A look at the “97.4% of climate scientists” meme
by Sapere Aude as part of our “dissident denial” series
c
On 4 February, 2017 the Daily Mail published an article entitled: “World Leaders Duped by Manipulated Global Warming Data”.
“…The Mail on Sunday today reveals astonishing evidence that the organisation that is the world’s leading source of climate data rushed to publish a landmark paper that exaggerated global warming and was timed to influence the historic Paris Agreement on climate change.
A high-level whistleblower has told this newspaper that America’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) breached its own rules on scientific integrity when it published the sensational but flawed report, aimed at making the maximum possible impact on world leaders including Barack Obama and David Cameron at the UN climate conference in Paris in 2015.
The report claimed that the ‘pause’ or ‘slowdown’ in global warming in the period since 1998 – revealed by UN scientists in 2013 – never existed, and that world temperatures had been rising faster than scientists expected. Launched by NOAA with a public relations fanfare, it was splashed across the world’s media, and cited repeatedly by politicians and policy makers.
Dr Bates accused the lead author of the paper, Thomas Karl, who was until last year director of the NOAA section that produces climate data – the National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) – of ‘insisting on decisions and scientific choices that maximised warming and minimised documentation… in an effort to discredit the notion of a global warming pause, rushed so that he could time publication to influence national and international deliberations on climate policy’.
Eight years ago, the “Climategate” scandal enjoyed some brief exposure. A large cache of emails had been discovered (possibly hacked into) at the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit.
The mails revealed that in 1997, in the runup to the Kyoto Climate Change Conference, a similar manipulation of data had taken place relating to the 1995 global climate report from the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change). The original report contained statements from scientists to the effect that there was no risk of a CO2-caused climate catastrophe.
On the Jesse Ventura talk-show of 19.12.2009, Dr. Ben Santer, lead author of the IPCC reports, admitted that he had deleted from Chapter 8 of the 1995 report those sections which had explicitly denied the claim of human-caused climate change. On the show he was confronted by Lord Monckton (a leading so-called ‘climate denier’) about the changes he had made.
Monckton: After scientists had submitted their finished draft, Santer came and rewrote parts of it – specifically where, in five different places, it had been explicitly stated that there is no provable human effect on global temperature. I have seen a copy – Santer went through the draft, deleted the relevant parts and wrote a new summary … which remained as the official conclusion.
Santer: Lord Monckton has pointed to cuts in this chapter … and there were cuts. In order to preserve harmony with the other chapters, we dropped the final summary.
Because the original 1995 report had already been signed by more than 100 scientists, Santer had to quickly find new signatories for the amended (falsified) report. Santer was just then in a conference in Kassel, Germany and he had no chance of quickly finding another 100 scientists to sign the amended report. However, at that time Kassel University was the home of the Center for Environmental Systems Research.
Its head, Professor Joseph Alcamo was responsible for looking after climate affairs in Germany on behalf of the UN, UNEP and the IPCC. On 9 October 1997, Prof. Alcamo sent an email to his assistants, who were waiting in Kyoto, telling him to secure the required new signatures for the falsified report. The email was discovered in November 2009 among thousands of other emails at the CRU Institute at the University of East Anglia. The key parts of the email are reproduced below:
I am very strongly in favor of as wide and rapid a distribution as possible for endorsements. I think the only thing that counts is numbers. The media is going to say “1000 scientists signed” or “1500 signed”. No one is going to check if it is 600 with PhDs versus 2000 without. They will mention the prominent ones, but that is a different story.
If the report comes out only a few days before Kyoto I’m afraid that the delegates we want to influence won’t have any time to consider it. We should give them a couple of weeks to take note of it.”
Simultaneously, Greenpeace activists were also working to get signatures on a document of their own to influence the media, using a tried-and-tested technique for signature gathering: Don’t read the fine print — just sign!
To showcase their campaign, Greenpeace was organizing a media event ahead of the Kyoto meeting to display the document signed by concerned “scientists.”
Alcamo continued:
If Greenpeace is having an event the week before, we should have it a week before them so that they and other NGOs can further spread the word about the Statement. On the other hand, it wouldn’t be so bad to release the Statement in the same week, but on a different day. The media might enjoy hearing the message from two very different directions.
These two high-profile cases should surely raise some doubts about the truth of what has frequently been hyped as the ‘greatest threat humanity faces’ – the threat of runaway global warming. Are we dealing merely with a few minor ‘touch-ups’ to official reports and the views of a small minority of dissenting scientists – or is the whole story of global warming/climate change an enormous scam?
We are told ad nauseam that global warming is “settled science”; that there is an overwhelming consensus among scientists as to the reality of human-caused global warming. Figures such as “98% of scientists”, even 99.5% according to ex-president Obama, are routinely trotted out.
Anyone who questions this “truth” is immediately vilified as a dangerous “climate denier” – one of the many derogatory accusations hurled at Donald Trump.
But President Trump was not always a ‘climate denier’. In December 2009, Trump and three of his children signed a letter to President Barack Obama (the letter was also signed by dozens of business leaders and was published as an ad in the New York Times), calling for a global climate deal:
We support your effort to ensure meaningful and effective measures to control climate change, an immediate challenge facing the United States and the world today. If we fail to act now, it is scientifically irrefutable that there will be catastrophic and irreversible consequences for humanity and our planet. [Emphasis added].
The day after announcing his candidacy for the GOP presidential nomination, Trump appeared on Sean Hannity’s Fox News show (17 June, 2015), where he said that he is “not a believer in man-made” warming, adding:
When I hear Obama saying that climate change is the No. 1 problem, it is just madness.”
And in early December of that year he criticised the Paris climate summit, saying:
While the world is in turmoil and falling apart in so many different ways … our president is worried about global warming. What a ridiculous situation”.
(At the conference, President Obama urged world leaders to agree to an ambitious deal to combat global warming).
During a campaign speech at the end of December Trump said:
So Obama’s talking about all of this with the global warming and the – a lot of it’s a hoax, it’s a hoax. I mean, it’s a money-making industry, ok?”
In January 2016, after Bernie Sanders had criticised Trump for his earlier suggestion that global warming was a hoax invented by the Chinese, Trump expands on the idea that ‘climate change’ is a “money-making industry”:
I think that climate change is just a very, very expensive form of tax. A lot of people are making a lot of money …”
And in September, some six or so weeks before the presidential election, but at a time when the contenders are already choosing their “transition teams”, word is leaked that Trump has chosen Myron Ebell of the Competitive Enterprise Institute to head the transition at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Ebell had previously accused climate scientists of “manipulating and falsifying the data”.
On the same day, Trump’s campaign manager tells The Huffington Post that Trump “believes [climate change] is naturally occurring and is not all man-made”.
What is the truth?
One of the most quoted percentages of scientists who support the IPCC’s claims is 97.4% – a remarkably precise figure.
We have to ask: 97.4% of what?
It cannot be 97.4% of all the scientists in the world – how could all of them have been canvassed? Perhaps 97.4% of ‘climate scientists’? But there are relatively few of these. Today’s “climate scientists” are primarily biologists and geologists and mathematicians and physicists who happen to have brought their varied scientific training to bear on the issues of weather and climate.
A figure that is not so often quoted (almost never, in fact – suggesting a deliberate suppression of unwelcome data) is that of the 31,487 scientists (more than 9,000 of them with a PhD) who have signed the following petition letter to the US Congress:
We urge the US government to reject the global warming agreement that was written in Kyoto, Japan in December 1997, and any other similar proposals.
The proposed limits on greenhouse gases would harm the environment, hinder the advance of science and technology, and damage the health and welfare of mankind.
There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of CO2, methane, or other greenhouse gases, is causing, or will in the foreseeable future cause, catastrophic heating of the earth’s atmosphere and/or the disruption of earth’s climate.
Moreover, there is substantial scientific evidence that increases in atmospheric CO2 produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the earth”. [Emphasis added]
The signatories support the Global Warming Petition Project. The website explains that:
The purpose of the Petition Project is to demonstrate that the claim of “settled science” and an overwhelming “consensus” in favor of the hypothesis of human-caused global warming and consequent climatological damage is wrong. No such consensus or settled science exists.”
It should be evident that 31,487 Americans with university degrees in science – including 9,029 PhDs – are not “a few.” These scientists are convinced that the human-caused global warming hypothesis is without scientific validity and that government action on the basis of this hypothesis would unnecessarily and counterproductively damage both human prosperity and the natural environment of the Earth.
To the 31,487 signatories of the Global Warming Petition Project we must add the 4000+ scientists (including 72 Nobel Prize winners) who have signed the “Heidelberg Appeal”: an appeal (issued to coincide with the opening of the UN-sponsored Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992) against…
an irrational ideology which is opposed to scientific and industrial progress, and impedes economic and social development [and] against decisions which are supported by pseudo-scientific arguments or false and non-relevant data.” [1]
Another document urging caution was circulated among reputable scientists in the wake of the Kyoto Climate Conference. This document is known as the Leipzig Declaration on Global Climate Change.
The document expressly states the following [emphasis added]:
As the debate unfolds, it has become increasingly clear that — contrary to the conventional wisdom — there does not exist today a general scientific consensus about the importance of greenhouse warming from rising levels of carbon dioxide. In fact, most climate specialists now agree that actual observations from both weather satellites and balloon-borne radiosondes (i.e. weather balloons) show no current warming whatsoever — in direct contradiction to computer model results.
Among the signatories of this declaration are scientists from NASA, the Max Planck Institute, one of the former Presidents of the National Academy of Sciences, and many members of the American Meteorological Society. These people are not lightweights in the field of science.
Clearly the so-called “consensus of scientists” so often referred to is not a consensus at all. But the many voices of dissenting scientists have been drowned out – at least until recently – by the constant repetition by politicians and the media of the ‘human-caused global warming’ myth, and by biased sources such as Wikipedia, which uses the “climate denier” slur to attack anyone who challenges the official myth.
If the 97.4% figure were correct, one could reasonably assume that the 31,487 scientists who have signed the petition must represent a large part of the 2.6% of scientists who, according to the 97.4% claim, oppose the consensus view. However, that immediately reveals a problem with the calculation.
If 31,487 is 2.6% of the grand total of scientists who must be assumed to have expressed an opinion on the matter … then that grand total is in the order of 1,180,000 scientists.
Did someone really canvass nearly 1.2 million scientists worldwide? There is no evidence of that.
It is, however, known that in 2009 a paper by Professor Peter Doran and graduate student Maggie Kendall Zimmermann of the University of Illinois in Chicago was published based on a survey Zimmermann had sent to 10,257 earth scientists, with two questions. Answering the questions was expected to take no more than two minutes:
- When compared with pre-1800s levels, do you think that mean global temperatures have generally risen, fallen, or remained relatively constant?
- Do you think human activity is a significant contributing factor in changing mean global temperatures?
[Note that the second question already presumes what was left open in the first question i.e. change. Note also that the second question is too vague to be scientific …. what does “a significant contributing factor” mean? Is a 1% or 2% contribution “significant”?].
3,146 of the scientists replied (a 30.7% response rate). Of those, 82% answered “yes” to question 2.
Only 77 of the scientists polled identified themselves as “climate scientists”. The student singled out the 75 of them who agreed that human activity was “a significant contributing factor” in changing global temperatures.
Coincidentally, 75 is precisely 97.4% of 77. But 75 out of the original 10,257 is a risible 0.73%!
As might be expected (for example, from its track record of routinely describing any challenge to suspect modern dogmas as “conspiracy theories”), Wikipedia reveals its bias in favour of the establishment’s “global warming” myth by claiming that the Doran and Zimmermann paper shows that “active climate researchers almost unanimously agree that humans have had a significant impact on the Earth’s climate” – when the original wording, as noted above, was that human activity was merely “a significant contributing factor”. Predictably, the article fails to mention the selection process involved – or the vastly higher number of dissenting scientists who signed the petition.
In a 2013 paper published by the Institute of Physic’s IOPScience and cited by NASA, University of Queensland climate communication fellow John Cook also stated that 97 percent of scientists who took a position on global warming agreed that humans were the primary cause. According to
Cook and his co-authors:
Among abstracts expressing a position on AGW [anthropogenic global warming], 97.1% endorsed the consensus that humans are causing global warming”.
However, a peer review of Cook’s paper by David Legates (a former state climatologist and professor at the University of Delaware), published in the April 2015 issue of Science and Education, debunked the 97 percent consensus figure.
Legates pointed out that only 41 of the 11,944 academic papers Cook examined in his meta-analysis (0.3%) explicitly stated that most of the global warming since 1950 was caused by human activity:
It is astonishing that any journal could have published a paper claiming a 97% climate consensus when in the authors’ own analysis the true consensus was well below 1%”.
Cook’s paper was also criticized by other scientists for what they said was a number of methodological errors. In a book published by the Heartland Institute and entitled Why Scientists Disagree About Global Warming, its three authors stated:
Probably the most widely repeated claim in the debate over global warming is that “97% of scientists agree” that climate change is man-made and dangerous. This claim is not only false, but its presence in the debate is an insult to science.”
Despite the general media support for the IPCC’s claims, there have been notable exceptions – as shown by the Mail on Sunday quote with which I began.
More than six years ago, on 13 October, 2012, the same paper published another surprising article with the headline: “Global warming stopped 16 years ago [i.e. around 1996] reveals Met Office report quietly released
… The figures reveal that from the beginning of 1997 … there was no discernible rise in aggregate global temperatures … This means that the ‘plateau’ or ‘pause’ in global warming has now lasted for about the same time as the previous period when temperatures rose, 1980 to 1996. Before that, temperatures had been stable or declining for about 40 years. […] The new data, compiled from more than 3,000 measuring points on land and sea, was issued quietly on the internet, without any media fanfare, and, until today, it has not been reported.
The article included a graph (see below) which charts the fluctuations in average global temperature between 1997 and 2012. There are peaks and troughs, but the significant finding is that the average global temperature in 2012 (just half a degree above the world average of 14C) was exactly the same as in 1997. That pattern has continued to the present, with warmer and colder years, but no average increase.
graph provided by the Daily Mail in 2012
Even more surprisingly, on 11 December, 2016, another British newspaper – the Sunday Express – published another remarkable article with the startling headline: “World on BRINK of MINI ICE AGE: Fears sparked as solar activity reaches new low. SOLAR ACTIVITY has reached its lowest point since 2011, prompting fears the Sun has reached its solar minimum early.”
The writer explains:
If the Sun has reached its solar minimum early, it could mean we could be in for a prolonged cold period. Images captured by NASA between November 14 and 18 shows that there are barely any sunspots. NASA says that solar activity has dwindled at a much faster rate than expected following a peak in 2014. The Sun follows cycles of roughly 11 years where it reaches the solar maximum and then the solar minimum.”
2014 was a year with record high temperatures. It was touted by the ‘climate change’ lobby as proof of man-made global warming. The Express article may well have puzzled many of its readers since it would have been the first time for many or most of them that global temperature had being linked to sunspot activity and sun cycles. But this was not a new suggestion. In 2002, an issue of the magazine Science included the editors’ “prognostications for next year’s hot research topics. Such as:
What is happening to the world’s store of ice?
What exactly is the sun-climate connection, now that “researchers are grudgingly taking the sun seriously as a factor in climate change” and in “triggering droughts and cold snaps.”
They could have added a whole bunch more, such as: Why is the atmosphere not warming appreciably in contrast to all model predictions? Why the disparity between temperature trends of the atmosphere and surface? What’s happening to CO2?”
Piers Corbyn is the older brother of Jeremy Corbyn, leader of the British Labour Party. He runs a very successful long-range weather forecasting business which has consistently proven to be more accurate than the ‘official’ meteorological offices such as the UK’s Met Office. Corbyn based his predictions on solar cycles and sunspot activity.
He has been challenging the ‘global warming’ swindle since at least 2008. In September of that year he posted an “initial response” to the BBC’s “Climate Wars” programme, in which he stated:
..This ‘Climate Wars’ production is a shameful and desperate effort from the BBC’s ‘green religion department’ to shore up the failing theory of CO2-driven Global Warming and Climate Change….
..The piece – and the Global Warmers camp in general – while pretending to be objective, skilfully avoid applying sound science and provide no answers to the mounting evidence which refutes the crumbling Global Warming theory. It puts lipstick on scientific fraud – but it remains fraud.
The website’s ‘mission statement’ includes the following:
WeatherAction supports True-Green-Policies to defend biodiversity and wildlife and reduce chemical and particulate pollution, and points out that CO2 is not a pollutant, but the ‘Gas of Life’ (plant food).
WeatherAction defends evidence-based science and policy-making. WeatherAction completely supports campaigns for geo-ethical accountability and CLEXIT (Exit from UN Climate Change Deals) and is against data fraud and the political manipulation of data and the so-called ‘scientific’ claims now dominating climate and environmental sciences.
Evidence shows that man-made climate change does not exist and the arguments for it are not based on science, but on data fraud and a conspiracy theory of nature.
If Corbyn and the many thousands of scientists now speaking out about the ‘climate change’ fraud are correct, how and why did a situation come about in which the world was told that it faced an imminent catastrophe if CO2 emissions were not drastically cut?
How many trillions of dollars, pounds, euros etc. have been spent promoting the urgent need to “reduce our carbon footprint”. And why would scientists and politicians lie on such a scale?
The origins of “the great climate fraud” will be examined in a further instalment.
SUPPORT OFFGUARDIAN
If you enjoy OffG's content, please help us make our monthly fund-raising goal and keep the site alive.
For other ways to donate, including direct-transfer bank details click HERE.
If Anyone is still reading this article, do they have knowledge of the original court decisions over what occurred? My memory is certain that the scientists and/or UEA were found negligent, but I cannot now find any reference to it. There are lots of subsequent hearings and inquiries that seem to drown out what happened.
CO2 is heavier than air. Thats why people suffocate when those African lakes turn upside down. It cannot be a greenhouse gas.
It should be noted that John Bates has said that he has not accused his colleagues of data manipulation. Also, the Independent Press Standards Organisation ruled that the Mail article was inaccurate and misleading. Later, the Daily Mail, more or less, acknowledged as much. So, putting that story up front wasn’t exactly an auspicious start to the piece. From then on things get even worse. For instance the scientists involved in the ‘climategate’ scandal, (and, yes, the emails were hacked – or stolen, to be precise), were cleared of any wrongdoing by a number of independent investigations from different countries.
As for the Global Warming Petition Project, also known as the Oregon Petition, it is probably the most frequently petition quoted by those who deny the scientific consensus on anthropogenic global warming. What this “petition” has in spades is largely unverifiable signatures on slips of paper. The Seattle Times reported that it includes such scientific luminaries as “Perry S. Mason” (the fictitious TV lawyer), “Michael J. Fox” (the actor), John C. Grisham” (the lawyer author) and Geraldine Halliwell (the Spice Girl). It all seems to be a bit of a mess really – much like the article in which it gets a thumbs up really. What on Earth are you people thinking by providing a platform for such anti-science garbage?
Your mistake is that you do not seem to understand that it is not the current CO2 from plants, humans, animals etc. causing the problem, because it is simply recycled back into the Earth’s system, as it always has been. The Earths system was in perfect balance.
The problem is the millions of tons of pre-historic CO2 being released from burning fossil fuels by man – CO2 captured from sunlight that last hit planet Earth millions of years ago – and nature cannot keep up with the new rate of re-cycling needed to trap this rush, hence the increase in CO2 levels.
Should be common-sense, really.
Well, well, well. And here I was thinking this site was both left and progressive. How wrong one can be. De-bookmarking oG will give me little more screen space. But how disappointing. Just another bunch of climate-change deniers with specious arguments and no overall vision.
OffG has never denied climate change, but we do publish a variety of opinions on this important topic. We are also aware of the attempts to bully and manipulate people into conforming to the current corporate fake Green agenda. Thanks for your totally spontaneous first contribution here
OK – I mostly agree with you that there is an attempt by big money to manipulate Green issues. However, giving space to assorted climate deniers is not the way to counteract that. As for my “totally spontaneous” contribution – sarcasm is not the way to win converts, and I am not some kind of corporate shill – you can research my comments on various internet sites as ‘Jams O’Donnell.
Re my comments possibly not so easy as I assumed, – but try on Disqus
its a scam to justify am imposed one world dictatorship. Brought to you by the lie masters of the universe.
@Sorry Not Buying It
You’re suggesting that C02 would have the same impact on the environment whether it’s 4ppm or 400ppm, providing the “total mass” remains constant?
How exactly do you see that working?
[I’m ignoring the repeat ad homs; hope you don’t mind]
You’re getting confused I’m afraid. I mention “certitude” in the context that YOUR certitude is unwarranted, not that certitude is required. I don’t say certitude is part of the scientific method.
No there is not yet sufficient data to assert AGW as a theory.
Meanwhile, I’d be curious to see how many AGWers drive vehicles with internal combustion engines (or charge their Teslas with electricity from coal-burning power stations)… and consume on a Western Level of environment-damaging consumption. Personally, I’d be delighted to see private cars banned from most parts of the city, and people like me (who walk, or take public transport, everywhere) given substantial tax breaks. I’d like to see fossil fuels phased out entirely… not because of C02 (regarding which there is no proof of danger, still) but because of all the other direct and corollary toxins, erosions and degradations of Life. I’d like to see us all buying lots less bullshit, and energy-gorged tech, and living simpler lives. We don’t need even a quarter of the plastics or conflict minerals we consume as though they’re birth rights. We don’t need sweatshop clothing or Monsanto-supporting pseudo-foods. Why not focus on the Big Picture, and a broad range of reforms, instead of a TPTB-sponsored scare-fad…? If we phase out fossil fuels, the red herring of C02 becomes a moot worry, eh? Because it’s criminally absurd that an unthinkably vast, virtually-infinite source of nearly-FREE energy, at the center of this solar system, isn’t being adequately tapped. Any excuses for the ambiguous state of Solar Energy Tech, today, can only be disingenuous at best; we know WHY it’s been stunted. Why do we stand for it?
One of the worst examples of the people who acknowledge acceptance that global warming is man made is set by those who spout it whilst driving around in massive gas guzzlers ‘cos they’re cool and wouldn’t dream of wasting their money on eco friendly alternative forms of reducing their carbon footprint when there are so many wonderful ways to spoil themselves on the latest technology or handbag with matching shoes. Their answer when asked whether they should be contributing to lowering that foot print? “Well what can I do, I’m only one person?” or “There aren’t enough of us to make a difference, so why bother?” I can’t tell you in words, just how stupefying such responses are. It’s far worse than being a denier, they at least have good reason to ignore what they consider to be a flawed science. I must look like my elevator doesn’t go all the way to the top, when I stand with my jaw on the floor catching flies with a very vacant expression on my face, on hearing such excuses for doing absolutely nothing about what they believe in. I usually manage to get my jaw re engaged but not the vacant expression which seems to linger for an inordinately long period of time thereafter.
Amen, M! Amen (in a non-Judeo-Christian way, of course)
As a good friend of mine used to say: ‘you poor old atheists’.
Well, I’m a Warmish Lukewarmer. And I ride a bike and put a brick in my toilet tank, and don’t fly anywhere that can be got to by less fuel-extravagant means.
But I am pretty sure the Goldman Sachs and Al Gore breed of alarmists don’t plan to allow any carbon restrictions to apply to them
Excellent, MLS! How would one start applying pressure, do you think, to get some timetable started re: phasing fossil fuels entirely out….? While boosting APPLE-style leaps-and-bounds Solar Energy Tech improvements? Because why quibble over C02 when it’s fossil fuels wreaking terrible ongoing (ramifying) environmental damage with or without AGW?
Sadly I’m not optimistic. Genuine research into renewables is patchy. Scams and get-rich-quick schemes predominate. Only nuclear currently provides a viable large scale replacement for fossil fuels, unless we want to see a massive and potentially civilisation-threatening decay of living standards and infrastructure, and nuclear is a worse potential pollutant than hydrocarbons in many ways.
If the C02 question had not been hijacked by cowboys and opportunists we’d have far more chance of getting a rational deployment of funds for research. The Green movement has been completely played by the clever use of the wrong sort of alarmism into backing stupid and expensive over sensible and cheap.
Thi is why I want to see a realistic understanding of the issues. less panic and more sense.
“Genuine research into renewables is patchy.” Which must be by design; with such a huge potential market, where’s the competition/ innovation….? Squelched by the same forces pushing alarmism, imo: a vicious circle designed to keep things profitable (and under control) for a closed circle of players.
“Squelched by the same forces pushing alarmism, imo”
Errrr…no. The “alarmists” are the ones pushing governments to invest in renewables, and have met with real success in Scandinavia (where a far, far greater portion of total energy production is from renewables) and have been stiffled in the US where the government has consistently FAILED to invest in renewables AGAINST the wishes of the very people you blame for this lack (note also in Scandinavia, public opinion and government policy is far more acknowledging of the reality of AGW than in the US). When governments DO invest in renewables, you whine “they’re taking my tax dollars away over a fad!” When private enterprise invests in renewables, you whine “See?! This is proof that AGW is a for-profit scam!” When there’s not ENOUGH investment in renewables you whine “It’s the fault of the alarmists! They just want to keep the profits among a small circle of players!” (i.e. those at the very forefront of increasing investment in renewables are, to you, the ones who somehow want to…keep enriching big oil)
Your misdiagnoses are becoming disgusting.
“Your misdiagnoses are becoming disgusting.”
Your use of the OTT-propaganda-vocabulary (“disgusting”? why not “despicable” like that other feller? Do you two ever appear in the same comment thread at the same time, btw…?) is becoming blatant. Or, as you might put it, “repulsive” or perhaps “satanic” or “pustulant”…?
Why not stick to “facts” (as you see them) and “logic”? You undermine your case with those rhetorical hissy fits.
“and people like me (who walk, or take public transport, everywhere) given substantial tax breaks”
Seriously? You had to smuggle THAT in? You’ve shown the petit-bourgeois content of your outlook on multiple occasions, but this is becoming silly.
As for solar energy, it is certainly a very important component of transitioning away from fossil fuels and one that can surely be developed much further, but it’s doubtful that it represents the panacea you make it out to be. It also comes with serious corollary costs having to do with toxins, and is green only in a relative sense. Ultimately, the real solution will come from reorganizing the way that societies consume resources, and that has to do with replacing capitalism with a production and social system based on the fulfillment of human needs rather than endless accumulation.
“Any excuses for the ambiguous state of Solar Energy Tech, today, can only be disingenuous at best; we know WHY it’s been stunted.”
The ambiguous state of solar energy tech is the result of a lack of investment by institutions that you think are devoted to maintaining the climate change “myth” – except when they’re funding climate-denialism. Oh, by the way, try this on for size: the Chinese are the heaviest investors in solar energy, and the Chinese are FULLY ON BOARD with the standard narrative about climate change. So please tell us: what ulterior motive do you see here? The Bastards That Control Everything are stunting solar energy (but want to “push” the climate change “myth” on us), while the Chinese are heavily investing in solar energy (but ALSO want to “push” the climate change “myth” on us). Let me guess: you “don’t know” because you’re “honest” about the “limitations of your knowledge”. Great! Thanks, in advance, for the for the “insights”.
Well, Sorry, old chum, your talent for missing the point, spinning things self-servingly and garbling perfectly-logical assertions from your “opponents” will serve you well if you’re looking to make a living as a shill/troll! I won’t fall for the trick of trying to untangle and unpack the mess you’ve made of my perfectly good comments (giving you the opportunity to garble, tangle and obscure even more)… I’ll just wish you well! Your job is to hinder discussion and polarize the debate and make a general mess of the threads and you’re about 30% there! Luckily, the discussion isn’t limited to this thread and you’ve got a helluva big job ahead of you if you want that bonus…! Good luck!
“Well, Sorry, old chum, your talent for missing the point, spinning things self-servingly and garbling perfectly-logical assertions from your “opponents” will serve you well if you’re looking to make a living as a shill/troll! I won’t fall for the trick of trying to untangle and unpack the mess you’ve made of my perfectly good comments (giving you the opportunity to garble, tangle and obscure even more)… I’ll just wish you well! Your job is to hinder discussion and polarize the debate and make a general mess of the threads and you’re about 30% there! Luckily, the discussion isn’t limited to this thread and you’ve got a helluva big job ahead of you if you want that bonus…! Good luck!”
Worthless retort. NONE of that came anywhere close to an argument.
Come back to gum up the rest of the threads, eh? Get to work, Man/Woman! Dangerous amounts of clarity were poking through….!
“As for solar energy, it is certainly a very important component of transitioning away from fossil fuels and one that can surely be developed much further, but it’s doubtful that it represents the panacea you make it out to be. It also comes with serious corollary costs having to do with toxins, and is green only in a relative sense. ”
Sounds suspiciously like an argument from the Fossil Fuels industry…. or the Nuclear. There is no source of energy on the planet that comes close, in magnitude, to the energy provided by the Sun itself, though all the fossil fuels on Earth come to us, in the end, via the Sun.
The “toxins” associated with producing solar panels with today’s tech is obviously an issue to be addressed with the kind of innovations possible in a field of research that isn’t being sabotaged by the competition. Solar energy comes in a myriad of forms… it isn’t limited to the electricity-generating-panels we know today.
Sorry, old chum, I’ve never encountered a genuine Green Type who was so ambivalent about Solar Power (the obvious panacea for our energy needs)… I think your mask is slipping.
Are you here to shill for Fossil Fuels… or for Nuclear?
“Sounds suspiciously like an argument from the Fossil Fuels industry…. or the Nuclear.”
Only to someone who thinks in absolutes and who believes in panaceas.
“There is no source of energy on the planet that comes close, in magnitude, to the energy provided by the Sun itself, though all the fossil fuels on Earth come to us, in the end, via the Sun.”
Irrelevant for two reasons: 1) I was talking about the effects of heavy metal contamination; 2) what matters isn’t the magnitude of the source, but the magnitude of what we can EXTRACT.
“The “toxins” associated with producing solar panels with today’s tech is obviously an issue to be addressed with the kind of innovations possible in a field of research that isn’t being sabotaged by the competition. Solar energy comes in a myriad of forms… it isn’t limited to the electricity-generating-panels we know today.”
Fair enough; I don’t disagree. I’m saying that you shouldn’t hop onto a panacea.
“Sorry, old chum, I’ve never encountered a genuine Green Type who was so ambivalent about Solar Power (the obvious panacea for our energy needs)… I think your mask is slipping.”
You do know that solar energy isn’t the only form of renewable energy, right? We need a series of new technologies, not only solar. Maybe we need more of solar than anything else; that can’t be predicted in advance, though. We’ll have to see what’s technically and socially possible. You seem to want to skip over such considerations and instead bow at the altar of a silver bullet. I can’t help you there.
“Are you here to shill for Fossil Fuels… or for Nuclear?”
No, you are. After all, you’re an AGW denier who aligns himself with the same forces making it difficult to bring more renewables online.
“You do know that solar energy isn’t the only form of renewable energy, right? We need a series of new technologies, not only solar.”
List the ones that make better sense than solar, please. I’m sure wind power/ sea-based turbine can be fine supplements. But what could possibly best Solar?
“No, you are. After all, you’re an AGW denier who aligns himself with the same forces making it difficult to bring more renewables online.”
Nah, either you’re just not sophisticated enough to catch the nature of the con (the AGW industry, as is, in no way works toward the total replacement of Fossil Fuels) or, yeah… you’re part of the nonsense. Nuclear and Fossil Fuels are both prohibitively and necessarily toxic for very different reasons; Solar is only toxic to the extent that the tech’s development has been stunted (powerful Oil Bastards at work, eh?) for half a century. A vast energy source at the center of the Solar System that’s always on… it’s a no-brainer, as they say. Yeah, a space-based operation seems in order. It’s do-able. And we can no longer live with the Eco-System Killing Fossil Fuel/ Nuclear curses.
I agree almost entirely [em]. The almost [em] refers to the big problem of ‘de-industrialising’ developed economies, and conversely of attempting to prevent ‘undeveloped’ economies from achieving even a modest level of comfort and self-sufficiency. It’s not too difficult for individuals or smaller groups to ‘drop out’ and ‘go green’ (live off the land etc), but for the vast majority in the cities it’s simply impossible. Using only solar energy for heating etc may be possible in Florida and southern Spain, for example, but people in much colder places – like Scotland, where I live, and certainly anywhere much further north – would freeze in the winter without oil or gas (or electricity generated in large power stations). Of course it’s possible to imagine a ‘clean, green’ way of living for everyone on the planet. But getting from here to there – whether it’s ‘undeveloping’ our unsustainable industrialised societies or sustainably developing the poor ones – is by no means easy. Has anyone even attempted to map out how it could be done – without removing two-thirds of humanity, as some apparently believe is necessary?
Paul! The main form of Solar would have to be from satellites in Geosynchronous orbit, probably, sending energy (microwaves? laser?) from the constant high noon of space. Supplemented by the diurnal, cloudless-skies-willing varieties.
Re: moving two-thirds of Humanity. that’s the Evil Eugenicist’s dream. With the will, the conversion from one energy format to the other would be no more implausible than the conversion of farmland-to-super-highways was (or the conversion to Internet Infrastructure). Thirty years? Forty? The major obstacle is the Very Powerful Fossil Fuel Lobby, which is, of course, also “The Government” and The (Petro-Dollar) Economy. Hard to make things happen that THEY are against (whether or not they pretend they’re “for” these things).
I didn’t suggest it wasn’t possible … just that I’m not aware of any detailed study or proposal as to how the transition could be made. The basic requirements are food, water and shelter … sounds simple, but a convincing experiment would need to involve a largish city (minimum 100,000, preferably 2-300,000) – like a massive “Eden Project”.
In colder climates, food production would be the biggest problem. I know there are some very clever integrated systems, but they mainly use hydroponics, which I don’t like (though presumably better hydroponically produced food than starvation …).
It would have to be a government-funded project – a kind of “Great Leap Forward” (but we know how that turned out …) – possible in a centrally planned state like China.
I read today that the Tory government has slapped a huge tax on solar panels. Is this TM following in the footsteps of MT – to force nuclear down our throats?
Well, obviously, initially you’d be gradually phasing Fossil Fuels out while phasing Electric-via-Solar in. It would happen over a period of decades… it wouldn’t be a matter of abruptly starting from scratch, like all the great paradigm shifts in housing, communication, transportation and energy we’ve seen from the 18th century forward.
“… just that I’m not aware of any detailed study or proposal as to how the transition could be made.”
That’s exactly the point: such studies or proposals, if attempted, are only ever undertaken to show how Solar fails… because such a change is the last thing TPTB want. I’m merely saying, overall, that we shouldn’t buy the absurd notion that Solar is still at a relatively primitive stage of development for natural, innocent, inevitable reasons. It has been, and will continue to be, sabotaged, for quite some time. The Empire is based on Oil.
re: ‘de-industrialising’: I’d call it “RE-Industrialising”
My sole contribution to the climate change is this: Does anyone know how much of anthropomorphically caused weather and climate change is due to wars around the planet, especially wars where DU weapons are used and uranium oxide and other chemical compounds (that may trap heat) are released into upper as well as lower atmosphere levels?
Short answer – no.
We just don’t know enough about natural variables to have much idea of what specific manmade activities (if any) will have enough impact on climate to make a perceptible difference. But one thing is for sure war does degrade and pollute our environment dangerously. Though I doubt this will factor largely in the MSM discussion of “climate change”.
“We just don’t know enough about natural variables to have much idea of what specific manmade activities (if any) will have enough impact on climate to make a perceptible difference.”
Not according to science.
I’m very puzzled. In previous comments you have admitted there are huge levels of uncertainty about how the climate works. You have admitted we don’t know the extent C02 acts as a forcer, you have admitted we don’t know the extent solar activity influences climate. You have admitted we don’t know what caused the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Ages. You have admitted we don’t know how much human activity may be responsible for the warming.
So, why do you reflexively respond to me when I say exactly the same thing by claiming “science” has all the answers??
How do you rationalise these reflexive rejections of the uncertainty on the one hand with your own acknowledgement of the uncertainty on the other? It’s as if you have been so trained to see uncertainty as an enemy that you have to reject it – even when you also know it’s true!
“I’m very puzzled. In previous comments you have admitted there are huge levels of uncertainty about how the climate works.”
You’re puzzled because you don’t pay attention (to me OR to the science. Proof of that is in this statement: “Given that C02 is only 400ppm and methane is 1800ppm the idea that C02 is the most potent greenhouse gas is counter-intutive and needs to be established pretty firmly.” Such BASIC errors – which you then try to laugh off by introducing other ones – mean that you’re not interested in the science, only in how you can weave together an “argument” to appear contrarian): I said that there are uncertainties about the RANGE of change that is predicted, but that the DIRECTION and overall TREND of these changes holds across the board (and is actually what we see). Each of the scenarios has a probability estimate attached to it, but that continued warming per se will happen is a near certainty. If anything, the models have been too OPTIMISTIC in that they have underestimated the rate of change.
“You have admitted we don’t know the extent C02 acts as a forcer, you have admitted we don’t know the extent solar activity influences climate.”
You keep using the slimy evasion of “know”. Do you mean in the sense of absolute certainty? Well, tough, you’re not going to get that. Science rarely delivers absolute certainty about anything. Otherwise, what DO you mean? Again, the rate of change has been alarming, and has been UNDER-estimated by the models. This actually lends them credence, because the modelers bent over backwards to make whatever predictions the models would make on the conservative side – but you take this discrepancy as “proof” that the models “don’t work”!
“You have admitted we don’t know what caused the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Ages.”
I said no such thing, because I didn’t even talk about these phenomena.
MLS responds to Sorry Not Buying It
I did apologise for writing 1.800 as 1800. I don’t remember any other errors being pointed out to me, but I can be a bit vague, so if I’ve forgotten I apologise for those too. I THINK the underlying point is correct though. Water vapour is by far the most potent greenhouse gas.
I am extremely interested in science. In fact I am FASCINATED by science and would much rather talk about science than insult my opponents for daring to take a different view.
Shall we both agree to do that? Talk science and avoid ad hominem?
I am preeety sure that’s not what you were saying elsewhere, but, as I said, I can be vague, so apologies if I have misremembered.
But if that is what you said – what did you mean? Specifically, what does “the DIRECTION and overall TREND of these changes holds across the board” mean in relation to our discussion of the current warming?
My initial response to this as a scientist is to ask you how you can possibly make such a claim absent any clear proof for a) what is causing the warming and b) how the earth’s numerous systems will respond to the warming.
You have made this assertion before. What models are you referring to? I can’t evaluate this claim unless you provide some source for the relevant models and their predictions.
Are you saying there are alarmist models from 20 years ago that predicted less warming than we have experienced?
Well, agreed, absolute certainty is unobtainable, but we generally require a pretty high degree of certainty before we accept a theory or a law. Most currently accepted scientific precepts have been established by repeated observations and survived numerous efforts at refutation, as per the scientific method. They have earned their right to be regarded as theories or laws. Manmade global warming has not acquired that degree of evidence. It’s merely a hypothesis. It’s one I happen to support, but I don’t pretend it’s anything more than that.
It’s very worrying to see the proper scientific method overturned in favour of hysteria and McCarthy witch hunts of scientists who are merely trying to assert proper standards of scientific objectivity. This is NOT science but politics. The lay population has been rallied into supporting sloppy science and our nonsensically inflated claims for reasons I have yet to understand.
And they have been told to regard any scientist who tries to maintain the proper methods as some sort of evil-doer. This is Luddism masquerading an environmentalism. No good will come of it.
Again, you need to source this remarkable claim.
Not only do I not do that, but I have no idea what models you can possibly be referring to. Please tell me about this research.
My mistake. I was sure you admitted we don’t know the cause of these events. I must have been wrong.
But do I understand from your reply that you think we DO know why the MWP and LIA happened?
“I did apologise for writing 1.800 as 1800.”
Please don’t insult everyone’s intelligence. Here’s what you actually wrote:
“Given that C02 is only 400ppm and methane is 1800ppm the idea that C02 is the most potent greenhouse gas is counter-intutive and needs to be established pretty firmly.”
That wasn’t a typo, but an instance of ignorance on your part. Why are you now trying to brush it off as a typo, as though you could substitute 1800ppm with 1.800ppm and still maintain the meaning of that sentence? Here, let’s try it:
“Given that C02 is only 400ppm and methane is 1.800ppm the idea that C02 is the most potent greenhouse gas is counter-intutive and needs to be established pretty firmly. ”
See how that doesn’t make sense? Therefore, you’re lying.
” I THINK the underlying point is correct though. Water vapour is by far the most potent greenhouse gas.”
Except that it’s reliant upon an already existing temperature change to get it going. CO2 and methane can be emitted without there being an already existing temperature change; water vapor takes place as a RESULT of temperature change.
“Specifically, what does “the DIRECTION and overall TREND of these changes holds across the board” mean in relation to our discussion of the current warming?”
That the planet is indeed warming up, that this is manifested in a long-term trend, and that this trend has been predicted to keep going (which it has).
“Are you saying there are alarmist models from 20 years ago that predicted less warming than we have experienced?”
Well, yes, and you’d know that if you paid any attention to news reports about new findings that surprise even climate scientists.
“Manmade global warming has not acquired that degree of evidence. It’s merely a hypothesis. It’s one I happen to support, but I don’t pretend it’s anything more than that.”
You “support” it? Get real. You’ve provided nothing but denialist tropes, AGAINST this “mere hypothesis”. How does that add up to “support”?
We know that CO2 is a greenhouse gas (this has been known for many decades), a conclusion derived from both basic thermodynamics and chemistry AND from actual experiments; we KNOW that humans have been pumping enormous quantities of CO2 into the atmosphere for decades; we KNOW that the Earth’s geochemical cycles can’t absorb all the excess carbon that civilization has been emitting; we KNOW that this excess carbon is due to human-related emissions, as shown by the carbon isotopic fractionation; we KNOW that when we measure the amount of carbon and calculate its radiative content, that it constitutes a huge amount of energy retained in the system; we KNOW that the Earth has, overall, been heating up for the past decades in the midst of this increase in CO2 and that this is completely outside of human historical ranges and is completely inconsistent with natural records dating back half a million years. So putting all these pieces together, you still want to PRETEND that there are no clear, excellent reasons for saying that, yes, humans are indeed almost certainly responsible for the patterns we’re seeing today. You still want to PRETEND that science works by providing a single “proof” for something, rather than asking whether pieces of evidence from disparate phenomena convergently point to the same thing (by your logic, evolution is merely a “hypothesis” rather than a well attested natural process because “no one has seen” birds evolve from dinosaurs). Sorry, I just don’t have that much FAITH in the virtues of ignoring the scientific method.
“This is NOT science but politics.”
Politics is EXACTLY what you’re partaking in.
“And they have been told to regard any scientist who tries to maintain the proper methods as some sort of evil-doer. This is Luddism masquerading an environmentalism. No good will come of it.”
This is pure caricatured garbage. The “Luddism”, if anything, is on your end, given your very weak grasp of the basics of the scientific method. Only someone afflicted with a sophomoric conception of science as something that provides singular “proofs” for phenomena could ignore that theories are built upon the convergence of evidence and indirect inferences made from said evidence. Please, tell me how much “certainty” would be enough for you, and how we could possibly get to it. Because nothing within the scientific method that you pay lip service to would suffice for that.
“Again, you need to source this remarkable claim.”
I presume you don’t read the news and therefore never read climate scientists being quoted. Not my fault.
“But do I understand from your reply that you think we DO know why the MWP and LIA happened?”
No. I haven’t looked sufficiently into these to comment.
Yes it really is a stupid sentence. I don’t know what else to say. I do know the composition of the atmosphere though, and my real point was the percentage of water vapour which I managed to omit altogether.
Friend, I have been more than courteous about your many and baffling science gaffs, and I’ve declined to respond in kind to your rudeness. But if you want to continue talking to me please stop insulting me and focus on the far more interesting topic of climate change.
Unless of course you find insults easier than science?
I’m afraid what you call “denialist tropes” is just the real state of the real science. It’s complex and NOT settled. There is good evidence for C02 as a climate forcer, but none of that evidence has been tested in a real world setting, so we can’t know for sure how the experimental observations translate into actual observation. The actions of other atmospheric gasses, the potnetial leaching of Co2, the actions of water-vapor and the impact of such small concentrations of C02 in such a complex system are all unknowns.
So it would be erroneous for me to say “Co2 is a major climate forcer”, but quite true for me to say “C02 may be a major climate forcer. and I am inclined to think it will be shown to be in the future.” However it’s also entirely possible I may be wrong.
Many scientists who are basically of warmist persuasions object to the manner in which science has been dumbed down and oversimplified. No one benefits from this. The evidence doesn’t support certitude. And people should not be persecuted for reminding their colleagues of that.
Well, it’s not quite that simple. There are those who derived differing results from experiments over the centuries, and there are climate scientists today who maintain C02 is not a major greenhouse gas. They may be in a minority, but we can’t forget that in the past minority views have turned out to be correct. Science isn’t a democracy, and shouldn’t be.
I personally agree that there is good evidence for C02 as a greenhouse gas. I just object, both ethically and scientifically, to those who hold a different view being discounted and derided like 16th century heretics. These guys likely know more about the science than most of the people denigrating them. It’s disgraceful.
But there is another aspect also. Simply because C02 has behaved as a greenhouse agent in laboratory experiments doesn’t mean it will do so in he real world to the same extent. And no, this isn’t just “denier” quibbling. It’s a very valid scientific point. The history of science is full of laboratory observations disproved by real world application.
Yes we do.Though of course the amounts in terms of percentages of the whole atmosphere are very small. 400 parts per million. With such tiny fractions it’s very hard to offer certitude.
No, we don’t. It’s theorised, but not known. One of the major problems many scientists have with the presentation of this issue in the media is the way in which no distinction is made between shades of certainty. The things we do know for sure ( eg – there’s more C02 in the atmosphere/ it’s getting warmer) are presented alongside things we only assume or theorise about (eg – the rate of decay/absorption of C02 in the earth’s systems, or the positive feedback loop associated with methane and water vapour), and NO attempt is made to distinguish between them. The cumulative effect of this is highly misleading.
We don’t know it. We infer it from experimentation. I think it’s a reasonable deduction. It’s not a certain fact.
You will have to explain what you mean by this. I can’t translate this sentence into terms that mean anything to me. But do remember carbon is an extremely common element, and it has ben present in the atmosphere in times past at hugely greater concentrations than now with no observable ill-effects. It’s not plutonium or mercury. It’s not a poison. It’s the stuff of life. The mere fact of it being in our atmosphere in increased amounts is not – per se – a problem. if we think it may be doing something dangerous we need to establish this with observation.
It would be more true to say we have evidence the earth has been heating up for about the last 100 years, if not slightly longer.
But this is where things become particularly complicated and have been particularly over-simplified by the layman press. We need to look at the current warming in the perspective of a world that has been continually warming and cooling since time began. In times long past the temps were often much MUCH higher than now, in more recent times (the last few million years) we’ve had a fairly long cooler period, interspersed with glaciations.
And within these long cycles we can see shorter cycles of warming and cooling. The most recent of these were the Medieval Warm Period, and the Little Ice Age.
In the MWP temps were potentially warmer on average than now in most f Europe. in the LIA they were much colder.
The MWP ended around the 13th century and temps cycled rapidly downward for the next few hundred years. . The LIA saw ice fairs being held on the frozen Thames well into the 17th C, before temps began to cycle up again around about the turn of the 19th Century.
Some climate scientists believe the current warming is simply a continuation of the thaw following the LIA. Others think this is probably true, but may be augmented by the increasing C02. Others are convinced natural cycles have nothing to do with the current warming. The fragmentary evidence we have is capable of many interpretations.
That’s a more accurate – if less brief – summary of what we know about the current warming.
No, we don’t know that. There is no data available to draw such sweeping conclusions, and even those scientists who suggest it as a theory would hesitate to say we “know” it.This is yet another example of the media exaggerating and simplifying the complex debates within the discipline.
Some studies claim to show the MWP to have been warmer than now. There’s anecdotal evidence in the records of a sudden and catastrophic tumbling of temps in the high Middle Ages as the MWP gave way to the LIA. Further back in prehistory we simply do not have enough data to establish how quickly the climate cycled through its changes. We can only see the broadest of changes over eons. But those changes involved warming and cooling of many times greater magnitude of anything humanity has witnessed recently.
One thing we know is that climate is always changing.
This does not rule out manmade C02 as a forcer, and does not rule out the possibility of extreme warming as a result. But that possibility can only be assessed within a realistic understanding of the climate’s known and still unknown cycles.
Well, I hope I’ve helped you to see that you had a very incomplete and oversimplified reading of climate history, and that the complexities and uncertainties are real, and not a chimera dreamed up by wild-eyed deniers.
No, evolution is a Theory – viz it has a large amount of data to support it, but not enough certitude or simplicity to be confirmed as a Law.
And no, ye gods, I’m not a creationist, I am merely telling you how science actually works.
I see – so why do you ignore it quite as persistently as you do?
You do enjoy the word “sophomoric” don’t you. But I am getting just a little bit tired of these abusive riffs. Why don’t we employ the scientific method you endorse so enthusiastically and talk about – science, not my personal failings as a human being.
I will gladly tell you that. I will consider CAGW or AGW to be a Theory and therefore broadly true when it has robustly been confirmed by repeat predictions, been proof against falsification and continue to fit the data better and more consistently than any other competing hypothesis.
In other words, when it conforms to the definition of a theory defined by the….oh, what is that phrase…?
Oh yes – the scientific method.
No. I don’t. I read scientific journals, peer-reviewed papers and books to get information on climate change. Because the climate science presented in the MSM is oversimplified and often dishonest hackery, written to communicate tropes and memes to people with no discernible scientific literacy.
Ah I see. I suggest you do. And try to read a bit more widely than the Guardian for you science fix. There’s a lot more data and a lot less dumbed down fear porn if you go to the actual literature.
[edited by Admin for typo at request of author]
You talk a lot about the scientific method and how you read peer reviewed papers to avoid the oversimplifications of the media; you also accuse me of “scientific gaffs”; but then you say stuff like this that makes me not take you seriously at all:
“Though of course the amounts in terms of percentages of the whole atmosphere are very small. 400 parts per million. With such tiny fractions it’s very hard to offer certitude.”
As you should know by now, it isn’t the concentration that is important, but the total MASS of carbon in the atmosphere. We’re talking many billions of tonnes. The majority of the atmosphere is nitrogen. You’re offering – sorry to use these word again, but they’re entirely appropriate here – sophomoric, denialist tropes that rest on personally incredulity (“I can’t IMAGINE how such small concentrations could add up to such a large effect. Therefore, they likely don’t.”
You also keep talking about “certitude”; then you switch to “the scientific method”, which ISN’T about certitude but the cumulative convergence of evidence and whether it points in one direction or another. You talk about AGW being a mere “hypothesis”, then later you mention “theory” (in the context of evolution) as opposed to “law” – yet earlier you said that there are indeed compelling reasons for CO2 as an important radiative forcer/greenhouse gas, which one would think would at least bump AGW to the level of theory instead of mere hypothesis.
MLS is entirely correct that we (scientists) cannot say anything with certainty about the causes of variations in weather and climate. The 1995 edition of The New York Public Library Science Desk Reference has this to say about “Global Warming”:
“There is no real consensus concerning the increase in global temperatures. Some studies have show that the world’s average temperature has risen by 0.5 degrees C since 1600. Other studies have noted a 0.3 degrees C rise in mean surface air temperatures in the past 100 years. It is unknown [em] whether the rise is part of the Earth’s natural climate cycle or a result of the greenhouse gases from human activity.
Solid evidence for greenhouse warming has not yet been found, though there is agreement that atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide is increasing. But warming is difficult to determine: Natural fluctuations in local climate, and even the world climate, are common, and climate conditions have been recorded for only a short period when compared to the millions of years the world’s climate has existed. Though researchers are using supercomputers to examine the global climate, the number of variables needed to determine a general circulation model of the Earth’s atmosphere is enormous” [blockquote].
This is only to restate what has been said innumerable times in this thread and by the very many scientists who have been courageous enough to challenge the myth of human-caused climate change.
I’m afraid that your information on the Global Warming Petition Project (GWPP) is wrong. The number is repeatedly often because it supposedly counters the actual overwhelming consensus based on 200 years of theory and mountains of data that industrial climate disruption (my preferred term for AGW) is real. And contrary to what you believe, 31,487 is actually a “few” people when you compare it to the number of people who meet the GWPP organizers’ absurdly broad criteria.
First, just having a Bachelor’s of Science (or higher) degree doesn’t make one a scientist. Having a degree, working in a scientific field, getting your climate science published in journals, etc. – that’s what makes someone a scientist. The GWPP is a list of doctors, engineers, veterinarians, and other mostly non-scientists who are not climate experts. The number of actual climate experts is probably less than 200.
After all, would you expect an mechanical engineer to know how to place a dental implant in someone’s jaw, or an oral surgeon to know how to design a suspension bridge? Of course not. So you shouldn’t expect all these non-experts to have informed opinions on climate science either.
Second, even if you accept the GWPP’s obviously absurd criteria for a scientist/climate expert, the GWPP’s signers represent 0.25% of the people who could have signed the petition (as compared to graduation data collected by the US Department of Education since 1970). That’s a tiny minority. If you compare the number of signatures to the number of people working in the GWPP’s chosen occupations, the signers represent 0.44%, still a tiny minority (as compared to Bureau of Labor Statistics data for 2013). And the minorities remain small when you compare the signatures by category to the US membership of professional organizations like the American Meteorological Society, the American Geophysical Union, the American Physical Society, the American Chemical Society, and the Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engineers. (source: http://scholarsandrogues.com/tag/gwpp-bls-doed2015/)
However you look at it, the claim that the Global Warming Petition Project somehow disproves the overwhelming scientific consensus on the causes of global warming is false.
thanks for a very useful comment and also the link you provided.
But as a scientist I’m appalled at the use of consensus in place of data. Science doesn’t measure a theory by how many scientists believe it, Science is about data not belief.
The data is what it is. And it’s ambiguous. Which is why there are so many shades of opinion.
And look at the wording of so many of the “consensus” statements. carefully worded to try and wring agreement from those who don’t agree!
One scientists will sign a statement claiming a “significant” human impact on global warming because he feels sure his models demonstrate CAGW is a high probability.
Another will sign the same statement because he thinks the evidence is good enough to show a reasonable likelihood of CAGW
Another will sign the statement because – while he doesn’t accept the CAGW theory – he still thinks human impact on climate i likely to be large enough for further study and exploration.
Yet another will sign it simply because he thinks the situation calls for a benefit of doubt.
The appearance of “consensus” is achieved by making the wording as vague as possible so that many different shades of opinion can find it acceptable. The “consensus” masks as much disagreement as it demonstrates agreement. In that sense it is pure politics, not science.
MoriaritysLeftSock, consensus has a place in science. It always will, and it should. We don’t have to re-prove the existence of gravity or the wave nature of light before we calculate trajectories of propelled objects or how much a He-Ne laser beam will diffract when it hits a knife edge. There is so much data underlying those positions that they’re accepted as fact.
And that’s ultimately what a scientific consensus is – a consensus of opinion based on the mass of underlying data. And at this point, the data is truly overwhelmingly in favor of the reality of industrial climate disruption (my preferred term). I’ve been studying and writing about climate for over a decade, including replicating some of the key papers on my own when something about the math pegged my bullshit detector, and everything I’ve studied says that climate is changing, that greenhouse gases are the culprit, and that the changes will be disruptive to human society and global ecology.
A great paper that talks about the evolution of scientific consensus and how science about once controversial topics proceeds is Shwed and Bearman, “The Temporal Structure of Scientific Consensus Formation.” Based on what they found, there’s been a consensus on the existence and causes of climate disruption since the early 1990s.
As for the vaguesness of the questions, that issue has been addressed indirectly by the fact that there have been something like 8-10 unique and independent attempts to assess the consensus of scientific opinion regarding the causes of industrial climate disruption. Each of them used differing methodologies and the measured consensus was as low as about 90% and as high as fractionally below 100%, with the mean being about 97% (IIRC). That’s replication, and it’s the gold standard in science. Most scientific questions are lucky to have one, maybe two attempts at replication performed – this question has been replicated over and over and over again.
1) Observation by repeat experiments that establish a given law or theory is NOT the same as “science by consensus.” We all know that 2+2=4. But this is not a “consensus”. We haven’t all agreed to believe this. We all know it, because it is demonstrated to be a fact. Newton’s Laws of thermodynamics can be confirmed by observation. We haven’t just all got together and agreed they’re probably true! Numbers of scientists who believe something is not evidence for it being true. Period.
2) This claim of “overwhelming “ evidence is so often made, and always in abstract. The “overwhelming” evidence is never detailed or defined or sourced. Where is the overwhelming evidence? Where is the research that removes all the numerous ambiguities that were still there last time i checked? Where’s the data on forcing, which proves the current warming is not associated with solar activity? Where’s the data that refutes the possibility c02 increases as a response to warming and not as agent of warming? Where’s the data on past non-anthropogenic climate cycles which shows this current warming is not simply a part of these cycles?
Of course the climate is changing. But where is the proof it has anything to do with human activity?
I wholly support the hypothesis of man’s affect on climate. There’s reasonable evidence, if largely inferential evidence for this. But I deplore the anti-science and media trolling that tries to make this plausible hypothesis into a certainty.
If you’re genuinely a scientist you must know it is a falsehood to claim anything about AGW is accepted as “fact”. Shame on you for saying that.
First, I’m not a scientist. I’m an electrical engineer who works in aerospace. But I have a masters degree in optics and communications, which combined to give me a decent background in stuff like the physics of IR absorption by the atmosphere and enough statistics (albeit rusty at this point) that I can follow most statistics in climate papers. I will not claim to be an expert, however.
We can say 2+2=4 is a fact because that’s math, and 100% certainty with positive proofs are possible in mathematics. But we can’t say that the Laws of Thermodynamics are “facts.” They’re scientific laws, which are merely theories that have been tested thoroughly and found to always be predictive and reproducible under the specific conditions they apply to. But they’re still subject to revision if we learn something new. That happened with Newton’s Laws of Motion when Einstein came along and proposed relativity.
But yes, actually, scientists have largely agreed that the Laws of Thermodynamics are probably true. We don’t bother to test them any more except under extremely weird circumstances precisely because they’ve been right so many times. Based on the data, scientists have agreed that the Laws of Thermodynamics are “true.” That decision is a consensus, based on the data. The same kind of consensus has formed, although not anywhere near as strong as the consensus of the “truth” of thermodynamics, about industrial climate disruption.
You asked for evidence, so here you go:
Modern warming cannot be due to solar heating because the sun would be heating the stratosphere more than it would be heating the troposphere. The exact opposite pattern is observed (tropospheric heating with stratospheric cooling), which just happens to match the expected pattern for greenhouse gases.
Carbon dioxide is an IR absorbing gas because of its atomic structure (IR photons are absorbed and converted into phonons, or quanta of vibration). This means that adding a LOT more CO2 to the air MUST make it more opaque to IR. This has been observed both satellites and ground stations.
We know the CO2 in the air is increasing (a la the Keeling Curve), and by measuring the change in isotopic ratio (C12 vs C13), we know that the change MUST be coming from a source that is or was alive. There isn’t enough change in terrestrial biomass to produce the observed increase, and we know it’s not coming from the ocean (the other possible source besides burning fossil fuels) because the amount of dissolved CO2 in seawater is increasing (ocean acidification, or, if you prefer, a reduction in ocean alkalinity).
We have measured a corresponding drop in global oxygen that corresponds with the increase in CO2, which means that the source of the CO2 is burning fossil fuels. And it doesn’t hurt that we know pretty well how much oil, coal, and natural gas is burned every year, and we can directly calculate how much CO2 all that combustion creates. All that CO2 has to go somewhere by conservation of matter, and it’s been tracked – it’s mostly going into the ocean, some is going into greening the biosphere, a tiny bit is reacting with rocks, and the rest is hanging around and pushing up the Keeling Curve.
As for prior cycles, astronomers know where we are in the Milankovic cycles, and based on those we should be cooling down to another ice age right now. But that’s not happening.
The fact that climate is changing is irrefutable. The fact that it is due to greenhouse gases is due to the IR properties of those greenhouse gases (which have been observed and are well understood according to quantum mechanics). The only greenhouse gas that is strong enough, resides in the atmosphere long enough, and exists in high enough concentrations in the atmosphere today to produce the observed effects is CO2.
There are literally no other alternatives that have any credibility at all. Every alternative hypothesis to AGW has been falsified. Every. Single. One. So even if you don’t think that the evidence I mentioned above is enough, the fact remains that industrial climate disruption is the only theory that fits all the data. And as Sherlock Holmes once said, “Once you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.” Industrial climate disruption is that truth.
Oh please. If only we knew enough to make such pronouncements. The climate is a coupled nonlinear chaotic system remember. Even if we had 2,000 years of good observation data we could not make specific statements such as this. Ask any climate scientist to put his reputation behind that claim. They won’t.
The evidence for a correlation between sunspot activity and global climate is very good. The precise way these variations interact with other variations, such as the accumulation of greenhouse gases is an ongoing exploration, and some interesting work is being produced
http://www.pas.rochester.edu/%7Edouglass/papers/PLA_Sun_II_in_press.pdf
Anyone who tells you we “know” anything much as yet is a liar or a fool.
Indeed, it’s consistent. But that’s all it is. It’s a very small window of observation of a chaotic system which responds in long and short cycle to pressures and forcings we are only beginning to comprehend, and many of which we still have no idea about. It’s not possible to offer any more than conditional observations at this time
As an engineer you must know you can’t quantify the effect of one force on a complex system unless or until you know all the other forces in operation. We DON’T KNOW THAT YET. So we can only best guess the impact of increased Co2. We can’t know anything .
[Since I’m not disputing the increase of C02 I won’t bother responding to your points about that].
Yes it is.
Again you are making HUGE leaps of assumption based on the idea we know far more about the climate than we actually do. I blame popular science blogs and the media for this widespread misapprehension. Their simplistic summaries of “global warming” have made everyone believe the climate is pretty much figured out, and only Big Oil scientists are claiming uncertainty. Absolute nonsense. Look at the IPCC reports. You’ll find very few claims of certitude there. Non-scientists don’t seem to understand the difference between a probability and a certainty, or that even a high confidence prediction on very limited data is still little more than a guess.
This is what you get from reading popular science blogs. Brian – even the IPCC does not claim anything like the degree of certitude you seem to think is being stated . It’s position is cited here:
“It is extremely likely [95 percent confidence] more than half of the observed increase in global average surface temperature from 1951 to 2010 was caused by the anthropogenic increase in greenhouse gas concentrations and other anthropogenic forcings together.”
“Extremely likely that more than half”, is a long way from “every alternative hypothesis to AGW has been falsified” isn’t it. In fact the IPCC is accepting that an unknown amount of the current warming could be, or even probably is, due to those “alternative hypotheses” you claim are impossible.
You see the disconnect between the popular idea of climate science and the reality expressed by the IPCC? This is the problem we all live with.
Simple response: there is no “overwhelming scientific consensus on the causes of global warming”. The incessant repetition of a lie does not make it a truth, despite what Goebbels said. There has been no global warming since about 1998. The “hockey stick” was pure invention – in real terms a blatant fraud. Satellite data (the most reliable) contradict both weather station data and computer models (the GIGO phenomenon). The ‘great climate change lie’ is sustained by dishonest scientists and governments and others i.e. by those who stand to gain financially or otherwise from it.
Paul, you’re wrong. Flat. Out. Wrong.
First, the hockey stick is present in pretty much all the data that exists – boreholes, stalagmites, ice cores, as well as tree rings. And multiple independent reconstructions, using improved statistics, all show the same thing – the hockey stick is not an artifact of the analysis method, but is embedded in the data itself. As for whether it was a “fraud,” Penn State and the National Science Foundation both investigated those claims after Climategate and both found that claims of fraud were unsubstantiated.
Second, satellite data does have greater geographic coverage than surface stations, but most satellite experts disagree that it’s the most reliable. Microwave sounding units used to indirectly measure the temperature of the atmosphere at various altitudes are subject to far more sources of error and bias than surface stations are, and so satellite data is inherently less accurate. The fact that the data sets of RSS and UAH are both based on the exact same raw data and yet have often shown opposite atmospheric trends (which UAH has had to adjust more to match RSS than the other way around – and RSS shows warming) should make you immediately distrust anyone who claims that satellite data is “better.”
And third, if you have to resort to conspiracy theories to make your point, you’ve already lost.
The hockey stick is most definitely NOT present across the board. It was a blatant and quasi-fraudulent contrivance by Mann et al, the product of poor methodology and conflating data from different sources. Not only did it controversially omit both the MWP and the LIA, but it used flawed programming that produced hockey stick-shaped spikes even from random data. It’s no longer used as a reference in serious studies.
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/403256/global-warming-bombshell/
MLS, you are also incorrect about the hockey stick. Even if the original methodology was fatally flawed (and it wasn’t, regardless of what you and others might think), the hockey stick has been replicated using alternative and improved methodologies, additional proxies, and on and on and on. But so you don’t have to take my word for it, here’s links for you:
Boreholes
Huang et al 2008 (look at Figure 2, specifically the spike at the 0 years BP end of the figure) http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2008GL034187/full
Pollack and Smerden 2003: http://ocp.ldeo.columbia.edu/res/div/ocp/pub/smerdon/Pollack_and_Smerdon_Journal.pdf
Stalagmites
Smith 2006: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/joc.1329/pdf
Ice cores
Oerlemans et al 2005: http://spordakost.jorfi.is/data/fraedigreinar/Oerlemans_2005_science.pdf
Shrubs
Weijers et al 2013: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Stef_Weijers/publication/235341966_Reconstructing_High_Arctic_growing_season_intensity_from_shoot_length_growth_of_a_dwarf_shrub/links/54a7ea3b0cf267bdb90b2ddf.pdf
Alternative methodologies
Barboza et al 2014: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1403.3260.pdf
Marcott et al 2013: https://www2.bc.edu/jeremy-shakun/Marcott%20et%20al.,%202013,%20Science.pdf
Ljungqvist et al 2012: http://www.clim-past.net/8/227/2012/cp-8-227-2012.pdf
Kaufman et al 2009: http://denverclimatestudygroup.com/OTHER-MISC/ArcticCoolingScience200909041236.pdf
The hockey stick is in the data.
WTF Brian?
NONE of those links express any support for the Mann et al (1999) Hockey Stick.
NONE.
Your first link specifically references the “controversy” of Mann et al (1999) IN ORDER TO DISTANCE ITSELF FROM IT. The graphs in this link are NOT Hockey Sticks specifically because they include the MWP and LIA which Mann et al ignored.
Your second link DOES NOT REFERENCE THE HOCKEY STICK (Mann et al 1999) AT ALL. It does not even cover the same period as that covered by the Hockey Stick. Why did you link to it?
Your third link only briefly mentions the Hockey Stick (Mann et all 1999), and again it draws attention to the fact it was anomalous due to its removal of the MWP and LIA. NONE OF THE GRAPHS AT THIS LINK PORTRAY HOCKEY STICKS.
Your fourth link has NO REFERENCE TO THE HOCKEY STICK AT ALL, and (again) its graphs do not portray hockey sticks, nor do they cover the same time period covered by the Hockey Stick. Again – why did you link to it, since it does not support your contention?
Your fifth link has NO REFERENCE TO THE HOCKEY STICK AT ALL, and (again) its graphs do not portray hockey sticks, nor do they cover the same time period covered by the Hockey Stick. Are we seeing a pattern here?
Your sixth link does at least contain one graph that superficially resembles the Hockey Stick, though it is not Mann et al (1999) and does not reference it. The resemblance is derived from the fact this figure also eschews the MWP and LIA, which is still a contentious and debatable thing to do.
Your seventh link can’t be opened.
Your eighth and last link – again – DOES NOT CONTAIN ANY REFERENCE TO THE HOCKEY STICK AND NONE OF ITS GRAPHS PORTRAY HOCKEY STICKS.
Why have you spammed all these links in “support” of your claim when none of them support your claim at all?
Are you so uninformed about the science that you don’t understand what you are linking to?
Or are you cynically assuming no one will follow your links and hoping you will seem to have proved your claim when actually you’ve shown your claim to be false.
You’ve shown Mann et al (1999) IS discredited and is no longer in use!
Did you just get “busted,” Brian? 7 out of 8 times? 7 out of 8 times only because one link failed? And then who would bother following up that failed reference after your previous 7? Unless MLS is the one who purposely misrepresenting your sources. When I have the time, I’ll have a look, too.
Not very good for your “integrity” as a poster of comments if nothing you linked to “proves” what you clearly contended they support, i.e., that contrivance by Mann et al known as the hockey stick.
Excusable if you don’t understand what you are linking to. But it’s called “lying” if you do.
So which is it, Brian? Tell me before I have a look for myself.
Thanks for the links, I investigated all but one of them, which does not work. I recognized several of them and had them already downloaded, but then my laptop crashed and I did not have Word backed up. Lost the lot. Here are the ones that linked:
3 Science 325, 1236 (2009); Darrell S. Kaufman, et al. Cooling Recent Warming Reverses Long-Term Arctic
Clim. Past, 8, 227–249, 2012 http://www.clim-past.net/8/227/2012/ doi:10.5194/cp-8-227-2012 © Author(s) 2012. CC Attribution 3.0 License. Climate of the Past Northern Hemisphere temperature patterns in the last 12 centuries
The Annals of Applied Statistics 2014, Vol. 8, No. 4, 1966–2001 DOI: 10.1214/14-AOAS785 c Institute of Mathematical Statistics, 2014 RECONSTRUCTING PAST TEMPERATURES FROM NATURAL PROXIES AND ESTIMATED CLIMATE FORCINGS USING SHORT- AND LONG-MEMORY MODELS By Luis Barboza∗,1 , Bo Li†,2 , Martin P. Tingley‡,§,3 and Frederi G. Viens¶,4 Universidad de Costa Rica∗ , University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign† , Pennsylvania State University‡ , Harvard University§ and Purdue University¶
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF CLIMATOLOGY Int. J. Climatol. 26: 1417–1424 (2006) Published online 3 May 2006 in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com) DOI: 10.1002/joc.1329 SHORT COMMUNICATION RECONSTRUCTING HEMISPHERIC-SCALE CLIMATES FROM MULTIPLE STALAGMITE RECORDS
Borehole climate reconstructions: Spatial structure and hemispheric averages Henry N. Pollack and Jason E. Smerdon
Explore this journal >
Previous article in issue: Quantification of subsurface heat storage in a GCM simulation
Next article in issue: Interannual memory effects for spring NDVI in semi-arid South Africa
View issue TOC
Volume 35, Issue 13
July 2008
Climate
A late Quaternary climate reconstruction based on borehole heat flux data, borehole temperature data, and the instrumental record
Authors
S. P. Huang, H. N. Pollack, P.-Y. Shen First published: 4 July 2008Full publication history DOI: 10.1029/2008GL034187View/save citation
Cited by: 10 articles
Citation tools
None of his links support his claim. I took the trouble to explore them all.
His claim the hockey stick is still valid is not sustainable, because it has been abandoned by all serious climate scientists after the faulty maths was exposed.
I don’t say this as an opponent of AGW. I”m NOT, as I apparently have to keep repeating, an opponent of AGW. I’m an opponent of bad science and bogus claims.
It’s so frustrating to read non-scientists who can’t tell the difference between good science and snake oil airily claim that anyone who questions any part of the AGW mythos – even those parts that are now officially rejected by all sides – are peddling nonsense.
The nonsense in this case is the claim the Hockey Stick is still regarded as valid. It patently and demonstrably is NOT, and that much is proved by reading Brian’s own links!
BTW why did you post that garbled extract of nothing much? Most confusing and unhelpful.
I “liked” your comment, for reasons I have already given in an earlier comment. I don’t think you’ll get anywhere with “facts” and “truths” with certain people on this subject, it would appear that lies and misrepresentations have replaced honest responses to genuine queries, but I wish you luck. The problem, as you have pointed out, is that much of the strategy these days in denying the man made GW theory is the promulgating of generalizations based on one aspect only and even within this deceit, there are the “omissions” either deliberate or just not taken into account, even though no correlation is possible on such threadbare argument. but it does win grants and attract prestige if it sits on the right side of the fence. I know this because I have been obliged to point out the egregious nature of such research, based entirely on refuting only one element of the whole, which in most cases, actually fails to do, but the resultant claims of the “hail the victorious” brigade, usually drown out any true and well (as in honest) founded scientific facts. The real muddy reality of the 97.4% “meme” as Sapere Aude likes to refer to it as, is indeed muddy, just not quite in the one sided way he portrays it.
As I said. Good Luck.
Forgive me but you seem stuck in a version of reality that is now about twenty years out of date. I have friends on both sides of this debate. And I know who gets the big bucks and the TV exposure. It really isn’t any longer the denialists.
There is far more money to be made in conducting a study that promotes climate alarmism than in promoting climate “denialism”. This is a simple fact. I don’t suggest this should not be the case, I happen to support the general hypothesis of AGW, and the alarmist interpretations of feedback need to be explored. But it’s simply untrue that alarmism is a poor, underfunded and overlooked discipline. On the contrary it’s worth millions of dollars in grant funds and attracts some of the most prestigious sponsors.
If you want to feel overlooked, try getting a mainstream media station in Europe to fund or even air a program that questions any part of the alarmist narrative!
And do please try to get beyond the idea this is a bogus debate with idiots and shills one one side and heroes on the other. It’s silly and frankly insulting to the many good people who work in this area.
MLS: “And do please try to get beyond the idea this is a bogus debate with idiot an shills one one side and heroes on the other. It;s silly and frankly insulting to the many good people who work in this area.”
I have already stated that several times had you been reading the comments and not entirely locked in your own argument. Your comment and insulting attack is rather redundant given your current investment in this debate.
I will repeat again what I made clear earlier, there are people on this site currently lying(or presenting argument without context) in order to promote their side of the argument and that makes a mockery of “debate”. The man made GW side may have delivered lies when they promoted their theory (Al Gore certainly misrepresented certain facts)but the deniers are no better when they do the same. If you can’t get your head around this simple truth then perhaps you have reason to be so defensive?
No-one benefits when trust is betrayed, because trust is earned and once lost, is difficult to recover again. I once would have battled long and hard to promote the man made global warming agenda, but the many deniers who felt betrayed by the lies, had good reason to close their ears to me only to follow the lies being perpetrated by the denialist camp. So the debate comes full circle until no-one is sure any more, which is lie and which is truth. If you don’t like the heat, then get out of the kitchen, but don’t do the high and mighty and act like a sanctimonious twit. Now we have proponents of the same side bitching and railing against each other, who needs enemies when we have friends like these? Get over yourself.
People lie. That isn’t an excuse for refusing to listen to both sides of a debate.
What lies are being spread on this forum? What truths do you see being concealed?
Let’s discuss the state of the data and not hide behind generalised arguments for failing to engage
I don’t buy this. Why are Polar ice caps melting in front of our eyes, extinction of species, soil erosion, sea levels rising, extreme weather events: bushfires, floods, etc… Yes we’ve always had floods and fire …
Maybe this will say it better than me. https://grist.org/series/skeptics/
New paper finds that Arctic sea ice is modulated by solar activity:
http://notrickszone.com/2017/03/02/new-paper-indicates-there-is-more-arctic-sea-ice-now-than-for-nearly-all-of-the-last-10000-years/
No it doesn’t-faked ‘pseudo-science’. So the OFFGuarian is now the On Daily Mail. Unbelievable!
My thanks to those who took the trouble to answer my earlier questions. I think the resulting conversations were helpful. I have a couple of new questions.
1) How do current temperatures compare to
a) the Medieval Warm Period (now renamed the “Medieval Climate Anomaly”)
b)the Little Ice Age
c) most of geological history (viz – are we currently above or be;ow average)
2) What caused the Medieval Warm Period
a) solar activity
b) increased CO2
c) we don’t know
3) Is the relation between climate fluctuation and CO2 levels
a) a good observation of correlation with some accompanying physics to suggest causation
b) a debatable observation of correlation with some debatable physics to suggest causation
c) completely proven to be causation
4) Is the relation between climate fluctuation and solar activity
a) a good observation of correlation with some accompanying physics to suggest causation
b) a debatable observation of correlation with some debatable physics to suggest causation
c) completely disproven to be causation.
5) is the theory that current warming will be catastrophic
a) a speculative theory based on speculative observation
b) a very well-supported theory based on accepted and observed natural systems
c) not a theory at all but a proven fact
6)What does “settled science” mean in this context?
a) catastrophic manmade global warming is a proven fact and proven facts in science don’t need to be debated any more.
b) catastrophic manmade global warming isn’t a proven fact but should be treated as one so we can take precautions just in case it does turn out to be true
c)just a way of presenting censorship of science as something scientific.
Well done MLS. Now we are entering the real debate, but be warned, there are very few absolutes in a science that can only be, at best, well intentioned and at it’s worst, deliberately misleading, but you are at least doing the right thing by asking questions. Although I choose to believe in the man made GW theory, it in itself can never prove beyond reasonable doubt that it is factually correct in it’s analysis and sometimes the answers leave you with even more questions. I know, I chased the subject matter down for many years and still am no closer to being able to state without reservation that the MMGW is beyond question the whole truth and nothing but. Keep asking questions – always.
Great series of questions, yet again.
And none can really be answered without some serious investigation of the scientific literature.
And I believe each question raises ‘contentious issues’ within various branches of specialization within the overall field of climatology and much else besides. To take but one of the issues you raise: climate fluctuation and solar activity, which cannot be sorted out without tapping the expertise of specialists in solar physics, astronomy, geology, paleontology, ecology, and the list goes on, and on. . .
To answer these questions, in my estimation, will require years of diligent research on my part, either that or access to someone with credentials or an experience equivalent to that of a Phd. in climate science, and who has done his or her best to dispassionately distill the mass of conflicting data from each of the relevant specialized fields of study down to a series of itemized probabilities corresponding to each of your questions.
You will have to wait a while for me to return with well considered answers for any one of your questions. On the other hand, I have a sense already that the overall science of climatology is only really beginning to get a sense of the daunting complexity of what it needs to know to be able to say, “we know.” I’ll leave it at that, and I’m copying and pasting your questions as a guide and reminder of where I might fruitfully direct my personal efforts to glean if only a very imperfect understanding of this sprawling subject that we call climate. Many thanks.
Seriously don’t like the way Admin & Catte interact with website, I’ve never come across it before. LOL even in their ijon70 got it right & I agree with them; “Sorry, I have neither time nor patience for dealing with crap. You either stick to “because facts should be sacred”, or publish provably false, completely unverified nonsense like the above. Can’t have the cake and eat it. I could spend hours dissecting every sentence of this bullshit and showing why it’s wrong, as I have done on occasions, but there comes a time when you just accept that someone is wrong on the Internet. It’s just that I don’t need to waste time reading stuff coming from a source that assumes the posture of moral superiority only then to prove that for the sake of stoking an argument it will sacrifice fundamental journalistic integrity.” and
“OK, that was a brief acquaintance — I started reading OffGuardian a few weeks ago because Syria, today I’m stopping reading it because the above crock of brown, smelly substance. I’m sorry, but these lies and distortions have all been extensively debunked, for a long time now. Do yourself a favour, subscribe to something like Skeptical Science, wait a a few months, accumulate knowledge, compare sources. Maybe even — gasp, shock — talk to actual climate scientists. There’s a lot of patient, kind guys among them who will gladly explain why what you propagate is nonsense. In the meantime, if you publish this, you’ll publish any bull. You have just miraculously sunk a hundred feet beneath rock bottom. Good bye.
As we said last time you made the (exact) same suggestion, we are talking to climate scientists and a couple of them are indeed posting in the comments.
Goodbye and thank you for your contribution.
One last link before I go which I think is really good to take a look at, http://neven1.typepad.com/blog/
Take care & Adios
Exactly! Sapere aude is, of course, a fake name, for Monckhausen by the look of this vile, omnicidal, pile of excrement. Every dirty denialist lie, regurgitated in the name of-cheques from the fossil fuel industry? Hatred of future generations? Utterly, utterly, despicable.
I fear you are not well sir.
I fear he’s (or she’s) just an actor; no one can be that unrelentingly (cartoonishly) OTT, from start to finish, can he/she? An actor and sock puppet of another avatar already participating in the threads, I suspect. Someone among the AGWs was feeling impatient with merely sticking to the AGW talking points…?
Just saw an apt cartoon – What if it’s a hoax and we create a better world for nothing – haha
That’s assuming that the world we would make as a result of “climate action” would be quantifiably better. Can we take that for granted?
Agreed – it all depends on who is driving the direction and this particular subject is entrenched in BIG money. Any change in direction taken too quickly at the moment could have just as many negative ramifications as positive as there are so many people, businesses and governments who are so deep in the present shape of things (one example, car sales – changing to electric could destroy billions in existing stock). There are thousands of things that change would effect but it will come, so be prepared for it.
Obviously you are either ignorant of how dire our situation is, or are a denialist pretending to accept reality. Unless we TOTALLY decarbonise as fast as possible, catastrophic climate destabilisation will wipe us out by 2050. Going slowly because some capitalist might be annoyed is a recipe for mass suicide, or, more correctly, mass homicide.
This is when politics overtakes science – I never said go slow, I said going too fast will have ramifications, so being aware you can plan against the negative. It is not just a few capitalists who would be effected, it is everyone as this subject is so much a part of the fabric of our society. It needs governments to actually take control but as the capitalists own those governments, I don’t see what is necessary to happen, happening. In all my other posts here I have said as such. 2045 is what I have read for all the graphs to intersect and the world is no longer able to be a good habitat for the human race, but no-one in power is listening so all I can do is point in the correct direction.
What if all the conspiracy theories are one big conspiracy to distract everyone.
“What if all the conspiracy theories are one big conspiracy to distract everyone.”
You mean what if Watergate, Gulf of Tonkin, Enron, Iran Contra, the Madoff/Goldman Sachs episode, BCCI Bank Scandal, Teapot Dome and the Black Sox Scandal, et al, had never happened…? Erm, what’s your point? Something to do with Time-travel? Those and thousands of other conspiracies happened, and the various “conspiracy theories” associated with each (nb: even the “mainstream” and/or false, Gov-supported, conspiracy theories regarding 9/11, Boston and 7/7, and so forth, are conspiracy theories) were either accurate in the first instance or not. You might just as well ask, “What if Geology is one big conspiracy to distract everyone?”
Perhaps you’re so acculturated to the Cointelpro function of the term “conspiracy theory,” as a debate-stopping pejorative (like “Commie” or “Libtard”), that you no longer understand the meaning of the term in plain English. “Conspiracy,” in the sense we are using it, has a legal definition and a considerable part of the criminal justice system is concerned with it. A “conspiracy theory” is a (wait for it) theory about a conspiracy, nothing more or less.
I’m interested, however, I must admit, in this burgeoning little meme… various commenters trying to wave us away from topics of concern by claiming they’re “distractions”. (Some of you are even trying to frame “Pizzagate” as a “distraction from greater crimes”! And what exactly is a “greater crime” than raping/torturing (and, possibly,) killing children?). Who came up with that one? It’s not as brilliant as the “Flat Earth” super-toxin but it appears to be catching on.
Just another day in the Propaganda Field…
ESSENTIAL READING from a scientist and teacher about how Big Science is often used as a tool of deception, profit and control:
http://activistteacher.blogspot.de/2010/06/some-big-lies-of-science.html
Maybe he should have stuck to teaching his students physics like he was paid to do & then refrained from calling a colleague a “house negro” & he wouldn’t have been dragged through court over a racist slur & end up in debt for over $1million dollars.
Rancourt is a radical in the classic (late-’60s) sense and radicals often suffer difficulties within the context of the mainstream institutions people like you appear to rely on for a sense of the Normal. Rancourt’s use of the term “house Negro” was justified (if a little risky) and his greatest “crime” was teaching his students to learn to think. And, btw, shouldn’t you be leaving harmless comments over at The Guardian instead of flailing around over here, out of your depth?
Essential reading.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/dark-money-funds-climate-change-denial-effort/
It seems obvious to me that the use of the word “denier” to describe anyone who is not full retard on the Catastrophic AGW bandwagon is a deliberate rhetorical device to conflate such people with “Holocaust denial”.
And we all know that’s beyond the pale, right? Clever psychology.
Except that basically makes it an ad hominem, which means they don’t have an argument.
I said “Essential reading” & provided a link about the dark money. Someone has investigated the dark money funding climate change contrarians, where’s the “they don’t have an argument” in that.
Actually, calling the rabble of knowing liars and disinformers and moronic dupes ‘denialists’ is utterly apt. The Holocaust that anthropogenic climate destabilisation will cause will kill orders of magnitude more people than all the victims of the Nazis. And these are victims who might yet be saved, but the climate destabilisation denialists are doing their vile worst to ensure that they are NOT saved. Moreover the truth of anthropogenic climate destabilisation and the details are better understood than the facts of the Nazi Holocaust. You are WORSE than Nazi Holocaust deniers.
Looks like a few quid of that dark money has found a home at OffGuardian.
Margaret Thatcher’s role in the genesis of the great global warming scare:
https://www.john-daly.com/history.htm
Hmmm, I got a “your connection us not private” warning when I clicked the link…!
I didn’t follow the link, either, although it’s probably safe to do so if you don’t enter any information at that site, and then again even doing so would probably not result in any difficulty. Better safe than sorry, I guess.
But to address the issue of Margret Thatcher and the very real role that she played (and why) in raising AGW as an “urgent international issue” to be raised sort of runs along this line (and I think it is a line that is very plausible):
You can read the whole of the paper from where that was lifted here or here.
As I wrote about that piece, “I do not necessarily agree with everything that Richard Courtney has to say on climate per se, but I think that his summary of the politics behind the rise into public prominence of “global warming” as a pressing issue pregnant with catastrophic consequences needs to be acknowledged and taken into account and further pursued.
The piece is titled: “Global Warming: How It All Began”
Great, N!
Was exactly the same text. Not sure what is going on with the dodgy SSL certificate. Use one of Norm’s links instead.
And now I notice that the second link I provided, which should direct to John Daly’s blog doesn’t work. And that is why, when I find what to my mind is an interesting piece of info., I copy and paste albeit ensuring that links to the place of origin are prominently displayed. That way I always have the article, whatever may happen to it elsewhere.
But yes, that is a good piece of analysis by Courtney. Glad you reminded me of it.
Mrs. T was already planning a way of cutting off the subsidies our coal mining industries were getting – because they weren’t making any money and she had a landslide victory because the coal industry was the root cause of the crippling strike action with everyone and his uncle coming out on strike. There was criminal bodily harm taking hold, so she took hold of the reins. The global warming argument was just the excuse she needed to pull the plug, so she always had a vested interest in promoting GW as man made. Nothing she said at that time must be taken out of the real context of her agenda. I certainly wouldn’t want her on my side if I wanted any credibility.
A truly moronic ‘argument’. Two hundreds years of science and observation, plus the total concurrence of ALL the Academies of Science of the planet, negated by a puerile argument based on Thatcher’s desire to destroy the coal mining unions in the UK. Are you really this stupid?
As a proponent of man made global warming I find it irksome that someone like you with your insulting and arrogant deliberate attempts to belittle others for their beliefs, are on the same side as me on the matter in question. You are a dazzling example of the wrong kind of support the subject needs. Please decide to become a denier, it would help our cause immeasurably to be without you as the voice of reason.
The best thing that can happen if the global warming people are correct and we act is that we save the world. The worst thing that can happen if YOU guys are wrong and we don’t take action is social and ecological disaster. But it seems that all too many people are banking everything on whether we can be “certain” before they’ll get behind taking action. It’s the equivalent of facing a loading gun, but rather than moving your head out of the way you instead postpone doing so pending more “confirmation” even though you’ve already determined a 95% probability that there is a bullet in in the chamber. It’s weird that so many people are willing to play Russian roulette with civilization just to get back at “the establishment”.
“It’s the equivalent of facing a loading gun…”
Inaccurate analogy. It’s much closer to facing a guy who says he has a gun in his pocket, and if you don’t sign this, and this, and that legal document, things could get nasty.
If there were a referendum on curtailing industrial development in the already-over-developed West, I’d vote on it tomorrow. If there were a binding referendum on clean air and clean water that would mean fewer conveniences and higher prices but a greener, quieter world: they’d get my vote in a heartbeat. Legislation to strictly monitor and control biotech monsters like Monsanto: all for it. Abolish private autos in “urban zones”: yes! Tax the hell out of fossil fuels and finance the solar energy tech they’ve been deliberately retarding for 70 years? Fuck yes.
But what they want, instead, is for the world to enter into a scheme of arcane fiddles, mumbo-jumbo and heavy-hitter-favoring-loopholes involving a kind of Wall Street for “Carbon Credits” and unknown powers of control and enforcement (I’ve mentioned before that it’s not hard to imagine the “Humanitarian Interventions” of 2025 being supposedly environmental in nature)… knowing what I know about the world and the bastards in control of it, I’d have to be a child or a fool to go along with the propaganda and expect the best as a result.
When a stranger starts pressuring you, with increasingly chill-facade-cracking urgency, to take a sip of his drink (Kool Aid, as it happens), do you shrug and shallow? Well, maybe you do.
“Inaccurate analogy. It’s much closer to facing a guy who says he has a gun in his pocket, and if you don’t sign this, and this, and that legal document, things could get nasty.”
I got it right the first time. Climate change scientists don’t have the power to threaten governments and people, so it’s your analogy that fails.
“But what they want, instead, is for the world to enter into a scheme of arcane fiddles, mumbo-jumbo and heavy-hitter-favoring-loopholes involving a kind of Wall Street for “Carbon Credits” and unknown powers of control and enforcement (I’ve mentioned before that it’s not hard to imagine the “Humanitarian Interventions” of 2025 being supposedly environmental in nature)…”
Like I said before, you got the last part comically backwards. It’s countries who would protect their environments against the encroachment of Western capital that are likely to be under the gun of military intervention. As for the rest of what you said: it’s relevant to the extent that capitalist “solutions” to anthropogenic climate change are indeed arcane and favor Wall Street – but that doesn’t mean we don’t need to do something REAL about it. What you’re saying is the equivalent of “Global poverty isn’t real because corporate-linked NGOs are the means through which people in the West engage with this so-called ‘poverty’.” POVERTY IS A HOAX, PEOPLE! STOP DRINKING THE ELITIST KOOL-AID!”
“knowing what I know about the world and the bastards in control of it, I’d have to be a child or a fool to go along with the propaganda and expect the best as a result.”
Who said you have to “expect the best”? But then, you offer no solutions whatsoever in any case, just despair, wallowing and helplessness. Your entire world-view is defeatist and axiomatically takes whatever exists as something that serves elite interests. Even if a genuine grass-roots movement of the masses bringing forth real solutions and fighting for real change made headway, you’d dismiss it as phony because their leaders haven’t been assassinated (and are therefore on the pay or are part of a controlled opposition, just like Marx, Lenin and Castro were for you).
“When a stranger starts pressuring you, with increasingly chill-facade-cracking urgency, to take a sip of his drink (Kool Aid, as it happens), do you shrug and shallow? Well, maybe you do.”
Poor analogy. A proper analogy would be a parent getting increasingly frustrated and impatient with its petulant child.
“I got it right the first time. Climate change scientists don’t have the power to threaten governments and people, so it’s your analogy that fails.”
We’re being threatened with supposed “extinction”, no? The Boogieman, in this case, is nothing short of Apocalypse. But there is no proof that it’s more than a scary story designed to elicit the desired response (hysteria).
Anyway, all the rest of your responses are written from the perspective of someone who believes (but does not know) that the science is settled on this matter; it’s precisely like arguing with a Jehovah’s Witness: fun up to a point. Then the circular logic becomes tiresome.
Neither of us has proof; we aren’t scientists; no one is in possession of equipment up to the task of measuring the supposed effects you’re alarmed about and I’ve shown your Faith has a serious down side. That’s all any logical commenter can hope to do.
At least here, StAug, you drop the pretense and show yourself as simply another fanatic denialist. In fact anthropogenic climate destabilisation is proceeding far faster than the most pessimistic IPCC Reports, and will, if creatures like you continue to win, cause human extinction and that of most higher life on Earth, this century. Whether you are just a liar, or a Rightwing ideologically-driven moron, is irrelevant-you are an enemy of Life on Earth.
“you are an enemy of Life on Earth”
Hilarious! No hyperbole there, eh? Am I dealing with the B Team now? Do go on…
“you are an enemy of Life on Earth.”
Whose life? The Syrians, Iraqis, Libyans, Serbians, Donbass ethnics?
Or are we talking Orangs, gorillas, snow leopards?
Climate deniers are not necessarily the enemy of Life on Earth, unless they have been actively promoting the many wars that certain “civilized” cultures of the larger economies, who by the way, are the ones who contributed the most to global warming, if we accept that it is man made. Whilst I acknowledge the man made science as having merit, I do not “KNOW” that they are, without doubt, correct.
Do you expend as much vituperation in denouncing the 1% money hoarding or the constant warmongering by the “civilized” Atlanticists?
I haven’t noticed you on any sites where life and death in war torn countries is being discussed, so you obviously do not consider the lives of those who are living now as important as this one debate you have focused your energies on.
Got news for you, if we ever get a handle on how to take power from the above mentioned holocaust investors, we might still have a planet to save, for it is they who wield the power and the direction of our debate. If the US/UK/NATO manage to start another war, the planet may survive but we won’t. The upshot being, deal with what we can and must change, because if we fail on that score, then any argument for or against man made CC is moot, we won’t survive long enough.
“We’re being threatened with supposed “extinction”, no?”
Please don’t twist words. You know exactly what I’m talking about.
“The Boogieman, in this case, is nothing short of Apocalypse. But there is no proof that it’s more than a scary story designed to elicit the desired response (hysteria). Anyway, all the rest of your responses are written from the perspective of someone who believes (but does not know) that the science is settled on this matter; it’s precisely like arguing with a Jehovah’s Witness: fun up to a point. Then the circular logic becomes tiresome.”
Translation: you have nothing to counter what I’ve actually said. Just accuse me of having “faith” and then walk away.
“Neither of us has proof; we aren’t scientists; no one is in possession of equipment up to the task of measuring the supposed effects you’re alarmed about and I’ve shown your Faith has a serious down side. That’s all any logical commenter can hope to do.”
You’ve shown nothing of the sort, only CLAIMED that you have.
Dude, I missed you! Your bumbling team member (“Mulga Borat”, I think; intern?) was making a total mess of it! So, where were we? Ah, yes: your unfounded certainties. Your unwillingness to admit that all you “know” about the topic is what you read from partisan, non-objective (deeply vested) sources… like all the rest of us. Lovely. Feel free to pile more passionate opinions atop the stack we’ve already amassed. It will neither help nor hurt but you’ll enjoy venting a bit more, I’m sure.
I’m sorry that you have such a religious aversion to Earth systems science and mistake it for “partisan, non-objective sources”. Truly, I am. In any case, you’re still holding an empty bag. That can’t be laid at my door, unfortunately, regardless of whether you choose to childishly skulk around and designate people as “Borat”.
“Earth systems science” of which you are a leading Scientist, right, Sorry? Or are you just a punter with an opinion like the rest of us? Laugh
We GET IT, StAug: you neither know nor believe anything, and are committed to keeping the world proletariat in the capitalist death-trap with your perpetual pessimism and proud agnosticism about everything. Earth systems scientists are themselves mere “punters” in your book.
I find the denialist lie that they accept the truth of anthropogenic climate destabilisation, but oppose any concrete action to prevent it because the financial parasites are hovering, looking for opportunities to suck blood, utterly unconvincing. We have to do something, anything, everything, or we are history.
The 1% “own” this planet including commerce, government, military, science etc. etc. How can we make any kind of decision on the way forward, when a) we cannot decide whether the science is even accurate, b) that governments, owned by the 1% will deploy fair and just practice in committing to a resolution of a problem that many perceive does not even exist – because the science is overly confusing, c) that it is worth the price that must be paid, usually by those who have the least and d) if we cannot even control the incessant attacks(wars) against those countries who stand in the way of the 1%’s who in their pursuit of their own agenda pay no heed to the carnage they leave behind.
Please also note, that vast swathes of the population on this planet have a vested interest in a future, but are not, generally, the ones who have contributed to that future many of us believe is in jeopardy, furthermore, many of those same people will not have a future regardless of any decision made by those in power, simply because they will not live that long.
Until we can reign in the activities of the 1%, hellbent on murder and mayhem and retarding the fortunes of the poorest, (who will, by the way, always be poor under the current reign of terror), whose future do you imagine, we will be threatening? Yours and mine – possibly, the poorest who have nothing to begin with, – unlikely, those who already have a degree of prolonged benefits awaiting them, most assuredly.
That is why we must make adjustments that all will benefit from, not just the “civilised” and the affluent.
The future for so many is not in the hands of the promoters of man made GW, however grandiose their vision might be, (because there really are two sides to the coin) but it lies with those who have wealth and power and as always, those who have contributed the least to the threat, must pay the highest price, as several people on this site have astutely pointed out. Setting aside the implementation of survival strategies necessary to halt the global warming catastrophe, if it were even possible, do you imagine that the war mongers would leave anyone alive to enjoy it? Unless we can halt the power mad war hawks, we may yet see a different kind of apocalypse. What use then, in preparing for a planets demise by one means, if the most immediate threats are ignored which result in the same end?
There is no loaded gun. There is no global warming. In fact, we are apparently heading into a significantly cooler period. But industrial civilisation has done and is continuing to do immense harm to the planet and to its ‘life-support’ systems (especially clean air and water). It has also brought immense benefits. Just about everything we tend to take for granted in our lives is a result of advanced technology and engineering. Try living in a mud hut somewhere where you have to spend three hours a day getting water and looking for wood to cook whatever meagre food you have. Actually, even people as poor as that are often doing terrible harm to their environment by cutting down the trees.
It’s not an either:or situation. We should be taking much greater care with the natural resources of the earth. But we should be doing it for the right reasons – out of a sense of responsibility to life, not because we have been lied into believing that one particular consequence of our way of life – the liberation of CO2 from burning fossil fuels – will cause disaster. There are far more important issues – such as dealing with that other manufactured fear cycle: inventing a new enemy/re-inventing an old one (Russia) > need to increase so-called ‘defence’ spending i.e more weapons manufacture > greater danger of war > less money to spend on helping to solve global famine, disease and poverty. According to UNESCO, 1.75 billion people are without adequate drinking water. A programme in India showed that it costs just $4 per person per year to provide clean drinking water. UNESCO reckons that it would cost around $10 billion a year for ten years to provide clean water for everyone who does not have it. This about 1.2% of global military expenditure (also 1% of what is spent on illegal drugs every year).
The climate change scam is not only a pernicious lie but it has distracted attention from far more important issues. We don’t need to ‘cure’ global warming because it isn’t happening. But we do need to cure the disease of militarism and the appalling neglect of the world’s poorest people.
Paul’s is a really slimy, but familiar, denialist trope. Deny the greatest of all ecological disasters, and PRETEND to be more concerned about lesser, if still dreadful, ecological crises. A despicable, but as I said, well-known, denialist canard.
“There is no loaded gun. There is no global warming. In fact, we are apparently heading into a significantly cooler period. ”
Errr…no. We’re not “apparently” heading into a cooler period.
I’d like to pose a couple of questions to those here who believe the theory of man-made global warming is “settled science”
(and no I am not a “denier, “ I am, if anything, a warmish lukewarmer).
1)Do you believe we know enough about how climate works to positively exclude all other sources of warming beside carbon-forcing? Do you – for example – believe we know what caused the Medieval Warm Period, or the numerous Ice Ages?
2)To be able to know this we would need to have sufficient data on every other force that influenced climates in the past so that we could exclude all of it. Do you know where this data is and how we acquired it?
3)Do you have any idea how many other potential climate-forcers there are? Do you have data on why none of these are relevant?
4)Do you understand why the current warming is predicted to be catastrophic? Do you consider this is a well-supported theory in terms of data?
5)Do you understand that many scientists accept some but not all of the CAGW theory? That the polarisation you read about in the media is not really representative of the reality?
6)Do you think it might be better if everyone calmed down and tried to discuss the science as if it were science and not articles of faith in a very strange religion?
Finally, a category into which I can finally pigeonhole myself with respect to the whole AGW thing: “warmish-lukewarmer-ism.” Thank you for sorting out that part of my identity. I was lost, but now I am found.
Good questions, by the way.
And lo and behold – none of the loudest voices here has even tried to answer my little questions!
Please- everyone who has posted here about how the data is beyond all doubt and only idiots could not realise this – answer my questions. You know about the science, right? You read all the research papers, didn’t you?
You didn’t just read a few headlines and jump on a bandwagon…did you?
“You didn’t just read a few headlines and jump on a bandwagon…did you?”
Your sophomoric statements make it seem that this is perhaps what you’ve been doing, what with your claims about how “only” CO2 is a significant factor for climate modelers.
“1)Do you believe we know enough about how climate works to positively exclude all other sources of warming beside carbon-forcing?”
Who told you that only carbon forcing is meant to be significant? CO2 isn’t even the most potent greenhouse gas; the importance of CO2 is that it’s building up in the atmosphere and that it’s indeed a greenhouse gas. But there are other gases that humans are also emitting. CO2, however, seems to be the overall most important one.
“3)Do you have any idea how many other potential climate-forcers there are? Do you have data on why none of these are relevant?”
Who said they’re “not relevant”? Some climate forces are acknowledged as negative forcers. This doesn’t mean that the overall trend and direction of change is still in the positive forcing side of the equation.
“4)Do you understand why the current warming is predicted to be catastrophic? Do you consider this is a well-supported theory in terms of data?”
The scenarios that are presented all have probabilities attached to them. The scientists aren’t saying that the effects will DEFINITELY be catastrophic, only that there’s a high chance of them being so, especially if the absolute volume of carbon emitted into the atmosphere is not reduced. Does anyone want to chance it on the basis that the models might be wrong? Because if YOU’RE wrong, the consequences are potentially extremely dire. If the global warming people are wrong, then the consequences are that some Westerners were inconvenienced. That’s spilled milk as far as I’m concerned, and certainly when compared against what may well transpire if the worst case scenarios play out.
I believe it was in a previous comment, someone said that all natural forcers had been eliminated as a potential cause for current warming, and that therefore only manmade C02 could possibly be causing it. It’s a fairly oft-repeated claim among lay alarmists.
Yes I know, which is why I don’t think the case for manmade warming has yet been proven. What surprises me is that you know this and still believe the case is proven.
Given that C02 is only 400ppm and methane is 1800ppm the idea that C02 is the most potent greenhouse gas is counter-intutive and needs to be established pretty firmly. What research have you read that puts this beyond doubt for you?
What does this statement mean? I can’t find anything in it that applies rationally to anything I aid or any of the science behind current climate theories. No one is disputing the climate has warmed. What I am asking is where the research is that shows manmade C02 is the sole or major cause.
But since you accept Co2 may not be the sole or major cause, I assume you must also accept we don’t know one way or the other. Viz – C02 may turn out to be a major forcer, or may turn out to be a minor one, and the current warming may have an entirely different and non-man-made cause?
Well in fact “the scientists” aren’t saying anything that homogeneous are they? Some are saying the case for a certain amount of manmade warming is beyond doubt. Some are saying there still some doubt, and some others are saying there is no evidence for manmade co2 as a forcer at all.
My question is – given the uncertainties and range of opinions you now acknowledge, why do you conclude that manmade global warming MUST be accepted as both real and dangerous by any reasonable person? Surely these levels of uncertainty make it quite reasonable to have doubts?
Well firstly, I’m not claiming manmade c02 won’t cause CAGW. I’m just not entirely convinced it will, because the data is (as you admit) too inexact at this time. Your question, though, assumes that reducing carbon emissions would be easy and therefore a reasonable precaution in the face of uncertainty. But is that true? And what if it’s not easy? What if cutting carbon emissions means food shortages, reduced life quality, power rationing, huge tax hikes, many human deaths?
How much pain and suffering would be justified in order to achieve a cutback in carbon that might not be necessary?
Isn’t a discussion of risk and benefit essential here?
How probable is the worst case CAGW? 20%? 50%? 80%? Isn’t something we need to know before evaluating a response?
These are reasonable questions
You wouldn’t have that problem if you paid attention to your units.
Methane is measured in ppb not ppm.
Oh dear. Well that’s a garbled sentence all right. Should say “and methane is 1.800ppm and water vapour is around 10,000ppm….”
Water vapor isn’t technically a forcer, because it relies on other factors to get it going and is very sensitive to these other factors. What it does do is to magnify what the forcers are already doing.
“I believe it was in a previous comment, someone said that all natural forcers had been eliminated as a potential cause for current warming, and that therefore only manmade C02 could possibly be causing it. It’s a fairly oft-repeated claim among lay alarmists.”
But not non-lay alarmists? Because that’s what we’re talking about here: what do the data actually show and have the scientists gotten it right? Or aren’t we talking about that?
“Given that C02 is only 400ppm and methane is 1800ppm the idea that C02 is the most potent greenhouse gas is counter-intutive and needs to be established pretty firmly.”
The concentration of atmospheric methane is 1,800 parts per billion, not million. Therefore, it’s 1.8 parts per million, compared to 400 ppm for CO2.
“What does this statement mean? I can’t find anything in it that applies rationally to anything I aid or any of the science behind current climate theories.”
You said: “Do you have data on why none of these [other forcers] are relevant?” Since no scientist is claiming that other forcers “aren’t relevant”, this is a mute point. Many “lay alarmists” also publicize the role and increasing importance of other greenhouse gases such as methane.
“Viz – C02 may turn out to be a major forcer, or may turn out to be a minor one, and the current warming may have an entirely different and non-man-made cause?”
It’s possible, but not at all likely given the evidence and the basic physics.
“Well in fact “the scientists” aren’t saying anything that homogeneous are they?”
Their estimates of the severity of change differ, but the important point is that all the estimates point to significant change and that this change is through increased release of CO2 and other GHGs. Like I said, the different scenarios have different assumptions attached to them and differ in the magnitude of changes that they predict, but they all have a clear signal of a particular kind and direction of change.
“My question is – given the uncertainties and range of opinions you now acknowledge, why do you conclude that manmade global warming MUST be accepted as both real and dangerous by any reasonable person?”
Because 1) the preponderance of evidence points to it; 2) the consequences of ignoring this threat could be catastrophic. I’d rather wager that the scientists are right and that we need to do something rather than twiddling my thumbs with the excuse that the scientists might be wrong.
“I’m just not entirely convinced it will, because the data is (as you admit) too inexact at this time.”
So in other words, you want to keep waiting to be “certain” (whatever that means), by which time the horrible effects will have happened. Then the only excuse you’ll have left is “But I wasn’t sure!”
“Your question, though, assumes that reducing carbon emissions would be easy”
It assumes nothing remotely like that.
“and therefore a reasonable precaution in the face of uncertainty.”
The problem is much, much worse. I don’t see fossil fuels being reduced to the extent they need to be within the framework of capitalism, so what’s really required is systemic change, not just some new laws and regulations. This goes well beyond a mere “precaution”.
“And what if it’s not easy? What if cutting carbon emissions means food shortages, reduced life quality, power rationing, huge tax hikes, many human deaths?”
These things are a certainty if nothing is done. Something doesn’t need to be “easy” for it to be BETTER than doing nothing, if the consequences of doing nothing are dire.
“How much pain and suffering would be justified in order to achieve a cutback in carbon that might not be necessary?”
The right question is: how much pain and suffering are you willing to risk just for the easy option of not doing anything? People are ALREADY suffering and feeling pain, especially in regions of the world that lack food security, or island nations that are experiencing rising sea levels. It’s ironic that you mention food shortages. It’s actually climate inaction that threatens to bring us more and more food shortages. Industrial agriculture of the sort that we have is completely unsustainable, for one thing. It threatens biodiversity, it threatens the livelihoods of small-scale farmers, it threatens aquatic ecosystems with nutrient and chemical run-off, it is highly fossil-fuel dependent, and it requires massive infusions of energy, water and land.
“Isn’t a discussion of risk and benefit essential here?”
Yes, and it should start by looking at what’s already happening.
“How probable is the worst case CAGW? 20%? 50%? 80%?”
Even a 5 percent risk would be far too high.
I appreciate the argument, but – going with this 5% risk for the moment – don’t we need to discuss how much the world should do to avoid something that has a 95% chance of not happening? Should we at least understand what the risk/benefit ratio is before signing off on this? Aren’t you worried these “precautions” could become just another avenue of exploitation by the 1%?
I can assure you with some degree of certainty that the 1% have already capitalized on the disparate ramifications of this debate. I really don’t think it would matter whether the man made GW “truthers” had got it right or the alternate “truthers” could prove their case. The 1% will always be one step ahead of the rest of us. I made a comment earlier whereby I explained that many of those who were advocating the man made argument whilst buying up and otherwise acquiring Africa’s rich coal reserves, which makes them a liability in every sense. I don’t know with any degree of certainty that man is responsible for the current GW situation, with the poorer countries struggling to find the means of “catching up” with the rest of the world, unless their was a consensus to support such countries with vast funding(which is never going to happen)I couldn’t require them to consign themselves to further poverty anyway. I see it as a situation in which we all must make our own decision and commitment but accept that if we make the wrong choice it will either doom us all or have no effect on our fate. Of course, I am speaking as someone who has the means, however limited, to make that choice, St. Aug has ably demonstrated that not everyone is lucky enough to have that choice. In the end, it all boils down to perspectives and means, the 1% will always have both.
@ Catte I agre with u 1 million % The Climate change debate has been manipulated by and for the anglo-zionist oligarchs. Look at their proposals CARBON TAX and floating it on the stock exchange. Weather and Climate change totally different things. The facts that the polar caps r melting is scientific evidence and this alone is effecting the weather patterns thru out the world. The other angle is what most third world leaders have been arguing for at least since the 80’s that the anglo-zionist r using and formulating arguments with regards to climate change in order to hamper third world development and guarantee the western WASP exceptionalism stays supreme.
“The Climate change debate has been manipulated by and for the anglo-zionist oligarchs. Look at their proposals CARBON TAX and floating it on the stock exchange.”
By this exact same logic, climate denial is manipulated by and for the “Anglo-Zionist oligarchs” (use the proper term, please: capitalists), since the fossil fuel industry has invested heavily in spreading denialist claims. It should be clear that whether or not a phenomenon is taking place is entirely independent of how capitalists interests take advantage of a debate. Capitalist interests are investing in solar energy; they’re also investing in fossil fuels. Furthermore, capitalist states have been dragging their feet for decades about taking serious action towards climate change, and conservative administrations have have tried to suppress the possibility of such action. Your stance is therefore hyper-reactionary Jew-baiting one that reduces world events to the machinations of “Zionists”, thus obstructing the structural and historical processes of capitalism-imperialism and its inherent dynamics and letting these off the hook (the trick for you, presumably, is to just get some NON-Anglo-Zionist capitalists in there). The irony is that while you rail against the “Anglo-Zionists”, you also become their tool by adopting canards that suit them and their interests.
“Weather and Climate change totally different things. The facts that the polar caps r melting is scientific evidence and this alone is effecting the weather patterns thru out the world.”
The polar ice caps are melting because of anthropogenic climate change. Also, lots of things “effect” weather patterns throughout the world. The important thing is to understand the long-term processes and the main phenomena that drive these.
“The other angle is what most third world leaders have been arguing for at least since the 80’s that the anglo-zionist r using and formulating arguments with regards to climate change in order to hamper third world development and guarantee the western WASP exceptionalism stays supreme.”
Yes, capitalists will always try to run things in a capitalist way. That’s an iron law of history. And guess what: it has no bearing whatsoever on whether climate change is happening or not. The leaders of the Third World that you cite have also been begging the large capitalist states to do something REAL about climate change and to share the burden of fighting it. Unlike you, they haven’t been denying it, because they can see the effects much better than you can from your air-conditioned room or office in the West: rising water stress and rising food insecurity.
“I appreciate the argument, but – going with this 5% risk for the moment – don’t we need to discuss how much the world should do to avoid something that has a 95% chance of not happening? Should we at least understand what the risk/benefit ratio is before signing off on this? Aren’t you worried these “precautions” could become just another avenue of exploitation by the 1%?”
Yes, I am. That’s why I advocate for revolution, not just reform of the exploitative capitalist dictatorship. As long as capitalism is maintained, the “1%” will find avenues for exploitation regardless of whether we do anything substantive about anthropogenic climate change. We have to get rid of this system to close of ALL avenues of exploitation, without exception. There’s GOING to be massive disruption, one way or the other; it’s up the international working class to decide who gets most disrupted: the world’s masses, or the gang of parasites who own and control nearly everything.
Good God, Moriarty-you are a moron, or deliberately appealing to ignorant morons. The argument that CO2 is ‘only’ 400 ppm and therefore unimportant, is cretinous. Anyone awake during high school science lessons knows how stupid this canard is.
Response to your questions:
1) Yes and yes
2) Yes. You need to read the climate modelling literature. Admittedly that is not an easy task as it spans hundred of highly technical papers published over many decades. But it exists
3) The error of the models so far has all been mostly on the side of being too conservative and the newly discovered components of the system have mostly made things worse. For example, nobody predicted such drastic warming of the Arctic and such a rapid collapse of sea ice in the Northern hemisphere. As another example, ice sheet dynamics is modeled quite crudely (because it’s very complex) and with assumptions that do not match the known historical rates of melting from the end of the last Ice Age.
4) Because it will lead to massive worldwide famine (quite some time before it lead to an inundation of coastal cities). And mass famines tend to lead to deep political instability. Which is not a desirable thing in a nuclear-armed world. That sort of thing. Longer term we have the issues with sea level rise, of course
5) That cannot be answered without being more specific regarding what “some but not all” means
6) You are correct that it has become a religion and this is preventing us from a sober discussion of the reality. The problem for your skeptical point of view is that the reality is actually much worse than what the mainstream description of it is, and that would be true even if there was no global warming problem whatsoever. The mainstream environmental position, which has become wedded to the “liberal left” political ideology and then given birth to a secular religion of token environmentalism, is that we can just carry on business as usual, we will just power it with renewables. Which is basically as delusional as the right-wing denial that there is no problem.
And it completely ignores the rest of the sustainability crisis, of which AGW is only one, and probably not even the worst component. There is also the exhaustion of non-renewable resources (fossil fuels, mineral ores, etc.), exhaustion of renewable resources such as fresh water, topsoils, and fisheries (they are in principle renewable, but the rate at which we are using them currently significantly exceeds the rate of renewal), destruction of ecosystems everywhere, and an ongoing mass extinction, Even without global warming, the combination of these converging crises means a collapse of industrial civilization with 100% certainty in the coming century or two.
The underlying cause of all these crises is the same — a combination of unrestricted population growth and a socioeconomic system that depends on perpetual economic growth (which means a perpetual growth in resource consumption). But you cannot have infinite growth in a finite system because of those pesky things called the laws of physics.
You do not adequately address that situation by switching to renewables (which isn’t even physically possible due to scalability and reliability issues and the sheer size of global energy consumption, which, on top of that all, is projected to grow by an order of magnitude in the next century), the only way to solve it is by a global program for gradual but drastic population reduction (if we can get global population down to the low hundreds of millions over the course of this century, that would go a long way towards making a real difference) and by doing away with the economic system predicated on infinite growth, instead moving to a steady-state one.
And once again, that would be the conclusion even if there was no AGW crisis whatsoever, the other problems are severe enough on their own, and much more difficult to deny, because they do not depend on mathematical modelling of a complex system that nobody fully understand because it is a giant labyrinth of differential equations, they depend on a couple simple equations and on fundamental physical laws (of conservation of energy and matter and the laws of thermodynamics), and you have to be a complete lunatic to deny them.
Thus the whole “But was there a pause in warming for 15 years or not, and was there a conspiracy to hide it?” debate is an exercise in futility, as the answer to it in no way changes the situation, no matter what the answer is.
My responses to GM’s replies…
So, “yes you believe we know enough about how climate works to positively exclude all other sources of warming beside carbon-forcing? And yes, you believe we know what caused the Medieval Warm Period, or the numerous Ice Ages?”
That’s very interesting. Can you tell me where you found this information? And – most importantly – what did cause the MWP and the ice age? The last I talked to my climatologist friends there were still nothing but competing theories about that. If it’s finally been solved they’d love to know. So would the IPCC, who also seem to think we are still in the theory stage there.
So you are saying there are papers published that claim to explain every other force that influenced climates in the past and that prove none of them are causing the current warming?
That’s amazing. I’ve been reading scientific journals for years and never seen anyone making such bold claims. Not even Michael Mann himself claims we understand every natural climate forcer.. Where did you read these papers? Who authored them? Can you link to them?
Well now that’s not true is it? Some of the early models were predicting an end to snow by the early 21st C. Parts of the Carribbean were supposed to be under water by 2015. The models have been consistently revised downward as the predictions failed to transpire in the real world. That’s not an indictment of course. Computer climate models are notoriously hard to calibrate – because (I think you’ll find) we actually do not know very much about the natural climate forcers at all.
Yes they did. Sea ice was predicted to be all but gone by now in the early models.
Are you saying the models are of necessity crude, because if so I agree with you.
No, you misunderstand. I realise why extreme warming might be catastrophic. I am asking why the current warming is predicted to become extreme. We know C02 levels of the past were far higher than now but they show no sign of the positive feedback loops that are assumed in the CAGW models. Do you know why the modelers have factored in these huge positive feedback systems when there’s little evidence for them in nature?
That’s an important question because without these feedback loops being keyed in the warming predicted by the models is not extreme or dangerous at all.
So, why are the positive feedback loops assumed a priori?
Well a small amount of Google will tell you that. Some scientists believe in the models that predict catastrophic warming from manmade C02 emissions. Others believe that is possible but unlikely. Still others claim the case for any manmade warming has yet to be made. And others yet again believe there can be no case for manmade warming because c02 is not in their view a potent enough forcer.
There are real and reputable scientists who hold all of these views and all shades in between.
…My view is lukewarm, not skeptical, but actually I agree with many of your comments about the other and often overlooked forms of environmental degradation. I don’t subscribe to the catastrophist and rather human-hating theories though. In fact I see them as symptomatic of a collective human psychological problem. We can’t seem to find a way to like ourselves can we. But should be dissuaded from falling into the delusion of believing the world would be better off without us. We are as much a natural product of evolution as anything else in this planet and have as much right to exist as the beavers and elephants and all the other creatures who change their environment to suit their needs. Balance and harmony i all we need.
Moriarty, your ‘…my climatologist friends’ is pure, unadulterated, confabulation. Only the really lowest denialist pretend that they know ‘climate scientists’ who blow the whistle on the Great Climate Change Conspiracy. What a vile creature you are.
I am not a climate scientist but I have some understanding of science. I cannot answer all of your questions but I have some observations that I would like to make.
Is it possible that the medieval warming was caused by the rapid industrial development of both China and India that took place at that time and the massive clearing of forests to make rice paddies that also took place at the same time? The Chinese were certainly producing enormous quatities of porcelain that must have taken really massive quantities of wood to provide the very high temperatures required while the Indians and also the Arabs were developing an iron and steel industry that likewise must have used a lot of wood. At the same time as both countries were cutting down trees they were both making huge rice paddies out of what had been forest. Rice paddies produce large quantites of methane. Could these two factors have had the effect of warming the climate? I don’t know but I have never seen them discussed which stikes me as a bit surprising.
At the same time, I have no idea at all as to what influence , if any, the civilizations in the Americas may have had on the composition of the atmosphere.
About CO2 being “a fertilizer”. Well it may well be, but that is not its only effect. It also modifies the pH value of the oceans and that in turn determines how easy it is for shelled creatures to make their shells and at 400ppm it is getting dangerously close to the point where many creatures, notably krill, will be unable to make shells. I think it is obvious, that for this reason alone, it is necessary, essential even, to limit drastically the production of CO2.
As to what made ice ages: Very large Volcanic eruptions have been blamed for some, the dust and smoke resulting from very large meteorite strikes have been blamed for others and as noted in the article the Sun’s output varies in a cyclical manner.
Do I understand why the results are said to be potentially catastrophic?
Yes. There are huge quantities of methane locked up in the frozen tundra of the arctic regions which are moving into the atmosphere as they thaw. This provides a powerful positive feedback loop, as methane is a greenhouse gas which is 25 times more powerful than is CO2. In addition there are other huge deposits of methane hydrate at the bottom of deep parts of the oceans which will become unstable and dissociate into methane and water if the temperature of the sea rises to 5 degrees C. There is also a large amount of Methane dissolved in a layer of the Pacific which will also probably bubble out if the temperature of the layer in which it is at present held gets too warm. These form two more, potential positive feedback loops. Oh and BTW the arctic ocean region was 50 degrees above average for the time of year on 04/11/2016. As the ice. melts the albedo of the Earth goes down and more of the incident radiation from the Sun stays on Earth instead of being reflected back into space.
Then there is the melting of the ice caps. if it all melts it is going to cause at the very least flooding on a huge scale. It may also, I should think, quite likely cause massive eathquakes as the crust of the Earth adjusts to the new distribution of pressure that would result. There is enough ice , that with thermal expansion as the sea warms up, to raise the sea level 80m. That looks like a catastrophe to me.
Well since we have almost no data for what caused the MWP it has to be possible it was somehow caused by human activity. But that’s the point – there’s no data to substantiate whether the current warming is due to human activity either. We an see from observation that the earth’s climate is in constant flux, following cycles of warming and cooling over decades, centuries and millennia that we barely understand. These cycles overlap and mesh like cogs in a machine. Given this the probability has to be quite high that the current warming is following one of these cycles – probably a continuation of the warming following the end of the Little Ice Age.
There is literally nothing to show that this warming is unnatural or dangerous or any different from the other periods of warming and cooling the earth has have experienced.
Having said that, it’s also true that C02 is a greenhouse gas, and therefore it’s possible that manmade C02 is involved in the current warming. However, even if this is true, there is no reason to suppose this will result in the catastrophic heating predicted by some computer models.
Yes, this is the theory. But it only a theory. And one not well-supported by observation. There is little evidence for such a positive feedback loop in past climate cycles- even when C02 levels were tens of times higher than today. A different, and possibly better supported theory holds that increased water-vapour would produce more cloud-cover and therefore act to limit warming.
The important thing is that everything is theory and based on very small amounts of data. The models are just guesswork punched into a computer and then run for X-number of cycles. It’s a GIGO system at worst and a guess-o-meter at best.
And remember – the earth has had NO ice caps for much of its history. Periods of ice cover like ours are as much the exception as the rule.
Fair and balanced response to MLS which suggests you have a methodical approach to information. It’s a shame that more scientists don’t follow your example.
Mohander, your boot-licking groveling to Moriarty is nauseating. That you prefer his truly ignorant lies and distortions to the science of climate destabilisation, elicited by real scientists and peer-reviewed in real journals, shows you to be an ignorant idiot.
Your cheap and demeaning insults are an offence perpetrated in the belief that you are able to repudiate ALL the deniers claims. The science that Global Warming is man made is something I believe in, but unlike you, I am aware that the current available studies do not prove conclusively that the assumptions adopted are based on absolutes, neither side of the debate can make that claim. It is your kind of insulting ignorance that makes life for those of us promoting man made global warming that much more difficult. Do the planet a favour and go play with the traffic on a four lane highway and please stop trying to hinder constructive debate, you are nothing more than a bombastic liability.
Cut the specious verbiage, Mohander. You’re the plainest denialist, denying that he is one, and covering his trail with nonsense. There is no even near equivalence between denialism and the mountain of climate science research and the mounting evidence from reality. ‘Absolutes’ are not required, you fool-just probabilities, and the probability of Near Term Human Extinction caused by anthropogenic climate destabilisation grows by the day, thanks to swine like you.
Moriarty, EVERY one of your points has been investigated and explained, more and more completely, since climate science began about 200 years ago with Fourier and Tyndall. If you really are so ignorant as not to know the details of the science, then perhaps you’d be better off at the Daily Mail or some similar dung-heap. If, however, as I suspect, you are just a denialist disinformer, then you are quite a nasty specimen.
Here is something that I think anyone who is not a professional in a particular field of scientific research, whatever it may be, and even if one happens to be a professional in a given field of science, should keep in mind, because it places an emphasis on a “fact” that tends to be elided and forgotten but that has enormous implications for the manner in which any scientific consensus, in our capitalist context, becomes THE consensus — I’m quoting in full the epilogue to a study by Peter Duesberg, Claus Koehnlein and David Rasnick, and titled, “The chemical bases of the various AIDS epidemics: recreational drugs, anti-viral chemotherapy and malnutrition,” an “epilogue” that might well have justifiably been titled, “What’s Wrong with the ‘Peer-review System,’ Anyway ?
Quote begins:
Epilogue
5.1 Why is AIDS research not free to investigate non-HIV hypotheses?
The probable answer to the question, why HIV-AIDS researchers do not study or fund non-HIV-AIDS theories, lays in the structure of the large, government-sponsored research programs that dominate academic research since World War II (Duesberg 1996b). Such programs favour individual investigators who contribute to the establishment a maximum of data and a minimum of controversy. However, if individual researchers move into new directions, that threaten the scientific and commercial investments of the establishment, the establishment can impose various sanctions via the “peer review system”. [Norm’s emphasis] The most powerful of these are denial of funding and of publication.
The peer review system derives its power from the little known practice of governments to deputize their authority to distribute funds for research to committees of “experts”. These experts are academic researchers distinguished by outstanding contributions to the current establishment. They alone review the merits of research applications from their peers, and they have the right to elect each other to review committees. Outwardly, this “peer review system” appears to the unsuspecting government and taxpayer as the equivalent of a jury system – free of all conflicts of interest. But, in view of the many professional and commercial investments in and benefits from their expertise, and even of the rewards from their universities and institutions for the corresponding overheads and partnerships – all legal in the US since president Reagan – ”peer reviewers” do not fund applications that challenge their own interests [Norm’s emphasis] (Duesberg 1996b; Lang 1998; Zuger 2001). Since “peer review” is protected by anonymity, does not allow the applicant personal representation or an independent representative, nor a say or even a veto in the selection of the “jury”, and does not allow an appeal, its powers to defend the orthodoxy are unlimited. [Norm’s emphasis] The corporate equivalent of academia’s [“]peer review system” would be to give General Motors and Ford the authority to review and veto all innovations by less established carmakers competing for the consumer.
Even the professional journals and the science writers of the public media comply with the interests of government-funded majorities because they depend on their monthly “scientific breakthroughs”, the lucrative advertisements from their companies, and the opinion of their subscribers. For example, an early precursor of this article was written in response to an open invitation from a pharmacology-journal over 3 years ago. But, after considerable pressure on the journal from anonymous “AIDS experts”, the editor requested a reduced article, which was neither accepted nor rejected. Instead, the editor simply dropped all further correspondence. Subsequently, the editor of a prestigious German-based science journal invited another precursor of this article 2 years ago, which received two favourable reviews in short order. But before the manuscript could be revised, the editor informed us that the publisher was concerned about losing subscribers if our paper were published and ceased all further correspondence. It is this passive resistance that can grind down even the most determined truth seeker.
However, the mere potential to resolve the agony of AIDS by alternative hypotheses, such as ours, should be sufficient reason to replace the medieval “peer review system” by a modern jury system without conflicts of interest and with rights for representation and appeals of the applicant. If the current, unproductive AIDS establishment objects, because AIDS-science is too complex to be understood by non-HIV-AIDS scientists, funding should be withheld until the AIDS establishment finds ways to explain the complexity and merits of its expertise to other scientists.
quote ends.
I don’t know where you find these gems, but this one in particular could either nullify every claim by both sides of the man made climate debate or elevate them to their own perceived lofty heights. Cracking up with this one.
Indeed, you are quite correct. But the upshot is that Duesberg et al. highlight exactly what is currently the state of the “peer review” vetting process in pretty much the entire field of scientific research, excepting, perhaps, the fields of engineering proper.
Exactly, so the Peer Review System needs to be overhauled and have rules instituted and show due diligence to apply their judicious responsibility without favor or hindrance – fat chance methinks.
Fat is good for you. The cholesterol theory is also dead. Finally.
Does that mean I can stop taking my Statin tablets? Mind you, last time I did that I ended up in Papworths with a heart attack and my first stent(don’t recommend it-either of said). Shame, because I still keep forgetting to take them. Oops.
Mohandeer, I don’t know that you should be on the Statin’s or not. I’m on an anit-coagulant because, well, without it my clod clots, and twice I’ve been hospitalized for a “major P.E.” There is no underlying genetic marker for what ails me — it is, as they say in the business, idiopathic. But the clotting does happen, I do have a ‘condition,’ so I’ll keep taking the anticoagulant. However, my doctor wanted me to start taking Statin tablets, and after some throrough reseach, some of which is referenced on my blog, I opted not to. I don’t have an underlying heart condition, and so called “high cholesterol” is proven to be unrelated to cardio vascular disease. On this issue, it may very well be that I know something my physician does not. He’s been wrong about things before. Who hasn’t? But I’ve strayed off topic, haven’t I? Apologies to Admin as ready to hit the “send” widget.
The consultant who fitted the stent gave me such a ticking off, scared the bejeebers out of me and I don’t want to get on the wrong side of her any time soon. Phew! Strewth, but she should come with a medical warning attached to her!
I was lucky. There was nothing they could do for me but send me up to palliative care and wait and see if I’d come through, so I didn’t have to suffer the distemper of any overworked medical personnel, and how they are overworked!
Oddly, I wasn’t at all perturbed by the prospect of possibly dying, but the dyspnea was rather severe and in itself anxiety inducing, as I understand it, an uncontrollable physiological reaction.
(We sound like old people, don’t we, I mean going on about our ailments and all?)
I am old(before my time)physically dysfunctional but not quite senile. I too while being rushed in an ambulance having been told I was having a heart attack was curiously indifferent except for my dogs at home(I was genuinely worried what would happen to them and that Gracie would be found a good home. The heart attack helped me put my own mortality into perspective and rather relieved me of the fear of dying, my sympathy is for the living, because for many, that is the real battle – one day at a time and often losing that battle simply because they are too poor to change their circumstances. Pity the child born into poverty rather than my sheltered if not luxurious life of readily available food, medical care and safety. Sometimes I come across as rather maudlin, not for myself so much as all those who rely on people like me and yourself to care about them.
Would you site the “peer reviewed articles”, please.
The above article is not well researched at all.
My issues with this article are;
The Daily Mail as a source for anything.
The Daily Mail also known as The Crazy Mail, & Daily Heil is not a good source of news or any information let alone science, it’s a trash newspaper along the lines of your Murdoch rags.
https://www.skepticalscience.com/this-is-why-daily-mail-unreliable.html
Dr Bates
https://www.skepticalscience.com/bates-knew-people-would-misuse-accusations-to-attack-climate-science.html
Climategate
https://www.skepticalscience.com/Climategate-CRU-emails-hacked.htm
Over 30,000 scientists
Maybe the reason that the figure is not often quoted or almost never is because it is misleading.
http://www.snopes.com/30000-scientists-reject-climate-change/
Lord Christopher Monckton
If the author had bothered to do proper research they would have found that Lord Christopher Monckton is not what he claims to be. He is not a Member of the House of Lords, either directly or by implication & has been asked to “desist from claiming to be a Member “without the right to sit or vote” ” by the UK parliament. Monckton has no science qualification & he is not a Nobel Peace Laureate. The only qualification he has is he was born rich & is a clown.
https://climatecrocks.com/2011/07/18/monckton-im-a-member-of-parliament-ive-cured-hiv-there-is-no-climate-change/
https://skepticalscience.com/docs/Monckton_vs_Scientists.pdf
David Legates
David Legates has close ties with Willie Soon.
“Legates and Soon have authored numerous papers together, including a controversial 2007 “polar bear study” that was partially funded by Koch Industries. Legates was the co-author on four of the 11 papers that Soon received fossil fuel funding for – and failed to disclose in the paper.”
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/23022015/guide-willie-soons-climate-research-funded-fossil-fuel-companies
“The Union of Concerned Scientists and Greenpeace have “cited Legates’ ties to several groups that have supported or emphasized skeptical stands on climate change while they also received regular contributions from ExxonMobil,” including “the National Center for Policy Analysis, which has received about $421,000 from ExxonMobil, and the George C. Marshall Institute, which received $630,000.” The Competitive Enterprise Institute, “which also once listed Legates as an adjunct scholar, received more than $2 million from ExxonMobil at a time when the company was publicly fighting climate change policies.” All three institutions have published works by Legates
Heartland Institute
The other issue with this article is The Heartland Institute.
“Heartland’s funding over the past decade has included thousands of dollars directly from ExxonMobil and the American Petroleum Institute, but a large portion of their funding ($25.6 million) comes from the shadowy Donor’s Capital Fund, created expressly to conceal the identity of large donors to free-market causes. The Koch brothers appear to be funneling money into Donor’s Capital via their Knowledge and Progress Fund.”
http://www.climatesciencewatch.org/2013/09/09/heartland-institute-nipcc-fail-the-credibility-test/
https://www.desmogblog.com/koch-industries-extensive-funding-climate-denial-industry-unmasked
http://www.ucsusa.org/global_warming/solutions/fight-misinformation/global-warming-skeptic.html#.WLV1fY9OKUl
https://www.skepticalscience.com/fossil-fuel-funded-report-denies-consensus.html
The 16 year hiatus claim debunked.
https://www.skepticalscience.com/no-warming-in-16-years.htm
Climate Change deniers don’t need a bigger voice they have one & plenty of funding to go with it.
I question who Sapere Aude is, whether Sapere Aude is their real name or a pseudonym, what their credentials are & who is funding them. The name strikes me as odd for some reason.
Judith Curry is wrong & also gets some money from fossil fuel industry.
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Judith_Curry
Something makes me suspect this offguardian article has been written by your usual denier, probably paid to come here & bring their denying trolls along to offguardian to troll anyone who disagrees with the views in the article.
We don’t need to debate the deniers anymore, the debate is over.
Oh dear. Scientists refute data not people. A fact is a fact regardless of who supplies it and a lie is a lie even if our best friend tells it to us.
There are numerous peer-reviewed articles available that question all or part of the CAGW hypothesis. I agree with some of them, not with others. Beyond the rather oversimplified science of popular media there are all kinds of nuanced opinions on this matter. Because that’s how real science works.
Moriarty, a truly villainous denialist like you talking of ‘real science’ is vicious nonsense. You are a disinformer, pure and unalloyed, nothing more.
Mulga, you need better programming. Your algorithm is unintentionally comedic. I’m starting to read your comments to myself with a “Borat” accent.
I imagined him to be an unkempt bearded loser living in a squat with nothing else to do except take his anger out at the rest of the world for his own failings by name calling and generally being a total prat with extreme nuisance value.
The Bearded Bellicose Borat Bot! If that’s an actual person I imagine him/her wearing a preposterous hat, for some reason
Denialist liars in what the Yanks call a ‘circle jerk’, all ‘pissing in each others pockets’ with admiration at what arrogant, duplicitous, clever little swine they are. This garbage discredits this whole site-it’s like the worst of the Murdoch denialist sewer.
What a wonderfully persuasive argument, Borat! Your many facts + ice cold logic = a chastening experience. I’ll just watch in awe as you save the world with spit and vituperation. Thanks!
I loved you response to grumble mumble or whatever pseudonym he has taken and couldn’t stop laughing. Made my day – thanks.
M.
Well a hat would keep his brain cell warm.
Knitted with holes in it to ensure everyone knows his “creds” or a “rasta man” type with the accompanying dreadlocks?
By the way I am certainly not a “denier.”
I don’t deny the climate has warmed.
I don’t deny it may be due to the increase in carbon in the atmosphere, since carbon is known to be a greenhouse gas.
I don’t deny that if the worst case scenario of positive feedback man-made warming is true we might be in a lot of trouble.
I am just scientifically literate enough to know what can be ascertained through science and what is simply guess or conjecture or – sometimes – snake oil.
I am aware we don’t have enough knowledge of climate to be sure of the extent to which carbon is a major forcer.
I am aware we can’t tell at all whether the recent warming is man-made in part or at all.
I an aware that science literacy in the general population is so poor they are easily duped by pseudoscience or exaggerated claims and that this has encouraged well-meaning climate scientists to simplify and exaggerate as a means of catching public attention. They meant well, but the result has been anything but good.
Just start with one simple fact: there has been no warming for the past 19 or so years. Therefore the fundamental claim of the scaremongers is false. From that it should be obvious that CO2 has a minuscule effect on temperature. There have been times in the past when CO2 levels appear to have been 200 times as high as at present – but the planet did not overheat. The graphs show that CO2 levels always rise AFTER a temperature rise, not before – so there is no causal link between CO2 and temperature. That’s all the science you need to know.
Paul, you’re an example of the truly deranged denialist fanatic. The last three years have successively been the hottest ever recorded, yet you have the psychotic impudence to say the world has NOT warmed for 19 years. You show yourself to be the vilest of the vile.
Moriarty, you deny being a denialist, then spew a string of denialist canards. Despicable.
My goodness but you are the epitome of despicable. Calling someone trying to engage in reasonable debate despicable is very much the pot calling the kettle black whilst throwing stones at anybody and everybody from inside your glass house. Careful you don’t scrape your knuckles on your way home to your cave tonight.
M, there’s something a little off about our new friend “Mulga Mumblebrain”… almost Bot-like. The generic pool of ad hominems deployed in generic sentences… and the awkward insertion of each name of each target for attack… plus the pre-packaged AGW talking points wedged in with the ad hominems… it all seems seems rather formulaic, eh? If that isn’t software, it’s someone who isn’t much more clever than software, doing a very poor job of simulating a passionate opinion.
A bit like the ‘phone bank operators ringing numbers over and over again(as in what I describe as nuisance calls) then reading from a pre-determined script with the hope of a hit in order to boost heir earnings? The lengths some of them will go to when they get a “No thank you” are quite extraordinary and outright dishonest. The bullying, threatening and general insidious way in which they operate?
It did occur to me that the performance was just a tad OTT(over the top), so you may be onto something there.
Was I as bad as this vicious little creature? Lord above, I hope not. How would you like him on your side of the debate, instead, me and mine have that particular pleasure – what a liability he is proving to be. I wish Admin would interject.
No, M, you were/are a Human Being with a Passionate Opinion… big diff. But I think “Mulga” is good to the extent that it he/she/it shows how the OffGuard will tend to attract infiltrators… maybe the standard term “shill” even works. We should all be on our (off)guard(ian)…
Shill is probably a close approximation. If someone wants to persuade others to their point of view, it is rather redundant if in doing so they not only insult and reduce the argument to mud slinging and alienating those you wish to “inform”. Possibly deliberate, in this particular case.
You’re not ‘trying to engage in debate’, you mendacious pustule. You and you little cabal of really smarmy denialist scum are simply having fun peddling the most moronic denialist canards, and congratulating each other on how clever you are. Considering that human existence is in deep peril, that makes you truly evil swine.
Borat, is the word “canard” your fave, or what…?
@STAug,
I think Mr. Mumbler makes a point: you are a pustule. I guess that settles that. AGW is real and catastrophic and upon us. How else to explain your “pustulence,” StAug?
And then there are all those other things that you are if it weren’t for the “fact” of AGW. Your “denial” is the “climactic fact” that proves the disaster.
You have been “comeuppanced.”
And Mumbler has another point: you don’t ever engage in debate, because you don’t ever agree with everything people who engage with you believe as the Gospel Truth. And that is the Gospel Truth about you, StAug.
And how dare you deny that you know for sure that AGW is not happening, not any more than you know whether it is happening. Really, it is just so enraging to try to have a level headed exchange with you.
And just to clarify something to the both of you: a “canard” is a “duck,” so in the manner in which you are using the word, it doesn’t make any sense to me. Agree with me or be damned.
Damn! DIRECT HITS! (now excuse me, I really must go emit some Carbon Dioxide into the atmosphere… I’m on a rather tight schedule… Manhattan needs to be under water, like, YESTERDAY)
Ad hominem attacks fail to address the issues.
No doubt the AGW promoters will find an attack to level at each and every scientist that challenges their hypothesis. But that does not constitute making their case in any way.
Ad hominem attacks. If you’re referring to my comment about ‘Lord’ Christopher Monckton it’s a statement fact he is a fraud & a clown with plenty of evidence to support that fact.
Please respond to evidence with counter-evidence. Tell people why you believe the science is so settled there can be no valid criticism of any part of it. This will help a discussion. Ranting about individuals will not.
The denialist cabal you are giving space to are NOT producing ‘evidence’- they are regurgitating long discredited lies, in the most arrogant, even snide, manner. You have turned this place into a simulacrum of the Daily Mail or any Murdoch sewer. Why? And don’t give me crap up ‘freedom of opinion’-this issue is far too important to allow malicious disinformers to hide behind that canard.
That’s right, Borat! No more of this “freedom of opinion” nonsense! Let’s all just snap out of it and jump in line behind you! Your opinion is LAW. To disagree is pure insolence.
So are many of those promoting man made argument. There is no right or wrong when both sides are lying.
Sapere aude = dare to know: from Latin.
Yes I know, still sounds like a pseudonym.
It is a pseudonym. Many of our writers use them as there can be a real price to pay for saying things deemed unacceptable in our increasingly surveilled age. But please (this is the third time of being asked) critique the article not the author.
What crap! What ‘price’ do denialists pay? Much more likely is that they are paid, by the fossil fuel industry. Are you?
“Judith Curry is wrong …”
Wow.
Deborah Harris, have you stopped beating your wife yet?
Stupid comment.
Well done Deborah, to fight these vile hypocrites. I’m interested in their mob tactics. Is this the usual clientele here, or has the Daily Mail got a surplus of Dunning-Krugerites determined to cause human extinction, so just loaned a few to this place? Either way it is truly DESPICABLE to see lies, idiocies, long discredited disinformation etc, all still being regurgitated, with a slimy veneer of a criticism of a ‘carbon industry’ that doesn’t exist, and the usual denialists’ lying denial that they are deniers.
Erm, you forgot the word “canard”.
And that’s the only reason I gave him a “down vote.”
Seems fair, N
See http://www.jonathan-cook.net/blog/2017-02-28/who-was-the-biggest-climate-change-villain/
“In 1991 the Shell oil company produced a half-hour film, Climate of Concern, for showing in schools and universities, that set out the dangers of climate change, apparently with unnerving accuracy.”
Anyone wondering why Shell Oil would produce a “prescient” half-hour film, for showing in schools and universities, against the practise generating its own profits? One would almost think TPTB are playing the game at a level above most of our heads…
“In 1991 the Shell oil company produced a half-hour film, Climate of Concern, for showing in schools and universities, that set out the dangers of climate change, apparently with unnerving accuracy.”
Only with “unnerving accuracy” if you are a Guardian journalist. As every honest person over 30 should be able to testify, the climate has not changed perceptibly since 1991 beyond its fluctuations over the normal natural 60+ cycle. No countries or regions have changed their Koppen climate classification. Miami’s climate has not migrated to New York, Dr. James Hansen’s 1988 prediction that the Westside Highway in Manhattan would be underwater by 2028 looks unlikely to materialize, our children DO know what snow is, and it is still quite futile to attempt to grow avocados outside next to the south side of Hadrian’s Wall.
Climate 101:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C3%B6ppen_climate_classification
Maybe because Shell and the other oil companies would actually stand to gain when governments raised the price of fuel to discourage drivers? I’ve read a suggestion that the Yom Kippur war was engineered to produce a temporary shortage of oil, thus raising the price and making it economic to start exploiting the North Sea oilfields.
Indeed, quite often, several nefarious goals are achieved with one deception. What the Radicals need to develop, that the Right has been profiting from for quite a while, is the tradition of the Thinktank to come up with these chess moves. The Radical Internet is a vast, disorganized Thinktank, of a kind, but a focused effort (with the Randoms filtered out) would probably work wonders.
Reblogged this on Floating-voter.
So, to recap: The same “Scientific Consensus” supporting Magic Bullet Theory, and the notion that steel-frame buildings can melt and collapse owing to office fires, and that the essential ingredient in rat poison is perfectly safe (even health-giving) as an added ingredient to a national water supply, and that there’s not enough evidence to justify a large-scale study of the possible link between certain vaccines and Autism… the same “Scientific Consensus” that, not long ago, argued that smoking cigarettes was good for you… is also asserting “Global Warming… erm… Climate Change”… and some of us trust this without a bit of skepticism? Interesting.
I suspect there’s an “Original Sin” component in the “AGW” narrative that the misanthropists (antiquatedly-gendered term, I know) among us find appealing (cue: Biblical Flooding). It’s not as though we’ve made our own measurements/observations and plugged these into our own climate models and therefore agree with the “consensus”… it’s just feels right, eh? Which is how the most effective propaganda works. It just feels right.
But where’s the “97%” of Scientists alarming the hell out of us over Monsanto? (Crickets)
You’re saying that the Chinese have been duped (they’ve signaled that they’ll continue to lead the world on climate action, with or without US help) while Trump got it right. Sorry, but do you really believe that?
I’m not privy to the Machiavellian maneuvers of intra-governmental schemes, so I can’t say any more than you can whether the Chinese are “in on it” in exchange for certain advantages. Which “sides” are the various governments on? We have no way of knowing. But Climate Alarmism would certainly be a good way to scare the world’s Serfs into acquiescing to a New Global Control System (aka a “NWO”).
I’m not as settled on one view of the atmospheric realities, or another, as I am fascinated with the mechanism of getting people to believe, passionately, in a theory they can’t have any natural sense of without promptings. Again: how many of us are amateur climatologists, with home made weather stations in our backyards, for whom the AGW is merely a confirmation of our own growing fears? It’s a wholly artificial scare. A function of Propaganda.
So they’re either duped or they’re “in on it”.
The real point being: neither of us can possibly know. And I’m fascinated with people who Believe without being able to know.
BTW How’s the home made weather station in your back yard holding up? Data still flowing…? Laugh
“The real point being: neither of us can possibly know. And I’m fascinated with people who Believe without being able to know.”
It’s okay, you’ve made it clear on many occasions: you neither know nor believe anything.
“It’s okay, you’ve made it clear on many occasions: you neither know nor believe anything.”
Not being a faith-driven zealot, I tend to be honest about the limits of my actual knowledge. It’s probably less fun than clueless self-righteousness (right?) but, oh well! I can live with that.
Being honest about the limits of your knowledge emphatically isn’t the same thing as strategic nihilism and helplessness in the face of concentrated wealth and power. Your individualist, life-stylist “people just have to DECIDE to stop feeding the system” is a dead-end to nowhere and is even less of a threat to the system you rail against (but have no real prescriptions against) than the revolutionaries that you’ve denounced as “paid opposition”.
“Being honest about the limits of your knowledge emphatically isn’t the same thing as strategic nihilism…”
I’m no version of Nihilist and you’re no version of good at reading, I’m afraid.
By the way: I’m still curious about the data flowing in to your private weather station(s), the obvious source of your certainty. I may not agree with your interpretation of the info but I can admire your industriousness in the search for the unambiguous truth. Unlike so many Dupes, hypnotized by Mass Media, you’re using primary sources.
“I’m no version of Nihilist”
Perhaps “defeatist” would be a better term. I’ll be generous and let you pick.
You’re a born propagandist, Sorry. A born propagandist! As long as you’re not a professional (are you?) that’s okay, I guess.
That’s not entirely fair. Just because someone does not agree with your point of view, doesn’t mean he is not entitled to that view. You can do better than this. Use your arguments in a constructive way, your judgments will have better authenticity if you remain focused on the argument and article.
‘SO they’re either duped or in on it’
I reckon the comment ignores human nature and the bandwagon effect. SCience isn’t the isolated search for the truth that scientists would have us believe. Scientists must attract funding for their research, much of which comes from commercial bodies which may or may not have political or commercial axes to grind. Scientists know areas that are ‘safe’ and will attract funding and they know too areas of endeavour that might be accused of being ‘unscientific’.
A few years ago Luc Montaigner gained a Nobel Prize for his research on the aids virus. Part of his research demonstrated the virus’ ability to ‘communicate’ elecromagnetically with other viruses. He was asked if his work had validated claims by homoeopaths that microdoses of homoeopathic were capable of influencing cells in the body. He was careful to state that whilst he couldn’t support all the claims of homoeopaths, Yes, his research suggested that microdoses could influence cells.
The roar of outrage from the scientific ‘community’ was deafening. Montaigner meanwhile took up a post in China claiming that scientists in the West had become too intolerant. It is tempting to suggest that the west’s loss will prove to be China’s gain.
“Scientists must attract funding for their research, much of which comes from commercial bodies which may or may not have political or commercial axes to grind. Scientists know areas that are ‘safe’ and will attract funding and they know too areas of endeavour that might be accused of being ‘unscientific’.”
This ignores that scientists who switch to the side that pleases the fossil fuel industry are often much more handsomely rewarded. It’s easy enough to “attract funding” for your research whatever your view on global warming, and those willing to find the naysayers are not at all short on cash.
“It is tempting to suggest that the west’s loss will prove to be China’s gain.”
The Chinese government is fully on board with the standard scientific narrative about global warming. Why are you talking about homeopathy?
There’s a bit of over-simplifying in the meme that the “fossil fuel industry funds everyone (yes absolutely EVERYONE) who questions the most extreme versions of the CAGW theory.
How well does this idea stand up to any form of analysis? For one thing it assumes there is some form of separation between the billionaires who make their money from fossil fuels and the billionaires who don’t. But come on, we know that’s naive and silly. The people who own the fossil fuel industry are also making money out of alternatives (lapping up the grant funds and tax breaks), nuclear, weapons manufacturing, banking, and every other form of exploitation.
The point is the 1% always diversify and always run both sides of the game. The fossil fuel industry funds climate alarmists as well as “deniers.” The interesting question is ‘why?’
“There’s a bit of over-simplifying in the meme that the “fossil fuel industry funds everyone (yes absolutely EVERYONE) who questions the most extreme versions of the CAGW theory.”
There’s no need for them to do this. They only have to fund SOME of the naysayers in order to provide a scientific veneer for their claims, and then they sit back and watch as petit-bourgeois elements in the West act as their ideological shock-troops. Third World peoples living in arid regions where there are serious problems with food and water security, and peoples living in coastal regions and small islands, however, don’t have the luxury of waiting for chauvinist constituencies and right-wing politicians in the West to get their act together, which is why they’re rather more anxious to see substantial action instead of luxuriant denial-wallowing.
The 1% always hedge their bets and will use every opportunity that presents itself to make money while making monkeys out of the rest of us – no matter which side we’re on. Imagine having subsidiary companies all moving in the direction of where the money is, that affords them a lot of scope while we are all busy looking in a different direction.
“he same “Scientific Consensus” supporting Magic Bullet Theory”
Hilarious coming from someone who thinks in terms of technological panaceas.
“Hilarious coming from someone who thinks in terms of technological panaceas.”
Very efficient, there, Sorry! You managed to make very little sense and be untruthful in one pointless (long-after-the-fact) comment! Top marks!
St. Aug.
There are people on both sides of this argument who are both dishing out misinformation, lies and information taken out of context. Anyone, but most especially those purporting to be scientists, trying to demolish the arguments of people quoting “facts” by using lies, is as the title of this article suggests, merely supporting their own “meme”. Such people are not just dishonest but a disgrace to their supposed profession. The whole point of this article was to expose the sundry lies being proffered to support one side of the argument over the other. It is not helpful when those who have a vested interest in supporting one side of the argument over the others, to lie in support of their position. Notice that several who are making pronouncements (on both sides) in several cases, are not giving links to their arguments, probably because the links would lead to a less than honest analysis. The fact is, that neither side can lay claim to having all the facts, it’s just not possible. When I say ALL the facts, I mean just that.
The only “truths” that have any validation are those based on personal choice of whether or not to believe one side of the argument over the other. As you know, I am a proponent of the man made side, but unlike some who are posting, I do not “know” with absolute certainty, whether I am on the right side of scientific fact.
Read Naomi Klein’s “This changes everything” and learn who really had vested interests in denouncing the man made argument. Also consider the flip side of the debate. It was known from the first draft of the submission of the man made theory that 123 scientists refused to sign up for it. Firstly, they were aware that there were flaws in the presentation and as such, could not be certain that the science proved beyond doubt, that man was indeed responsible. Secondly, if the science was not spot on, they realized that if they signed, it would be handing over to the elites, the wealthy and the self serving, great power, to be used or abused. They, quite rightly, had no faith in such people, that the theory would be used to unfavourably discriminate against economies who still had unplumbed resources, like that of Africa. The powers that be, might well have instigated boycotts against countries, desperate to drag themselves out of poverty, which would weaken their chances and diminish the global interests of those countries who, for the most part, if we are to accept the “man made” argument, have already used so much of their resources, that they were the main contributors in the first place. No-one, with any realism, would trust them to “do the right thing” with respect to other economies.
Therefore, if we accept that neither side can prove their argument, except with lies, misinformation or facts taken out of context, or facts based on information that is less than 100% reliable – because we(mankind) weren’t even around – then the arguments cease to have any real validation – either way!
I must accept the fact that I follow my own path, as I have done, with the full knowledge that others may not be in a position to do the same. Those of us who have the means to make a choice, should do so, but it would be wrong to dismiss those who do not have that choice, until the argument can be settled one way or the other. As stated earlier, the people who accept the man made side of the argument, who still cannot make the effort to do what they can are far more culpable than those who still question the science. You once told me, that there are many people, whose circumstances are so incomparable to yours and mine, that such considerations like that of reducing their carbon footprint, are risible given their situation. I suggest, therefore, that we follow your reasoning and allow those who have a choice to make it, without being judgmental of those who are unable to meet the challenge and leave the two sides to argue among themselves. Those who are still trying to discern the truth, should be permitted to do so, but as the article intimated, without the respondents lying their socks off. I will not entertain argument from those who lie(there is one in particular, who has joined the fray and I know him of previous, he has no boundaries except to promote his own agenda). It ends up as a mud slinging match. This article, has not so much put the cat among the pigeons, as invited dishonest representation of facts, which really should be sacred.
Regards,
:)M
“I will not entertain argument from those who lie…”
M! Yes, exactly. Some are just normal people locked, for personal reasons, in ATTACK MODE and have no desire to contribute to an actual debate or conversation. Others are Disinformation Bots, here to muddy the threads beyond comprehension. It’s not difficult to see who is what…
It would appear political science trumps empirical science.
The problem with empiricism is that it observes and reports what it sees. It is left to others to reach conclusions. There is little doubt that after the mini ice age centred on the 1820s, temperatures have risen, but the whole argument about whether the rise is man made is another issue entirely.
If you allow empirical science to dictate your thinking on the wrong side of the future of this planet you are virtually guaranteed to be accused of pimping a political agenda, because a future for those still to be born is really not that big an issue for them, whether it is a mere possibility or otherwise.
Something more pertinent to the what this post is about and that I’m stealing from Judith Curry, from a piece titled, “RICO!, which everyone should read:
Quote begins:
[. . .] the consensus on human caused climate change is not as overwhelming as you seem to think. See my recent blog post The conceits of consensus, which includes a detailed analysis of an extensive survey of climate scientists (not to mention extensive critiques of the Cook et al. analysis).
Third, the source of funding is not the only bias in research, and the greatest bias does not necessarily come from industry funding, see these posts:
Conflicts of interest in climate science
Is federal funding biasing research?
Industry funding and bias
Industry funding: witch hunts
Scientific integrity versus ideologically fueled research
quote ends.
A few years ago- since 2008 I listened to a news report on the BBC about global warming which came out with the usual guff about the trend being ever upwards but it added a strange comment, the exact words I fail to remember. It claimed that we were in for either ‘two’ or ‘three’ cold winters but nevertheless these were simply a slight aberration and the trend was still upwards. Now the strange thing was that the next two winters were very cold- unseasonably so nowadays and I remember driving up a pennine road in May and seeing snowdrifts well above the level of the cars.
Now my question is: How on earth could the weather during two winters be predicted well over a year beforehand? I have often wondered whether this item on the BBC should really have got through and what do the people who shape the news agenda know that we don’t? I enjoy conspiracy theories and whilst I take very few as gospel there are a lot of stories about the HAARP project in Alaska, apparently installed by BAe and used by America to influence the world’s weather. It may be utter nonsense of course but still to this day I really do wonder how the BBC could possibly have known that we were in for these cold winters a considerable time before they happened
Who cares about why it’s changing – surely we should just be prepared to deal with the changes. Sadly, a lot of science has been hijacked by money and you always have to check who is funding what before you can trust anything. I quite like the wind and solar technologies for power production (decentralises production) and higher efficiencies in the use of that power. All the problems we get from global warming could be fixed if all governments took responsibility and paid for it (I remember when the thinning ozone layer in the southern hemisphere had a solution that would have cost £50 million but no single government would cough up and they even argued over who caused most pollution to have caused the problem in the first place). Always money.
Pretty obviously though, the reason why the warming is happening dictates what (if anything) should be done about it.
Not necessarily so, the example I gave was to build a solar powered ozone producing factory floating (using balloons) in the stratosphere which would ‘mend’ the ozone layer. The polluters and farting cows could continue trying to destroy the ozone layer but the factory would continue to mend it. I understand that it would also be advantageous to stop polluting but the people responsible for that never listened to reason before, so I think ‘just clean up after them’ (like you do with children!).
Forget the politics, whether of the business lobbies fighting over taxpayer funds or of the bureaucratic scientific “consensus” manufactured by careerists on the make. Look to the data.
If a hypothesis, like “anthropogenic global warming,” explains everything, it explains nothing. The world is more complicated than our vaunted “climate consensus scientists” make it out to be, and we have some way to go yet before we really have a handle on all of the complicated climate related interactions in our world, which isn’t to say that we don’t understand some of them . . .
As merely one example of many of the “tabloid media hyping climate doom” prognostications, see this: Climate Change Threatens the Survival of Coral Reefs.
Then compare that with this: Coral bleaching debate by Jim Steele
Without a thorough understanding of a) your (proxy) data and b) an army of actual experts carefully collating and cataloging mountains of such “understood” (proxy) data from around the world (a work that is still very much in its infancy) and c) without a theory taking into account all actually known factors making for climate and average temperature — YOU CANNOT KNOW THAT THE WORLD IS IN A WARMING OR EVEN A COOLING PHASE.
“Oh, but the “ice” is disappearing,” you say. It’s an easily observable “fact.” Really? Let’s have a cursory look at that: Is Antarctica’s Climate Change Natural or CO2 Driven? There Is Absolutely No Consensus
But more later, eh, not to give it all away at once and to overwhelm . . .
Oh God, don’t tell me YOU’RE also a denier, Norman. One would think that a Marxist would be immune to the oil-industry backed petit-bourgeois First Worldist fad of climate denial.
I took special issue with this whopper:
“Without a thorough understanding of a) your (proxy) data and b) an army of actual experts carefully collating and cataloging mountains of such “understood” (proxy) data from around the world (a work that is still very much in its infancy) and c) without a theory taking into account all actually known factors making for climate and average temperature — YOU CANNOT KNOW THAT THE WORLD IS IN A WARMING OR EVEN A COOLING PHASE.”
Actually, you can easily do that: you can simply MEASURE temperature around the world (measuring temperature really isn’t that hard to do) over the course of many years, and plot the long-term trend. You can also plot the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere over the same time period, and you can measure the isotope fractionation of this carbon to see whether the prediction of a greater mass of C-12 from anthropogenic releases holds true (it does, by the way). The equivalent increase in CO2 in the atmosphere that has been seen over the past decades is something that normally takes thousands of years. Now we see a temperature and CO2 concentration anomaly that hasn’t been seen for at least hundreds of thousands of years, smack bang in the midst of an industrial age, and we’re supposed to believe it’s just pure coincidence that it’s happening now.
Umm, so “measuring temperature around the world isn’t that hard to do”? Really? How many weather stations would you need to get a decently reliable answer? Where would you site them? It so happens that by 1960 there were some 6000 stations around the world (not a lot if you want to get a good global average). By 2010 the number of active stations was down to around 1200 and most of them were sited in or near urban areas and predominantly in North America and Europe. Almost none in either polar regions or the tropics. So how accurate would the information be? It;’s very interesting that the IPCC prefers ground-based stations – because the data they produce is closer to their (absurd) projections. Satellite monitoring is vastly more accurate and covers a much greater surface area – and it contradicts the IPCC scenarios.
“By 2010 the number of active stations was down to around 1200 and most of them were sited in or near urban areas and predominantly in North America and Europe.”
Dropping the other measuring stations had, if anything, the effect of making warming appear to be LESS severe.
“Almost none in either polar regions or the tropics. Satellite monitoring is vastly more accurate and covers a much greater surface area – and it contradicts the IPCC scenarios.”
Not when you remove the bias of the stratosphere.
Can you tell readers about the ‘bias of the stratosphere?’ It sounds as if it may be significant.
It’s indeed very significant, and as such it’s something that needs to be canceled out if we’re to get an accurate picture of what’s going on in the troposphere. When that’s done, the trend from satellite data lines up very well with that from measuring stations:
https://skepticalscience.com/satellite-measurements-warming-troposphere-advanced.htm
Ozone absorbs ultra-violet radiation and warms up so the stratosphere is warmer than the top of the troposhere – as ozone depletes, the temperature in those areas is less than it would have been – it all just confuses the data. (or at least the interpretation of the data)
Is this an established fact or a theory?
Temp. gradients in different layers of the atmosphere – measured by high altitude balloons, ozone layer absorbs ultraviolet radiation (I thought this was accepted, well known fact). CO2 and methane destroy ozone. Go out in the sun in NZ and Australia and get extra special burns compared to UK summers (more UV getting through, thinner/non-existent ozone layer). So…. looking from space you will see different temp. layers. Surface temps. under thin/non-existent ozone layers will be higher than they would be with ozone absorbing that energy. Checkable science. Higher temps. in specific areas will produce higher temp differences which feed the weather. Stabilising world average temps. does not preclude more violent weather patterns when ozone is thinned in specific areas – this is exactly what seems to be happening. So, theory formed from facts.
@Sorry Not Buying It
But what if some trends are upward and some not? If 90% of locations show zero warming and 10% show warming then the net average shows warming. But how much sense would it make to say it actually indicates “global warming”?
This is a real issue and not simply one of semantics. Obtaining an accurate idea of global temperature is extremely difficult.
This is also a side effect of thinning ozone layers in places – this causes warmer surface temperatures and so temperature differences increase and give storms more energy. Overall temperature averages could be unchanged but the weather becomes noticeably different.
“If 10% of locations show zero warming and 10% show warming then the net average shows warming.”
True, and also irrelevant, since it isn’t “10% of locations” that show warming, but actually MOST of the locations in which there are measuring stations. Yes, some show little or even no change (or change in the opposite direction), but on the whole, they do.
“But how much sense would it make to say it actually indicates “global warming”?”
Also irrelevant, though of course it WOULD be relevant if we saw a pattern like what you’re talking about.
“This is a real issue and not simply one of semantics.”
Ironically, the semantics are all coming from your end, and the real issue is what the measuring stations actually show, even if it’s the issue you want to talk about.
Hey,
Look. I’m not a knee-jerk denier. If you want my very Marxist take on the issue — and no, I’m not being facetious in calling it “Marxist” — my reply to you is a short piece that I’ve posted online here
And if you do a search at my blog under the word “climate,” you should come up with some very interesting papers and content by a number of “scientists” who know something about what they are talking about.
I also recommend that you read Jim Steele’s piece, Coral bleaching debate. Among other things, it underscores that a lot of what has been interpreted as evidence of “global warming” is anything but. You should also visit his website, as it is an excellent archive of original analyses by Steele. Really, it is an education.
Regards,
–N
You might at least offer an opinion before giving up the ghost. Just because you don’t agree with this particular OffG’s post, doesn’t mean you have the right to judge all their very good articles. That’s a bit unfair. Name calling to the degree you have doesn’t advance your case at all. Stay and put your own thoughts down. I am among many commentators (on the other side from me in this particular article) who are intelligent and considerate and whose opinions I have learned to respect. At least read some of the comments, many have valid criticism and if you cannot give a come back then perhaps you are not able to contribute. That’s not the fault of OffG.
Mohandeer,
Is your comment for me or was it intended for someone else?
“Sorry, Not Buying It” was the one threatening to leave forever, so I assume M was addressing him/her. This reply-system gets incredibly confusing by the fourth round of replies…
Aye. Not yet done reading every reply posted while I slept. I was puzzled (but kinda figured it really was intended for someone else).
Incidentally, N: more than once, perusing the material on your website, I’ve wished that comments were possible! Why not…?
Why not? It is because I would rather be spending my time trawling the internet for the pleasure of availing myself of other people’s insights than moderating comments, that is to say, having to deal with trolls and such.
On the other hand, though there is some consistent traffic, it’s moderate, so it is unlikely that would have to deal with a whole lot of comments, let alone the occasional piece of bait.
Perhaps I should reconsider . . . I’ll give it a think . . .
I’m in sympathy with your feelings on all that, certainly. But, still… yeah. Give it a think!
““Sorry, Not Buying It” was the one threatening to leave forever,”
Please, show me where I was “threatening to leave forever”.
Some prat just rubbished the article without making any useful contribution – why post the comment in the first place if he didn’t have a point to make? Can’t find him now, but no N. it wasn’t for you – pranny. I don’t care which side of the argument you are on, at least you take the matter seriously to want to investigate it. Besides which, what makes you think I’d be so polite if it were you. Big grin right now.
😘
Of course you’re a denier, Pilon-and an impudent one in having the gall to deny it. Steel’s denialist garbage relies on the usual impertinent denialist claim to know better than the scientific community who are the experts in the field, in this case reef scientists. Meanwhile the Great Barrier Reef is bleaching again, and most Pacific reefs are bleached, and many are stone dead, while odious liars like you pretend that it is not so,
“Of course you’re a denier”
And, of course, you are a Mumblebrain. ’nuff said.
Well, Mulga Borat may not come to us overburdened with persuasive rhetoric or information of any kind, but I’ll bet she/he’s fun at a party! He’d probably “canard” the hell out of the place!
I visualize him as being somewhat comatose at his kind of party, something which the other guests at the party would be extremely grateful for.
“overburdened with persuasive rhetoric or information of any kind” – you do know it’s wrong and very naughty to mock the afflicted don’t you? But by golly, it’s fun.
It’s all targets these days.
Arthur Neslen’s article in the Guardian about the Black Black Book of Bioenergy is available here: Protected forests in Europe felled to meet EU renewable targets – report (24 November 2016)
http://www.birdlife.org/europe-and-central-asia/black-book
Husq. thanks for the link. Drax in Yorkshire is one of the companies who until recently was using lignite coal with pellets from the US in their Biomass production. I wrote to them for data ie whether they had carbon capture figures and whether the forests they were using in the US were protected or (their claim was that for every tree chopped down another was being planted). Needless to say, I did not get a response and I seem to remember that Drax have since announced they are closing down their Biomass “green” energy production.
Watch the video here: http://en.newsner.com/man-points-camera-at-ice-then-captures-the-unimaginable-on-film/about/nature.
Really good video, scary but amazing.
The climate has always changed naturally. Is man having a significant effect on the climate? Are we heading for more warming or cooling? There are hundreds if not thousands of climate experts and scientists (independent from fossil fuel funding) who disagree with the IPCC which only investigates man made climate change ignoring all natural causes. Some astrophysicists believe we are heading for a cooling period due to reduced solar activity.
The science is far from settled and the so-called 97% consensus that AGW is “catastrophic” has been debunked many times. Most skeptical scientists agree that man is having just a small impact on the climate. Even Nuttycelli and the rest of the AGW zealots at skepticalscience and The Guardian do not say that 97% of scientists think that man is having a “catastrophic” affect on the climate, they just say man is having “an” affect.
“Catastrophic” global warming is just a theory from computer models most of which have been wrong when compared with current data. The most accurate temperature readings are from satellites and balloons which have shown no statistically significant warming for the last 23 years. Scientific institutions have cherry picked the data from particular weather stations or sea water through tanker engines to falsify the evidence and to back up their “belief” and “theory” and “funding” that there is global warming.
Man has always adapted and new forms of energy which do not pollute are replacing fossil fuels which is good news. Instead of fighting against the harmless, life giving gas CO2 the world should have been concentrating on REAL pollution.
We all want clean air to breathe and clean water to drink and there are many clean air laws around the world prohibiting the amount of carbon particulates in the atmosphere, more stringent laws would be welcome. The term “carbon” is deliberately used to confuse the issue between carbon particulates and CO2. CO2 only accounts for 0.04% of our atmosphere. Man made CO2 only accounts for 4% of all CO2. Termites omit more CO2 than man does. The amount to which CO2 is a green house gas is a matter of scientific debate and whether we have reached saturation point. CO2 is a harmless, life giving gas which we all need to survive. An increase in CO2 follows natural warming. Excess CO2 increases crop yields. Trees convert CO2 to oxygen. The climate may be changing and man may be having a small effect (deforestation, geo-engineering, pollution etc) but it is NOT a reason to give the un-elected UN huge powers to control CO2 (ergo all human activity) that governments around the world can use and abuse to their own advantage.
I return to my original point that there are hundreds if not thousands of climate experts and scientists (independent from fossil fuel funding) who disagree with the IPCC and the public should therefore be wary of all this “catastrophic” scaremongering until the climate scientists have resolved this once and for all without political and monetary interference.
Those that are concerned about the environment and who have been paying attention understand that the biggest benefit for US air quality since the 1970s has been the boom in natural gas use.
Natural gas has much cleaner emissions than coal or biofuels and does not carry the hazards of nuclear.
Natural gas is cheap and abundant.
Co2 emissions are not harmful to health but the “global warming” swamis make nuclear out to be the preferred alternative after admitting wind and solar will never work.
It was a bait and switch scam from the start:
https://alethonews.wordpress.com/2012/01/08/three-mile-island-global-warming-and-the-cia/
https://alethonews.wordpress.com/2014/11/14/bait-and-switch-climate-alarmists-have-religious-conversion-to-pro-nuclear/
“The climate has always changed naturally. Is man having a significant effect on the climate? Are we heading for more warming or cooling? There are hundreds if not thousands of climate experts and scientists (independent from fossil fuel funding) who disagree with the IPCC which only investigates man made climate change ignoring all natural causes.”
Wrong. The IPCC cites models that take into account the contributions of natural forcings and compares them to empirical findings. Only by factoring in anthropogenic contributions can we account for what we actually see. I seriously don’t know where you get the idea that the ICC “ignores all natural causes”. This is not only not the truth, it’s the exact opposite of the truth.
“Some astrophysicists believe we are heading for a cooling period due to reduced solar activity.”
Yet the world clearly hasn’t been “cooling”. If there is indeed reduced solar activity contemporaneously with rising average temperatures, then this is itself evidence for anthropogenic climate change since the Earth is getting warmer. Unless we can account for this through natural processes on Earth, then the only thing left is human-caused phenomena as the culprit.
“Instead of fighting against the harmless, life giving gas CO2 the world should have been concentrating on REAL pollution.”
This is a Red Herring. That something is life giving in one context doesn’t mean that this designation is appropriate in all contexts. Try eating only apples every day. Apples are “life giving”. Does that mean that eating only apples is good for you?
“We all want clean air to breathe and clean water to drink and there are many clean air laws around the world prohibiting the amount of carbon particulates in the atmosphere, more stringent laws would be welcome. The term “carbon” is deliberately used to confuse the issue between carbon particulates and CO2. CO2 only accounts for 0.04% of our atmosphere.”
This is an argument from incredulity: “I can’t imagine how such a small percentage of CO2 could be harmful, therefore it isn’t.” What matters isn’t the concentration as much as the total MASS of CO2 since CO2 interacts with infrared radiation in a different way to nitrogen. By invoking the concentration, you’re falling back on the worn-out “CO2 is a trace gas” argument, as though something being present in “trace” amounts automatically means that it is “harmless”. The US EPA LIMIT for arsenic in water is 0.01 parts per million. Would you drink water with 10 parts per million of arsenic? What about 20? It’s only a trace amount, even with those higher concentrations! Go on, take a sip every day if you think trace elements and compounds can’t have profound effects.
“Man made CO2 only accounts for 4% of all CO2.”
Also a Red Herring. Humans indeed only emit a small fraction of the entire CO2 that cycles through the Earth’s geochemical system, but the relevant point is that since humans are emitting EXTRA CO2 at a rate faster than it can all be reabsorbed back into the system, this leads to an increasing mass of CO2 in the atmosphere over time.
“Excess CO2 increases crop yields.”
Sure, with all things being equal. But the increased mass of CO2 in the atmosphere means that all thing are not equal. For one thing, global climate change has meant more drought in many parts of the world, placing more strain on available water sources, including in already arid parts of the world facing food insecurity. The timing of rainfall is also affected by climate change, which can mean more heat stress or more flooding. Interactions with pest organisms can also change when plants are raised on more CO2, and some pests even prefer such plants.
This is typical of the pseudo-science peddled to lay people on this subject. The climate guys justify talking this nonsense because it will help to get people on board with what may be essential policy changes, but no serious scientist on either side would dream of saying such things when talking to other scientists.
You see, this statement of yours is basically saying “well we know about how much warming we’d get from solar fluctuations, el Nino effects and so on and when we factor those in we still have warming that can only be explained by man-made factors.”
Do you know why this is nonsense? Every climate scientist does. it’s because we emphatically do NOT know how much natural climate fluctuation we can expect from natural forcers. How could we know that at this stage when we barely understand what those forcers are?
Climate science is in its infancy. Accurate observations have been possible for less than 100years, and that is a blink of an eye in climate development terms. Our methodology for examining ancient climate can tell us something about fluctuations, but almost nothing about why they happen. Even the Co2 correlation is uncertain. And as for solar activity – we are only beginning to understand its impact. The extent to which greenhouse gasses work witht each other and with solar activity, and possible other factors still less well understood is merely in he theory stage right now.
This is the accepted truth in climate science, it’s just elided in public from a mistake belief that the public needs to be convinced by overstated and simplistic memes rather than complex truths.
My point was addressed to Geoff Bridges, who wrote “…the IPCC which only investigates man made climate change ignoring all natural causes.”
This claim is emphatically not true. Radiative forcings are one of the foundations on which the climate models are built (they also take into account air and water currents and heat exchange between the two) and not some side-show as you’re implying; they’ve been calibrated and tested using hind-casting (comparing historical and pre-human patterns to the models) to test their accuracy in making predictions about the contributions of natural forcings. Sure, we don’t know everything about the natural forcings; this in no way is the same thing as saying that there isn’t clear evidence, based on what we DO know and from the data we DO have, that anthropogenic climate change is occurring.
For you and a lot of naysayers, it seems that climate science is perpetually in “its infancy”, yet you guys making sweeping assumptions and claims that imply that you think YOU’VE got a handle on climate science (“CO2 is a harmless trace gas”; “it’s the sun”; “it’s methane”; “we’re entering a cooling period”).
“. . .you guys making sweeping assumptions and claims that imply that you think YOU’VE got a handle on climate science (“CO2 is a harmless trace gas”; “it’s the sun”; “it’s methane”; “we’re entering a cooling period”).”
There is a difference between having a handle on “climate science,” i.e. the qualitative state of that science as a discipline, and having a handle on “climate,” per se.
On both sides of the debate (“AGW is real and a portent of catastrophy” vs. “AGW is not real and not a portent of anything”), there is one equivalent “assumption,” namely, that the “science is already settled in one way or another.”
But there is a second kind of presumption that can be taken with respect to the debate, critical of the former category of an asserted certitude, namely, that the science is not near settled one way or another, and this presumption is based on the very real and ascertainable and, indeed, ascertained “fact” that “expert opinion” — the basis of which is the core individuals who comprise the technical expertise underpinning climate science, who can be named and have been named, because they are only a handful of actual human beings among us — is “divided” about what we know and can ever come to know about “climate” and even about “the average current temperature of the world, let alone in the recent past or past geological epochs.”
That this is so, see, for example, Judith Curry’s The conceits of Consensus for confirmation that among themselves, the “climate scientists” admit to not knowing.
So if the experts in the field haven’t yet decided among themselves, on what basis — if it isn’t to be one of unadulterated “faith” — is someone to decide who isn’t intimately acquainted with all of the niggling but crucially important and yet unresolved problems associated with settling the question of AGW?
Furthermore, lets assume for the sake of argument that AGW really was the most pressing issue of our times.
What are the chances that under the present cultural regime ruling over us anything could ever get done to seriously mitigate the problem if mitigating it means the curtailing of large scale “profits?” So maybe the hysteria over climate change actually needs to become a substantive concern over something else before social conditions actually become such that we really are in a position to actually become good stewards of our planet and its natural bounties.
“There is a difference between having a handle on “climate science,” i.e. the qualitative state of that science as a discipline, and having a handle on “climate,” per se.”
True, and the denialists on this forum (most of them) don’t have ANY sort of handle on the science. I’m not an expert myself, but what I do know makes it clear to me that the sophomoric statements floating around here, about CO2 being a “harmless trace gas” are the same tired, oft-repeated claims swindled into the public “debate” over anthropogenic climate change to undermine societal resolve to do anything substantive about a potentially disastrous outcome. When such basic errors as “if methane is at 1800 ppm [it’s actually at 1.8 ppm] while CO2 is only at 400ppm, why should we be so worried about the latter” are the norm, it makes me think (quite reasonably, I submit) that many people here simply DON’T CARE about the facts. They only care about whether they can weave a clever-sounding argument that makes them look like fighters against “the establishment”, when in fact they’re objectively acting as shills for reaction, chauvinism and the fossil fuel industry.
LOL. Well, this is certainly the wooly and vaguely-worded message we find in most media and in the statements made by the IPCC intended for popular consumption. But it’s more word-fog that substance.
Firstly, let’s understand that a computer model isn’t magic. it isn’t even experiment in the true meaning of the word. It can’t know things we don’t know. It can just do lots of sums very fast and spit out the results.
Those results are only as good as the data we put in. If we don’t know why climate fluctuates we wont be able to find out by running models. The best we can do is punch in our known observations of geological climate changes (which is massively incomplete and may be entirely wrong), punch in a bunch of assumed forcers, run the program and see if it matches the observations.
In general people who believe in C02 as a major forcer manage to produce models that “prove” it, and people who believe in solar activity as a major forcer manage to produce model that “prove” this.
How is this? Well, it’s the nature of what a model is – which is, above all a reflector of the modeler’s bias. When a modeler makes his model he doesn’t punch in an exact replica of all facts in the universe. He can’t do because he doesn’t have them all. He has limited facts at his disposal and his model reflects that lacuna.
He also – because he’s human – gives more weight to the facts he likes and less to the ones he doesn’t. And if his model doesn’t work the first time he imperceptibly tweaks it until – like magic – it work just fine.
Models are just toys really. Fun tools for exploring theories. No one ever thought to call them evidence – let alone proof – until politics entered the science arena and we all became propagandists.
So, when the IPCC is quoted as saying its scientists have “calibrated and tested using hind-casting (comparing historical and pre-human patterns to the models”….what they mean is they’ve punched in a bunch of necessarily limited observations that most closely match their favourite theory, pressed run, got a bad result, tweaked and pressed run again, until they got an answer that “proved” – whatever idea about radiative forcing they wanted to prove.
And what the IPCC doesn’t say is that elsewhere there is another group of scientists doing the same thing with the same data and getting completely different results.
If you choose to believe one set of models as “proof” and reject another as “meaningless” well, that’s your call. But it’s far better to eschew faith and conviction and simply embrace the fact that the evidence can’t justify the extent of certitude and belief people want.
It’s amazing that even saying this makes me a “denier” to you – since to most “deniers” I am a “believer”. Bu such is human madness I suppose.
“Firstly, let’s understand that a computer model isn’t magic. it isn’t even experiment in the true meaning of the word. It can’t know things we don’t know. It can just do lots of sums very fast and spit out the results.”
Yes, that’s precisely why they’re useful. Humans can also do the sums and spit them out. So what? Nice caricature there with models being thought of as “magic” by climate scientists. No one ever claimed them to be. They’re an additional tool for analyzing the world; they can make testable predictions, and can be checked against what actually happens. The more we discover about nature, the more can this knowledge be integrated into models. That you derisively cite “magic” is a reflection of your own ignorance of scientific development, not of any shortcomings of models per se. Secondly, models can indeed tell us about things we don’t know and didn’t think to look at previously, such as a pattern that we can go out and verify. If that pattern holds true in nature, then that does indeed constitute evidence.
“Those results are only as good as the data we put in. If we don’t know why climate fluctuates we wont be able to find out by running models.”
Except that models aren’t simply “data”. They relate data in a mathematical way to reflect what we think is driving a phenomenon. If the results and what we see in nature are consistent, that is indeed evidence that the model is capturing something accurate about the phenomenon.
“The best we can do is punch in our known observations of geological climate changes (which is massively incomplete and may be entirely wrong), punch in a bunch of assumed forcers, run the program and see if it matches the observations.”
Yes, and when we do this, the models show what we’ve been seeing: that rising CO2 concentration in the atmosphere is driving increased temperature.
“In general people who believe in C02 as a major forcer manage to produce models that “prove” it, and people who believe in solar activity as a major forcer manage to produce model that “prove” this.
How is this? Well, it’s the nature of what a model is – which is, above all a reflector of the modeler’s bias.”
Right, everything is just about “bias”. Climate change and Earth systems are apparently beyond the ken of science.
“When a modeler makes his model he doesn’t punch in an exact replica of all facts in the universe. He can’t do because he doesn’t have them all. He has limited facts at his disposal and his model reflects that lacuna.”
True, but a Red Herring. A model doesn’t need to “punch in” an exact replica of anything in order to be useful.
“Models are just toys really. Fun tools for exploring theories.”
Models are used everywhere in science, and are not there for “fun”. Without models, modern science would not even be POSSIBLE. Or think of it from a practical standpoint: would MoriartysLeftSock prefer to ride on an airplane piloted by a rookie who had 1,000 hours on a flight simulator (encoding everything known about gravitational dynamics, aerodynamics, heat exchange and and materials science) or would he prefer to have the plane piloted by someone who just wants to “stir things up”?
It’s true that scientists can integrate bad assumptions into their models. But assumptions can ultimately be checked (most of the time), and we can still provide sound REASONS for why an assumption is good or bad. What matters isn’t that different models provide different outcomes, but rather what the assumptions are based on and if they’re reasonable or not.
“No one ever thought to call them evidence – let alone proof – until politics entered the science arena and we all became propagandists.”
Wrong. No one ever thought to call them evidence until computer technology was powerful enough.
“So, when the IPCC is quoted as saying its scientists have “calibrated and tested using hind-casting (comparing historical and pre-human patterns to the models”….what they mean is they’ve punched in a bunch of necessarily limited observations that most closely match their favourite theory, pressed run, got a bad result, tweaked and pressed run again, until they got an answer that “proved” – whatever idea about radiative forcing they wanted to prove.”
False, diversionary and tiresome nonsense.
“And what the IPCC doesn’t say is that elsewhere there is another group of scientists doing the same thing with the same data and getting completely different results.”
Please, show me these models.
“If you choose to believe one set of models as “proof” and reject another as “meaningless” well, that’s your call. But it’s far better to eschew faith and conviction and simply embrace the fact that the evidence can’t justify the extent of certitude and belief people want.
It’s amazing that even saying this makes me a “denier” to you – since to most “deniers” I am a “believer”. Bu such is human madness I suppose.”
You’re a denier because you can’t even get the basic science right (you CONFIDENTLY stated that methane is present at 1,800 ppm in the atmosphere and used this as a reason to doubt why CO2 should be considered important. Next time you strut around with these sophomoric and erroneous statements, you might want to fact-check).
Not climate scientists, lay people. Scientists know the limits of modeling, but computer models are indeed presented as if they were magic in the popular literature of alarmism. Hilarious and infuriating.
Yes, and how many of the predictions made by the vast array of climate models have proved to be accurate so far?
That’s not a rhetorical question. I mean it as a point of discussion.
But you have to admit, unless or until a model prediction is verified by real word observation it’s only so much maybe – that’s the point. In the popular media climate models are presented as if they were evidence of something. How often have you read the words “climate models predict…” as if there’s some sort of source of proof behind this prediction. Bu the prediction is just an extension of the modeler’s imagination into an unknown future. They are at best only suggestions of possibilities. “Uncollapsed probability waves” is how a colleague once termed them.
Yes,but that’s using real world observation as a basis for models (which is the proper way of doing things), not models as a basis for assumptions or beliefs about the real world, which is what “popular alarmism” tends to do.
You know what the advised strategy for those living in glass houses is don’t you? Let’s stick to the science and leave our personal ignorances out of it. It’s more interesting and more friendly.
Yes, which is , I think you’ll agree, precisely the point I have been labouring to make. How nice to find you on my page 🙂
What else are they? What else could they be? (Please don’t say “magic” 🙂 )
And what do they use to do that beside data?
I think you already said that and I already agreed with it (because it is what I have been saying from the outset). But I still don’t see what they use to do this beside – data?
No. They don’t. Studies of ice cores and other such real world science show an apparent correlation throughout geological time between levels of C02 and temperature. Some studies purport to show a strong correlation. Others purport to show a weaker or delayed correlation. Others claim to show an absence of correlation.
I tend to think we can accept a degree of correlation. But of course – rule of science – “correlation isn’t causation.” We can map a correlation between the numbers of TVs per head of population and incidents of deaths from breast cancer. As TV ownership has grown in the 20C so have incidents of breast cancer. But no one is going to posit a causal mechanism.
The models that predict increased warming due to C02 have been programmed to assume the causal connection and to explore its potential impacts. You can’t use a model to test whether the assumption is true – merely to predict the potential outcome if it IS true. As you have already admitted, only real world testing can show whether the assumption is based in fact.
So, the case for C02 as a major forcer is still purely hypothetical/theoretical. I happen to find it quite persuasive, simply based on C02’s known properties, but there’s little empirical observation of C02 in the environment or solid experiment to make this more than a good theory so far.
Sadly yes it is. It’s the human condition. All we can do is struggle within ourselves and within our discipline to minimise the impact.
I like to think nothing is beyond the ken of science. But science has its own pace and can’t be made a servant to fashion or fad, or even faith. It’s just a fact that right now our understanding of how climate systems work is not sophisticated enough to warrant the certitudes sold, not by scientists (for the most part) but by under-informed and over-zealous non-scientists., who equate a nuanced understanding of the physics of climate with some sort of devil-worship.
Let’s not be silly. Think about for a moment – how could a model of the climate that was not based, as far as possible, on accurate replicas of all the known variables hope to produce anything “useful”?
Yes it would. And is. Computer models have a useful part to play but that’s all.
I’m not sure you fully comprehend what kind of models we are talking about. Computer climate models have very little in common with flight sims. Most notably because we know how a plane works and can therefore replicate it mechanically and digitally almost perfectly.
We don’t know (much about) how the climate works.
Our knowledge of climate is comparable to a flight sim programmed by a bus driver who works near Heathrow and has seen a lot pf planes take off and land
And no, I wouldn’t trust myself to a pilot trained by using that. 🙂
Powerful, yes, but not magic, remember. Let’s just remind ourselves (again) – no computer model currently known can tell us how the climate works. All they can do is run extrapolations of data. And their extrapolations will be no better and no more accurate than that data. If our data is incomplete (and it is) the extrapolations will be incomplete. This does not make them useless, but we cant claim a model as proof of anything. And no scientist does.
It may be tiresome. I suppose you may find it diversionary (that’s your call). But it isn’t false or nonsense. I have worked with computer models and with people who use them. Everyone who is candid will admit this is the way it always is. The struggle with innate bias goes with the territory.
I’m not a denier. I’m a Warmish LukeWarmer. I think C02 is quite likely to be a significant forcer and see some evidence for that. I believe I have a fair grasp of the science, but if you can correct me on anything more I’ll be happy to learn.
Maybe start by filling in my basic climate science questionnaire that’s somewhere on this thread. As I said – I love science, hate ad homina – so any time you want to really get in to the science and show me where I’m going wrong I’ll enjoy discussing it with you.
GB. “the IPCC which only investigates man made climate change ignoring all natural causes” Not true, so why would you make such a claim?
A collection of the most moronic denialist canards, all long debunked, some decades ago. Are you scum really so stupid, so ineducable, or are you just trying to impress a new generation of vicious dullards?
I take my hat off to you posting this article. I see there are some who have already got their fingers in their ears and are running away. The AGW debate is going to run and run and run, it is now so deeply entrenched in so many brains there is no room for discussion or looking at other views.
Why did AGW become “climate change”? AGW is very specific and what is said to be a major danger to us all and the planet and what is forming policies. “Climate change” is something the earth has gone through for billions of years, even since human ancestors appeared. I find it irksome “climate change” has become something to fear via almost blanket conflation with AGW.
Well done Manda-the most moronic denialist canard of all. When did ‘AGW’ become ‘climate change’. You are the winner of today’s ‘Dunning-Kruger’ Award for advanced stupidity.
Yet again someone has read an article in the Daily Mail and has assumed it is true.
Its the Daily Mail FFS!! Of course it is not true. When was the last time you read anything in the Daily Mail that was true?
Wikipedia no longer allows the Daily Mail to be used as a reference because it is so unreliable.
When it comes to climate science the Daily Mail ALWAYS distorts and misquotes in order to fulfill the wishes of its oligarch owner.
If you want to know what is really behind this story then you will either have to study the scientific papers yourself (after completing a University degree in climate science so you can understand them), or you can go to a suitably qualified person who has. (That does not incude David Rose of the Daily Mail or ‘Lord’ Monckton)
I recommend the YouTube videos by ‘potholer54’. Potholer is a science journalist who produces well researched videos debunking rubbish ill informed articles like this one.
For the real info on this story watch this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQph_5eZsGs
“Wikipedia no longer allows the Daily Mail to be used as a reference because it is so unreliable.”
I’m afraid I do not find Wikipedia ‘the oracle’ nor you tube videos. I certainly do not trust Wikipedia unquestioningly!
You seem to be suggesting the article is using the Mail as its only source. It also refers to several peer-reviewed articles and a great deal of scientific opinion.
And please remember that claims of evidence are not refuted by saying “oh HIM, he just talks rubbish,” or “no one EVER listens to HIM!” That’s just a species of avoidance and is not valid. In future please refute specific claims of fact with data or with counter-claims – not with generic dismissals of alleged personal credibility.
You’re right , the Potholer videos debunk much of what is being discussed here , but I wouldn’t expect to get much buy-in from this crowd.
The “establishment” lies to us a lot , and more and more people are becoming aware of that. If they’ll lie to us to get us into a war – which they clearly have done , repeatedly – then they’d lie to us about anything. Since global warming is an establishment concept , it makes some sense to just assume it’s a lie. You can’t go wrong claiming that anything – heck , everything – advanced by the establishment is a lie. Just be off-establishment , so to speak , and you’re cool , dig ? Therefore , the earth is flat. No , really , it must be , otherwise why would the establishment tell us it’s round ?
Believing the establishment line uncritically is a dangerous form of groupthink. So is disbelieving uncritically. What we’re seeing is a global failure to engage in independent , critical thought , and that’s hardly a hopeful sign for our future.
Climate science is NOT an ‘establishment’ concept-it is a scientific concept, worked on by tens of thousands of scientists for 200 years. Climate science denialism, which this vile cess-pool of lies and disinformation most certainly is, IS an ‘establishment concept’. It is a lie created by the fossil fuel industry, the great capitalist power on the planet. That you have denialist frauds here, arguing that they criiticise climate science for some vague ‘Leftist’ motivation, is just lying, or advanced self-delusion verging on dementia,
Great Britain is an US Intelligence poodle specializing in screaming false reports on Syria (gas, children, etc.) , Libya, Ukraine, Russia (Crimea) , the United Nations (convoy bombing), etc. and even Amnesty International (prisons), WikiLeaks, what’s one or two more?!
You are right of course, yet during the recent battle for Eastern Aleppo, one of the only balanced reports, accurately describing the activities of the fighters in the east and calling into question the activities of the white helmets, was published in the Daily Mail.
I am a homoeopath and am still here in large part thanks to the treatment I had from a homoeopath who has dedicated her life to treating cancer patients. I had been given a terminal diagnosis in January 1999 after an operation to remove my left kidney with its large grapefruit sized tumour four monthes earlier. I see most newspapers especially the Grauniad routinely reviling homoepathy and Wikipedia doing likewise. The Daily Mail sometimes prints positive articles about homoeopathy and sometimes negative ones. It is reassuring to know that at least there seems to be a degree of editorial independence.
And who could forget the Great Freon Hoax of the 1970s…?
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/12/05/the-ozone-scare-was-a-dry-run-for-the-global-warming-scare/
Watts Up with That??? That’s your true milieu, StAug-but at least there is NO doubt left that you are just another vicious denialist dissembler.
Yeah!
Offer evidence please, not ad hom. There are many people on both sides who are informed enough to debate this issue with data. If you haven’t researched enough to do this you should probably stop interjecting. These streams of abuse do not do credit to your position.
He trolls.
From 2015, this (below), featuring comments by Dr. Richard Lindzen (“American atmospheric physicist known for his work in the dynamics of the middle atmosphere, atmospheric tides, and ozone photochemistry. He has published more than 200 scientific papers and books. From 1983[1] until his retirement in 2013, he was Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.[2] He was a lead author of Chapter 7, “Physical Climate Processes and Feedbacks,” of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Third Assessment Report on climate change.”)
NASA and NOAA today proclaimed that 2015 was the ‘hottest year’ on record. See:
Warmist Joe Romm: ‘We Just Lived In The Hottest Year On Record’
&
Claim: ‘With 2015, Earth Has Back-to-Back Hottest Years Ever Recorded’
Meanwhile, satellite data shows an 18 plus year standstill in global temperatures.
MIT climate scientist Dr. Richard Lindzen balked at claims of the ‘hottest year’ based on ground based temperature data.
“Frankly, I feel it is proof of dishonesty to argue about things like small fluctuations in temperature or the sign of a trend. Why lend credibility to this dishonesty?” Lindzen, an emeritus Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology at the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences at MIT, told Climate Depot shortly after the announcements.
“All that matters is that for almost 40 years, model projections have almost all exceeded observations. Even if all the observed warming were due to greenhouse emissions, it would still point to low sensitivity,” Lindzen continued.
“But, given the ‘pause.’ we know that natural internal variability has to be of the same order as any other process,” Lindzen wrote.
Lindzen has previously mocked ‘warmest’ or ‘hottest’ year proclamations.
“When someone says this is the warmest temperature on record. What are they talking about? It’s just nonsense. This is a very tiny change period,” Lindzen said in November 2015.
Lindzen cautioned: “The most important thing to keep in mind is – when you ask ‘is it warming, is it cooling’, etc. — is that we are talking about something tiny (temperature changes) and that is the crucial point.”
“And the proof that the uncertainty is tenths of a degree are the adjustments that are being made. If you can adjust temperatures to 2/10ths of a degree, it means it wasn’t certain to 2/10ths of a degree,” he added.
MIT Climate Scientist Dr. Richard Lindzen Mocks ‘Hottest Year’ Claim: ‘Anyone who starts crowing about those numbers shows that they’re putting spin on nothing’
– “70% of the earth is oceans, we can’t measure those temperatures very well. They can be off a half a degree, a quarter of a degree. Even two-10ths of a degree of change would be tiny but two-100ths is ludicrous. Anyone who starts crowing about those numbers shows that they’re putting spin on nothing.”
Climatologist Dr. John Christy said it best: “If you want the truth about an issue, would you go to an agency with political appointees? The government is not the final word on the truth.”
Coal powered supercomputer!
National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR)
The power will be generated primarily from “clean” coal (coal that has been chemically scrubbed to reduce emissions of harmful pollutants) via Cheyenne Light Fuel and Power. NCAR is also aggressively working to secure the provision of alternative energy (wind and solar) for the facility, hoping to attain an initial level of 10%.
Measuring 108,000 square feet in total with 15,000-20,000 square feet of raised floor, it will be built for 8 megawatts of power, with 4-5 megawatts for computing and 3-4 for cooling.
http://www.ucar.edu/communications/staffnotes/0702/datacenter.shtml
Well at least the kind of “scrubbers” they will be using will be an improvement of the Chinese “carbon capture” model which only reduces the output to a lower level rather than the lowest level. The Yorkshire power Group have now decided they cannot “afford” to use US dirty lignite coal and carbon capture production in their bio mass alternative supply.
The longer you go, the more you drop your mask, StAug, and there you are-a truly vicious, but boiler-plate, lying, disinforming, denialist.
Mask? I was hoping you’d notice my viciousness the moment you came spitting and vituperating into the virtual room, Baby!
Having lived in the Alaskan Arctic not all long that long ago I’m prepared to believe my own eyes, scientific measurements, and the reports of local Inupiat peoples who’ve lived their entire lives in that climate. Climate and temperate has and is changing dramatically in that region. That is a fact not open to debate unless of course one values “opinions” over actual measurement. What percentage of scientists agree or disagree about what is happening in the Arctic, is actually, well, a rather a moot point I’d say.
As we understand it, no one disputes there has been warming. The debate is about what has caused it and whether it poses a threat to human life and the planet.
Admin always jumps in to defend the denialists. You don’t bother hiding your intrentions, do you.
We are routinely accused by both sides of being biased. We take that as an indicator that we are not. 🙂
There’s lots of factors to take account of it seems. Will the models cope?
Plumbing a 90 million-year-old layer cake of sedimentary rock in Colorado, a team of scientists from the University of Wisconsin–Madison and Northwestern University has found evidence confirming a critical theory of how the planets in our solar system behave in their orbits around the sun.
The finding, published Feb. 23, 2017 in the journal Nature, is important because it provides the first hard proof for what scientists call the “chaotic solar system,” a theory proposed in 1989 to account for small variations in the present conditions of the solar system. The variations, playing out over many millions of years, produce big changes in our planet’s climate — changes that can be reflected in the rocks that record Earth’s history.
http://news.wisc.edu/from-rocks-in-colorado-evidence-of-a-chaotic-solar-system/
“Their Sky Has Changed!” Inuit elders sharing information with NASA regarding Earth’s “WOBBLE”
http://www.thebigwobble.org/2016/06/we-are-all-obsessed-with-weather-here.html
One of the reasons that GW is not evidencing itself the way it was calculated is the recently discovered phenomena known as Magnetic Polar Shift. Europe sent two probes to orbit our planet to ascertain whether any evidence could be found to catalogue the changes. Since MPS is known to have occurred previously but the consequences cannot be determined we can only wait until the scientists can cobble together a theory. The only scientist studying MPS was not, until recently, taken seriously. The evidence, however, is available and science is now investigating it. In the end though, this planet is now probably beyond the point of salvage in relation to GW, so it matters not a jot whether we reduce our carbon footprint or not, if GW doesn’t finish us off, MPS may soon relieve us of the concern. The planet could do with a good cleansing – it doesn’t need us and it won’t care if there is no-one to appreciate it’s majesty or power and any deniers can go to sleep feeling self satisfied that all is well with the world and can continue to live their lives just as they jolly well please (So there!). We as a species are just not that exceptional as any self respecting existentialist will tell you.
“We as a species are just not that exceptional as any self respecting existentialist will tell you.”
We don’t need to be any more exceptional than snails or elephants for me to love my children, my Wife, (some of) my friends and relatives and the notion of billions of other humans and their children and the paintings they will paint or the music they will play or the lunches they will eat or the holes in the roofs they will patch, today or centuries in the future. I can’t say I trust people who consider Human Beings to be a kind of plague on this Earth… the politics that follow from that kind of worldview can’t be exactly Humanity-friendly, eh? It just strikes me as a modern extension of the “Original Sin” meme that poisoned Indo-European thought for centuries… the contempt for Humans used to justify every kind of Evil perpetrating by “superior” types against all the rest. The paradox being that the Evils that this attitude gives rise to are what appear to fuel the attitude (“Humanity is a plague!”) itself, no? Neither I, nor any of my people (ordinary humans), wage War or Rape or Usury; we don’t Frack or Strip-Mine or Kill Rivers or hunt animals to extinction… what is your problem with us? We’re the vast majority of Humans. What’s your problem with US?
Perhaps the attitude itself… the Misogynanthropy… is the Plague that needs eradicating?
St . Aug: I have reduced my Carbon Footprint by 40% and give 10% of my paltry pension to charities trying to provide clean water and schooling, meds and food. In 25 years times, if the man made GW argument proves true I will be able to look into the children’s eyes and tell them I did my bit. Any denier who made the conscious choice to gamble away their future can wear the mantle of guilt, not me. It is you who chooses to reject a scientific argument that purports that mankind itself may be responsible for climate change, rather than concern yourself of the consequences if your choice should prove to have been wrong. As for the insult regarding “politics” not being “human friendly” I merely stated an observation. This planet’s evolution over four and a half billion years never had any single species so rapacious or destructive to the point where half of all the plant and animal life have been extinguished or are facing extinction and still pursue this reckless course even though it will endanger not only the rest of the planet’s flora and fauna, but their own future generations. Mankind’s legacy will be the death of all other life on this planet as well as their own. That will of course, include all those who chose to err on the side of caution and attempt to address the problem – just in case – because they do care if future generations even have a future. To say your attack against me was arrogant is putting it mildly, look to your own guilt and take the log out of your own eye before telling someone to remove the spelk from theirs. I have not advocated the murder of, or utter contempt for, the starving and dying children of this world, so many others conveniently avert their gaze from. Mankind itself will bring about it’s own doom precisely because it is self serving and can find every excuse under the sun for not making the necessary changes that might affect their own status quo to the detriment of others less fortunate. So which one of us is the misanthrope?
” I have not advocated the murder of, or utter contempt for, the starving and dying children of this world, so many others conveniently avert their gaze from. Mankind itself will bring about it’s own doom precisely because it is self serving and can find every excuse under the sun for not making the necessary changes that might affect their own status quo to the detriment of others less fortunate. So which one of us is the misanthrope?”
M, I don’t consider mankind a “plague” or a threat to the Earth (“Mankind” being a blanket term containing within it children, of course) that deserves to destroy itself; the threat to the Earth (and the other Humans on it) comes from a tiny cluster of powerful psychopaths, not every one of the 7+ billion people on the planet. Also, the corollary trope, which you may or may not subscribe to, about this 7 billion being beyond the carrying capacity of the Earth, is utter nonsense and more thinly-veiled, Eugenic misanthropy (and you’ll notice that no one who worries about that carrying capacity is offering to take the first step to lighten the load).
What we can’t have is 7 + billion people living to American standards of consumption, driving to the corner store every time they need a 50-gallon drum of high-fructose corn syrup for Super-Bowl watching on their 500 watt, wall-sized TV-screens.
In any case, if you consider (Wo)Mankind evil, or a threat or a plague or an abomination, you’re a misogynanthrope by definition. If you don’t, you needn’t be bothered by my dim view of the Eco-Fanatics who subscribe to that creepy worldview.
Re: carbon footprints: you’d have a hard time finding someone living in the “developed” world with a smaller footprint than mine, though, again, the science isn’t settled on all that, and the AGW scheme is festooned with red flags, all your fist-shaking notwithstanding. The Truth isn’t much fussed by histrionics. Sorry! But that’s how it is.
The comments and replies are getting confused. St. Aug or whoever it was/is, is referring to someone else who really wasn’t contributing anything, just criticism. St. Aug is fine with argument(well almost)but not with people who make empty promises of leaving.
I just sent a reply to you which was for someone else – disregard please.
What do we as humans try to do when we have super swarms of another species we share this planet with? We try to find ways of relieving ourselves of the problem. Wear the shoes of this planet’s other species, who are, for the most part at our mercy and tell me they have no right to their existence and you will have confirmed to me what I have known for more than forty years.
Despite humankind’s arrogance in believing they have the right to do whatever is their will with this planet, we are the problem, this planet would not miss us and it would not care, neither would the other species who would have the chance to live according to the limits of the planets caprice. Since when did we appoint ourselves GOD and decide we were in some way superior to the rest of earth’s inhabitants? Because that is exactly how we behave – as though our presence is required or even desirable in order to bear witness to the planet’s existence.
When we are left with a barren landscape, we might then, finally realize our real significance in the grand scheme of things. What a shame then, that we must wait until our last breath to come to this realization. Some legacy we will be leaving future generations, just as we let the Biafran War children die in their hundreds of thousands because not enough people cared then or now. It will never change unless we become better than we are now. To achieve this we must become guardians of this planet, not it’s destroyers.
PS: wouldn’t it make sense for you to unlike the comment of mine you just railed against…?
Why? You are entitled to your opinion, regardless of whether it does not resonate with mine. You live your life in one part of the world, I live mine elsewhere, as such, I can only ever be the sum of my own experience and knowledge gained. You yourself, have shown me a different view of the world you inhabit from your view. That’s worthy and notable.
I have no axe to grind with you just because we are at odds with each other and if I choose not to “like” your comments that would reflect more on me than it does you.
Have you investigated the reliability of those water-charities before donating your money? There have been alarming stories of scams and money-making schemes. Ecology, or rather faux-ecology is a huge money-maker now, more’s the pity.
Yes I have tried to. Bill Nighy is currently asking for donations to one of the charities I support and as far as I have been able to deduce, it is genuine. If you know of any such scams involving charities supposedly helping children, then do a big service to those who want to help and put out an article relating to the scams. I really don’t know any other way in which to help these blighted souls except through charitable donations.
The Inuits and other indigenous peoples have passed down their knowledge for many centuries and the fact that they have now been observing the changes rather establishes, not refutes the GW situation. It is they who know the changes are dramatic and understand that it is not something that should be happening in the span of half a lifetime. so well done you for stating the obvious point which some on this site would rather disingenuously try to do a “put down” number on it. Their bias is peeping through the cracks in their argument, not yours.
We will have to wait for the next instalment but – in the meantime – the only thing I can contribute to this debate is the very obvious point that the human population of planet Earth has increased substantially and its consumption of carbon has also increased – possibly geometrically.
This logically suggests that human presence and activity on planet Earth has increased substantially and that this surely must be contributing towards the overall climate of planet Earth – especially when bearing in mind phenomena like con-trails from aircraft, smoke and soot from coal-powered power stations and factories, methane from meat-producing animals, etc., etc., etc.
No one is surely arguing that they have no effect at all?
Another thing I see from time to time is photographs of parts of the world taken decades apart, from which it is absolutely obvious that ice shelfs and similar structures have retreated substantially over a number of decades.
Presumably, they have disappeared due to ice evaporation caused by higher temperatures.
What other possible explanation is there for such natural behaviour?
What difference these events make in the long run I do not know.
It may even be arguable that climate warming may be a good thing if it is keeping a new ice age at bay.
Is it?
The last really big ice age resulted in something like 90+ per cent of all then existing species becoming extinct.
Maybe we should be welcoming global warming?
Climate Change is a vast amalgamation of different studies all interrelated. Not only has the human population grown along with the emissions that is a consequence, but the forests that at one time might have kept apace are all but gone and the ice and snow cover that reflected back the dangerous UV rays have also been melted away. Because of snow cover disappearing, perma frost coverings of methane deposits which is 34% more potent than CO2 are going to be exposed. Flat earthers can believe what they like, but if Larson D “plops” rather than slides into the Antarctic Ocean, they can explain how they were right whilst shoving other people out of their way making sure they get into the lifeboats. They won’t have any right to a position in the lifeboat though, will they? After all, aren’t they the biggest obstacle mankind has in dealing with the effects of climate change? On a personal level, I have given up trying to reason with deniers, they can keep their heads right where they are, we don’t deserve this planet and do deserve whatever mother nature decides to throw at us for making FUBAR of a gift we should have treasured. I don’t want to be around when only the wealthy can get their hands on the dwindling resources such as food and drinking water and basic shelter from the elements.
This article based on leaked documents is yet another opportunity for denouncing the science, not because the science is at fault, but that so many have gone to such lengths to intimate that climatologists are desperate to get the message out against the tide of an ever growing population of Ostriches.
How in the world any sane mind could imagine that a planet the size of earth could sustain a destructive parasite that is spreading like a plague over it’s surface, laying waste to finite resources, is beyond me. Do these minds truly imagine that if a massive die off of human kind by the billions as late as fifteen years ago, would not have halted the inexorable decline of earth’s viability? 95% die offs of both fauna and flora have occurred in past epochs and that is exactly what needs to happen now if this planet is to renew itself in a distant future. Over the next 4 billion years, the only ELE’s that could threaten earth’s existence are from space or from the one invasive species who can unleash catastrophic menaces(that would be the species known collectively as home sapiens).
“On a personal level, I have given up trying to reason with deniers, they can keep their heads right where they are, we don’t deserve this planet and do deserve whatever mother nature decides to throw at us for making FUBAR of a gift we should have treasured.”
We neither deserve nor un-deserve the planet we’re on, we’re simply on it and doing all kinds of weird things to it. There is no (anthropomorphic) “Mother Nature” deciding who gets to stay… I have as little patience for these crypto-Judeo-Christian morality narratives as you have for “Deniers” (a term which sounds an awful lot like “Truthers” to me). Unless you have a weather station of your own and understand the science better than anyone else posting, here, M, wouldn’t you say your passionate certainties are out of proportion to what you can possibly know? I think a few decades of scare tactics can do wonders to move a population’s concerns in one direction or another, but what I’m interested in are the same essential questions: What do we really know? And why do we think we know it?
I’m not thoroughly exasperated with AGW-Denial-Deniers because I once belonged to that club. But I was never really fervent in my opinion because I knew I didn’t really know it. Neither do I now, but I feel a little clearer on the matter than I used to. Always open to persuasion! But not so open to the old narratives about Mother (or Father or Trannie) Nature and all that and the subliminal gender stereotypes built into them…
Mother Nature is just a term which is more to do with a paganist interpretation of our planet’s natural elements and is no more indicative of a benign/malign conscious entity than the supposed God descriptor as a “being”, intelligent or otherwise. The planet has no conscience and no awareness and yes, it too, merely “exists” which is why it doesn’t care about our continued presence on it’s surface. The planet did not willfully decide to unleash the Russian Lava Fields which plunged the planet into another ELE many millions of years ago and it could take another oblique hit by an asteroid which would render any discussion on the merits of GW very moot. the planet, does however, have a will as in the saying “Nature abhors a vacuum” and mankind’s determination to thwart that “will” or the natural essence of nature’s nature is as futile as Canute holding back the tide, but demonstrably shows our intent to “own” the planet. We will never own let alone win, this planet and those who toilet in their own back yard must suffer the consequences, it was, after all, their choice to do so. We are not just “being” here, we are actively pursuing the destruction of our own resources and defying the planet’s nature in doing so and their are consequences and in that respect we do not have a right to destroy the natural order, the pre-existing fauna and flora without respect or even due consideration and therefore, are not deserving.
I was passionate for many years prior to GW being a topic of discussion because of my zoogeorgaphical studies, Al Gore came very late to the scene as far as I was concerned and the willful denial of man’s contribution to the destruction we have wrought just left me cold and contemptuous to the point that I really didn’t care if they brought the sky down on their heads and I still don’t. As far as I am concerned, mankind can cease to exist as a species. You may not have studied loss of habitat and microcosms and the effects of man’s exploitation since the beginning of the 20th century, but I have. I had over sixty A4 box files full of studies and got rid of the lot 13 years ago when I realized that mankind would always serve it’s own best interests at the cost of other’s, no matter who those others were and with only the short term benefits in mind.
I made a decision some 13 years ago, not to continue bashing my head against a brick wall and instead watched as someone looking from the outside in as mankind wrought about it’s own demise. It’s not callousness, I am considered by many to be a kind person, nor is it even defeatism, it is simply resignation to accept what I cannot change and resolving not to make it my own lonely, heartbreaking and thankless battle. An acceptance of the futility of fighting a losing battle.
No offence to the deniers, I do not wish any individual harm simply because they view things differently from me and I still care what happens to the victims of man made wars and natures destructive power, but I limit my culpability to that which I am guilty of, nothing more and nothing less. Let sleeping dogs lie?
I agree that our civilization is destructive of the environment, unconsciously so, given the primary value that is the organizing principle of our economies, namely, production for profit. The culture is in that respect, as Prof. John McMurtry has put it, “life-blind.”
Some days, I feel as you do, and really believe that given the nature of things, that life processes are in themselves and predominantly ‘unconscious,’ there is nothing that anyone can do to stave off our inevitable destruction if we continue in the present vein.
On other days, I’m more optimistic, because not everything that humans have collectively accomplished were matters of blind good luck, and I think that more and more people either have or are on the cusp of realizing that we must make “human need,” as opposed to profit, the essential value underpinning human purpose. And sometimes I’m just optimistic because Chantal’s (my wife’s) flower beds are in full bloom, the sun is bright on high, and birds are singing and flitting in and out of the cedar hedge.
But today, right now, I’m that place the feels like there is not very much hope. Probably, though, because it is the month of February, and February is always kind of like that — always has been and probably will be until the day I die. Yes, and then there is all of that other stuff, too, that I sometimes despair about . . .
I know what you are saying. I do actually give to charities to help the helpless, not because I don’t care, but because I do. I wish I could make the world realize where we as a species are headed, instead I put bird feed out on the feeder and just enjoy the moment as they in their multitude of colours and habits flit back and forth in their busy schedules. My post was deliberately controversial and not just to antagonize the non believers but those who feel as I do, that global warming in this era is “probably” man made but worse than the deniers, do nothing whatsoever. Sometimes it’s good to light a fire under people, if for no other reason than they damn well ought to care. (I think I once accused you of playing devil’s advocate – bloody cheek coming from me, the arch nemesis of the constrained and conditioned responses). Well I never said I was perfect, did I?
Yes, people have lied and exaggerated out of good intentions (probably). But they have still lied and exaggerated. We need to remember that nothing good comes from suppressing truth in a “good cause.” Because people are too fallible and too often wrong to be allowed to make such a call.
The best way to arrive at the truth is to allow all the facts and all the data to be freely evaluated. Once any section of society decides it knows what the truth is and is therefore entitled to suppress any pesky fact that might make people doubt – well they’ve become guardians of a faith haven’t they?
Catte: “Yes, people have lied and exaggerated out of good intentions (probably). But they have still lied and exaggerated. We need to remember that nothing good comes from suppressing truth in a “good cause.” Because people are too fallible and too often wrong to be allowed to make such a call.”
That people on both sides of the argument are lying is not in dispute.
“. Once any section of society decides it knows what the truth is and is therefore entitled to suppress any pesky fact that might make people doubt – well they’ve become guardians of a faith haven’t they?”
Clever girl. It’s one thing to denounce a scientific purported fact with the same false counter arguments used to produce it, but when that argument, right or wrong, shows how dire the consequences could be if ignored, that is a greater crime. How’s that for a “pesky” fact. Or are you so certain of your “pesky” facts that your “guardians of a faith” is in the right? You see Catte, the knife cuts both ways, doesn’t it?
Anyone willing to ignore the possibility that GW is man made is willing to take a gamble that will not affect them for their future, but generations to come. The problem with their choice is that it is no choice for those who want to guarantee a future for generations to come. Waiting until it’s too late to make the necessary changes is merely an easy cop out but a difficult one to explain, especially as those responsible for not sandbagging when the river was overflowing, will likely have already had their cake and popped their clogs. Cold comfort to those who will neither have cake nor any opportunity to eat it!
“The best way to arrive at the truth is to allow all the facts and all the data to be freely evaluated. ”
So what if the science is faulty. It changes nothing if we do nothing. More than twenty five years of band aid strategies have been the result of “arriving at the truth” and the truth will prove to be elusive until the debate is moot. Ever heard of positive action? It’s the opposite of negative action – or doing nothing, until it’s too late. If the worst case scenario proves to be a false alarm then all deniers can smirk and say “Told you so”. If the generation born today have no future what will the deniers being saying then? Oops we f****d up?
In a shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted way, you are right. I would rather be a “Guardian” of a future for kids born today, than be a brick wall standing steadfastly in the way of a runaway twenty ton tank. So thanks for the compliment.
So, if a prediction is dire enough we have a duty to take it seriously – even if it’s wrong? That doesn’t seem to make very much sense does it?
OK, I can get on board with what you say. But questioning the theory of manmade global warming isn’t the same as ignoring it. In fact it’s the very opposite of ignoring it. It’s subjecting it to analysis.
Surely you aren’t suggesting that any extinction-prediction should be a priori assumed to be true and deemed off-limits for further discussion? Can’t rational amounts of positive action go hand in hand with further discussion and research?
I do have to add that I am not sceptical about AGW, but I don’t like any “truths” being deemed above the need for proof.
And do try to be less confrontational if you can.
“Can’t rational amounts of positive action go hand in hand with further discussion and research?”
They can and do, that’s why sometimes I am D’agent provocant, or should that be L’agent provocateur? It isn’t just mischief on my part, it serves another purpose, but sometimes I’m too clever for my own good. At least it got people moving in the right direction.
Catte.
If there is one thing I feel more disheartened about than even the deniers it is those who suffer from an acute attack of apathy. They believe the science and still will not do anything that will inconvenience their lifestyle. Being a denier is not a sin, but doing nothing is. The people on this site are actually engaging in debate(heated in some cases) but that in itself is a good thing. Much better that the debate rages furiously than gets consigned to the bin or swept under the carpet as either “An Inconvenient Truth” or a “Convenient Lie”.
Confrontational often gets the desired results, people should be passionate about what they believe or get off the bus. Can you think of a better way to get passion into the debate than the way I have achieved it. I’m not afraid of their condemnation, words don’t kill, deeds or the lack of them, do. In case you haven’t noted I’ve “liked” as many posits in opposition as I have others, simply for making the effort. Just going through them again now.(I didn’t get to my laptop yesterday, got a lot of catching up to do).
The people who have read the article then rubbished it without making any useful contribution promising they won’t bother any more are about as welcome as a dose of …..Castor Oil and they are neither use nor ornament.
I’ve done my “confrontational” stint and now I have lots of interesting comments to catch up on.
Have you? Become a guardian of a faith, that is?
What pompous garbage. No-one on the side of science and rationality has ‘lied or exaggerated’ out of any intentions, good or bad. In fact they have consistently erred on the optimistic side as climate destabilisation has proceeded far faster and broader than the worst IPCC predictions. The liars, exaggeraters, disinformers and deceivers are the denialists you have made very welcome with this odious pile of denialist disinformation. To publish these odious LIES, not ‘opinions’ is in fact, disgraceful. Just what twisted ideological reasons are really behind it, who can say, but it is PRECISELY what one sees in the worst denialist sewers like the Murdoch fake-stream media.
On a personal level, I have given up trying to reason with deniers, they can keep their heads right where they are, we don’t deserve this planet and ….
As someone you would regard as a “denier”, I have not given up trying to reason with climate alarmists, although in my opinion very few of them demonstrate the ability to use reason rationally or reasonably and on the whole they prefer condemnations, ad hominem attacks and bandwagon arguments to discussing relevant theories and facts, so my efforts are usually wasted.
But since you don’t believe that we (including, presumably, you personally) deserve this planet, I would start my reasoning by asking why do you believe this? What seems to be the problem? And how do you propose to solve it?
CAGW as promoted by people such as Gore, Hansen, Clinton and Obama is a classic “problem, reaction, solution” gambit. They say we (the general “we”) are destroying the biosphere (the problem), but that by recognizing and appreciating this fact (the reaction) we can change our ways so that we will no longer be destroying the biosphere (the solution).
But when we study the solutions they place on offer, we see “carbon trading” and “carbon taxes” that are guaranteed to make everybody a lot poorer except those running the casino or collecting the revenue or benefiting from subsidies and other forms of largess. We see millions of wind turbines and billions of solar panels that will not in practice provide the stable, reliable, high quality electricity required to run a modern industrial society and will in any case be so expensive to build, install and maintain and so disruptive to the conventional grid that they will bring the economic system to its knees. These fiscal and technological innovations may represent a cure that is worse than the disease.
In Hansen’s call for a move to much greater use of nuclear power, we at least see recognition that “renewables” are not up to the job. But practically speaking, there are no solutions to the problem of 7.4 billion humans living on a planet with limited resources. There are only can-kicking measures that we hope may tide us over until our numbers decline.
But worse still, although individually many of us in the consumer societies could cut down on our consumption and use a lot less resources, our societies as a whole cannot do this. The global economy is the Beast. It is a ferocious beast that is always hungry for more. It knows only two modes of operation: grow or die. A lot of people have thought hard about how to make it run in a “sustainable” mode, but the Beast is wild and it cannot be trained to sit, shake hands, role over or play dead on command in exchange for any treats we could provide.
Whether or not we deserve this planet, we had better stick to the ethical dictum that as children of the Universe, “no less than the trees and the stars we have a right to be here.” Once we throw that attitude away, the barbarians will be us.
Carbon fuels are abundant. Not just for centuries but millennia.
Even the earth’s core is now thought to be carbon.
Look up methane hydrates.
Carbon is as natural as oxygen.
“Carbon is as natural as oxygen.”
Irrelevant.
Carbon is as natural as Oxygen?
Carbon dioxide at levels that have never pre-existed except as prior to an ELE are the problem. Of the many elements – see the periodic table – many are toxic, but at levels we can survive. The compounds, however, can be favourable as in H2O or lethal as in C2O – especially if the mitigating factors have been removed. Which is where mankind comes in.
Co2 composition of the atmosphere has been much higher than current levels at many times over the Earth’s history. There are natural forces which moderate the level, primarily absorption into the oceans as well as through rainfall, plant respiration, and even dissipation into space. Co2 is a normally fluctuating component of our atmosphere. Plant life is adapted to far higher levels and is presently experiencing co2 drought.
I’m not arguing for geoengineering higher levels of co2, but currently we are dealing with a very minor increase of a trace component.
Mohandeer – may I ask where you got the impression that current Co2 levels are at a high only previously associated with ELEs? Whoever is telling people this is being egregiously misleading.
Co2 levels have been higher than they are now through most of the last 650 million years, if not longer.
http://geologys.hol.es/carbon-dioxide-levels-in-the-jurassic-period/
Much higher. 1,000ppm and more.
Yes, the C02 levels were also high immediately before ELEs, but they had been just as high for millions of years before as well! For most of this time life flourished far more abundantly than it does now. And even with such huge levels of C02 there was no sign of a positive feedback catastrophe
C02 has been at an all time lo in our epoch. This is beyond question.
Tell us where you got that dreadful piece of misinformation please!
The same fossil records those scientists have misrepresented because they failed to mention the relevant die offs and fauna/flora distribution/type and a vast range of other details. It’s easy to manipulate information if the agenda is specifically geared to promoting a biased view. It’s egregious to pretend that the answers are known when the absence of evidence is the basis for the argument. Failure to mention compounds that mankind and most of the previous fauna were not able to tolerate that existed during the periods you mentioned is just as deceitful. Anybody can publish a paper on perceived facts and wonderful tables and diagrams to explain a theory, there will be a whole bunch of others who will jump on the bandwagon right up to the point where the theory and “known facts” are disproved by those who said it was fundamentally incorrect, precisely because the evidence doesn’t stack up.
“As someone you would regard as a “denier”, I have not given up trying to reason with climate alarmists, although in my opinion very few of them demonstrate the ability to use reason rationally or reasonably and on the whole they prefer condemnations, ad hominem attacks and bandwagon arguments to discussing relevant theories and facts, so my efforts are usually wasted.”
I’m so used to getting that sort of treatment from Bush/ Clinton/ BHO supporters, for nearly 20 years, that it feels nearly natural, now, to be treated like a raving lunatic/ moron/ baby-killer by everyone on the other side of any other debate I’ll ever enter. The new rules of “civil debate”: get emotional! Go for the eyes! Won’t someone think of the children? Laugh
Agree with your argument in as much as the solution was probably never attainable, but simply by acknowledging the science and rubbishing it, is in effect, accelerating the process. You have the choice to denounce the science or recognize it’s possibility, but feel free to hurtle towards oblivion if that is your wont. I’m not standing in your way. I fully accept that the problem will never be resolved, most of the economies are run by greed with their own wealth being uppermost in their concerns and I know this and cannot change it. I observe it whenever I can, without emotion. We could be hit by another huge asteroid in the next five years and I could get hit by a bus tomorrow and the “problem” of man’s future or lack of it, will be moot.
When a problem is just “too hard” to fix, so let’s not try, becomes the “meme” as in the title of this article, then giving up trying is pretty much the human default setting in so many instances. So perhaps they are right and we should just give up,
So here we are, 7.5 billion people have had no negative impact on the rate of global warming and it’s all just a lie – OK, that argument has real merit for some. The three wise monkeys comes to mind.
When a problem is just “too hard” to fix, so let’s not try, becomes the “meme” as in the title of this article, then giving up trying is pretty much the human default setting in so many instances. So perhaps they are right and we should just give up,
So here we are, 7.5 billion people have had no negative impact on the rate of global warming and it’s all just a lie – OK, that argument has real merit for some. The three wise monkeys comes to mind.
When a problem is incorrectly diagnosed, it becomes impossible to fix because incorrect solutions will be applied. As Grey wrote in his Anatomy, “sometimes doing something is worse than doing nothing”.
We here from time to time about how our economies are decarbonizing, leading to a future scenario in which we can all live happily ever after without using fossil fuels. Actually, if you study the figures in depth, you’ll probably come to the conclusion that worldwide—global GDP if that’s not an oxymoron—total gross production is tied very closely to fossil fuel consumption. The industrialized nations have managed to wean themselves a little by transferring heavy industry to China and India, but overall, GDP and fossil fuel consumption go hand in hand.
If we attempt to solve the problem of potentially disruptive climate change by cutting anthropogenic CO2 emissions by substantially reducing fossil fuel combustion, we may or may not succeed in ameliorating this problem which may or may not be a real problem but we just don’t know because the establishment has labeled the science settled and declared discussion anathema—which is never a good sign. But by reducing fossil fuel combustion we will positively absolutely certainly succeed in crashing the economic system on which the vast bulk of the 7.5 billion of us depend on for a living. That’s our predicament; that’s the hole we’re in as a species; and the sooner we realize it the sooner we can apply solutions that have a reasonable chance of making things better rather than worse.
“Once we throw that attitude away, the barbarians will be us.”
We already are in too many instances.
Barbarians – guilty of barbaric measures, throughout the ages.
“And why would scientists and politicians lie on such a scale?”
Scientists follow the herd or lose funding. Politicians lie because that’s their function; they represent powerful concerns with needs and desires inimical to our own, so Good Liars are always useful. Al Gore warned of rising sea levels, then promptly purchased luxurious ocean front property (Montecito, on the Pacific). Either Al Gore is stupid or we are.
“Climate Change” spawned carbon trading (lucrative for some), puts in place a framework for stunting the development of smaller energy-producers and developing nations… provides, in a word, more Control for those in charge… and is yet another progressive cause all kinds of geopolitical monkey business can hide behind. I was a “believer” until Climategate. I downloaded and read many of the emails. Then I did quite a lot of reading that informed me as to fact that A) there’s no way to tell if higher temperatures lead to more C02 or vice versa 2) some of the hottest cycles on record predate the Industrial Revolution by centuries 3) the Sun, that sustained thermonuclear reaction at the center of our solar system, experiences output-cycles, or a “climate”, itself; the Sun’s climate drives our climate.
Of all the planet-killing mega-toxins being pumped into the ecosphere every minute of every day by unnecessary industrial processes, it’s almost funny that it’s C02 (aka a key component in photosynthesis : “Photosynthesis removes CO2 from the atmosphere and replaces it with O2”) they’ve got us worried about. “Climate Change” is an internally-redundant catch phrase…. but it’s the Ice Ages you really have to worry about.
I can defend Gore’s behaviour by pointing out that he was probably referring to long-run climate change and – as the great economist Keynes once pointed out – “In the long run, we are all dead”.
In the short run – i.e. his own life-time – it would make sense for him to live in a nice home in Montecito.
Any negative impacts on his former home would only set in long after he had finished living there.
I would be more concerned about the San Andreas Fault, myself!
I believe Tipper – Al’s wife – got the Montecito home after they separated.
Maybe Al doesn’t care any more – about the house or his ex-.
“I can defend Gore’s behaviour by pointing out that he was probably referring to long-run climate change”
Nah, Gore was claiming, back in 2006 (while hyping his promo vid for the Carbon Trading market) that we had ten years, at best, before apocalypse. How much of a margin for error did Al calculate when he bought that property? Maybe he planned to re-sell at a substantial loss as all the data came pouring in…?
And maybe he missed the fact that six years before his film premiered, “The San Jose Mercury News reported on June 30, 1989 that a “senior environmental official at the United Nations, Noel Brown, [said] entire nations could be wiped off the face of the earth by rising sea levels if global warming is not reversed by the year 2000.”
erratum: 17 years before his film, I meant to say
“Climate Change” spawned carbon trading (lucrative for some), puts in place a framework for stunting the development of smaller energy-producers and developing nations… provides, in a word, more Control for those in charge…”
Yet “those in charge” have consistently dropped the ball when it comes to climate change and made only non-binding agreements to maybe do something substantial in the future. You would think that if the the “scam” of climate change provided such an avenue for control, those in charge would stop undermining their own efforts to use this lever.
“You would think that if the the “scam” of climate change provided such an avenue for control, those in charge would stop undermining their own efforts to use this lever.”
Well, no. The “rules” they want to put in place should apply to others (as ever). Which explains why there are no NATO “humanitarian interventions” in, say, France over the mistreatment of minorities and so forth.If they can get India to obey these rules while not injuring the bottom line of industry within the governing Empire, all the better. If they can get AGW to really stick… really fly in the minds of the Serfs… I can well imagine it being used, in the future, as a pretext for NATO invasions of AGW-“violaters”! That would be an ideal bonus of the scam.
“If they can get India to obey these rules while not injuring the bottom line of industry within the governing Empire, all the better.”
Except that the existing climate change agreements have been fought against in the imperialist centers precisely because of the chauvinist feeling that the rules disproportionately FAVOR the poorer countries, who are given more leeway to pollute and build up their industries. The corporations want the government to lift off the brakes and be loose everywhere, not just in the Third World (which, by the way, is the site for a lot of new CO2 emissions from imperialist corporations who move their precisely because of the more lax environmental regulations) but in the First World, too. As for NATO intervention, you got it comically backwards: NATO interventions take place against countries that are more inclined to protect their environment against the interests of imperialist capital; it’s those countries most inclined to open their economies to penetration and lax environmental regulations that become honorary members of the “Free World”. To paraphrase you: I can “imagine” (because something like it has actually happened, unlike your hypothetical case) a NATO intervention against a country that resists the encroachment of Western energy interests and tries to keep the oil in the ground.
Sorry, not buying it: Good one. When the original summit discussions were due, 123 scientists refused to endorse it. They did so, primarily, not because they disputed the science, but because it disproportionally penalised the poorest countries like Africa who had vast resources from being able to use their fossil fuels in an attempt to catch up with the rest of the world. Enter the corporates and the plotters and schemers. Now most of those resources have been “acquired” and “appropriated” by stealth or outright theft by those who still denounce the man made global warming theory, but were savvy(if that’s the word to describe their greed and guile)enough to seize the opportunity and the resources whilst condemning the science. Others were even cleverer than that and advocated the science while secretly doing the same thing. Ain’t life grand? Damned if you don’t and damned if you do.
““Photosynthesis removes CO2 from the atmosphere and replaces it with O2”)
Photosynthesis can only occur if the forests and jungles exist to keep apace. The problem, which is what so many “alarmists” have been trying to get across, without, I have to say, much success, is that the supporting combatant has been removed at a rate which outstrips the levels of harmful CO2.
The clear-cutting and paving over of rainforests is precisely the kind of crime we are not being conditioned, in general, by TPTB, to be alarmed about. The “Alarmists” have been misdirected in the aid of scheme they can’t see through, in my opinion, in a very forest-for-the-trees sort of way. The “Deniers” are not a monolith of pro-“development” stooges… some of us think our energies can be focused against the bastards ruining everything, not in concert (however well-meaningly) with them. And the term “harmful C02” is equivalent to the term “harmful 02” or “harmful copper”… it’s not a scientific term, it’s a propagandistic scare tactic developed by a Thinktank to expedite a Global Control framework.
“And the term “harmful C02” is equivalent to the term “harmful 02” or “harmful copper”… it’s not a scientific term, it’s a propagandistic scare tactic developed by a Thinktank to expedite a Global Control framework.”
I’ll say it again: even though human emissions of CO2 are a small fraction of the total amount of CO2 that is cycled through the Earth’s geochemical system, this system cannot reabsorb all of it, which means that more and more of the CO2 stays in the atmosphere (rising ppm). Whether CO2 is harmful or not depends on the context. It’s supremely ironic that so many naysayers rail against assessments based on models for being overly “simplistic” and that climate change is “in its infancy” and that everything is super complex, yet are happy to make broad-brush and very un-holistic claims about CO2 being simply “a harmless gas”.
Just take a look at what the earth’s natural systems are doing. Massive crash in Arctic sea ice. It is now one quarter of its 1979 volume and has not been re-growing during the long Arctic winter night. Methane releases as permafrost around the Arctic melts. Carbon dioxide over 400ppm. Last year it grew by between 3 and 4 parts per million. Plants to seem to have passed their peak CO2 uptake point, as do the Oceans. 93% of extra warming goes into the oceans and gets released during an El Nino. We may be about to experience another El Nino, just a year after the last one ended. Coral bleaching events – sucha sthat afflicting the Great Barrier Reef – are becoming more common. Oceans ph is decreasing, thus putting the viability of organisms with carbonate shells at risk. Greenland ice sheet melt is continuing at a faster rate than expected and the West Antarctic Ice sheet – which rests on the ocean floor – is becoming dangerously unstable.
With respect this is the meaningless jumbled up soundbite science of the popular media. A mix of decontextualised observations, inaccurate summations, false assertions and computer projections presented as real world events. It’s not real, and no one, even in the core of serious climate scientists talks like this about the subject amongst themselves or in their studies. This is the nonsense churned out to get headlines and grab research grants. – Not that this makes the underlying claims wrong, of course (in fact I happen to endorse the general idea of AGW), but it’s just not reflection of the real, highly complex and and nuanced issues.
Just to take one thing as an example – the Arctic ice sheets. Every year the media highlights the “destruction” of these sheets, as if it were an extraordinary and heretofore unknown event. But of course it’s not. The Arctic ice sheets melt every summer – and then re-form every winter. But the popular media doesn’t usually cover the second bit.
Sometimes the ice sheets melt more, sometimes less. In El Nino years the melting will tend to be more extensive, in La Nina years it will be markedly less. The melts and re-forms follow patterns we only dimly understand at present, that loop over years, decades and beyond.
The state of the ice in any one five or ten-year period is not going to tell us much about longterm climate patterns, and even if it did we do not yet really know how to read what it tells us, or what longterm trends it’s following.
You also need to remember the other thing they don’t tell you, which is the Antarctic ice sheets are not shrinking at all. In fact there is little to no sign of warming in the Antarctic anywhere than in the Peninsula.
You won’t hear about this because vagueness and fuzzy stories about boring scientific uncertainties don’t sell newspapers.
All we currently know is that the earth is almost definitely warming and has been doing so over the last 100 years or so. We know this period of warming coincides with a certain amount of increase (no one is sure of exact amounts) in atmospheric Co2.
We can infer the two may be linked. But there is no proof of this as yet. There are so many other variables in the study of climate , and our grasp of them is still so poor, that we simply can;t be any more certain than that.
After all, the world is coming out of the mini Ice Age, which caused temp to plummet for a few hundred years between about 1400 and the mid-19th C. We don’t know what caused that Ice Age and we don’t know what ended it. So we can’t tell whether the warming we are experiencing now is simply a part of that unexplained natural cycle or something more.
And even if we assume it is our carbon emissions that are at least in part responsible we absolutely do NOT know if this will be a bad thing. A slightly warned earth would be a potential blessing. It only becomes a bad thing if the warming becomes extreme. yes there are computer models that predict this – but these models have been programmed with specific data sets that assume what is called a “positive feedback loop.”
In (very) simple terms this means the models are programmed to assume the initial warming will create water vapor which will act to in turn to create more warming, which will create more water vapor, and so on…
Now this is one possible scenario of course, but it’s only one of many. And there are many problems with assuming a positive feedback system would operate, mainly because there’s not much evidence in the historical record for such systems.
If we use a computer model that doesn’t assume positive feedback then the amount of warming predicted by our present carbon emissions is not catastrophic at all, and might in fact make things rather pleasanter for many. But this, rather boring, alternative scenario doesn’t get airtime, because it is very very dull.
So, in summary. Yes, manmade global warming is probably at least partly real, and yes it may be dangerous, but anyone who is telling you it’s all certain and beyond question is misinformed by the silly populist version of this very complex, but very interesting topic.
With respect this is the meaningless jumbled up soundbite science of the popular media. A mix of decontextualised observations, inaccurate summations, false assertions and computer projections presented as real world events
And your post is not more of the same??
You are about to receive a lot of oft repeated negative remarks – the usual narrative in denouncing provable facts, with absolutely no acknowledgement of these very real and provable truths.
If the Larsen shelf causes a gigantic tsunami wiping out the Eastern Sea Board, you can bet it will not be due to man made global warming. Let me think now, Oh yes, it will be more on the lines of “well, it was always going to happen, because these kind of things have happened before”.
You are wasting your time, if you did but know it. The deniers do not want your provable facts and undisputed observations, they have chosen their side and will stick with it, no matter what information flies in the face of their side of the argument.
It is worth noting also, that NOAH couldn’t find their arse with both hands and they just do not have the manpower to catalogue and analyse the statistics and work with the meteorologists and other scientific researchers and put everything together in one singular presentation. On the flip side, those who have the most profits like the giant petroleum companies, are ploughing billions of dollars in campaigns to refute the facts you promote, wealth and power always win out and always will. You really are in for such a pasting, I don’t envy your position, but I will wish you luck.
Tsar Nocholas
I just finished my comment to you and the very next comment I read had this: “this is the meaningless jumbled up soundbite science of the popular media. A mix of decontextualised observations, inaccurate summations, false assertions and computer projections presented as real world events”….side splitting in it’s doubly attributable to the commentator himself, especially as I had just warned you of what would follow.
It is so very satisfying to be proved right sometimes, but I do feel for you.(Please note, I am NOT laughing at you or your attempt to put the facts out there, but please try to see where I am coming from.
If you were to read the comment you are referring you’ll see the commenter happens to accept the idea of AGW and is merely discussing how the science tends to be dumbed down and simplified for popular consumption.
We see a tendency on all sides here to respond with instinctive rejection without reading and digesting first.
You forgot to place the “With respect” bit in front which is what DavidKNZ used in re-quoting MoriartysLeftSock, who I know is largely accepting of man made global warming, just not necessarily on this site(there are other sites you know?) You might also have noticed – if you weren’t in too much of a rush, that I added an addendum thus: “Please note, I am NOT laughing at you or your attempt to put the facts out there, but please try to see where I am coming from.” Where I was coming from, but you lost your sense of humour? My way of letting him know that the crap was going to hit the fan from all sides – which it did. It’s why I, for the most part don’t try and persuade the deniers any more.
“If you were to read the comment you are referring you’ll see the commenter happens to accept the idea of AGW and is merely discussing how the science tends to be dumbed down and simplified for popular consumption.
We see a tendency on all sides here to respond with instinctive rejection without reading and digesting first.”
So just who, in this instance is responding with “instinctive rejection”, since I had already read and understood what MLS was trying to convey, so perhaps I am not as tending towards instinctive rejection as you obviously judged me to be.
I found his leading comments fun after I had just posted to Tsar Nicholas, so your point exactly is what?
OK, that was a brief acquaintance — I started reading OffGuardian a few weeks ago because Syria, today I’m stopping reading it because the above crock of brown, smelly substance. I’m sorry, but these lies and distortions have all been extensively debunked, for a long time now. Do yourself a favour, subscribe to something like Skeptical Science, wait a a few months, accumulate knowledge, compare sources. Maybe even — gasp, shock — talk to actual climate scientists. There’s a lot of patient, kind guys among them who will gladly explain why what you propagate is nonsense. In the meantime, if you publish this, you’ll publish any bull. You have just miraculously sunk a hundred feet beneath rock bottom. Good bye.
Before running away you might like to read our other article on “free speech, censorship and the right to be wrong.” It’s aimed at people who scream and panic when confronted with cognitive dissonance. None of us are “climate deniers”, but we do understand the need for open debate. Nothing is gained by refusing to hear both sides of an argument.
If you’d like to tell us where the points raised in this article are – specifically – “debunked” we’d be happy to publish your reply.
And you’ll be interested to know we are interviewing a – gasp, shock – climate scientist, later this week.
🙂
Sorry, I have neither time nor patience for dealing with crap. You either stick to “because facts should be sacred”, or publish provably false, completely unverified nonsense like the above. Can’t have the cake and eat it. I could spend hours dissecting every sentence of this bullshit and showing why it’s wrong, as I have done on occasions, but there comes a time when you just accept that someone is wrong on the Internet. It’s just that I don’t need to waste time reading stuff coming from a source that assumes the posture of moral superiority only then to prove that for the sake of stoking an argument it will sacrifice fundamental journalistic integrity.
Sir, are you by any chance a parody account?
Science simply can’t do what you demand it do. I am persuaded that manmade global warming is real to some extent, but the amount of certitude you want to claim is just not available.
LOL – I love that the expressed views of 30,000+ scientists is “crap” to you, because you don’t have time for nuanced thinking!
Maybe make time? It helps
“sacrificing fundamentals of journalism”?
No.
Arguing with the journalist from fundamentalist belief?
Yes.
Bye iJon.
Don’t let the door hit you on the way out.
Incidentally, there are a lot of overexcited alarmists out there who are going through tantrums as result of the election of Donald Trump. This seems the best explanation of why their language has become so much more colourful and unrestrained by the dictates o protocol of late. For instance, proper scientist Roy Spencer of the University of Alabama posted a nasty piece of “fan mail” he received the other day that make’s iJon’s potty mouth prose sound like John Keats by comparison.
Here’s a sample, with the expletives asterix-ed as I know nuns and vicar’s daughters visit this site
Like every other idiot who thinks 7.4 billion human beings cannot alter our planet, you fail to ask yourself the most important question you should be asking: what if you’re wrong.
If you are wrong, and mankind is desequestering carbon, nitrogen, and hydrogen in the form of fossil fuels, then you are advocating the destruction of humanity through the reversal of natural climate engineering.
If you’re wrong and we continue to use fossil fuels, the species and all other mammals will be forever wiped out.
And you are so fing arrogant, and so fing lazy, as to not bother asking that simple question.
Why? Because it would be too much work for you to live without your f***ing car.
F*** you.
Go do your fing homework ahole. Your “science” can’t explain the CO2 levels in the atmosphere, nor the melting Arctic ice cap, nor even why the ice ages occurred only in the northern hemisphere. You don’t understand a dmn thing about weather or climate, or even basic atmospheric chemistry. All you know is your f***ing ego.
Well, a**hole, I’m not impressed by your ignorance, your stupidity, nor your arrogance……
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2017/02/fan-mail/
So Spencer loses patience with the flat earthers and this is what? Proof that people who are totally exasperated by man’s ignorance, stupidity and arrogance finally snap and resort to bad language in dealing with the ostrich tribe? Hope your logic pans out for you in the not too distant future. On a personal note, I find such logic slightly flawed. ExxonMobil and shell on the other hand along with all the other huge corporations making mega bucks from the continued depredations and denudations are probably rubbing their hands together in glee believing their money is safely winging it’s way into their already stuffed bank accounts.
Being in denial won’t change the facts – Climate Change is a Rich Man’s Trick adjusted & morphed from Ozone hole that turned out to be fake & then Global Warming that wore thin & now gets called Climate Change.
Per capita we pumped out 23 times more carbon 100yrs ago than we do today & each time a volcano goes off it pumps out 10 years worth of human emissions in each 24hrs. Did you ever think why Birmingham area was called the ‘Black Country’?
QUOTE: “The Black Country is an area of the West Midlands in England, West of Birmingham,[2] including Dudley, Walsall and Sandwell. In the Industrial Revolution, it became one of the most industrialised parts of Britain with coal mines, coking, iron foundries and steel mills producing a high level of air pollution.” Un-QUOTE Its clean today! Ding Ding Ding………
Why did Al Gore stop his road show ? Because over 16,000 highly qualified scientists proved he was talking shite with his Polar Bears extinction etc etc. But tell the truth & people like you run for hills……
Margaret Thatcher started the “Greenhouse Story” as a weapon to beat the Miners & the idea caught on with the elite with some tweaks on how to screw carbon tax etc etc – do the research & you will see when the entire scam started.
See how GE (General Electric) made BILLIONS on “Ozone Friendly Fridges” now study Ozone & see it was all hogwash!
FOLLOW THE MONEY not your heart – saying all that I’m all for a clean planet but don’t lie to me & stop being silly.
Yes leruscino, I worked in the power industry a long time ago and the (state owned) British Coal and the (state owned) Central Electricity Generating Board had an joint operational “fluidised bed” pilot power generating plant which would have given coal a cleaner and more efficient future but not to my knowledge any reduction in carbon dioxide. This research was of course shut down, shortly to be followed by the privatisation of the power industry and the coal industry. The liquidation of what in the north of England is known as “men’s work” seems to have gone hand in hand with AGW, so much so that AGW could be seen as a nice tool for the gender agenda whereby instead of women having to do these jobs (equally of course) they have merely done away with the jobs, but that’s another issue….
“Being in denial won’t change the facts – Climate Change is a Rich Man’s Trick ”
The delicious irony of that is that this canard ensures that you continue to do the bidding of the Rich Man. “Climate change is a conspiracy for manipulate the world’s poor” is a demagogic slogan in the pocket of reaction, national chauvinism and First World privilege.