By Andy May
This is the transcript of a talk I gave to the ASME (The American Society of Mechanical Engineers) South Texas Section January 20, 2022
Federal money allows unelected bureaucrats to control scientific research. They dictate the projects, and often the outcomes. They use selective leaks to the press to embarrass anyone who tries to interfere with their control. They trade in fear and relish it. Anyone who disagrees with them is suppressing “science.”
They also use an ignorant and compliant news media, to demonize privately funded scientific research as “corrupted” by “evil” corporations.[1] Government research is “science” and privately funded research is corrupt. Using this narrative, they become the “truth,” and no contrary views are allowed.
President Eisenhower said, quote:
“The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocation, and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded.”
President Eisenhower’s farewell speech, 1961
H. L. Mencken wrote, quote:
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”
H. L. Mencken, 1918, In Defense of Women
What better way to frighten the public than with a scientist’s prediction?
In Figure 1 we see a cover of freezing weather in Time from January 31, 1977, that discusses the cold winters of the 1970s. Both Time and Newsweek wrote articles about the “coming ice age” in 1975. Contrast this with the April 3, 2006, cover that advises us to be very worried about a hypothesized global warming tipping point.
Government funded research told us we were all going to freeze in a new ice age in 1977, then the world stopped cooling and began to warm and by 2006 the editors of Time decided we are all going to cook due to global warming if we don’t destroy the fossil fuel industry.
I don’t know how much government money was spent to predict a new Ice Age in 1977, but a 2018 Government Accountability Office report claims the U.S. spent over $154 billion on climate change related activities since 1993.[2]
Figure 2 shows two Y2K warnings from 1999. We were all going to die because computers couldn’t tell the difference between 1900 and 2000. This bug would undoubtably (speaking sarcastically) cause computer failures resulting in accidental nuclear bomb detonations, dangerous prisoner releases, and terrorist attacks. But nothing happened. As Ross Perot remarked, he has yet to be hit by a car he saw coming three blocks away. Hospitals were supposedly in danger of overflowing if we didn’t shut the country down due to Covid-19, in the meantime Sweden did nothing, or at least had no lockdowns, and was fine. The list goes on and on.
What has private research done for us? Examples include semiconductors,[3] personal computers,[4] cameras,[5] telephones,[6] automobiles,[7] airplanes,[8] scotch tape,[9] television and movies,[10] Teflon,[11] Velcro,[12] aspirin,[13] and more. Governments, not as many inventions, but examples include atomic bombs,[14] ballistic missiles,[15] AK-47s,[16] and probably COVID-19[17] and the COVID-19 vaccines![18] Private inventions tend to improve our lives, government inventions tend to destroy lives.
But, then the advocates of government-controlled science ask, “What about basic research? What about research that companies will not fund?” This is nonsense, science and technology will advance regardless of government intervention, governments aren’t that important. Witness that both Newton and Leibniz invented Calculus at about the same time and Elisha Gray and Alexander Graham Bell filed for telephone patents on the very same day.[19]
Much government research money is spent on useless or dangerous research. The COVID SARs virus was probably developed partly with U.S. government research dollars. Specific U.S. NIH research grants have gone to the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Research dollars have recently funded efforts to addict zebrafish to nicotine, four million dollars was spent to study the connection between drinking alcohol and winding up in the ER.[20] Who would think there was a connection?
It is a myth that science and technology can be conjured up by spending money. It is also a myth that scientific research drives the development of new technology, it is the other way around, scientific breakthroughs are normally the result of technological change. Not the reverse.[21] Thermodynamics was developed because of the steam engine, not the other way around. Einstein’s theory of relativity may not have been developed without the Michelson interferometer and other spectacular inventions in the 19th century.[22] As everyone here should appreciate, the engineering is done first, then science figures out how it happened.
Politicians and bureaucrats control scientific research and research outcomes by selectively funding projects that look for potential disasters, ideally global disasters. Many people love disaster stories, journalists love disaster stories, scientists love to be quoted in newspapers and on television. It’s win-win for everyone but the general public. Princeton physics Professor William Happer once wrote, quote:
“[As] Director of Energy Research of the Department of Energy in the early 1990s I was amazed that the great bulk of federal funds for environmental studies from the DOE, NASA, EPA, and other federal agencies flowed into research programs that reinforced a message of imminent doom: humanity and planet earth devastated by global warming, pestilence, famine, and flood.”[23]
Prof. William Happer, 2003
So, it is not surprising that as government has taken over funding scientific research, scientists have migrated from research that helps people, to researching possible catastrophes, no matter how remote the possibility. Science has devolved from improving human lives to developing plots for disaster movies. And, if humans can be blamed for the catastrophe, it is even better, then the politicians can mandate people change their lives “for the greater good.” The politician’s power then increases because exercising power increases it and people will give up their freedoms in exchange for security, whether the danger is real or not.
When a politician uses the phrase “for the greater good” hide your children and hold onto your wallet, he’s after something and up to no good.
When Al Gore was running for Vice President in 1992, he wrote a book Earth in the Balance in which he said on page 5, quote:
“Professor Revelle explained that higher levels of CO2 would create what he called the greenhouse effect, which would cause the earth to grow warmer. The implications of his words were startling; we were looking at only eight years of information, but if this trend continued, human civilization would be forcing a profound and disruptive change in the entire global climate.”
Al Gore, Earth in the Balance
Revelle was a famous scientist who had taught a class that Gore attended at Harvard. He wrote the following in 1991, a year before Gore’s book came out. It is from a Cosmos paper entitled: “What to do about Greenhouse Warming: Look before you Leap,” written in collaboration with Fred Singer and Chauncey Starr, two other famous scientists.
Quoting the paper:
“We can sum up our conclusions in a simple message: The scientific [basis] for a greenhouse warming is too uncertain to justify drastic action at this [time]. There is little risk in delaying policy responses to this century old problem since there is every expectation that scientific understanding will be substantially improved within the next decade.”
(Singer, Revelle, & Starr, 1991)
Revelle had studied the growth of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere for decades and concluded that it might cause some warming, but he was unsure if it would be a problem. His mention of “within the next decade,” was eerily correct, as the famous pause in warming started in the year 2000, just nine years later. It lasted at least until 2014.
Al Gore, who had little training in science, suffered no such doubts. He was sure that burning fossil fuels was causing carbon dioxide to rise to “dangerous” levels in the atmosphere and was convinced this was a problem for civilization through rising sea levels and extreme weather. He was sure we needed to mitigate CO2 for the greater good. There was no evidence to support these assumptions, but Al Gore didn’t need evidence, he could always rely on climate models, and he did. Revelle had a deep distrust of climate models.
The incompatibility between Revelle’s true views and the way they were presented in Gore’s book was noticed by Gregg Easterbrook, a Newsweek editor, who wrote about it in the July 6, 1992 issue of The New Republic.[24]
Al Gore was humiliated by Easterbrook’s article and follow up articles by George Will and others. Justin Lancaster was Revelle’s graduate student and teaching assistant at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography from 1981 until Revelle’s sudden death in July 1991. He was also an Al Gore supporter. Lancaster claimed that Revelle was “hoodwinked” by Singer into adding his name to the Cosmos “Look before you Leap” article. He also claimed that Revelle was “intensely embarrassed that his name was associated” with it. Lancaster further claimed that Singer’s actions were “unethical” and specifically designed to undercut Senator Al Gore’s global warming policy position. Lancaster harassed Singer in 1992, accusing him of putting Revelle’s name on the article over his objections and demanding that Singer have it removed. He even demanded that the publisher of a volume that was to include the article remove it.[25]
Professor Singer, the Cosmos publisher, and the publisher of the book, objected to these demands and charges. Then Singer sued Lancaster for libel with the help of the Center for Individual Rights in Washington, D.C. Professor Singer and the Center won the lawsuit and forced Lancaster to issue an apology.
The discovery process during the lawsuit revealed that Lancaster was working closely with Al Gore and his staff. In fact, Al Gore personally called Lancaster after the Easterbrook article appeared and asked him about Revelle’s mental capacity in the months before his death in July of 1991. Friends and family of Revelle recall that he was sharp and active right up to the moment when he passed away from a sudden heart attack. But this did not stop Al Gore and Lancaster from claiming Revelle was suffering from senility or dementia and that was why the account in Gore’s book was so different from what Revelle wrote elsewhere, including in the Cosmos article. Lancaster himself had written in a draft letter to Al Gore stating that Revelle was “mentally sharp to the end” and was “not casual about his integrity.”[26]
During the discovery process, Singer and his lawyers found that Lancaster knew everything in the Cosmos article was true and that Revelle agreed with everything in it. The article even included a lot of material that Revelle had previously presented to a 1990 American Academy for the Advancement of Science meeting.
When Revelle argued against “drastic” action, he meant measures that would cost trillions of dollars and cripple the fossil fuel industry and developing countries. Up until his death, he thought extreme measures were premature. He clearly believed that we should look before we leap.
Al Gore tried to get Ted Koppel to trash Singer on his weekly TV show, Nightline, and it failed spectacularly. He wanted Koppel to investigate the “antienvironmental movement” and in particular “expose the fact” that Singer and other skeptical scientists were receiving financial support from the coal industry and the wacky Lyndon LaRouche organization. Rather than do Al Gore’s bidding Ted Koppel said the following on television on February 24, 1994.
“There is some irony in the fact that Vice President Gore, one of the most scientifically literate men to sit in the White House in this century, [is] resorting to political means to achieve what should ultimately be resolved on a purely scientific basis. The measure of good science is neither the politics of the scientist nor the people with whom the scientist associates. It is the immersion of hypotheses into the acid of truth. That’s the hard way to do it, but it’s the only way that works.”
Ted Koppel, Nightline, February 24, 1994
Calling Al Gore “scientifically literate” is debatable, but Koppel has the rest of it right. He has integrity that is lacking in journalism today, further he understands the scientific process. The attempt to use Koppel to tar Singer, brought a huge amount of well-deserved criticism down on Gore.
Given this, it is not surprising that Lancaster agreed to issue an apology only two months later, on April 29, 1994. Lancaster’s retraction was specific:
“I retract as being unwarranted any and all statements, oral or written, I have made which state or imply that Professor Revelle was not a true and voluntary coauthor of the Cosmos article, or which in any other way impugn or malign the conduct or motives of Professor Singer with regard to the Cosmos article (including but not limited to its drafting, editing, publication, republication, and circulation). I agree not to make any such statements in future. … I apologize to Professor Singer”
Justin Lancaster, court ordered apology, April 29, 1994
So, in his court affidavit Lancaster admitted he lied about Fred Singer. Then afterward, Lancaster withdrew his court-ordered retraction and reiterated the same charges. He admits he lied under oath in a courtroom and in writing, then tells us he didn’t lie. He admits that Professor Revelle was a true coauthor of the paper, then he states “Revelle did not write it” and “Revelle cannot be an author.”[27] What some people are willing do to their reputations, in the name of an imaginary climate change catastrophe is hard to believe. He retracted his retraction despite documentary evidence in Revelle’s own handwriting, and numerous testimonials from others that Revelle did contribute to the article. A Climate Change catastrophe? Let’s look further.
Figure 3 contains the Nobel Prize committee’s announcement of Yale Professor William Nordhaus’s prize, received in 2018. He was given the prize for his decades of research on climate change economics and for developing the DICE economic model of potential climate change economic damages.
In 1990 Nordhaus wrote, Quote:
“…those who argue for strong measures to slow greenhouse warming have reached their conclusion without any discernible analysis of the cost and benefits…”
(Nordhaus, 1990)
Nordhaus won the Nobel Prize 28 years after writing this. Nordhaus also called Al Gore’s 1997 Kyoto Protocol a:
“… conceptual disaster; it has no coherence politically or economically or environmentally.”[28]
Yale conference minutes
Kyoto had little to do with climate change, it was mainly an enormous transfer of money from wealthy countries to poor countries.
Figure 4 summarizes the result of Nordhaus’s analysis, using graphs from his 2018 Nobel Prize lecture.[29] The slide highlights two economic scenarios, the first is the IPCC recommended path to an average 21st century warming of 1.5 degrees Celsius, which reaches two degrees of warming from 2060 to 2080, but then falls. This hypothetical warming scenario is shown in dirty yellow in the left graph. The Nordhaus DICE economic model results of this scenario are shown on the right side of the right graph. The red bar shows the present cost of abatement, or the cost of reducing greenhouse emissions enough to limit the warming to 1.5 degrees. As you can see, we pay over 50 trillion dollars today, to achieve a potential savings of less than five trillion dollars in the future. If everything works out the way the IPCC says it will, it is not a very good deal.
The second highlighted scenario is the economically “optimal” DICE model. On the left graph, it is the labeled orange line dotted with triangles. It reaches four degrees of warming before leveling out. It is the scenario with the lowest cost to society. The increase in temperature is higher than the IPCC recommends we plan for, and considerably higher than observations suggest we will reach. Four degrees of warming is certainly not physically dangerous to humans, animals, or plants. Temperatures are warming more in the high latitudes, at night, and in the winter. The changes during the daytime, in the tropics, and in the summer are quite small. Life thrives in areas with very high temperatures, so our economy is the main concern, and Nordhaus is saying four degrees of warming is optimal from an economic perspective. As we can see in the right graph, the projected benefits of this optimal scenario (in green) are much higher than the costs (shown in red).
The right graph plots the analysis of all the scenarios plotted in the left graph, except for the “optimal (alt dam)” scenario with uses a different future damage scenario. The “base” scenario is the IPCC RCP8.5 emissions scenario with essentially no attempt at mitigation.
Nordhaus arrives at his conclusions by analyzing the “social cost of carbon” dioxide emissions. If a carbon tax is applied to fossil fuels, then the cost of the fuels goes up causing damage to the economy. Fossil fuels are used to make or distribute nearly everything we use in our daily lives; thus, as a result, implementing the tax increases causes the cost of everything to go up, which reduces consumption and lowers our standard of living. But, if the IPCC’s worst-case scenario is true, and their analysis of the cost of warming is accurate, there will be benefits to raising the cost of fossil fuels because we will use less of them, emit less CO2, and avoid costs due to global warming. The right-hand plot compares the IPCC calculated damages to climate change costs for various CO2 mitigation taxes designed to limit warming for various scenarios.
The IPCC would like us to limit warming to 1.5°C over the pre-industrial era, roughly pre-1900, or the end of the Little Ice Age, when CO2 was about 280 to 290 ppm. But as Nordhaus’s analysis shows this would be an economic disaster and cost over $50 trillion out of an $88T world economy. It would likely impoverish nearly everyone. Even limiting us to less than two degrees of warming in the next 100 years, would lead to an economic catastrophe. Compare this with the IPCC estimate of a trivial 0.2–2% reduction in world GDP in 60 years if we do nothing.
Nordhaus used the IPCC RCP 8.5 emissions scenario for his calculations, this scenario has been shown to be an improbable worst-case scenario and has been discredited by numerous researchers. The other more moderate IPCC scenarios look much better economically and from a supposedly dangerous climate perspective.[30]
Bjørn Lomborg also looked at the potential costs of global warming versus the cost of radically reducing CO2 emissions in a 2020 paper in Technological Forecasting & Social Change.[31] In a detailed analysis of economic projections by Nordhaus, the IPCC, and others, Lomborg also finds an imperceptible change in global GDP today due to climate change. He observes a slight change of -0.28% in GDP at 1.5°C of warming, and a 2.9% reduction in GDP in 2100 with 4°C of warming if we do nothing about climate change.
Lomborg points out that the IPCC projects an increase in human welfare of 450% between now and the end of the 21st century. Projected climate damages, if we do nothing, would reduce this gain in welfare to 434%. Thus, climate change is projected to reduce the gain in global wealth by 4% in 2100.
Lomborg goes on to point out that, while the cost of doing nothing is small, the costs of proposed climate policies are very large. The Paris agreement, if fully implemented, will cost over $800 billion per year in 2030 and will reduce emissions by just 1% of what is needed to limit the average global temperature rise to 1.5°C. Each dollar spent on Paris will result in only 11¢ of benefits. Again, not a very good deal.
The public and the news media, who should be asking probing questions, have become convinced that they cannot understand science. They have elevated science to a form of magic, only understood by witches and warlocks. They are reduced to asking scientists to spoon feed them meaningless sound bites. With a little work, most lay people can understand scientific papers and they should try. Relying on politicians, scientists, and the media to tell us what is happening is not acceptable. Scientists should also write more that can be understood by lay people, as John Tyndall, Svante Arrhenius, and many other early scientists did. Not little 600–800-word op-eds, but real scientific papers, just written for the common man. The news media are awful at writing about science because they often have no interest in what is true, they just want attention and startling predictions. Their goal is attention, not education. As a result, we must figure it out for ourselves. Toward that end remember these words from the great physicist Richard Feynman:
Quote:
“Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts.”
Prof. Richard Feynman
Science is a method of uncovering the truth. It is a methodology, honed over millennia, that can be used to destroy what the majority thinks is true, but isn’t. When a scientist stops challenging the consensus view, he is no longer a scientist.
Finally, we will end with one last story. Steven Koonin reports in his book Unsettled, that “Senator [Charles] Schumer (together with Senators Carper, Reed, Van Hollen, Whitehouse, Markey, Schatz, Smith, Blumenthal, Shaheen, Booker, Stabenow, Klobuchar, Hassan, Merkley, and Feinstein) introduced Senate bill S.729” , which says in part, quote:
“. . . to prohibit the use of funds to Federal agencies to establish a panel, task force, advisory committee, or other effort to challenge the scientific consensus on climate change…”
Senate Bill S.729
Yes, these Senators were trying to legislate against challenging an unproven scientific hypothesis, basically a scientific opinion, using government research money. It doesn’t get much worse than that. Science is debate, if all sides are not examined and argued, it isn’t science. Thankfully, their effort failed, the last thing we need is for scientific truth to be determined by the U.S. Senate!
“When you mix politics with science, all you get is politics.”[32]
Anthony Sadar, Washington Times,
Politics is about forging a consensus opinion through persuasion and intimidation; science is about challenging that consensus. Debates are about education, let’s hear all sides.
Download the footnotes and the bibliography here.
This talk is mostly drawn from my latest book, Politics & Climate Change: A History
Politics and Climate Change: A History, by Andy May ↑
(Government Accounting Office, 2018) ↑
William Shockley, Bell Labs ↑
John Blanknbaker, Kenbak Corp. ↑
Joseph Nicephore Niepce, French inventor ↑
Either Alexander Bell or Antonio Meucci ↑
Karl Benz ↑
Wright Brothers ↑
Richard Gurley Drew, 3M ↑
Charles Francis Jenkins, Charles Jenkins Laboratories ↑
Roy Plunkett, DuPont ↑
George de Mestral, Swiss engineer ↑
Felix Hoffman, Bayer ↑
Julius Oppenheimer, Manhatten project ↑
Walter Dornberger and Wernher von Braun ↑
Mikhail Timofeyevich Kalashnikov, Soviet and Russian army general ↑
Shi, Wuhan Institute of virology, see Viral, by Aline Chan and Matt Ridley ↑
Various manufacturers under contract to the U.S. Government. ↑
(Ridley, 2015) ↑
(Schow, 2019) ↑
(Ridley, 2015) ↑
(Gallucci, 2018) ↑
(Happer, 2003) ↑
(Easterbrook, 1992) ↑
(Geyer, 1993) ↑
(Singer, 2003), Chapter 11 in Politicizing Science by Michael Gough ↑
(Lancaster, 2006), Lancaster “fully rescind and repudiate my 1994 retraction” ↑
(Yale University, n.d.) ↑
(The Nobel Prize, 2018) ↑
Wang and colleagues (Wang, Feng, Tang, Bentley, & Höök, 2017), (Ritchie & Dowlatabadi, 2017) and (Burgess, Ritchie, Shapland, & Pielke Jr., 2020) ↑
(Lomborg, 2020) ↑
(Sadar, 2022) ↑
everyone should go to college. then get a masters.
Just print diplomas on N95 masks and pass them out for free.
That’s EXACTLY why so many here believe in a non-scientific opinion presented by an engineer with no experience or qualifications in the science of global warming or climate change.
BETTER: How about print on every N95 mask:
“Protecting myself and my neighbors against the deadly, dis/misinformed, plague-spreading, unvaxxed and unmasked”?
Sometimes it’s best to spread well -deserved shame as well as education!
Almost everyone should go to community college and learn a trade or profession that will enable them to become a productive member of society. Having done that, they should pursue further education to enhance their value in the workforce and improve their value as a citizen. The market for scholars is small and the people who are cut out to be decent scholars is also small.
Example: Folks go go from high school straight through to their MBA are pretty much useless as managers. On the other hand, experienced managers, who then take an MBA, actually do bring enhanced value back into the workforce. link
Disagree. Bell curve. Some people just want to work. A H.S. degree used to prepare people to work at a variety of occupations.
A H.S. student could dabble with bookkeeping, drafting, metal shop, wood shop, or mechanics. Our school had even classes and business partnerships for kids who intended to go into business for themselves.
Yes, the girls were steered into typing and shorthand, and Home Ec, but came the PC revolution and many of them had the last laugh. My wife was one. Became a geek.
Nowadays, a H.S. diploma is no guarantee that the person is literate or numerate.
The mistake being made is the assumption that everyone can “go to college.” College has been dumbed down considerably to accommodate that.
I don’t know if we can ever again have a H.S. diploma worth what it once was. All the time that used to be spent teaching the basics and useful skills has been coopted for indoctrination.
My 2¢ and I probably owe you some change, commiebob.
Sadly, the college diploma isn’t worth much anymore either.
especially a B.A. at Hah-vid as we see with Gore and Bill McKibben
More like expertise in BS like that of Christopher Monckton.
Interesting you’re mocking a Harvard education without benefit, apparently, of having attended? What exactly is your basis of judgment with, apparently, almost zero knowledge but hearsay to inform you??
Not that you’d be able to answer in precise and accurate detail without making up 99.99% of it — since it seems you *already* know “everything” about things which everyone else knows you likely know nothing.
Were you aware that one of the richest billionaires in history who attended “Hah-vid,” Mark Zuckerberg, created an app that millions and millions of users employ, called Facebook? An app (and the reason for this seemingly tangential info will become apparent momentarily) which is apparently a huge contributor to ongoing mis/disinformation about AGW (and more recently and famously, Trump, COVID-19 and other political or ridiculously politicized topics), by so-called skeptics?
“What exactly is your basis of judgment”
Gore and McKibben
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/09/03/facebook-misinformation-nyu-study/
Related to my previous reply to Rhoda R., here’s a fact-based window into exactly how valuable Facebook is.
What is actually worth something is experience.
SCIENCE is worth something, not the undereducated, shouted, big-mouth opinions of those who know nothing useful about global warming because they never earned a PhD in the subject, a subset of a larger subject, climate science.
Therefore, even though this website is the “most popular website on global warming,” that claim neatly skirts a more responsible and factual approach, i.e, to be the most accurate and truthful site about global warming.
The reason it is the most popular site probably has to do with its largely undereducated, generally intellectually lazy fan base needing validation for their crackpot, undereducated, skewed and mostly uninformed opinions that keep getting laughed at in their own personal circles — because those ignorant opinions are obviously (at least to anyone who’s done extensive lay research into global warming and climate change) based on cherry-picked facts.
climategate
“Climategate” is a catch-all term for a nontroversy invented by conservatives, some of whom intentionally inflated and promoted fears resulting from out of context excerpts they didn’t understand in certain emails between climate scientists.
FYI, climate science is an advanced discipline that 99.999% of conservatives, with their measurably 8-11 IQ points lower than Libs, are too dumb and lazy to earn PhDs in, or fully understand.
“Climategate” has been debunked many times by legitimate sources. But conservatives don’t like legitimate sources because then they have to think and change the incorrect, overly simple ways they thought in the past — which is too difficult to do for intellectually and emotionally lazy conservatives, who being simple-minded, ALWAYS WANT EVERYTHING TO STAY THE SAME.
That term, now deemed inaccurate to say the least, and at worst idiotic, ONLY survives in “echo chambers” in which conservatives repeat myths and lies debunked by science and reality and investigation.
Because conservatives are scaredy-cat snowflakes who must own guns, fear their own shadows and still don’t like the darkness like four-year-olds, such terms persist because cons can’t emotionally handle the overwhelmingly confusing and huge reality of climate change and global warming and its massive impending effects.
Here’s how a typical conservative “handles” the realities of climate change:
CONNEDSERVATIVE: “CLIMATE CHANGE IS SCARY, DADDY! WAHHHH, I don’t want to face it!
“I don’t want my government to deal with it because I don’t trust ‘them’ — yet don’t realize it’s ‘me’ and you and all our neighbors, even though I should have learned in civics class this is a republican democracy and I elected the representatives in my region — because of my unwarranted trust issues. Which were engendered by my dysfunctional, right-wing authoritarian parents in me, leading to mental health disorders I can’t understand and don’t know how to deal with in myself!”
CONNEDSERVATIVE DADDY:
“It’s okay son! I have my gun and I’ll shoot something, maybe the Sun or the atmosphere or a liberal someday! I’ll take out my rage on someone innocent so I feel better! Yay school shootings! YAYY GUNS, WHOO HAH!!
“I’ll also label the issue ‘alarmist’ so I don’t have to deal with MY fears about it. Then I can project ‘alarmism’ on others — instead of dealing with my own wackadoodle, out of control emotions I’ve never been able to manage, nor chosen to get help for.
“Because I’ve always voted for capitalist GOP leaders who say no to universal health care. Which might well help me with my mental health issues, but which I’m too stupid myself to go get help for.
“Hang on a minute there, son. I’ve got to go shoot up a mall. (To be honest, probably not a minute but your lifetime, because I’ll be in prison soon or in hell when I turn my gun on myself.)”
Your fear of, and failure to, debate is *loud and clear*.
FYI, not that you’re able to learn anything true or useful anymore, but “Climategate” is capitalized because it’s the proper name of a false, long-ago debunked conspiracy theory.
Thank you for revealing again what we educated liberals who understand the basics of science already know about conservatives:
1) They’re not as smart as liberals.
2) They don’t know how to debate.
3) They throw out debunked terms and cherrypicked facts in place of debate points, falsely believing they’re debating when in fact they are merely proving their ignorance.
4) They are so locked into their own thinking processes, they falsely believe responding to fact-based assertions with one word, “climategate,” which refers to a debunked lie promoted by climate change deniers, will be understood as a debate point.
5) They believe “Climategate” is a real controversy. Because they don’t know how (or are too lazy) to research fully, and don’t like to give up ideas, no matter how false, once stuck in their small brains.
6) Their misspellings and other deficiencies in English often telegraph their laziness and lack of reasoning apability. Those willing to work at learning and keeping up proper English punctuation, grammar and usage are clearly more intelligent (and useful, productive) humans than the vast dirty ocean of “unwashed” (a metaphor for uneducated rabble) who are too lazy to do so.
Thank you Andy May for a fine piece of scholarship, and thank you HR for your sensible comments.
Re universities:
My older two kids have five degrees between them – engineering and business, and three health/medical sciences degrees – and I have two engineering degrees, all taken before our universities became bastions of woke nonsense. My older kids are both very intelligent, and I am satisfied with their educations.
I warned my two universities one year ago that they should NOT invoke Covid-19 vaxx mandates and they proceeded anyway. Then I wrote them to object, saying “You’re literally killing our kids.” But they carried on, doing enormous harm to future generations of our best and brightest. We are now submerged in a sea of intellectual nonsense, a Woke-World run by scoundrels and imbeciles. I discuss this in my last three papers, listed below.
My question now is the education of my youngest daughter, now in junior high school. I cannot send her to my schools – Queen’s and University of Alberta – all now part of Woke-World. So my question here is where should she go to school? She is another bright kid, and should do well in life, but I don’t want to subject her to the endemic woke nonsense that now passes for academia.
[stop spamming-mod]
So my question here is where should she go to school?
I just read today that Asian-American studies is going to be added to the HS curriculum. When will the students have time for the traditional 3Rs?
98% off the OP’s topic. Your points would be well taken in a blog about the value of education.
that’s just intellectual self-stimulation. you’re masters baiting.
My take on an old adage
Them as can, do. Them as can’t teach. Them as can’t do or teach become journalists, them that fail as journalists become politicians. Those that fail at politics often become Prime Minister
Too many who have a masters degree cannot read a scientific paper to save their life. Also in this day and age it is not about being able to think that gets you a degree it is how you conform. Please do not suggest something as silly as increased exposer to extreme propaganda as a means to helping the ignorant understand anything.
You may then ask, “What is the alternative” if the bastions of learning have become nothing more than cloning machines for the masses.
I do not know. That is what is so troubling. If there was an ounce of honesty in the Universities then we would not have the issue we have currently with people misconstruing the moderate warming which may be from CO2 ( and the numerous benefits from it ) and the horrible projections that appear in ‘scientific’ studies.
It is not to say that negative consequences won’t occur, but if someone could please point to the study that shows that we are worse off then we were 100 years ago I would like to read it. From all I can see we are moving forward quite well in that crops are better than ever, technology is great ( if not a little controlling right now ) and temperatures have never been milder in the past several hundreds of years. ( That is correct there have been several temps close to this one over the last 10,000 years )
It is much more difficult to live in cold than in warmth. I am tired of pretending otherwise.
Would there be a point in which warm temperature cause more damage then benefit? Of course but I doubt that we could hit that with a quadrupling of CO2 if we tried.
Finally if the actual tech we moved to made sense ( nuclear power ) I don’t think anyone who had a brain would be particularly upset. It is the ridiculous tech like wind and solar that makes so… stupid. Solar is an okay offset though I have to suggest that there is limited use unless you move offgrid and need it.
Good comment, thank you Forrest. I agree.
Please repeat everything you wrote, not wearing armor and bereft of weapons, in person to the millions who own beachfront property and live on Islands such as Bermuda. Be sure to *emphasize* your Supreme ignorance: Viz., that you don’t believe in global warming, you don’t believe in consequent sea level rise, you don’t believe any actual climate change science — even though (or should I not assume?) you have earned NO PhD in any of the sciences required to determine the validity of global warming and its myriad negative effects worldwide.
WHEN, not if, they lose their entire nations, due to well documented sea levels rising in the last case, please sign waivers NOW allowing them full rights to post photos of your mangled corpse after their 100% homeless population gets through with you, with emphasis in the caption about your rampant ignorance on AGW and its effects, on every social media for all the world to see!
Perhaps your example will do some good, such as revealing the nature and value of karma. And the pitiable, but predictable, results of passing on misinformation and disinformation.
Disclaimer: Of course I don’t wish harm upon you personally. But those posting wilfully ignorant (dare I say idiotic?) information that could have been researched fully but wasn’t — due to blindness and prejudice based on preconceived, ignorance-based and ridiculously politicized notions, even though “the truth is out there” — kind of *deserve* what they get. Is my point clear???
When you say it’s much more difficult to live in cold than warmth, should I assume you’re speaking from a Midwestern U.S. perspective?
Don’t you think your opinion would change if temperatures regularly reached 100° in summertime of a location in which you lived? How would you feel about 120°? What about 130? Is that much more pleasant to live in than a relatively cold winter?
Why do you believe every person in every location across the globe would be better off just because you would feel better off in your particular location with warmer temperatures? Isn’t that a bit solipsistic? Fyi, solipsism is the idea that the entire world runs or should be run or operated according to your own extremely limited personal perspective, such as the view of a toddler.
And why have you ignored the many many studies that reveal
1) the fossil fuel industry employs very few people in relatively dangerous jobs,
2) solar and wind and other jobs based on energy production from renewable sources would be far more numerous by comparison, and higher paid because they rely on technical knowledge,
3) there is still NO responsible way to store and manage nuclear waste with its extremely long half lives, which means future generations will always be in danger of contamination (and obviously the more nuclear production, the more danger because there’s more waste), and
4) the dangers of global warming have already been established, with many unknowns because it is impossible to exactly predict effects of such dramatic climate change in such a short time that we are definitely causing!
In other words, your research is deficient, your viewpoint is highly ignorant, and your conclusions are lacking in most pertinent information to make them reasonable.
Now that we have established your views, compared to climate scientists, are those similar to a toddler’s, would you consider not posting anymore? Because my own view is that your view is bringing the average intelligence of posts on this website down by scores of points.
The push to increase student enrollment has resulted in dilution of the curriculum and grade inflation. The net result is to keep people out of the job market longer, and saddle them with exorbitant loans. I suspect that my Depression Era parents, both high school dropouts, had better educations than the typical college graduate of today.
Well, we have “big pharma” funding about 50% of the FDA budget, so it’s not unheard of. Most of the funding for COVID-19 vaccine research and development was paid for by US taxpayers.
This page claims to have the Time 1977 covers: https://time.com/vault/year/1977/. There is a Big Freeze cover. Online posts claim the penguin cover is from another year and altered.
Sounds about right.
It doesn’t have all the covers. Both Newsweek and Time, at the time, put out multiple editions of each week’s issue and often changed the cover. I’ve seen these debates before about the supposed fake covers from Newsweek, both covers were correct depending upon the day, the printing location, and the edition of the week’s magazine. I suppose there is an “official” cover for each week, but there is usually more than one. Time is circulated worldwide, and issues come out throughout the week and are modified for different locations.
OK, OK, it was a fake. I fixed the figure and the text. Sorry about the error.
OK, OK, it was a fake. I fixed the figure and the text. Sorry about the error.
Perhaps more importantly, “The Big Freeze” article does not predict a coming ice age, and global warming from CO2 is mentioned as one possible future.
The article notes that both future warming and future cooling were possible, and being journalists they note that either would be “disastrous.”
Being an inhabitant of Planet Earth, 45 years later, I can state, unequivocally, that all predictions of pending disaster, whether from fire or ice, were wrong.
https://time.com/vault/issue/1977-01-31/page/34/
Not to be a parrot, because I wrote this in response to another ignorant comment above, it seems like you need an education:
Please repeat everything you wrote, not wearing armor and bereft of weapons, in person to the millions who own beachfront property and live on Islands such as Bermuda. Be sure to *emphasize* your supreme ignorance you arrogantly parade as absolutely true knowledge:
Viz., that you don’t believe in global warming, you don’t believe in consequent sea level rise, you don’t believe any actual climate change science — even though (or should I not assume?) you have earned NO PhD in any of the sciences required to determine the validity of global warming and its myriad negative effects worldwide.
WHEN, not if, they lose their entire nations, due to well documented sea levels rising in the last case, please sign waivers NOW allowing them full rights to post photos of your mangled corpse after their 100% homeless population gets through with you — with emphasis in the caption about your rampant ignorance on AGW and its effects — on every social media for all the world to see!
Perhaps your example will do some good, such as revealing the nature and value of karma. And the pitiable, but predictable, results of passing on misinformation and disinformation.
Disclaimer: Of course I don’t wish harm upon you personally. But those posting wilfully ignorant (dare I say idiotic?) information that could have been researched fully but wasn’t — due to blindness and prejudice based on preconceived, ignorance-based and ridiculously politicized notions, even though “the truth is out there” — kind of *deserve* what they get. Is my point clear???
If it wasn’t clear, like Star Trek’s Captain Picard so often states, I will “make it so”:
Your claim that both conclusions in Time and Newsweek were wrong is itself 100% wrong. Why ignore the incredible levels of species extinction? The extremely well researched rises in sea levels so far? The vast swathes of ice cover, sea ice and glacial destruction? The incredibly well- researched predictions about the dregs of the earth surviving rising temperatures, such as rats and cockroaches and jellyfish, while more sensitive species are easily sent into oblivion by changes they can’t adapt to rapidly?
I understand people who aren’t smart and have little imagination can’t imagine future consequences. And that you can’t see anything beyond your own backyard and your own city, such as idiots who claim “because this winter is very cold in my city, there’s no global warming.”
But really? Couldn’t you educate yourself a little better? Is it that difficult or are you those who share your opinions (NOT even close to facts or fact-based statements) merely lazy as all get-out? Wouldn’t any smart, reasonable person delve into such a far-reaching topic much more completely before reaching such a huge generalization??
SERIOUSLY, yours (and certainly you aren’t alone, your numbers are legion!) is one of the most arrogant, ignorance-based statements I’ve seen here at the most popular (yet least scientific) website on global warming, revealing the blindness and dangers of spewing insipid mostly fact-free opinions based on partial knowledge. (Remember, someone famous and wise said, “A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.” So true HERE!)
And count yourself lucky I didn’t tell you what I *really* think about such drool-pools of writhing festering waste at the bottom of the garbage can that is the ill-conceived, poorly informed community of global warming skeptics!
Here’s a nicely designed website that outlines the many many disastrous effects of climate change (especially AGW):
https://climate.nasa.gov/effects/
If ramifications of these drastic climatic changes aren’t clear, it may be useful to go to skepticalscience.com to learn more.
A few years ago someone I had not seen since graduate school~mid-60s agreed that we had it at the best of times. After Sputnic (1957) much money was injected into the expensive venture of marine science and others. Graduate students and new graduates had much more to say about their research, with of course proper oversight and cooperation. They were not glorified lab assistants as a former student lamented to me recently. I can testify to it and have heard it from several, even current researchers, that projects they deemed important couldn’t get funding.
There are a couple of papers just out about “Sleeping Beauties in Science,” unfortunately seemed too much a statistical approach to lost ideas in papers. While there is nothing new about this, Mendel was mentioned, it would seem that there is more redundancy and repetition. This, among other factors, has pushed a clear change in the process of science. Much good science has been done but often overshadowed by universities and much of the press and scientific societies becoming beholden and even politicized. Anti-advocacy seems appropriate but is still advocacy, not the stuff of science. Calling out errors is certainly part of the scientific process. There is a legitimate government interest in research, but not controlling it as much as they do now with too many of the researchers complicit.
There is an interesting book about an exceptional marine parasite (Pfiesteria) which covered some of this difficulty a researcher had with this system. Barker, R. 1997. And the Waters Turned to Blood. Touchstone (Simon and Schuster). 362 pp.
Sputnik also resulted in a (temporary) upgrading of the HS math and science curriculum. Unfortunately, other social forces conspired to degrade that all too quickly.
Unless “government” has a gun to it’s head it should not have control of anything. We are living in a world that proves that right now.
Their principal function today seems to be spending too much on defense, and transferring the rest from one set of pockets to another set of pockets. Where in the constitution does it say that the government is empowered to transfer income? I looked, but I didn’t find it.
hehehe, my email and phone number was blocked by W Admin over my “harassment” about Constitutional Authority issues. No profanity, polite, detailed and researched. They just did not want to hear it or address it. Oh, well.
Just a guess, but maybe you called them liars?
Ahh, poor simple still can’t get over being so simpleminded. Ain’t it precious!
95%?
It’s 97% isn’t it, Shirley?
Replace the fake April1977 with real January 31 1977 version.
That, I remember.
Both Newsweek and Time, at the time, put out multiple editions of each week’s issue and often changed the cover. I’ve seen these debates before about the supposed fake covers from Newsweek, both covers were correct depending upon the day, the printing location, and the edition of the week’s magazine. I suppose there is an “official” cover for each week, but there is usually more than one. Time is circulated worldwide, and issues come out throughout the week and are modified for different locations. But, your January 31, 1977, cover works just as well.
OK, it was a fake after all. I fixed it.
Except don’t, because it does not say what Mr. May thinks it says. See link above.
corrigendum the cover on the left is fake. Andy doesn’t know this yet although he has been emailed.~charles
The gist of it at the time wasn’t fake however-
The 1970s Ice Age Scare | Real Science (wordpress.com)
I don’t think it is fake, it is just a different edition from the original printing. Not unusual. In any case, it represents the thinking at the time. Each issue of Time had several editions, often with different covers.
observa, Thanks, I finally figured it out and fixed the error.
Quote attributed to Djilas M. “Science gradually yielded to propaganda and as a result propaganda tended more and more to represent itself as science”.
So government funding for climate science is really funding for propaganda as propaganda has evolved to represent itself as science.
Not just climate science.
Figure 4: the left graph of temperature projections shows a linear trend 2010 – 2050 of about 1.3C in 40 years whereas the reliable measured UAH6.0 linear trend 1980 – 2020 is about 0.6C in 40 years.
There is no reason to assume the existing 40 year linear trend will suddenly double therefore the temperature flight path ‘launching ramp’ ought to be half as steep.
Of course the future 40 year linear trend could be less or even negative as 1940 – 1980.
The IPCC future ‘scenarios’ and temperature projections are all pretty silly in any case.
This is one of those things where people will bloviate depending on their preconceived beliefs. Having actual data is a good thing.
Here’s a study that shows that people who reach 90 years of age are likely to be light consumers of alcohol. Teetotalers, apparently, don’t live as long.
The other thing with research is the possibility of discovering something unexpected. Breakthroughs are much more likely to be accidental than deliberate. One good breakthrough makes up for tens of thousands of blind alleys and failures.
I’m a big fan of curiosity driven basic research. Sadly, given the current state of the scientific enterprise, that kind of research is pretty much extinct.
Curiosity driven basic research is the opposite of climate Scientology which starts with the conclusion and then works to find some pathway to it
Corruption is the essence of Scientology
Your statement applies to any area of research that the government can exploit to expand their oversight over their populations, not just climate science. Ex. Look at the science behind the Covid ‘research’.
CommieBob, Would you rather spend four million dollars on the connection between drinking and ER visits or on possible natural causes of climate change and global warming? Very little is spent on natural causes because politically it is advantageous for humans to be at fault. Most work on natural warming is voluntary, yet it is most likely. This is the public corruption of science Eisenhower warned us about – choices!
I would spend it on AI.
link
Both Jordan Peterson and Iain McGilchrist point to the work of AI researchers trying to come to grips with human cognition. It highlights the deficits of the kind of left brain thinking practiced by the loony left. My hope is that, as this knowledge becomes widely accepted, society will regain its connection with reality and that the woke and their fellow travelers will fade into the mists of history. And that, my dear friends, will signal the end of CAGW (or so I imagine).
Andy, I absolutely agree. Eisenhower was very prescient. Thanks for the wonderful article. (But change the part about the Time articles, after reading the articles. “The Big Freeze” article does not say what you seem to think it says, as I mentioned either above or below this post – with a link.)
On my read through, I copied out two jewels:
_____________________________________
Temperatures are warming more in the high latitudes, at night, and in the winter. The changes during the daytime, in the tropics, and in the summer are quite small.
_______________________________________________________________
I’ve written that almost word for word more than a few times and places. Usually prefaced with, “The IPCC tells us…”
And the IPCC also tells us, “Globally averaged mean water vapour, evaporation and precipitation are projected to increase.” Hardly a recipe for the drought the media constantly warns us about.
That comes from the IPCC’s AR4 Chapter ten page 750
_______________________________________________________________
“When you mix politics with science, all you get is politics.”
_______________________________________________________________
Good one, and added to my file of quotes, factoids and smart remarks.
Much like adding a little ink to a much larger volume of water. It doesn’t take much ink to make the water opaque and unsuitable for anything but ink.
Excellent perspective.
Very informative: about how a non-scientific structure has been created, suggesting (!) representing Science.
https://blog.friendsofscience.org/2022/01/17/sociology-of-scientific-knowledge-ssk-part-2-who-spawns-the-legions-of-activists/
Not no, but HELL NO! No government is interested in truth — it could interfere with the narrative.
Many inventions make it despite government and government science. Parsons’ steam Turbine being a prime example.
Nikola Tesla seems to have invented the modern world in an hotel bedroom for the modern world to ignore him, or steal his inventions or name.
No journalist, or newspaper editor would dare contradict the CAGW narrative. That’s where we are. Who remembers David Bellamy? And that happened about 20 years ago.
I’ve not read all of this.
Once I get to the bit where it claims Sweden’s taken no measures against Covid 19, it’s discredited.
Sweden did & still does, take measures.
https://www.bmj.com/content/375/bmj.n3081
Visitors to Sweden have, until 21st January, need to present a negative Covid test.
Other regulations are listed here.
https://visitsweden.com/about-sweden/information-for-travellers-corona-virus/
Adam, I meant there were no lockdowns, but I acknowledge that testing requirements and encouraging vaccinations qualify as something. Thanks for the very good links, the bmj paper is a keeper.
The idea that research is less meaningful because it is funded by private interests, perverted by the profit motive, is ludicrous. The evidence stands on its own merits and the interpretations can be assessed regardless of where the funding comes from.
The same goes for publicly funded research. It is not perverted by any other interests
either. For the same reason.
Obviously, the profit motive is short-term. That’s why no country leaves its defence or
health research to the private sector. It’s not a good investment to develop something
that is only needed in a contingency in 20 years’ time.
(Imagine developing a novel antibiotic. Its most sensible use is to be held in reserve for resistant bugs. Very useful invention with zero economic return).
But conversely, developing refinements to technology to meet consumer needs is a very wasteful activity. Market niches are various and changing. Multiple lines of approach, responding to what isn’t wanted, are best for building a better mousetrap. That’s where the private sector excels.
Now, if you want to spot where the real problem is, try looking at the public communication of science – or any new things; arts, economics, even technology. That’s very tightly controlled.
And it’s controlled by a collusion of interests between established big business and the revolving door of Government insiders.
The sceptics are usually outraged when it is alledged that they are paid by the evil industry to publish what industry wants them to. How is this cartoon any different?
Quite simply because the fossil fuel industry never did any such thing, paying skeptic scientists to publish only what the industry approved. The accusation has been around for 30 years now, devoid of an iota of evidence proving it true. IPCC- / NASA- / NOAA-associated scientists receive government-sourced funding, that is not in dispute by anyone. The question there is whether their funding would continue if it completely contradicted what the government apparently wants, which is confirmation that global warming is primarily driven by human activity.
Where is my cheque?
Just one example, Hans: One of the multi-agency National Climate Assessments was presented as “a deliverable” for Obama’s climate policy. It was obviously driven by politics; it was full of outright lies about increasing weather related disasters and blatant misuse of data.
Because it’s true?
No.
I think that it comes under the heading of “Damned with faint praise”
This is a very powerful essay by Andy May. Very well presented and supported.
Yes. A talented and perceptive investigator and writer.
Absolutely NOT. If it is worthwhile, private industry should fund and profit from it. Government’s only role should be protecting the intellectual property rights via a FAST, low-cost court system that an individual inventor can access and afford to prevent those with deep pockets from stealing the IP.
Yes, the patent system, required by the Constitution, is something else that has been corrupted. I quit renewing my patent after the patent office kept demanding more and more money to keep it active. A big corporation can usually afford it, a small inventor cannot. So, it quickly ends up in the public domain. I don’t think that was the intent of the Founding Fathers.
A chapter in the book, Made in America by Bill Bryson, details several such cases. Deep pockets stealing an invention. The inventor couldn’t afford to protect it.
Back in the day (mid-80s) I was really interested in oceanography, lots of fascinating geochemistry to investigate there, but was turned off by the incessant environmental negativity. The straw that broke it for me happened in a graduate level course on marine chemistry when the class obsessed on the theory that increasing CO2 would shortly cause ocean pH to change so much that plankton would no longer be able to form their shells and the ocean food chain would collapse. It’s always something with these people.
Makes you wonder how any of them made it through high school chemistry, much less undergrad, e.g. quant-qual.
They apparently had not been exposed to the concept of buffering.
Excellent article, Andy! I’ve seen other summaries of Nordhaus’ work, but found yours to be very concise and readable. This would be effective to show alarmists that even one of the highest luminaries in the pantheon of Keynesian Klowns (the school of economics preferred by governments everywhere) concluded that the economic impacts of climate change mitigation are not “optimal”.
I also liked the Gore – Revelle summary – it’s important that the Administrative State and its corrupt media not be allowed to disappear this narrative down a memory hole. As a side note for those who were not around then, Gore and Clinton were very much political rivals prior to their ‘fusion’ during and after the ’92 presidential election. Gore was the detestable eco-nutter described above, while Clinton was very vulnerable to his history as a serial philanderer. Once elected, Gore was given free rein to distort government climate research, while Clinton benefitted from the ongoing support of one of the most vicious partisans in modern political history.
“He clearly believed that we should look before we leap.”
If I recall correctly that is the original meaning of the Precautionary Principle before the Rio Conference turned it on its head.
Andy May, thank you for this article. You spoke to the South Texas section of the ASME. I have been a member of the national ASME since my student days in the late 1970’s. In my view, ASME is well positioned historically and technically to help the public understand why the climate crisis claims should be challenged. Yet today they are knee-deep into supporting the fashionable climate narratives. Why? The concept of heat engines, with the supporting thermodynamics and properties of water and air, should equip ASME leadership to explain openly that the emphasis on the “greenhouse effect” is incomplete and therefore highly misleading. Sure, the emission and absorption of infrared energy by the atmosphere produces a static warming effect as the surface looks toward space. But the atmosphere functions far more powerfully as the working fluid of its own heat engine operation, driving circulation to high altitudes where heat energy is more easily emitted to space from the atmosphere itself as longwave radiation. It is highly self-regulating. Now retired, I still pay my annual dues if for no other reason than to write rebuttals to the ASME social media posts about climate change as a member in good standing.
David,
I strongly agree with you that the engineers with a full understanding of the thermodynamics and properties of water and air are best suited to presenting and explaining the to the less educated public as well as general academics of the reality of the water cycle. But in reality it’s likely that few of even mechanical engineers fully understand everything involved. You have to be completely dedicated to dig really deep and takes a lot of pondering as well as a rehash of the entire concept to build on what you think you already know. But it’s absolutely fascinating!!! It takes a “Chess” mind.
See my answer to Rick C below about the ASME meeting itself.
Great article. Revel passed away a hero of science and truth. Lancaster will go to his grave carrying the weight of deceit, dishonesty and malice on his shoulders. Gore will be remembered as a warning about lost integrity and what happens when you turn your back on your responsibility to others.
Andy: Good presentation (in spite of the Time mag cover flap). I am curious about how it was received by the ASME section members. As an ME and retired former practitioner, I’m guessing that they would not have had you speak if they were not mostly skeptics already.
Sadly, ASME nationally has been infected with wokeism and jumped onto the Climate Change
band wagongravy train.It was an interesting meeting. The South Texas (Houston) members were enthusiastic, but when the announcement came out the New York Headquarters wanted to make it a pro/con meeting and have someone talk after me with the opposite view. I said fine and so did the chapter officers, so we ask them to find somebody, but nobody volunteered. Several New York folks attended the meeting and made an announcement that the views I expressed were my views and not the ASME views, which was obvious to begin with. But kudos to them, they let me speak.
Interesting! Thanks for describing this aspect of the meeting. It is encouraging to hear that the section members were open to what you had to say. No surprise about the HQ folks.
Andy, exactly what are ASME’s views? Do they deny facts? Do they accept UN IPCC CliSciFi modeling? Do they deny politics and funding affect scientific findings?
Anyway, it is a big stretch for partisans to assert Big Oil money affects scientists, whereas Big Government money doesn’t affect scientists. Anybody that assumes government is a neutral observer deserves what they get. Sadly, we are all affected by politics dictating science.
The headquarters in New York seems to follow the climate change alarmist party line, but the rank and file are as divided as every other group. Remember the ASME is a huge organization with hundreds of sections around the world.
So, Andy, the leadership is out of touch with the rank and file? Has the leadership ignored the inputs of a plurality of its membership?
The government needs to fund basic science. Things like a blood test for cancer, how the body and metals react in space, how to the strengthen the immune system, super conductivity, big broad science.
The government needs to be absolute agnostic about its findings. It should report its findings and let the private sector work out applications that improve our lives.
Andy,
While quoting Ike, don’t forget his third warning, which “ain’t fer down da road” (e.g., Fauchi et al):
“Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.” – President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s Farewell Address (1961)
We were warned
https://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=false&doc=90&page=transcript
President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s Farewell Address (1961)
Extract
“Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been over shadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers.
The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded.
Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.”
I am rather confused about the reference to Y2K. What does that have to do with government doing anything?
“But nothing happened” was due to the tremendous amount of work programmers put in updating old code that WAS susceptible to the problem. Many of those systems being used by utilities and banks. The panic and hype was certainly way overblown (as is always the case) but it was a real problem.
I suggest that “one of these things is not like the others”.
TonyG, As one of those who lived through that time, there were a huge number of government regulations generated because of the supposed Y2K dangers. The government funded hundreds, maybe thousands of research projects looking for potential problems. Very little of it helped anyone. It wasn’t that work didn’t need to be done, it was the government overreaction that was the problem.
I lived through that time as well.
It was not clear to me that you were talking about government programs with regard to Y2K, and frankly I don’t remember any of significance. I would guess that your work put you closer to them which is why it seemed so significant – for the rest of us, the primary overreaction wasn’t the government, it was the usual suspects (mainly media followed by those who take what the media says even farther) who love to panic over everything. The panic was there, certainly, and the overreaction, just not so much from the government – at least to us lay people.
If you’re saying that those government programs fed the media hype that I witnessed, I see that as quite possible. In which case I would suggest that perhaps that section could use a little revision to make that more clear.
(BTW I see you were downvoted. Wasn’t me: I don’t engage in that.)
Actually the original government “scientists” were the educated clergy of yore who provided the science of the day of the the king’s right to rule by divine providence. Like todays “scientists” they got to share in the plunder of the peasants as long as they supported the government required conclusion.
Ever since Senator Proxmire issued his Golden Fleece awards, there has been a stigma associated with basic research because it is not evident to the average citizen, or sub-average Congressman, that basic research can be useful to society.
Proxmire’s goals were well-intended. That is, he wanted to reduce wasteful government spending. However, it is well recognized that “The road to Hell is paved with good intentions.” The unintended consequence is that Congress is now reluctant to authorize spending on projects that don’t have an immediate and obvious public benefit. Unfortunately, the benefit is now usually framed in the context of some emergency or impending catastrophe that even the dullest can appreciate. The problem is that the claims are often invalid, but they serve the purpose of giving the sponsor(s) of the bill cover if anyone questions the practical use of the basic research.
However, even major corporations are scrutinized by upper-management, board members, stock holders, and the general public. Thus, they are reluctant to support basic research that isn’t related directly to their quarterly profit, and therefore, tend to focus on applied research that can be defended easily.
In my opinion, the federal government can probably play an important role in basic research, albeit it is best to leave the specific decision making to organizations like the National Science Foundation, with the stipulation that basic research be given equal footing with applied research for current problems like pandemics, or uncontroversial technology needs. ‘Research’ into areas where there is an obvious desired political outcome, such as gun control, should be strongly discouraged as inappropriate applied research. The typical Congressman with a background in law, or simply a dedicated career politician, is usually not qualified to properly appraise the importance of science research. It raises the question whether they are responding to requests of lobbyists.
There is little question that Eisenhower’s prescient admonition about the corrupting influence of the Military-Industrial Complex has been ignored and needs to be corrected.
https://www.americanexperiment.org/president-eisenhowers-farewell-address-warned-about-science-as-an-appeal-to-authority/
The “talk” isn’t ANYTHING like a scientific review of the research, a thoroughly vetted into the real workings of scientific research, but mere fear mongering, bordering on paranoid ravings of a nonscientist who has never received any federal money for any sort of research.
Therefore it’s not useful at all. Merely a parade of opinions wrapped up as science. In fact I would like to borrow and bastardize a phrase from Stephen Colbert here and call this entire opinion “Scienceyness.”
EXACTLY the kind of drivel lapped up eagerly by fellows in denial and psychosis … Those who gather here because there’s no other place for such ignorance and lack of reality (thus, sanity) to be celebrated like birthdays of Charles Manson and Frederick Seitz, the celebrated liar (or at the very least mentally disabled due to age-related cognitive deterioration) scientist hired by the tobacco industry to falsely cast doubt on the dangers of cigarette smoke…
A little background on Frederick Seitz:
He “was a central figure amongst skeptics of global warming.[6][28] He was the highest-ranking scientist among a band of doubters who, beginning in the early 1990s, resolutely disputed suggestions that global warming was serious threat.[29] Seitz argued that the science behind global warming was inconclusive and “certainly didn’t warrant imposing mandatory limits on greenhouse-gas emissions”.[29] In 2001 Seitz and Jastrow questioned whether global warming is anthropogenic.[30]
“Seitz signed the 1995 Leipzig Declaration and, in an open letter inviting scientists to sign the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine’s global warming petition, called for the United States to reject the Kyoto Protocol.[6] The letter was accompanied by a 12-page article on climate change which followed a style and format nearly identical to that of a contribution to Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), a scientific journal,[31] even including a date of publication (“October 26”) and volume number (“Vol. 13: 149–164 1999”), but was not actually a publication of the National Academy of Science (NAS). In response the United States National Academy of Sciences took what the New York Times called “the extraordinary step of refuting the position of one [of] its former presidents.”[6][32][33] The NAS also made it clear that “The petition does not reflect the conclusions of expert reports of the Academy.”[32]”
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Seitz
Yet his type of disinformation and misleading BS — fueled by a mind decaying into Alzheimer’s or other dementia — formed the basis of an entire industry denying global warming and/or its anthropogenic source by a host of seemingly well-meaning but often misled, undereducated dupes.
I challenge every reader here to obtain a climate science PhD and publish their own work before judging that of the international climate science community. If you’re too lazy to study it, you’re not worthy to doubt it in public except under a bright yellow label: “100% hearsay and undereducated opinion.”
Hey fellow readers! I hope you enjoy the “intrusion” of intelligent discourse and calls for more research and learning into the vast swaths of ignorance apparent here. For what is science worth, if most of it is to be so rapidly and obviously ignored by so many readers here?
I know that it’s not easy for people who aren’t smart to recognize they aren’t smart because the Dunning-Kruger Effect, but…
PLEASE do more research, open your minds and stop believing people who don’t have advanced climate science degrees, and in general stop being such LAZY butts who accept only opinions you already agree with, based on vast ignorance. (Uh-oh, here’s the Dunning-Kruger problem again: How do you know you’re ignorant if you’re too ignorant to know you’re ignorant?? I guess we’ll know who they are when they start calling names instead of debating using scientific facts.)
Here’s a 100% reasonable challenge to all those dubious (yet mostly uninformed because they aren’t climate scientists) of the current advanced state of climate science:
Get a Master’s in climate science.
Get a PhD in climate science.
Join a climate science research team and get your name on published, peer-reviewed papers.
Publish your own work in established journals that vett the science.
In other words, for the love of God and everything holy and unholy, PLEASE *FULLY* EDUCATE YOURSELVES
in climate science and STOP POSTING SUCH IGNORANT MISINFORMATION AND DISINFORMATION.
And have a nice day. QUIETLY. UNTIL you are fully informed.
Finally, if you can’t trust scientific experts who are trusted by other similarly educated experts, you have a trust problem. It’s NOT a problem within the science, which has well established protocols for checking validity in every area of modern science, but a problem within YOU.
If you have a trust problem in other areas such as unwarranted fear of governments that have never harmed you, fear of being lied to by “official” sources (yet swallow corporate hype and marketing wholesale, as well as non-scientific statements and theories promoted by non scientists and politicians whose campaigns are funded by such corporations), and/or belief in conspiracy theories, you have a huge MENTAL HEALTH ISSUE.
Who are you?
Sunsettommy looks like we have a new troll. But this one doesn’t seem to be as much fun as the regulars.
I only skimmed this article and I’m skimming it again and came upon the research by Nordhaus.
The author quotes studies done literally 32 years ago in an environment bereft of the vast knowledge we’ve acquired about climate change and potential effects. So why is the author using 32-year-old research when obviously the underpinnings of that research is mostly outdated?
I haven’t done any research on Nordhaus, nor Fred Singer, but the likely deficiencies of 32-year-old research in our current environment with incredibly advanced tools now compared to then, should be obvious.
When a writer has to cherry-pick economic research 32 years old as opposed to updated information, can’t anyone here see the obvious ramifications, that his conclusions cannot possibly be close to reality?
Not only that, the writer has totally ignored environmental consequences and costs. Never in the article is it mentioned that entire Islands are being lost under the rising seas. Never in the article isn’t mentioned about the potential cascading effects of species lost and the loss of keystone species upon which many others depend.
WHY IS SO MUCH VITAL INFORMATION PURPOSELY IGNORED IN THE OPS POST??
The only reason I can figure is that he’s cherry-picking data ONLY to fit a previously chosen position that’s NOT BASED IN SCIENCE. In other words, it’s an anti-science, ignorant conclusion that ignores huge swaths of information, learning, and scientific data collected since at least 32 years after the allegedly key (but clearly outdated) economic research he quotes.
Of course capitalist oriented types will grasp onto it like a straw in a pile of hay, totally ignoring every environmental consequence, every unknown, every daytime that doesn’t fit their preconceived IDIOTIC (and notably, ever-shifting) notions like “global warming isn’t real,” or “if it is real we didn’t cause it,” or “if we did cause it, it’s not that bad and might even be good!”
100% BUNK, DEBUNKED.
Guess what, conned snowflakes? The Big Heat-up and the Scary Sea Rise are coming. If you own coastal property, you’d better get out of it now. If you live in an island nation, your nation’s island may be gone, some of them by the end of the century and some sooner!
By the way, scientific facts and climate model projections aren’t “alarmist” unless you’re a fear-mongering snowflake who’s afraid of his own shadow. Like most conservatives are. Which is why they “have to” own guns. Which is why gun deaths and gun accidents are so prevalent here — oh yeah, also because most conservatives are, compared to libs’ average 8 to 11 points scientifically measured higher IQs, stupid as hell.
The label “alarmist” (99% incorrectly and imprecisely applied by cons in the case of global warming/climate change) is the typical scaredy-cat conservative’s way to deny or downplay a realistically likely event in order to reduce his/her own anxiety.
It’s also an inaccurate label that amounts to projection, a way of transferring their own fear of something into a *false* accusation about others, which is often required by conservatives in order to avoid dealing with an unpleasant reality they can’t mentally and emotionally handle, being such a snowflakes.
Which makes them wackadoodle in general. And society suffers the results when a male conservative stupidly endures, without asking for help, severe enough mental health issues, and they typically blow their gaskets and shoot innocents in malls or a McDonald’s or a post office. (Female conservatives react differently. They usually simply abuse their children or kill those kids. Or lose them after spinning downhill into, typically, alcohol or meth addiction.)
https://share.newsbreak.com/dwngvlg9