will ever be able to control the climate – God help us if we do.
Their goal is to make even “proximity” (in the form of a debate) with a “contrarian” the same as being “complicit”. They want a hard border with people who do science!
“Borders don’t work” they say but they want a frontier like “le front républicain” in France against the “extreme” “far right” (which is pretty much the equivalent of the French communist party of the 80ties).
An embarrassment to my alma mater.
Fat face, narrow beady eyes. He and Mann have a lot in common.
Has Dresser ever been asked why the temperature recovery from the Little Ice Age should have stopped ~1950?
What ever was the basis for declaring that the (climatically speaking) steady 200-400 year WARMING TREND (evidenced by 150 years of perfectly linear Tidal Guage data – the oceans are climate thermometers) had at least one unknown cause until 1940 but then that (or those) cause(s) suddenly stopped… and CO2 emissions kicked in as the sole cause of the continued warming?
That claim is childishly stupid… requiring a ton of VERY unlikely assumptions.
Once you see that word “intersection” you know you are about to be hit with a load of leftist double talk.
IMO what he is really saying is that as a “climate scientist” he is a failure and he is changing his focus to a field where his ability to indoctrinate and self promote may be more effective.
Looks like hubris has joined stupidity and arrogance as having no limits. Dessler just moved hubris into the approaching infinity column.