CORRECTION (EW): In the original article I mixed up Ted Nordhaus and William Nordhaus. Ted is William’s nephew. Thanks Neil Lock for pointing out this mistake. Interestingly, Ted is also a substantial figure in the climate movement, so most of what I wrote still applies.
Essay by Eric Worrall
Nordhaus is one of the giants of the climate alarmist movement – but in his own words, “I no longer believe this hyperbole”.
Why I Stopped Being a Climate Catastrophist
And why so many climate pragmatists can’t quit catastrophism
AUG 11, 2025
TED NORDHAUSRecently, in an exchange on X, my former colleague Tyler Norris observed that over the years, my views about climate risk have evolved substantially. Norris posted a screenshot of a page from the book Break Through, where Michael Shellenberger and I argued that if the world kept burning fossil fuels at current rates, catastrophe was virtually assured:
Over the next 50 years, if we continue to burn as much coal and oil as we’ve been burning, the heating of the earth will cause the sea levels to rise and the Amazon to collapse, and, according to scenarios commissioned by the Pentagon, will trigger a series of wars over the basic resources like food and water.
Norris is right. I no longer believe this hyperbole. Yes, the world will continue to warm as long as we keep burning fossil fuels. And sea levels will rise. About 9 inches over the last century, perhaps another 2 or 3 feet over the course of the rest of this century. But the rest of it? Not so much.
…
For a long time, even after I had come to terms with the fundamental disconnect between what climate advocates were saying about extreme events and the role that climate change could conceivably be playing, I held on to the possibility of catastrophic climate futures based upon uncertainty. The sting, as they say, is in the tail, meaning so-called fat tails in the climate risk distribution. These are tipping points or similar low probability, high consequence scenarios that aren’t factored into central estimates. The ice sheets could collapse much faster than we understand or the gulf stream might shut down, bringing frigid temperatures to western Europe, or permafrost and methane hydrates frozen in the sea floor might rapidly melt, accelerating warming.
…But like the supposed collapse of the Amazon, once you look more closely at these risks they don’t add up to catastrophic outcomes for humanity. While sensationalist news stories frequently refer to the collapse of the gulf stream, what they are really referring to is the slowing of the Atlantic Meridian Overturning Circulation (AMOC). AMOC helps transport warm water to the North Atlantic and moderates winter temperatures across western Europe. But its collapse, much less its slowing, would not result in a hard freeze across all of Europe. Indeed, under plausible conditions in which it might significantly slow, it would act as a negative feedback, counterbalancing warming, which is happening faster across the European continent than almost any place else in the world.
Read more: https://www.breakthroughjournal.org/p/why-i-stopped-being-a-climate-catastrophist
…
Nordhaus wrote the article in August. Normally WUWT sticks to current news, but Nordhaus is a substantial figure in the climate movement.
Could there be 2-3 feet of sea level rise by the end of this century? It’s not impossible – though I would put this at the high end of possible changes – based on current trends the sea level rise by the end of this century would be more likely to be around 12 to 18 inches.
And you know what? When it happens, nobody will even notice.
I used to live in a house which was at risk of flooding during unusually high tides. We stopped one flood by sealing the doors with plumber’s non-setting putty. The next owner settled the problem by raising the floor by 3 feet.
A century from now, if the house is still standing, I’m sure the floor will be raised another 3 feet.
Without this “fat tail” of terrifying tipping points, climate alarmists have got nothing. And as Nordhaus admits in his article, noticeable climate impacts are so wildly improbably they are not worth taking seriously.
I applaud Ted Nordhaus’ courage coming forward and admitting he no longer believes climate change is an imminent catastrophe. Hopefully his example will inspire others.
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If I understand right, Ted Nordhaus is the nephew of William Nordhaus. Does this article’s presentation not muddle that distinction?
Yes it does.. 😉
Absolutely correct – thanks Neil my mistake.
Ted is 60 years old. His views when he is 80 might get closer to reality. He seems to still be learning. I’d like to stick around, but that is unlikely.
Why do smart people keep tying future events, like sea level rise, to burning fossil fuels? Burning fossil fuels will have no effect on climate or weather.
Because the argument that it will, while wrong, is not obviously wrong.
Depends on what you mean by ‘obviously’. The fact that there has been no sea level rise acceleration makes it pretty obviously wrong, IMO.
Unfortunately, too many people don’t understand the meaning of acceleration. They stupidly think if the sea is rising- that means its accelerating.
They also think that a tiny shift in ocean water pH towards neutral from slightly basic is “acidification”.
Keyword is people. The club of Rome came up with this nonsense and presented it with authority and all media parroted it. That way you convince 80% of people. Too lazy and/or dumb to think for themselves.
Also: good news does not sell.
“— “The common enemy of humanity is man. In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill. All these dangers are caused by human intervention, and it is only through changed attitudes and behavior that they can be overcome. The real enemy then, is humanity itself.” — Club of Rome, premier environmental think-tank, consultants to the United Nations. “
It’s an excuse to control the people that burn fossil fuel for energy.
Scare them into giving the elite more authority (and your money).
I have some confidence, backed by data, that burning fossil fuels adds CO2 to the atmosphere. The additional CO2 has improved plant productivity and that is now being observed greening places like north-central Australia and the fringes of the Sahara.
Biomass contributes to water retention and increasing humidity. The increased atmospheric moisture means the middle of Australia can now support convective instability, which creates low pressure zones that draw in moist air from the oceans. So it becomes a virtuous cycle that drives towards greening.
So CO2’s contribution to biomass is able to change regional climate. The greening is occurring over large regions of the planet despite efforts of some to still the wind and moisture it brings with their big bird mincers.
By the late 70s and early 80s we had eliminated 97% of the pollution from cars and a huge percentage from coal plants, etc etc. The only thing left coming out was Carbon Dioxide. The environmentalists were flummoxed by this success and believing only in the impending doom of the speicies that turned all their thought and actions against Carbon Dioxide. Hence the global warming theory was born and it was music to the ears of the doomsters. That is why we are where we are today. They mowed over science and anything in their way to have their gut feelings validated.
Economics is NOT a science!
Why not? Why can’t economic activity be studied scientifically?
Like Karl Marx?
Has everybody who studied physics been right?
Too many ill-defined objects. Why can’t future be studied scientifically?
Science can only study simple things? Guess that rules out weather. Also a lot of chemistry.
In fact defining ill-defined objects is a big part of science.
The future cannot be studied scientifically because science is based on observation. There is plenty of economic activity to observe. For example I study decision making under uncertainty and my mentor Herb Simon got a Nobel in Economics for that in 78.
You can only ascertain probabilities because the variables are too voluminous and mostly unknown. When dealing with uncertainties, you can only have intervals where the actual value may fall. It falls in the domain of quantum theory. You’ll never find a physicist that will tell you exactly where an electron is at any point in time, only where it might be. Again, look at the stock market for a scientific prediction of what WILL occur.
“I study decision making under uncertainty….”
Me too, David, and I would be fascinated to learn what your studies in this core-field of scientific research have revealed to you. Is there any chance of your giving us a summary of them, or a link to a place where they are already summarised, perhaps? Thanks.
You can’t study things that haven’t happened.
That’s why they use
modelsGeorge,
The past is ignored, the present is occupied by people on missions and the future is preferred for making Joe Citizen into a frightened little rabbit from whom extracting money easily is the object.
Future prediction has no place in hard science because no uncertainty estimate is valid. Every important scientific number should be expressed with its envelope or, alternatively, needs a rather good explanation why the uncertainty is not presented with the number.
It takes extra work and extra skill to calculate the envelope, so it is often not done. There is excellent guidance literature but mistakes are still made. For example, many academics prefer math that divides uncertainty of routine daily temperature sets by a factor related to the number of observations and so made smaller. They ignore wider uncertainty factors and so produce unrealistic results.
Mea culpa, I often fail to calculate uncertainty. Geoff S
These academics have never built anything that requires knowing the actual uncertainty range to determine if it will work with whatever is being built. The Standard Error of the Mean is useless when dealing with the real physical world.
Several years ago I played around with making a graph where I made the line cover ±0.5 degrees. Try picking out an anomaly of 0.05 with a line width that large. You can’t do it. Again, academics like to show lines using widths that cover 0.00001 on their graphs to make anomalies look accurate. If the used appropriate line widths to show the uncertainty, you would never see the dot where it occurs.
Very good, Sherro .
Maybe worthwhile for us to to review Ms Curry’s discorse RE: uncertainty and risk.
Gums sends…
IF something can be studied and modeled with the tools of science
THEN is it science?
I think science has to be applied to the way a thing is done rather than the thing itself.
ex. A dolphin is not marine biology, but marine biologists sometimes study dolphins.
Is a study about dolphins written by marine biologists using science tools a work of science?
My answer would have to be yes. While I understand that Economics is not a science in the same way that astrophysics is a science, I have to revise GW:
“Economics is NOT (always) a science!” … but it can be.
All the social sciences are sciences but they are difficult sciences because nothing is more complicated than humans.
Joe,
I will start to believe that global climate models are useful when science succeeds with a proper diagnostic model of the workings of the human body. First things first. Geoff S
Geoff:
I’ll start believing climate models when they can reasonably predict
1) regional rainfall & temperatures a year in advance,
2) onset & strength of the yearly Indian Ocean monsoon a year in advance, and
3) onset and strength of ENSO 2-7 years in advance.
We will know the GCMs are improving when they all no longer predict a mid-tropospheric tropical hotspot. Until this happens they have no chance of doing any of # 1-3.
btw I agree that we need a better working model of human physiology especially at the cellular & molecular level. [And since I’m getting older, they need to hurry! Lol ] Getting a better human model is also far more likely than
# 1-3 above.
I believe that they are called sciences because they are in fact not so. It is a conceit of academia.
The problems are multi variable and the hypotheses cannot be tested.
USSR, China, Cuba and Korea might be tests, nobody after 1988ish wants to interpret the results.
I mean China v Taiwan and N Korea v South Korea economic analysis seems so obvious.
Because how people react is too random. One can study very large scale trends but as you try to focus in on more and more specific demographics, things get very ‘noisy’.
It’s similar to how TV ratings in the US were done in the time from the rise of widespread access to cable and direct broadcast satellite until online streaming got so big.
By the early 2000’s, Nielsen Media Research was still operating like they did in the 1970’s and before, when the vast majority of the country only had 3 or 4 over the air channels to watch. In the 70’s the population was 200 to 225 million. With the limited variety of programming available, and home TV recorders next to non-existent, a pretty good estimate of how many people were watching any given show was possible with a rather small sample set.
But by 2002, with the population knocking on the door of 300 million, and a majority of people having access to at least 50 channels in basic cable or DBS packages – NMR was canvassing *at most* 25,000 households, and that only during “sweeps weeks”. They wouldn’t divulge how many electronic monitoring systems or mail in TV diaries they normally used.
The numbers flat out did not add up. The possibility existed for some show’s audience to not be sampled at all.
Several shows with very active online fan activity and high amounts of being recorded on TiVo DVRs got cancelled solely due to NMR’s outdated and inadequate sampling methods.
The greater the diversity of what you’re examining for economics, the greater the number of choices available, the larger your sample data must be to get a better estimate of what is going on. You have to cast the widest net you can, otherwise you could get a skewed result – such as having significantly more than 50% above or below an average.
When you get weird and unexpected results there’s a couple of possibilities. 1. Your sampling methodology is poor. 2. Whatever you are sampling really is skewed that way. The methodology has to change to verify.
But what some people do when they get a weird result is to tinker with the sampling in order to get a result they like the looks of – such as with “adjusting”, “normalizing”, “homogenizing” etc past weather data.
As for TV ratings, they have become more accurate, at least for views by streaming, DVR recording, and various pay per view methods – because NMR finally got around to incorporating all those means by which the views are *directly measurable* instead of inferred by statistical guessing.
The perfectly accurate way to gauge the result of a change in an economy is to survey 100% of the people affected by the change. Of course that’s very impractical. So you start by asking a subset about the effect. Then you cast the net wider. Then wider again. You plot out the numbers and monitor the changes, for example a simple Yes or No question.
If you get a 40:60 split early on, you ask more people. Say it shifts to 43:52. Ask another sizable group and if it stays at 43:52 *then* you have a pretty good guess that the demographic group you’re looking at is 43% in favor of the effect and 52% against.
You stop expanding the sample size when the results stop changing.
Sample size increases sooner or later hit a point where random fluctuations color the samples beyond repair. Take your “Whatever you are sampling really is skewed that way. “. In a skewed distribution the mode (the value with the largest number of occurrences) will modulate the mean of any sample. This introduces uncertainty into any statistical analysis involving the sample means – e.g. the standard deviation of the sample means. Both 40:60 and 43:52 could be within the uncertainty interval so either one could be right.
If both 40:60 and 43:52 are both based on “averaging”, whoever is doing the averaging also assumes that the mean is the only expected outcome – that doesn’t work in the real world where sometimes the long shot *does* win. The “uncertainty interval” is meant to provide for the “long shot” sometimes winning.
It can be studied scientifically. The issue is that the economists doing the studying have been trained by statisticians that 1. think the average is the only outcome that can happen, 2. think uncertainty is always random, Gaussian, and cancels, and 3. that averaging can reduce uncertainty.
I’ve always liked the Adam Smith concept of the “invisible hand”. Economics are driven by many, MANY people making individual decisions that, in whole, become an “invisible hand” driving economics.
Economists pretend to know where that “invisible hand” will push based on 1. samples and, 2. statistical descriptors based on those samples. But they never ask the correct questions in collecting the samples and always color analyses of the samples with personal bias of how things “should” go.
The “invisible hand” and “climate” are pretty good analogues. Both are non-linear and chaotic. Anyone that thinks they can predict the future path of the invisible hand or the climate probably also believes the “long shot horse” will never win. They have no actual understanding of what probability distributions mean and how they combine in the real world. The concept of uncertainty being a descriptor of the Great Unknown totally eludes them.
To study it scientifically, one must first make a hypothesis, then develop a theory that is defined mathematically. One can verify the theory by experiment, but it only takes one experiment to invalidate it. Economics has hardly passed from the hypothesis state to a valid theory of anything. You can study it statistically, but that only provides probabilities and not an actual function that with a deterministic calculation.
My proof, stock markets.
Yes, there is no way to carry out a controlled experiment to test the hypotheses. People still argue that the Soviet Union or Cuba just didn’t do it right.
A subject can be studied and hypotheses formed. That is a step of science.
The scientific method requires those hypotheses to be tested by controlled intervention experiments designed to disprove them.The experiments cannot be designed to support the theory. This is not possible in many fields of study.
Associative studies cannot provide proof of causation.
Hypothetical concepts extrapolated into the future are not science.
Don’t agree. Friedman explains this better than most. And light years better than I can. But let’s give it a try.
Economics is the study of human behavior when dealing with scarcity. Problem is there are too many variables to study. Climate science fits this too.
It is incredibly difficult to determine what is actually happening with any degree of certainty, and nearly impossible to figure out what will happen in the next 50 to 70 years because you don’t have a test Earth at your disposal to isolate the “too many to count” variables. So you lean on computers and hope your assumptions are reasonable. And then something happens (discovering, political upheaval) and everything changes.
That’s economics too.
Dealing with scarcity usually results in the development of alternatives that simply can’t be predicted from “known variables”. It’s the “unknown unknowns” of Rumsfeld. This applies to both economics and climate.
The future can be seen in a crystal ball, just ask any carnival huckster telling fortunes. In reality that crystal ball is so cloudy as to be unusable.
So why has it been christened “the dismal science”?
Academics love calling what they do science even or especially if it is not even close.
One more conversion. How many climate realists have become alarmists? The climate realist count will only increase. The narrative is collapsing.
Conversion… ?
He still believes in fossil fuels causing warming..
He still believes he can predict climate future though carbon emissions.
More like one step back from the precipice of insanity..
How many? Depends on who’s counting and whether you believe survey data.
There are a lot of “I didn’t used to eat sneakers but boy I love a big bowl of Adidas now” types looking for attention and validation.
The world is alarmingly average.
Think of how stupid the average person is, and realise half of them are stupider than that.
Most people don’t even know what critical thinking is, let alone how to use it.
Thanks, George! 😄
Indeed, a great loss.
“Could there be 2-3 feet of sea level rise by the end of this century? It’s not impossible – though I would put this at the high end of possible changes – based on current trends the sea level rise by the end of this century would be more likely to be around 12 to 18 inches”.
Depends on the rate today. Quick and dirty using following tide gauges:
Brest
Fremantle
Honolulu
Key West
San Francisco
Sydney.
Says about 3mm/yr and Acceleration a tiny 0.01 mm/yr² Yields about 11 inches by 2100
Below graph shows the 30 year rate for those seven tide gauges.
Hmmm, the graph didn’t show up
If you click on the graph, it will expand and become clear. Click on the “X” in the circle to return to comment text.
BTW: If you are attaching an image to a comment, click on the sun and mountain icon in the lower corner of the comment box. Then click on the image in your image file. Check to make sure that image appears below the comment box before clicking “Post Comment”. You can attach only one image to a comment.
Thanks for all that (-: I zigged when I should have zagged. In addition to what you posted, if you’re on a PC clicking on the image will take you to where getting back to WUWT where you left is a chore. Right click on the image and choose, [Open link in a new tab] and you merely have to select the tab you left from.
You don’t need to add this commentary after each image. People know that when they hover their mouse over the image, and it shows it’s a link that they can click it.
Also, many of us don’t have the image icon in the toolbar.
The graph is of low interest while the black line shows that peak at 1950. Until we know what caused it, we cannot properly speak of the cause of the 2010 peak.
Fundamentally and importantly, most ocean level change studies fail to consider changes to the volume of the rock basins that contain the ocean waters. We know of changes that are happening while we look, but we fail to measure them adequately if at all. That is very poor science. Geoff S
There are known knowns.
These are things we know that we know.
There are known unknowns.
That is to say, there are things that we know we don’t know.
But there are also unknown unknowns.
There are things we don’t know we don’t know.
Donald Rumsfeld
A very logical statement for which he should never have been mocked.
He seems content with no longer being a Catastrophist. I suppose he thinks he deserves a gold star for that, and maybe he does. But he still believes the rest of the climate garbage, and I get the feeling he’s not interested in pursuing it any further, and that’s a shame. No intellectual curiosity there. Is it fear, or just plain intellectual laziness that stops him, I wonder. Maybe both.
Be specific… what other “climate garbage” does he believe?
Specific?
Read the text.
He still believes in everything – just the lite-version of it, with 90% less disaster.
He dismissed the X rated version for the GP version of climate crisis.
The Bill Maher trick of fence sitting.
Whenever things get too crazy, open up a backdoor with a pseudo-critical statements in case things go wrong,
That way you can keep on riding the gravy train with the cool guys and pretend to be a rebel without pissing too many people off but leave it just in time before the traincrash.
He still believes this:
There is zero proof of that. It is sheer speculation, based on pseudoscience.
“Yes, the world will continue to warm as long as we keep burning fossil fuels.”
There is zero proof of that. It is sheer speculation, based on pseudoscience.”
And yet you write on a website started by a man who believes the burning of fossil fuels is causing (at least some part) of the warming (as does Roy Spencer). You gonna tell Anthony Watts or will I?
Maybe my English ain’t the best so it may be my fault,
but it seems that you are once again distorting things, and most probably in a deliberate way.
1) He can write on any website he wants -as you do.
2) There is a massive difference between attributing some warming to co2 and going full AGW nuts and use it to transform society.
The first is a logical assumption and says nothing about the level of impact(I also believe in an impact but that it is close to Zero).
the 2nd is the official but impossible scenario – it never happened in hundreds of millions of years and the planet cooled actually down with 1000* higher climate gas levels = an estimated 20% co2 and most of the water vaporized as result of the heat.
And disagreeing with someone on a single or several subjects does not mean automatically to disagree on everything.
I know you do not understand that as you are not allowed to disagree or even question anything that goes against the great narratives(climate,genderism,lgbtq etc)without being called names and being excommunicated by your peers.
But that’s how life works outside the woke bubble.
still think colluuuusion was real 😉
Old news. Ive moved on to “release the Epstein files.” Surely even someone with the morals of a cockroach like you Derg would want the pedos held to account? Wouldn’t you?
Lots of skeptics are “lukewarmers” who think human caused warming is real but harmless or beneficial. Happer and Curry for example. They may even be the majority.
CO2 IS a GHG, so ceterus paribus it should cause some degree of warming. The possible complications come with ‘ceterus paribus’.
Yes, that’s the rub. The necessary, foundational assumption behind the notion that CO2 will impact temperature has never been true, is not true today, and will never be true in the future.
The feedbacks and reactions are negative and the end result of increasing atmospheric CO2 is indistinguishable from zero.
And until they can explain the glaciation with 10 times today’s atmospheric CO2 level, they can’t scientifically justify claims of any supposed influence of CO2 today. It’s the same planet orbiting the same star and the basic physics have not changed.
The sun has changed. The Barycenter has changed. Precession, axial tilt, and eccentric ellipse orbit have changed.
If they needed leadership that allowed them to speak up, then it’s time they spoke up.
Certain mass media people who made careers of slamming others for believing silly things are now faced with the prospect that they’ve believed something just as silly the whole time.
2025-26 is shaping up to be the era of CO2 as the climate control knob retractions.
I cannot work out why so many clever people failed to recognise the poor standard of climate research and object to global warming and net zero concepts from the start. This scientist did, from first contact with Phil Jones in 1992.
I was helped by careful reading of the beautiful book “The Apocalyptics” by Edith Efron. I then understood the mechanism of scare campaigns invented by bored and not-too-bright bureaucrats, in this case cancer epidemics from man-made chemicals.
Interested to hear what finally turned readers here from converts to sceptics. And why it took so long. Geoff S
“…scare campaigns invented by bored and not-too-bright bureaucrats…”
Well put.
don’t think so.
bored and not too bright people can never be this successful,organized and effective.
Especially bureaucrats who are on top of that considered to be lazy.
With lacks of brains and attitudeyou will never ever get such results.
These people are like rabid dogs who know exactly how to create and maintain shame and fear and how to silence the opposition.
They are highly motivated and extremely organized – so much that they control almost all of MSM,politicians,Big Tech and narratives – and they do so for years and decades and they are absolutely not backing down.
Marginalizing this extremely powerful and organized behemoth down to bureaucracy is the biggest , and most primitive mistake one can make.
And it will end in a totalitarian system run by big corporations(who own your politicians) instead of a big government.
“bored and not too bright people can never be this successful,organized and effective.”
A fair point to think about.
Motivated, organized, manipulative, yes – but I wouldn’t confuse that with intelligence.
Rollerball.
Ever heard of “failing upward”? Hank Johnson, case in point.
“Interested to hear what finally turned readers here from converts to sceptics. And why it took so long.”
Never really thought about it, I had just accepted that what scientists said was probably correct, until Mann started taking the Micky with his hockey stick.!!
As an engineer with an interest in history, old houses & dendrocronology, I could see it was total bollocks, & a couple of days’ research confirmed it.
Then I found WUWT & learned a lot more – the rest is history (:-))
That’s how it usually works.
Even smart and well educated people often fall for crap for several reason.
The 1st is that if they are not focused on a subject they use only their stand-by intellect.
They do not form an opinion but only repeat a mantra pavlov reflex style.
And if they are raised in a ” service society” where everything is served and not aquired, they are not willing to leave this comfort zone.
This results in animal trail thinking.
Animals use those trails paved by others because they save the most energy.
The 2nd thing is – fear ,shaming , indoctrination.
Most crumble under the weight of propaganda without even realising.
And if they are demoralized or emotionally invested they can’t and won’t leave the bumble.
The 3rd thing is the dumbpride of smart people.
“I’m too smart and too educated to be fooled for years and even if I fall for a lie all of my smart friends would not.
And it is impossible to control and buy so many experts to lie at us”
– says the guy who has been lied into every single war by EXPERTS.
Lies and conspiracies on a supermassive scale – like the Iraq2 war when the US&UK governments and the Mi6 and FBI and the MSM conspired to justify the war though noone of them had any evidence .
Yet they can not call it conspiracy because they don’t really focus on the subject and the service guys = experts,journalists etc do not call ita conspiracy.
But once the focus and attitude are there and fear and shame are removed
insight becomes a piece of cake.
Spot on.
Hopefully my tale, Geoff, will be of interest.
I’m in my mid 70s so have good memory of the 50s, 60s, 70s climate. Having moved from Manchester (UK) to West Yorkshire, just in time for the winter of 63. Snow and ice were often visitors in the two decades 60–80, when the ground froze so hard, it couldn’t be penetrated with a pickaxe (I once tried 🙂 ), and football games cancelled due to hard ground.
It was in the early 80s, one January on the train to work in Manchester, I stared down one day at the canal and thought “it no longer freezes over”, that was when I realised that something had changed.
Of course, as time passed, the ‘global warming’ mantra grew ever louder, and because of my observation, I reluctantly accepted it (I much prefer a proper winter, I love snow and icy weather).
But, the first inkling all was not right, was when the Mann (excuse me whilst I spit) fraud stick was publicised and the blame laid at the door of the industrial revolution. Having worked in engineering, and studied elec eng, we learned something of the history of that time.
My immediate response was ‘no way!’, the revolution really only began in Western Europe and the north-eastern side of America (any other regions were minor in comparison). Big as those regions were, on a global scale they were miniscule, and the pollution they produced, would spread around the world, but would be insignificant to mother Earth’s contributions.
That made me want to know more, although I’ve read many books about it. For me the clincher is the fact that in the last 8000 years we’ve had three climate optimums (not crises), when CO2 was considerably lower, and temperatures were somewhat higher, without the benefit of modern technology, mankind has survived them.
Incidentally folks, I’m currently reading a book “Hoax, why the burning of fossil fuels doesn’t cause climate change” by Darwin Throne.
I’m a bit perplexed about this book, as the author contests that it’s not GHG, but air pressure which adiabatically enhances the energy absorbed from the sun. His opinion that Happer, Lindzen et al. are wrong. He does provide what appears to be proof of his theory, through the calculations and comparisons with other planets.
Anybody else looked at this book?
First, your experience…. rely on it.
The fatal flaw in all of this “climate science” is the lack on inclusion of electromagnetic fields and waves.
Verify few people can describe in correct scientific terms how electro magnetics warms the land and the sea.
Very few people understand that EM affects the atmosphere in different ways. And yes, air pressure is part of it, adiabatic is part of it. There is no single “control knob.”
GHG is a pseudoscience creation based on common, syntax derived definition, language. Stated simply, it is a made up term.
The other fatal flaw in all of this “climate science” is defining everything as climate when it is a coupling of multiple energy systems that we live in.
You did not, but many people commit a serious mistake by using the Climate Liar Lexicon. All that does is give them an unearned credibility boost.
Thanks for your reply, and confirming the air pressure etc. is part of it.
With so many, unpredictable variables, how can we possibly claim an understanding, and predict future outcomes?
Sheer arrogance on the ‘settled science’ mob!
I have been a sceptic from the start. There is too much variance in weather to predict with accuracy what will happen, especially when dealing with such a small percentage of the atmosphere.
As an engineer, I was trained to find a transfer function that relates the input to the output. Time is not an input to a state function describing the sun’s input to temperature. Time is only used in a gradient to define the actual change in output. This really turned me off. It appeared to be similar to all the stock market books and theories about how to make money. I would say the only money made was from the sales of books.
I was around and casually watch the debate of the coming ice age in the 1970s.
It was when I first saw Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth that I knew a hoax was being perpetrated. Snow disappearing from the Himalayas? No alternate conjecture? What about freezer burn (sublimation). Consensus? Oh boy.
I am skeptical – I ask questions and do not accept appeal to authority as verification/validation.
I am pragmatic – Does it pass the sniff test?
I’ve watched the abuse of language, hijacking, redefining, and repurposing words for too long and I am sick of the lies.
Jim, we are in agreement. A consensus if you will permit the humor.
One of my jobs was running toll and Directory Assistance call centers. We scheduled operators every 15 minutes. I am VERY familiar with the vagaries of time series and predicting for annual budgets. Variables were never predictable. It is one place I learned about uncertainty in time series.
Same with determining equipment quantities.
My first exposure to the new “ice age” in the early 70’s and looking at the data made bells go off about the so called accuracy of the predictions.
My scepticism only increases from there!
I never believed it from the beginning. I guess you could say I’m naturally skeptical about humans having an outsized influence on nature based on something so trivial as what we exhale with every breath.
My natural curiosity and extensive reading about the subject only reinforced my skepticism.
And I certainly never believed a warmer climate is worse than the cold misery of The Little Ice Age, during which the industrial revolution began.
It takes much longer to reverse brainwashing than it does to inflict.
Neural pathways are strengthened by repetition.
It takes many more repetition to undo the brainwashing then reinforce new thinking.
When one has not the time or inclination to do the in depth research needed, one accepts the most credible statements are true. When one reads those statements repetitively, they (as Goebbels clearly explained), those statements become “truth.”
Each person as a personal reality according to Protagoras (cc 450 BC) that is based on belief and perceptions. Perceptions being memory and sensory inputs. In modern times we know these perceptions can be altered, so personal reality devolves into pure belief.
A person will believe what they believe until given sufficient cause to alter the belief.
The some people take a stand on an issue for power, money, celebrity status, etc., is true, but the repetition still plays in.
It all starts with not being a skeptic, not asking questions, accepting conclusions based solely on appeal to authority.
Humans are in a sense herd animals. Too often it is the case of merely following the “alpha.”
For me, it was the concept that we think we know what climate was like, with any degree of accuracy, thousands or millions of years ago.
“Norris posted a screenshot of a page from the book Break Through, where Michael Shellenberger and I argued that if the world kept burning fossil fuels at current rates, catastrophe was virtually assured…”
From a few years back, Shellenberger has also moved sharply away from the alarmist viewpoint, which was good to see.
“Yes, the world will continue to warm as long as we keep burning fossil fuels.”
This is not in evidence. The maximum influence of the resulting increase in CO2 is vanishingly weak in the proper context of dynamic energy conversion within the general circulation.
https://www.regulations.gov/comment/EPA-HQ-OAR-2025-0194-0305
It will be very interesting to see how the EPA deals with all the adverse and supportive comments to the proposed action to rescind the 2009 Endangerment Finding. My guess is that they will finalize the withdrawal of the EF on the grounds of the statutory wording, but will hold short of the more correct scientific conclusion that NO ONE KNOWS that rising pCO2 is capable of causing any “climate” harm at all.
So about Ted Nordhaus, it is good that he is expressing this moderated sense of the issue, but there is room for improvement. Same with Lomborg and others, for that matter, who don’t let go of the core claim that “warming” is still a problem.
“Yes, the world will continue to warm as long as we keep burning fossil fuels.”
It will also continue to cool. It will also continue to warm and cool regardless of which fuels we use.
“Nordhaus is one of the giants of the climate alarmist movement “
He has never been. He first came to attention with his 2004 book “The Death of Environmentalism: Global Warming Politics in a Post-Environmental World.“.
““The heating of the earth,” Michael Shellenberger and I wrote in our 2007 book, Break Through,
Sounds pretty “climatis hystericarsis” to me.
Ted Nordaus: ‘I Thought Climate Change Would End the World. I Was Wrong’ – ‘My worldview was built on apocalyptic models sprung from faulty assumptions’ – Climate Depot
We’ll take that as a win.
Not a win for skeptics. See Nick Stokes’ comment.
Nick has his views I have mine.
The lion’s share of observed warming since 1980 has arguably been due to the reduction in sulfates produced over the Northern Hemisphere. Sure, humans do a number of things that can impact regional climates in some way- deforestation, agriculture, SO2 emissions, the UHI. But none of the predicted disasters ever materialize. Climate Doomsday is usually placed far enough into the future that no one today has to think much of it, or do too much about it, except for carping…
“arguably”
Yes. We humans like simple answers so we over simplify.
It was involved, but it is highly improbable that it was the “control knob.”
I fully appreciate that you did not state any of it in binary terms. We are in agreement. 🙂
CO2 does not now, never has, and never will have a significant effect on climate. Compelling evidence shows that back in 2000 the measured increase in water vapor was more than twice as much as possible from just planet warming. The assumption by many Climate Scientists that water vapor increase is just feedback from temperature increase caused by CO2 increase is shown to be wrong. https://watervaporandwarming.blogspot.com
People who use “feedback” in that manner and context do not know the scientific and engineering definition of feedback. Try to explain to them and they give word salad responses.
Nick Stokes, half a dozen years or so ago, presented on WUWT a very well written paper on feedback. There were a few other articles/papers on WUWT in that time frame, too, on the subject. They all got it right.
He’s still an alarmist idiot. Sea level rise has NOT accelerated, yet his “estimate” tops out at FOUR TIMES the existing and essentially steady rate. AND he continues to credit CO2 as the driver of all warming, with zero empirical evidence to support that naked assertion.
He doesn’t think it’s a disaster. Great. It never was. But he continues to spew nonsense about what will happen and the supposed cause, so I wouldn’t count him among the converted just yet.
Every journey begins with a first step.