…
It’s a sign skeptics are winning. A few years ago the term “skeptic” had been turned into an insult. People would write to me and implore me to call myself a realist. (I wasn’t having a bar of that). Now, all kinds of wannabees are pretending they are skeptics even as they swallow and repeat the establishment lines ad infinitum.
Take, for example, Professor Stephen Emmott. It’s a PR game — Emmott hopes the half-asleep audience will see the right keywords and not notice that what he actually says is the complete opposite of the badges and labels he claims as his own.
Emmott (Emmott who?) has written yet another scary book and is doing his best to pretend he is the voice of reason. According to Donna LaFramboise his new book is just a rehash of a 40 year old one. (Geoff Chambers has all the other links).
Let’s unpack the empty PR
Quotes below are from The Australian.
First up, Emmott tries to look reasonable by saying he won’t demonize climate skeptics:
He [Emmott] affects bafflement at climate scepticism: “I have no idea why people don’t believe what is overwhelming evidence for climate change,” he says. But in fact he does have an idea, and it has less to do with villainous deniers, whom he refuses to demonise, than with us lot in the media.
Emmott “knows” that man can control the weather, and calls the unconvinced –“Deniers”. Who’s a demon then? A denier is either a lizard-brain-operator who is beyond the reach of reason, or maybe “just” a Nazi sympathizer. Either way deniers are beyond the pale and should not be listened to. Note how “polite” he pretends to be while acting like an namecalling troll.
Secondly, Emmott drags out the old gate-keeper excuse to silence views he doesn’t like. He thinks newspapers should give no time to doubters of man-made climate change because they aren’t qualified:
It’s what you might call the spurious balance problem: “I think well-intentioned broadcasters and newspapers tend to give equal weight to a climate scientist and a climate denier in the interests of balance, so what you get is presented as a two-sided, balanced discussion and yet the evidence is overwhelmingly on the side that climate change is happening. You get equal time being shared by someone like Nigel Lawson, who last time I looked was not a bio-geochemist or an atmospheric physicist.”
Emmott’s qualifications:
“… a neuroscientist by training who branched out into complex, interdisciplinary computer modelling at UCL…”
Nigel Lawson, former M.P., and Chancellor of the Exchequer, has a degree in philosophy, politics, and economics, but he’s not allowed to express a view on man-made climate change. For that, he should have studied neuroscience.
Here is more of Emmott’s fake politeness:
“It’s fine to have a view,” he says, politely. “But it has to be based on something sensible.”
How big of him, allowing people to express their sensible views? But since sensible, according to Emmott, means parroting the dominant meme, presumably all critics “can have views” as long as they agree with him.
Oh boy, Emmott wants the title “skeptical”
Here’s Emmott trying to own the term skepticism, while not being one:
Apart from the fact that he would prefer not to be vilified for his views as a scientist, he’d like some credit for his own scepticism.
“Science is organised scepticism,” he points out. “Being sceptical is what scientists do all the time. What else might explain this? And the reason almost everyone in the science community is of the view that climate change is happening is there are basically no other explanations for what we see.”
Note the segue from the bland truth (science is skepticism) to the rank logical fallacy: ” There are no other explanations (that our blind eyes) can see”. It’s argument from ignorance. He might as well have told us he won’t listen to critics (because they’re as dumb as rocks) but he knows he’s right because the government approved scientists say so, and really he’s a skeptic even though he follows the herd slavishly, and can’t provide any evidence to back up his “faith”.
Further on, he shows how little he knows about climate models and climate skeptics:
“Ultimately,” he says, “you just can’t ignore the simple facts of physics and chemistry that Tyndall demonstrated in the 1860s, that if you increase greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, sooner or later it’s going to heat up the system. And that’s precisely what we’re doing.”
It’s almost five years since I wrote the Skeptics Handbook, and explained that skeptics don’t have any problem with the greenhouse effect, the basic physics or chemistry, (we take issue with the imaginary climate feedbacks fed into the models-of-doom). Here the average climate-skeptic-blog-commenter with no qualifications can outdo Emmott’s understanding of climate models. Either Emmott hasn’t got the Internet yet, his only source of news is the Guardian, or he is deliberately tossing a strawman and hoping the crowd is dumber than him. I think B is most likely. Either way, anyone who cares about the University of Cambridge ought to be doing something about it. What does “Professor” mean anymore?
Stephen Emmott, if you want to be called “skeptical” get with the game, turn on the Internet, and find some evidence to support your devout conviction that the climate models are not a joke. I’ve been asking since January 2010. If you can find That Mystery Paper or evidence that supports the assumption in the climate model about humidity amplifying the heating (by a factor of about three Stephen, kind of crucial), then you’ll convert thousands of skeptics and be the hero of the IPCC. They can’t find it either…
The fawning fan of flawed models will never deserve the title “skeptic”.
PS: It wouldn’t hurt if readers prodded newspaper editors who have reprinted these puff-pieces. Did they read this brazen hypocrisy before they published it? His audience doesn’t have to do any research to show he is wrong, he proves it himself. It was all there in the one article.
Other thoughts on “Skepticism”
- The skeptic who wasn’t
- Emails with an unskeptical skeptic
- The rise of the unskeptical scientist
- Unskeptical Scientist Stickers and T-shirts
- The word Skeptic is back!
- Skeptoid – like a skeptic but not quite
“But it has to be based on something sensible.” well here would be a good place to start!
AGU, all about co2 and global warming
http://www.agu.org/meetings/fm09/lectures/lecture_videos/A23A.shtml
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Blackadderthe4th That video is rubbish. It claims the models are doing well and that CO2 sensitivity is even higher than those obvious failures. It is loaded with disproven nonsense. He should have been fired.
Beware of fake skeptics like Blackadderthe4th. Go back to Youtube you clown!
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‘It is loaded with disproven nonsense’ such as?
621
He said something like science based on a wide variety of multiple assumptions from diverse people is more accurate than if there is only one asumption from one person. Hilarious!
Where do you hire audiences like that?
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‘variety of multiple assumptions from diverse people is more accurate’ what is the time code for that statement, because I don’t remember it being there, but it is a while since I’ve viewed the video! So a time code would be useful to go directly to it! Cheers.
19
At 3.00 he says that “We cannot fire either the climatologists or the meteorologists once we know that CO2 makes it warmer?
They can and should be fired if they have used their position to fearmonger funding over a tiny, beneficial, harmless or even non urgent rate of warming. They should also be charged with crimes against humanity and made to pay back the costs.
At 6.50 he makes an incredible number of asumptions about the history of the planet and then makes conclusions based on the asumptions that can easily be argued many ways.
At 8.25 he shows how his models completly ignore the majority of the surface area of the earth that is ocean and its regulation of CO2 via planckton etc. He ignores that the ocean is its own system and that the fluctuations in it could be internally caused and cause the atmosphere to follow not the other way around.
At 9.30 He claims that the “CO2 thermostat takes a half a million years to work, contradicting the 800 year stuff at the beginning and suggesting that modern warming was caused half a million years ago!
More importantly due to the time frame involved this shows he has a sample quantity of 1. You cannot prove a correlation with this!
14.44 ” The asumptions that go into them are largely independant, so when the different techniques agree then we can have pretty good confidence that we actually are watching the history of the planet”
At 16:10 he gives CO2 full credit for every change in ocean PH and boron when there could be many other factors altering this.
EG: Meteorite showers link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007%2F978-94-010-3411-1_13
At 20.22 the chart clearly shows peak ice to the left or BEFORE the peak CO2 drop. He gets the cause and effect the wrong way round!
At 22:00 he shows how Hydrogen Sulfide in the oceans is the real control knob but does not adequatly explain where it came from. Then he forgets he did this.
At 24: 50 he admits that CO2 does not adequately explain the warming! then quickly changes the subject before anyone can ask why there was no thermal runaway.
At 26:20 he admits that meteorites did cause the problem!
At 29;07 he shows a chart that clearly again shows things other than CO2 happening before the CO2 change but claims thay are together. They only look to be together because of the scale.
At 34:50 he admits that orbits cause the change in heat which then causes a change in CO2.
At 36:18 he uses bad accounting to ignore that spending causes interest not interest causes debt. What he should note here is that the analogy is weak due to lack of thermal runaway.
At 43:20 he mentions rate of incoming space dust not changing much but ignores the cumulative long term change it may have caused which is relevant to his earlier claims about a weaker sun in the past.
At 45:13 he forgets that volcanoes do not always spew lots of CO2.
At 46:00 he forgets that he has already shown CO2 did not cause the warming and cooling but at best can only be counted as interest on spending and clams that it is the explanation.
At 52:00 he fails to explain where all this asumed new rock suddenly came from but he does unwittingly suggest in this that open cut mining may reduce CO2.
At 54:50 he does not comment on how the ocean ph could be causing the atmospheric CO2 change and not the other way around.
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‘They can and should be fired if they have used their position to fearmonger’
Graph that proves there is no correlation between co2 and temperature, according to some people!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QCbPZki_dfs
‘At 26:20 he admits that meteorites did cause the problem!’ yes to the dinosaurs! Hahahahaha…………….! So how can I take your other points seriously? When you have just shot yourself in the foot so dramatical! That was a glaring error and I just demolished it from memory, I suggest you go back and look!
017
There is an obvious correlation between heat being the cause and rate of change in CO2 levels which is an effect. Lord Moncton shows that there is a correleation but that it is not good enough to be the “Main” driver”. The chart is even titled “CO2 is not the main driver” The “Greenman” video you have reposted on your channel attempts to make him appear to contradict himself by carefull editing. Greenman has failed to hide enough of Monctons text though as you can clearly read “co2 concentration reinforced the original warming”. Why are all your criticisms of Moncton not the same as Alley when they both clearly say the exact same thing?!?
Where is the Greenman video cut up like this to show how Alley contradicts himself?
At this point in the video Alley has a chart on the screen with an arrow pointing to a blip and the text on the chart that says “9 deg. F ocean and 14 Deg. F Land Arctic warming” Then he says “we can’t find many other meteorites”
What do you think the word “MANY” means here in relation to these blips? How does the word MANY differ from the word none? Was that blip in a chart of dinosaur concentrations we were looking at?
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‘The “Greenman” video’ well that was one of potholer’s!
‘What do you think the word “MANY” means here in relation to these blips?’ now what are going on about?
I refer you back to
‘At 26:20 he admits that meteorites did cause the problem!’ yes to the dinosaurs!
I think you are a bit confused!
06
Yes I did mix up Peter Hadfield (Potholer54) and Peter Sinclair(greenman3610).
My mix ups do not make that video from Alley any better!
I am too busy to keep arguing with you old foe. Bye.
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‘I am too busy to keep arguing with you old foe. Bye’ so that’s game, set and match to me again then!
10
I have to say blackadderthe4th that Alley’s presentation was way back in 2009. That’s 4 years ago. He was out of date then and is even more so today. Frankly, it’s laughable. The fact that you have to cite such out of date material demonstrates that you’re at the bottom of the barrel scraping around, desperately looking for something that might revive your case.
You need to do better. And, so does Alley.
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‘Alley’s presentation was way back in 2009’ oh four years, it must be obsolete by now! But then again Darwin’s theory of evolution is a lot older and hasn’t been overturned, exception for a few deluded creationist in America. And Newton’s laws of motion, a lot older yet again, were good enough to put man on the moon! Some barrel.
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You want to put Darwin and Newton on the same page as what’s his name?
Darwin’s theory has not been falsified. Nor was Newton’s.
What’s his name’s didn’t make it past 16 years of temperature statis (23 by some records).
I suspect he’s been smoking the same stuff as you blackie. It leads to delusions and other psychological aberrations. Just ask comrade Lew – he’s the expert on that.
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“Darwin’s theory of evolution is a lot older and hasn’t been overturned. And Newton’s laws of motion…”
Darwin’s theory is slow being destroyed, hence why it is still a theory and not a law. Nobody is game enough to continue to try to prove it accurate enough for fear they may continue to prove it false. That could cause a few problems in Science huh?
Newton’s laws of motion are laws specifically because NOBODY could prove them wrong, only confirm their scientific accuracy.
You would know this however if you had any idea of how Science “Actually” works.
12
what a quaint view of science. Basic texts alluded you?
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‘you would know this however if you had any idea of how Science “Actually” works.’ well I do know that Darwin’s LAW, it is because it is so strong, is only being questioned by a few creations, who believe the that Noahs Ark was a factual event!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7niqJfO-Yjk
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Blackadder, Darwin’s Theory of evolution is still just a theory. It has never been tested fully, however there is slowly scientific evidence to support that at least some of it, specifically the “survival of the fittest” concepts of his theory are false.
As for Noah’s Ark, I’m sorry, did you miss the news article several years back where Archeologist actually believe they found the remnants of it on a mountain?
Do you even understand how a scientific theory becomes a scientific Law? Do you even understand the basics of the Scientific process in which all information, data and processes are given to any other scientist to test the theory, any empirical evidence that shows the theory is wrong means it fails with the data provided. That dear fellow is why the CAGW theory collapses in a massive heap, because 1 (well more than one actually) have show with empirical evidence that NONE of the claims stand up to empirical evidence and testing.
01
The Tyndall experiment has been completely misinterpreted.
It shows that ghgs absorb IR energy but the thermalisation was at the tube walls.
Anyone with basic statistical thermodynamics will understand that a system at local thermodynamic equilibrium cannot thermalise any external energy. Instead it is re-radiated to a sink at lower spectral temperature.
There are 13 basic errors in Climate Alchemy: three of them elementary and very embarrassing: it has been the biggest scientific fraud in History and this AGU crap is part of that political action…..:0)
[The main error comes from Sagan – you have to reverse the sign of the aerosol cooling. Houghton introduced 3 more, Trenberth another and Ramanathan cocked up the IR physics. Pierrehumbert has done a good job in conning people but his work is the OLR bite finesse in direct line with Sagan’s false views on Venus.]
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I ended up watching the whole thing and I must admit the guy is pretty entertaining, but he had so much to present and it went so fast that you had to accept the “trust me” factor. There was no satisfactory explanation for why the CO2-lags-temperature observation doesn’t matter, according to him. He went into an absurd analogy with credit card debt and then cited the various astronomical cycles as causing the centuries long lag, but as far as he was concerned CO2 still caused the warming.
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‘here was no satisfactory explanation for why the CO2-lags-temperature observation’ oh yes there is!
The reason for the temperature rise and the co2 800 year lag.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S8r46j2WrNk
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I assume blackadder that you meant to also include the words “doesn’t matter” in the quote, because the context is completely different if you don’t. It appears you answered it as if you did mean to, and thanks for the clarification of what the speaker Alley meant. However that’s just the positive feedback model which I believe cannot occur in reality.
Since humans put only about three per cent of all CO2 into the atmosphere each year the alleged increase in over 100 ppm since 1750 would have occurred anyway, just at a slightly slower rate. So instead of 400ppm today it would have been maybe 390, or what it was only a few years ago. So it’s hard to get enthusiastic about an impending disaster!
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‘“doesn’t matter” in the quote,’ were/when does he say this? Time code needed please.
‘However that’s just the positive feedback model which I believe cannot occur in reality.’ why?
‘the alleged increase in over 100 ppm since 1750’ it looks like you are 200 years in error!
‘So it’s hard to get enthusiastic about an impending disaster!’ but the tipping point is not that far off!
The Co2 tipping point!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJFWaidKuoU
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That’s my interpretation of what Alley was getting at. He didn’t say it, I wrote it.
Positive feedback will not happen because nature has checks and balances. I’ve never heard of glasshouses exploding because of high CO2 concentrations.
I watched the youtube link. Complete nonsense. The world isn’t going to stop. Go to a lookout and watch a busy city for five minutes. Renewables are going to continue that? Today’s kids are going to sacrifice all their goodies? Come on!
20
‘according to him’, ‘That’s my interpretation of what Alley was getting at. He didn’t say it, I wrote it.’ I understand now! It was if you can’t find a direct quote just para phrase it! That will be good enough! NOT.
‘Positive feedback will not happen because nature has checks and balances.’ and what are they?
‘I’ve never heard of glasshouses exploding because of high CO2 concentrations’ and what has that got to do with AGW?
‘The world isn’t going to stop of course its not, that is a different theory all together, no doubt one about gravity! Not climate.
Any more red herrings?
02
Now it seems that blackie is right into “peer reviewed” youtube.
This is how far the warmists have fallen. The peer reviewed science is running against them – so now youtube is their go.
Next they’ll be sacking youtube staff for having the temerity to run non AGW youtube clips.
20
‘ into “peer reviewed” youtube.’ well actually its nearlt good as! because if to take into consideration the experts involved. And on some/lots of the vids there is a link to the original, which has further links to the info used! Peer reviewed in a lot of cases!
01
He also claimed climate change as a phrase but we know he was referring to AGW. Claiming this phrase is an attempt to remove it from the vocabulary of the climate sceptic, climate change is normal after all, and he wouldn’t want anyone thinking it could change without humans.
Spooky guy, I started to feel a little queasy reading his quotes.
230
As usual Jo, one strike of the hammer and you’ve hit the nail on the head and driven it home. The upside of the hammerings we’ve taken over the years is that they’ve bred a skeptic community who’ve seen it all. A Saturday night special Johnny come lately trying his hand at a bit of infowar against a bunch of vets gets his ass handed back to him big time.
Pointman
btw 16-41 Yay!
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“Climate Change” as used by this [bleep] is what is known as a package deal. The wrapping of the package is the legitimate concept that climate changes by whatever mechanism and has done so since the beginning of climate. Carried along with the package is the covert concept that climate is changing unnaturally and the cause is something that man did. Further down in the package is Global Warming. Still deeper is Anthropomorphic Global Warming. All wrapped in catastrophe because it isn’t natural. At the base is Climate didn’t change before we could measure climate so any change was caused by man. Their “proof” is based upon quantum mechanics in which it is assumed that nothing happens until it is observed and that man is the only observer. From there, the package gets filled with all kinds of miscellaneous detritus.
What is the payoff of such a package? When challenged, the people who packed the deal can claim they were misunderstood and the only meant the wrapper of the package. As the discussion continues, they bring out the other contents one at a time to distract the discussion from the fact that a fraudulent package had been delivered that was filled with unsupported, irrelevant, and immaterial details. They think they win because any discussion gets tangled in the irrelevant details until the Godwin Rule can be invoked.
It is rather like trying to catch a pig rolling in mud. The pig enjoys the roll and you get very muddy in the process. Stop feeding the pig and it will soon go away due to natural causes.
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Precisely, they should be challenged every time they misuse the ‘climate change’ phrase, remind them that an educated person wouldn’t misuse it, except to deceive.
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“Global warming was a specific threat that failed to materialise, so they moved the threat to something much more vague. Don’t let them get away with it. Every time they try to frame the debate around those words, shift it right back to global warming. When you post or talk with people, use the words global warming rather than climate change. If you don’t, you’re not only an unconscious victim of their propaganda but you’re also failing to exploit a major mistake they made.”
http://thepointman.wordpress.com/2011/08/18/so-which-is-it-global-warming-climate-disruption-or-climate-change/
Pointman
330
I agree, it all started with the Green movement finding they needed to reframe the debates, and simply changed wording and inserted mumbo jumbo science twaddle, then when that didn’t work, they started “frauding” the debate with outright lies and misinformation and it is getting worse, they are now back into the “I must scare the living daylights out of the youngsters” in order to get my bald faced lies on the front page. Time the media woke up and stopped pandering to these Cretans.
40
In general, the Green/Left has problems with Attribution Theory, which states:
Those of you with children will be familiar with this kind of behaviour.
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Yes, I remember my young nephew, around four years old at the time, after being particularly naughty he exclaimed “I didn’t know that I did it!”
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Emmott arose from the skeptic tank.
71
Live from Planet Orwell.
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Emmott obviously hasn’t tuned in to the Australia’s government broadcasters: the ABC and SBS.
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Exactly, Otter, and few other commentators here have addressed the issue of the media’s role in the perpetuation of the false and irrelevant consensus. (In #17 Neville has bemoaned the non-reporting of Arctic model failures in the MSM, but that’s about all.)
I will just take it as a given that the media is not expected to have expertise in atmospheric physics, geology, or the half dozen other disciplines crucial to climatology. But we should expect Journalists to uniformly apply standards for determining what has actually happened and what was said by whom. Just as in matters of politics or business, where conflicting opinions are found they should all be aired and the technique of point/counterpoint can be employed. Where experts disagree on how a series of events can be explained it is currently normal to publish a summary of all competing arguments. In other words, no special treatment for climate science.
The virtually total absence of climate realists and their data in the MSM, even in the case of the non-commerical media like ABC and SBS (highlighted by Sceptical Sam), is especially confounding when you consider what kind of scientifically dubious pap the MSM is only too happy to publish. (Wait, hold the Post button, you’ll see where I’m going with that argument in 60 ±10 seconds.)
Consider in the print media there is usually a “Weird News” section with quirky stories from around the world. Events which are unusual or tragic or both are reported, sometimes with explanation, sometimes without. Some stories (eg this pig attack piece) have startling events/predictions which are shown to arise plausibly from more commonplace processes, just under conditions which the public has no experience about and so the conditions seem unusual. Does that sound at all like Natural Climate Change?
Consider the enormous numbers of spooky crackpot television series that various networks have funded over the years, such as “Sightings” (of the UFOs/aliens/Loch Ness Monster variety), or the infamous “Unsolved Mysteries” series. From web-based descriptions of the series, it seems Sightings would present testimony and simulations of unusual events, but would sometimes present the skeptical/naturalist explanation for the phenomena. Obviously with “Unsolved Mysteries” they are biased towards events that have no definite explanation, probably due to a lack of good data, but isn’t that also the situation with climate science? (Lindzen once said this)
The Murdoch rags are only too happy to follow the outrageous claims of a UK psychic on tour in Australia, a subject which surely nobody could seriously say there is a huge body of scientific evidence over which an overwhelmingly supportive consensus had been formed.
Our ABC does not seem to have used their “weird-and-wonderful” label since Oct 2012, but even today they are happy to run a paranormal puff piece with the headline “Ghost hunters check Tasmania’s Franklin House for bumps in the night“. Yes, despite an overwhelming consensus that ghosts are the stuff of fiction and the products of easily deluded minds, your ABC for a mere 17 cents a day is happy to question the consensus and put the claims to the test.
Yes this does relate to global warming. I’ve given you the supporting evidence, now here’s the proposition.
Even if the networks and newspapers believed “climate skeptics” were ratbags and “denier science” claims were probably a load of cobblers, they could STILL broadcast the contrarians’ information in the same derisive categories that they demonstrably already support. At least this way the counterclaims and information would be out there, it would be cruising the antennas and rolling down people’s driveways by the millions. It would start conversations.
But the MSM don’t even do this much when the topic is climate science. Why the hell not? They don’t take skeptics seriously, they don’t even take them lightly, they don’t take contributions from climate sceptics at all.
It’s damn suspicious.
20
Unfortunately Andrew, Journalists no longer ‘do’ history, any more. It used to be a core subject, then it became a prerequisite, then it became an elective, now it is irrelevant.
Would any real journalists care to comment? Are there any real journalists left, on this planet, to comment?
40
I don’t know why you don’t like him. He sounds eminently (emmottly?) reasonable to me.
“It’s fine to have a view,” he says, politely. “But it has to be based on something sensible.”
On that basis I declare that the only politicians allowed on the BBC should be UKIP members. What is not to like?
/sarc (just in case!)
110
Strictly speaking Jo, this, masquerading, scientist is correct. He states ““I have no idea why people don’t believe what is overwhelming evidence for climate change,” “People” whoever they are, do believe in Climate Change . What they are sceptical about, which appears to be well beyond the good professor’s intellectual grasp, is that climate change is entirely due to anthropogenic causes. I am a scientist and find the “science is settled” mantra is the antithesis of what I’ve been taught and what I have taught to others. The science is rarely settled and even if it seems to be, new knowledge, does, more often than not, lead to a fresh approach that shows we don’t know what we don’t know until we do know. Anyone who thinks otherwise is either mendacious or a fool
341
Spot on Ian.
40
So is that an unknown known, known unknown or an unknown unknown????
00
Thank you Jo, you hit the nail on the head again. These nails must be loving you so much for it.
Well if not the nails than at least we do so!
Of course they all want the title “skeptical”. Because this is about scientist, to be skeptical, they somehow remember it, maybe the skeptics blog keep on reminding them this… Yes they are reading the skeptics blogs, and try to answer to what skeptics say, but never in an open dialogue, that would be too dangerous, we know that. Never directly referencing them. Not even on the CAGW blogs, even there, there are no links to skeptical blogs. Look how the answers to the critiques done for example at climate audit appear, for instance Marcott’s critique, and many others.
And if one cannot combat his opponent in a dialogue, as the good arguments are on the other side, the best one can do is to silence the opponent, isn’t it? “Don’t listen to them, they are deniers!” or something like this.
I guess you are right again with “I think B is most likely.”
However, to double check the subject, to read the posts, to try to understand, requires a skeptical mind. Does he have such?
Btw, thanks for the links to Donna’s and Geoff’s posts these were a delight to read and very clarifying!
50
I have been making some headway in some of the not-so-casual conversations I get into. If the person is at least acquainted with the scientific method, I ask them where did they learn that consensus was part of it? How many scientists did Einstein consult to determine the theory of relativity? I then say that consensus is a political process not a scientific one. That has been a show stopper, so far.
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‘I then say that consensus is a political process not a scientific one’ are you sure about that? As Sir Paul Nurse (Nobel Prize winner) floors Delingpole, a blog AGW denier, by showing it is not the case!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vuQLvK6kxeU
440
I think James was simply stunned that this analogy even came up. The analogy with cancer treatment and doctors is a stupid analogy from start to finish.
Paul Nurse doesn’t show concensus is not scientific, by analogy with canser diagnosis. Only in your mind, because you want to believe it.
Cancer detection has false possitive detection. One test, one doctor, one consultation is not evidence. Everyone is advised over and over again to see another doctor. Perhaps the first one is named Dr. Patel and will not do you much good at all.
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‘The analogy with cancer treatment and doctors is a stupid analogy from start to finish’ why?
224
So if my plumber tells me my oncologist was caught hiding the data, non-randomly “adjusting” the results, trying to lean on editors to stop his critics getting their material published in medical literature, then I’m listening to my plumber.
Sir Paul Nurse’s analogy is so stupid — it isn’t science.
So Nurse breaks the scientific method and “catches” Delingpole for nothing while showing how much a tool of fashion-think he is and you think that’s worth bragging about?
PS: You need to use dictionary english here. If you call us deniers, you’re going to have to explain which scientific observations we deny.
504
‘ If you call us deniers, you’re going to have to explain which scientific observations we deny’ for starters this is good one!
How AGW deniers see climate change and how realists see it!
http://www.skepticalscience.com/graphics.php?g=47
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You’re going to waste our time with a fraudulent website, run by a fraud?
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Blackadder4(wow are you serious?) Do you think we deny the world has warmed since 1970? Not even close. And why start in 1970 (could it be that graph doesn’t look too hot if you start it earlier?) Nevermind.
The warming trend started circa 1680.
What caused that?
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‘The warming trend started circa 1680.What caused that?’
hmmm is that the period a lot of deniers claim to be the LIA? I can never keep track to be honest, because in seems to be like Easter, always moving around. Depending on who is make the point and for what reason, but they may just be ‘climate zombies’!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t5sxBSa6Tck
(You keep using the D word without cause,if you keep doing it I will start unapproving your comments and you didn’t answer her question about what caused the warming trend to start) CTS
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Who is CTS? A bit sensitive these people from OZ are they not? What ever happened to the “Crocodile Dundees”?
I think I questioned that by stating, I paraphrase, ‘is that not the period for the so called LIA?’ because it seems to be a move able feast, a bit like Easter. Go back and look its only one post away!
‘I will start unapproving your comments’ so OZ the land of censorship! If people deny the obvious facts then they can only be called *******, so what else should I call them?
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Oh yes, the skeptics invited the LIA, just to confuse you. You know there is not such a precise year when warming started but it was around then. And before warming started it got colder.
“Climate for you” has a nice description with some weather events from the LIA from Europe:
http://climate4you.com/ClimateAndHistory.htm
see also 1362: Grote Mandrenke and the opening of the Zuiderzee in the Netherlands:
http://climate4you.com/ClimateAndHistory%201300-1399.htm
bat4, You obviously deny natural climate change. Please take a science book and start reading about LIA, MWP or the Bond events, and further. There is a lot of climate change in the history, and contrary to what people like you say (I will not use the term “natural climate change deniers”) those were FAST climatic changes.
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/abrupt/data4.html
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/abrupt/data5.html
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/abrupt/data6.html
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/abrupt/data7.html
http://www.clim-past.net/9/1181/2013/cp-9-1181-2013.html
“Heinrich stadials are associated with cold North Atlantic sea surface temperatures which appear to have triggered abrupt increases of aridity and wind strength in the Sahel. Our study illustrates the influence of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation on the position of the Sahara–Sahel boundary and on global atmospheric dust loading.”
These events are levels of magnitude higher then LIA and MWP
And of course for the MWP there are thousands of studies:
“Was there a Medieval Warm Period? YES, according to data published by 1164 individual scientists from 670 research institutions in 46 different countries … and counting! ”
http://www.co2science.org/data/mwp/mwpp.php
But why bother to look for when you can simply deny all this and maintain your religious chant, you know your psalms and all the truth, everything else must be wrong. It appears this is the century of religious renaissance…
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@Otter
July 8, 2013 at 12:14 am
‘You’re going to waste our time with a fraudulent website, run by a fraud?’ well this is from the AGU! But I suppose you’re going to call then frauds as well!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-X8Q8koQXsY
Oh dear!
00
Because its aimed only at reinforcing your own belief, and seems to be doing a good job in sparing you any conscious effort to think and question that belief in my humble opinion.
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@ blackadderthe4th, July 7, 2013 at 8:05 am ·
If the consensus of cancer scientists consisted of “experts” who have consistently been wrong, then why would you pay any attention to them?
google search: climate it’s worse than we thought
results: about 22,200,000 (0.26 seconds)
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http://www.newscientist.com/special/worse-climate good link! Cheers.
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Blackadderthe4th,
As someone who has personally diagnosed several thousands of patients with various cancers, I would suggest that the analogy of cancer is so completely spurious that Sir Paul is being deceptive in using it. Drawing two disparate things together to draw a false analogy for some gotcha moment is the hallmark of the charlatan who lacks evidence to back up his assertions.
Cancer diagnosis, for starters, is fraught with uncertainties, biopsies which fail to get positive results due to sampling issues, enlarging lesions which turn out to be benign in spite of having many of the characteristics of a malignancy, multi-locular breast cancers which fail to show up on mammography and ultrasound in spite of being advanced, prostate biopsies false negatives, you name it, but one thing is certain: Advocating severe life threatening treatment for patients without having completely certain, hard physical evidence (not just relying on computerised scans but hard pathology with which to base clinical decisions) is exactly how major mistakes are made, and people are therefore subjected to horrendous treatments which are thoroughly unjustified by the evidence. Now that is where the analogy to climate science is thoroughly appropriate, poking further holes in an already sinking ship.
A further analogy of interest is when a doctor makes poor clinical decisions based on flimsy evidence, he is certain to be sued! And don’t think the glorified geography teachers of climastrology can’t be subjected to the same if they continue to advocate certainty when they know their doctrine is false.
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‘As someone who has personally diagnosed several thousands of patients with various cancers’ well anybody can claim anything on the Internet, it remain largely uncheckable! But the argument was, if you consistently ignore professional advice the chances are you’re going to be wrong! And Delingpole reveals what a revelation it is to him, by his reaction and body language. He realizes he has been caught out!
219
So, I should defer to expert iridologists and homeopaths?
Experts in medicine are useful and often speak with some factual basis behind them. But 25 years in general practice has taught me to be highly selective about expert advice, given that often specialists in different fields often lack a holistic perspective and often prescribe treatment based on rote learned algorithms rather than pragmatic understanding.
I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve had to undo the harm done by these so called experts due to their arrogant and often unfounded belief in their own infallability, when often they would have been better to be more circumspect. I’ve also seen otherwise good GPs who have caused death or injury to a patient by following a ” by the book ” approach, rather than listened to their intuition, their well- honed right brain powers of observation.
You can doubt my credentials all you like, the argument Sir Paul Nurse advocates has nothing to do with climate, and I wouldn’t trust the health of my cat to that ” Nobel prize winner “. Under his tenure, the Royal Society has devolved into a joke, any semblance of authority it pretended to have has been reduced to that of a mere advocacy pressure group, no longer standing for the integrity of science, upholding the tenets of skepticism and the principles of open debate. People such as your good self lack the intelligence to understand that distinction.
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‘homeopaths’, have I got this wrong, you refer people to homeopaths?
014
That’s “defer”, Rufus.
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As I understand it, to defer means you are passing your responsibility over to a homeopath?
015
I enjoyed Winston’s comments very much. I’m reminded of one of Al Gore’s ‘howlers’. He gives us the benefit of his perceived wisdom on global warming on pages 172 and 173 of his book ‘ An Inconvenient Truth’, where he informs us that ‘mosquitos are profoundly affected by global warming’, and tells us that ‘now, with global warming, the mosquitos are climbing to higher altitudes’.
Professor Paul Reiter, an expert in mosquito biology commented that the treatment of the same issue by the IPCC was ‘amateurish’ and ‘reflected the limited knowledge of the 22 authors’. He presented his views to the British Parliament when he commented that ‘the natural history of mosquito-borne diseases is complex, and the interplay of climate, ecology, mosquito biology and many other factors defies simplistic analysis. The recent resurgence of many of these diseases is a major cause for concern, but it is facile to attribute this resurgence to climate change, or to use models based on temperature to “predict” future prevalence. In my opinion, the IPCC has done a disservice to society by relying on ‘experts’ who have little or no knowledge of the subject, and allowing them to make authoritative pronouncements that are not based on sound science.’
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‘that ‘mosquitos are profoundly affected by global warming’ don’t know about mossies, but other wildlife seems to have made its mind up!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8sNtemijNn4
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Winston has over 25 years invested in his medical career. Why should Winston make his data available to you when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it. There is privacy rights to consider.
But seriously… Delingpole was more likely to be bewildered by the analogy because it is astonishing that the chief figurehead of the Royal Society would think that opinion, even of experts, was of paramount importance in global warming.
The superior skeptical argument here, which you seem unable or unwilling to understand, is this: if you consistently ignore observational measurement the chances are you’re going to be wrong!
Facts are more important than expert opinion.
Here is the only fact that warmists have, the ONLY one: Carbon dioxide absorbs and emits infrared radiation in some of the bands the surface can supply. That’s all.
Between 1959 and 2000 the CO2 level at MLO went up by 25% while over the same period most analysis of land temperature networks show a rise in global average temperature of 0.6 Celsius degrees. To assert this correlation is causative is fallacious innuendo, as is most of CAGW pseudoscience.
On the other hand you have ice cores and sedimentary isotopic analysis showing no sign at all of natural CO2 injection causing or boosting any detectable warming in the past, not even in the PETM. You have at least three major testable predictions of modern CAGW greenhouse theory failing the observational tests.
On the matter of scientific consensus you have 1100+ peer-reviewed science papers supportive of the conclusion that more CO2 is incapable of causing the 2.1 degrees per doubling that the IPCC recently claimed and therefore no significant harm will result, to say nothing of the original alarmist nonsense of 3 or 4.5 degrees per doubling.
The experts who ignore measurements are experts you do not want to be taking advice from about important matters.
As for the future, the solar physics experts are predicting 30 years of cooling beginning next year, because solar activity is the single largest factor in Earth’s climate variability. Would you ignore the advice of these experts, and if so, why?
Do you want to be taken seriously, or are you just trolling?
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Andrew
In ten more years of cooling this numbskull will be loudly proclaiming to those around “I told you so” as he pulls the sheepskin tighter around his faux figure. Just the usual wolf masquerading as a sheep among the pure flock!!IMHO!
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Methinks thou shouldst change thy name to Baldrick !!
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True.
‘Let’s remember Baldrick that you tried to solve the problem of your mother’s low ceiling by cutting off her head.’
Did I get the quote right?
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@ Blackadderwhatever -“As Sir Paul Nurse (Nobel Prize winner) floors Delingpole, a blog AGW denier…”, now we all know you’re a twit. Apart from everything that statement implies, you’d have to be a complete and utter fool come throwing the D word around here.
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‘utter fool come throwing the D word around here’ well how would you label people who denier the bleeding obvious?
(You first have to explain what is being denied) CTS
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Check your grammar. And your logic, for that matter.
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The whole point of the Blackadder character is the dramatic irony that results from him, anachronistically, not being caught up in the follies of his age. Unlike the two gullible lefties who wrote Blackadder.
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‘Unlike the two gullible lefties who wrote Blackadder’ methinks you are reading too much into a sitcom!
014
@blackadderwhatever: Here’s a post I made on SKS some time ago. They didn’t publish it because they couldn’t answer the REAL questions. I bet you can’t either:
Cowards! You can’t even answer a few simple questions to unearth the truth! You refused to publish my post. You can’t handle even the simplest opposing view. Shows what your “science” is worth. Enjoy your crumbling religion 😉
That’s just silly. ARGO can’t find it. You seem to suggest that hot water doesn’t rise. There’s even a comment here from someone stating “heat is not temperature”. WHAT?!
Notably your “chart” above doesn’t show any acceleration whatsoever and, there’s no Y-scale. Are you measuring this in phlogistons?
Sea levels have been rising for tens of thousands of years, since the last deep ice age ended. There’s no acceleration evident today. Have you taken land subsidence into account? Have you even noticed charts of where it’s slowed?
How did the Australian Aborigine cross the oceans to get here? Maybe you should see this:
http://www.migrationheritage.nsw.gov.au/objects-through-time/essays/50000-years-before-present/attachment/map-of-ice-age-aust
You seem utterly convinced that man-made CO2 (still a tiny trace gas in our atmosphere at 0.0397%) is going to burn the planet to hell tomorrow. Of course, when it comes to doomsayers, it’s always tomorrow, next week or in the future. That just continues until the next fearmongering “fad” comes along to be likewise always “predicted” in the future. Some questions for you:
Every exhalation is around 4% CO2 (40,000ppm – atmospere now 397ppm). How is it you don’t burn your tongue in the sun when you exhale that ENORMOUS 4% of CO2?
How is it that delicate aragonite corals evolved when CO2 was some 20x higher than today?
With CO2 so much higher in the past and you expecting a LINEAR scale to CO2 heat trapping effect, why was there never a runaway greenhouse, ever?
How is it that CO2 was many times higher than today even during deep ice ages?
You understand that CO2 is necessary for photosynthesis and farmers actually pump CO2 into their greenhouses to increase yields, right?
Do you know that Viking graves in Greenland now are in permafrost – something you can’t dig without hydraulics? Vikings colonised and farmed Greenland 1000 years ago, why did they leave 300 years later?
The Little Ice Age is documented in paintings from the 1600’s where the Thames and Hudson rivers froze 10ft thick and the locals held fairs on them. Are you aware of this at all? Are you aware this was caused by the “Maunder Minimum”, a time when very few Sunspots and Solar activity occurred?
Do you remember when an imminent “ice age” was predicted in the 70’s?
Are you aware that Global temps rose sharply between 1910 and 1940, then fell sharply between the 40’s to the 70’s? Did Man have something to do with it or is my next question the answer?
Do you understand the cycles of the oceans (PDO, AMO, ENSO) and their impact from warm to cool and back again over regular decadal scales?
Why is it that in a desert, you can fry during the day and freeze at night, but not in the tropics? What magical atmospheric component is missing in a desert to cause this and therefore, is CO2 actually trapping any catastrophic heat at all? A clue – notice how the night is usually warmer when it’s overcast?
Have you noticed that CO2 continues to climb but Global temps have flatlined for the last 17 YEARS? Why the disconnect?
Are you aware that according to well understood physical parameters, the effectiveness of CO2 as a greenhouse gas diminishes logarithmically with increasing concentration and from the current level of ~397 ppm, accordingly only ~5% of the effectiveness of CO2 as a greenhouse gas remains beyond the current level?
Do you understand that warm water outgasses CO2 – try opening a warm and a cold bottle of soda water. Do you now understand that the oceans could never become “acidic”, considering their pH ranges from 7.9 to 8.3, depending on where you measure it and, that the pH scale is also logarithmic?
How do you explain the findings of ancient tools and tree stumps under retreating glaciers?
Have you seen the geologic records that show CO2 rising AFTER temp rises by some hundreds of years?
Have you discovered Milankovitch Cycles – how the Earth has cyclical wobbles in its orbit being tugged on by other planets causing major changes in our distance from the Sun?
Have you discovered that on very regular cycles, the Earth suffers a major ice age about every 100,000 years lasting many times longer than our current interglacial? Do you think that’s connected to my previous question?
Why is it that some 90%+ of species live around the Equator?
Figures are readily available to show winters kill more people than summers – have you looked into them and why do you think retirees look forward to living in warmer climates?
Are you aware that the Arctic ice extent is now the same as the 1979 annual mean? Do you really think it’s going to be “ice free” at all this NH summer?
Are you also aware that cat 3+ cyclones making landfall in the US and tornadoes are at record lows? The NOAA has figures on that if you dare look.
Does it make sense that “climate scientists”, being largely (if not totally) government funded, need to continue blaming Man for CO2 ills since governments want to tax us on it and, if they say it’s not, they’ll lose their job?
Frankly, all of the tip-toeing, cherry-picking and completely unscientific (if not impossible) explanations I see on this site in support of AGW are truly far-fetched wonders of the age. You seem to suggest that surface winds are somehow stopping hot water from rising? Nonsense. All that rubbish and referencing to desperately try and explain-away the now 17 year warming pause.
If you get all the charts and scale them by whole degrees (something we might physically feel – maybe) then they’d be a straight line not even resembling static.
People, have a good look around and you’ll find there are more questions that require answering before spouting for certain that Man is to blame for climate change. It’s been doing it for billions of years and will continue to do so. There’s NO peer-reviewed study out there that can scientifically and unequivocally state that they can filter out Man’s warming signal from the natural noise.
If you keep believing point-blank the government and the lamestream media, you’ll look like a fool (you’re rapidly getting there) and have a lighter wallet to boot. Don’t be a puppet or a parrot to them. Remember this:
“When a well-packaged web of lies has been sold gradually to the masses over generations, the truth will seem utterly preposterous and its speaker a raving lunatic”.
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Well about the species extinctions he might be right. That is really sad.
Here another such example: as Donna also observes the “journalist watch dog” species is about to become extinct, or did so already:
“Obvious conclusion: don’t kid yourself – jaded, cynical, skeptical, hard-nosed reporters are on the brink of extinction. ”
http://nofrakkingconsensus.com/2013/07/03/more-on-stephen-emmott-author-of-ten-billion/
And I wonder if it has anything to do with human caused climate change?
On the other side he still gives us some hope – according to his numbers of water consumed to produce chocolate, then the sea level rise can be stopped if we eat more of it (I mean chocolate):
http://contrary2belief.wordpress.com/2013/07/03/save-the-world-eat-more-chocolate/
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Jo,
No matter what is said or done, the damage these A-HOLES have done is irreversible and economically we all are having to pay for it.
Through forced policy and law changes for terrible technology and terrible analysis that have corrupted our governments to follow scientists as they are our experts and should NEVER be questioned…ya riggggggght.
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Politicians tend to have short memories regarding what they themselves have said, but long memories about what others have said.
They will therefore remember the advice they were given by scientists, but forget the political reasons that the advice was sought.
Often in politics, the way you ask a question leads into the way it is answered. Scientists often don’t realise this, and see the vague words as being an opportunity, rather than an escape route for the politician.
We are going to see a lot of sad scientists, at some stage, and that point is fast approaching.
30
According to Wikipedia his basic degree (like Lewandowsky) is in psychology which is further evidence that psychology is not science.
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Emmott.. Isn’t that the guy from “Back to the future” ?
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…so what you get is presented as a two-sided, balanced discussion and yet the evidence is overwhelmingly on the side that climate change is happening.
False!
Let’s first note the 15 year stall out in temperature, and quote The Economist: “The mismatch between rising greenhouse-gas emissions and not-rising temperatures is among the biggest puzzles in climate science just now.”
That’s not “overwhelming evidence,” period.
In fact, the overwhelming evidence is going OUR way. ALL the much ballyhooed climate models have failed. Not just slight hardly noticeable failures, but utter, complete, miserable failures. The models, often touted as the basis for trusting the supposed settled science, predicted skyrocketing temperatures, but temperatures are flat or falling. Despite rising CO2. Epic fail!
Also, what about that there’s been no increase at all in the truly minimal sea level rise despite the decades of false hype about melting polar and glacial ice.
Contrast this with the bs spewed in 1988 by the head Chicken Little James Hansen: “the West Side Highway [and thus most of Manhattan] will be under water.” NOT! To the “untrained” eye, the sea level is just exactly where it was in 1988. No change. Nada.
The fact is that ALL the fear mongers’ predictions of doom, going back over 40 years, like a never ending broken record of constant crying wolf, have not only failed to come true, but have been simply laughable. A joke.
And what about the granddaddy of them all, the supposed evidence for a causal correlation between CO2 and temperatures. Non-existent. See Al Gore made into a fool by parroting the already debunked and retracted IPCC contention on CO2 in this key 3 minute video.
And lastly, and most critically, the hockey stick, a fabrication of the leftist activist Michael Mann,
has been thoroughly debunked. The means that there is nothing unusual about current temperatures, which means there’s simply nothing wrong with the climate. It’s not broken. Don’t try to fix it. (!)
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“…so what you get is presented as a two-sided, balanced discussion and yet the evidence is overwhelmingly on the side that climate change is happening.
False!
You have fallen in the trap….
Climate change is happening. It has been happening for 4.5 million years.
Global warming is happening. Over the last 100 or so years the ‘average global surface temperature’ (A meaningless statistic, worthy of a separate discussion) has warmed by 0.7 degrees Celsius. But this depends on where your starting point is for measuring ‘global temperatures’.
Anthropogenic Global Warming is happening. However, humans contribute to global warming in the same magnitude as you pi$$ing in the ocean will affect the sea levels.
This discussion (In which the goalpost are being changed all the time by the carbonazis) is about the following:
1. Are humans the cause of global warming in any measurable way? – The answer is no.
2. Is anthropogenic CO2 the cause of global warming in any measurable way? – The answer is no.
3. Can the rise in recent temperatures in any way be distinguished from natural variability? – The answer is no.
There is NO (measurable) CAWG or AWG and in the last (about) 15 years there hasn’t been any global warming either.
To tax or cut CO2 will have NO affect on global temperatures.
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Hi Other_Andy,
You make some good points, some like my own. But I’m not exctly sure why you say that I have fallen into a trap. Sure, climate change always happens, but I was treating the term ‘climate change’ as a synonym for AGW.
We are recovering from the Little Ice Age. Even if this 15 year warming stall is only a pause, we
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Hi Eric,
“……but I was treating the term ‘climate change’ as a synonym for AGW.”
Since global warming has stopped and the link between warming and CO2 is becoming tedious they have shifted their argument. They now talk about ‘Climate Change’ and not about ‘Anthropogenic Global Warming’.
As soon as you say “I don’t believe in Climate Change’ they will ridicule you as climate change is natural.
Don’t debate their ‘straw men’, call them out for the frauds they are.
It was never about ‘Climate Change’, it is and (always) was about ‘Anthropogenic Global Warming’.
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Since global warming has stopped and the link between warming and CO2 is becoming tedious they have shifted their argument.
I like that, ‘tedious’ instead of tenuous. It’s because of the convoluted epicycle style explanations for the lack of warming that the CO2 connection is ‘tedious.’ The “missing heat” is in the ocean or blocked by aerosols, or you have to measure the complete “earth energy” not air temperature. These are tedious explanations or redirections.
And yes, it’s clear that they changed the moniker to climate change because the warming wasn’t what was wished for. When referring to agw, I’ll often strike out gw, as “
global warmingclimate change is bs.”70
I think it’s generally good practice to force the Warmist to declare their support specifically for AGW, because “climate change” is vast and nebulous, and means nothing.
160
OK, with this awkward netbook I accidentally hit Post Comment before the comment was done. So I will give up on the last comment, since that caused me to lose my train of thought.
P.S.
One error in my #15 comment above is that Hansen in 1988 predicted that in 2008 Manhattan would be under water. (I left 2008 out of the quote!)
110
Groovy! Do you have a reference link for that?
50
Ok, I tried to post just the links, but that was turned into spam, I think. Anyway, I have this link, which in turn links to a salon article as the source:
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2010/10/04/the-rumours-of-manhattans-death-are-exaggerated/
30
You meant to say ‘billion’ years…
10
source
10
I’d say Emmott needs to seek professional help. He comes across as a seriously disturbed individual in that interview. There’s definitely some pathology there.
Guess what Prof? The future has always looked uncertain and we have no idea what will happen but billions of people are trying to earn a living and get ahead. Unlike you, most take the odd bit of time off and try to enjoy life. Relax, find some pleasant company, have a beer or a nice glass of red and chill. You should not be working from 8AM to 1AM.
Are there any biological systems that don’t seek to exploit their environment to the hilt? Other than humans, that is?
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That’s a rhetorical question probably, but just to complete it…
There’s none that I know about.
Seems to me that every organism must exploit its environment to at least survive, let alone do anything more spectacular than survival.
Somehow the word “exploitation” has been imbued with a sinister connotation in the environmentalists’ subculture, as though it must inherit the political association between exploitation and slavery. It doesn’t have to be so and should not be. To exploit is basically to consume opportunistically or to co-opt something for your own purposes. Eating food meets the definition of ‘exploit’.
You could live in a cave, drink nothing but water from the sky, and eat nothing but berries, but even in this ultimate back-to-nature lifestyle you would be exploiting the cave to the detriment of bears and exploiting the berry bushes to the detriment of birds. Exploitation at some level is unavoidable, anyone who says otherwise wishes for death.
This is a fundamental contradiction in the core of the present ultra green/left. Lions can eat gazelle alive, beavers can interfere in river flows, ancient aborigines could light massive bushfires to trap and kill animals, but modern humans can’t dig up minerals or burn coal. Never mind the fishing quotas and the artificial restraints on urban sprawl; if we pause even for a moment to consider the aggregate consequences of our increasingly efficient ‘exploitation’ of nature we would be the first organism on the planet to be having second thoughts about it. The anti-exploitation meme is moot at best and suicidal at worst.
50
More on the useless climate models from Bob Tisdale.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/07/06/models-fail-greenland-and-iceland-land-surface-air-temperature-anomalies/#more-89439
Why can’t the MSM show us this evidence of the con and fraud of CAGW based on this data.
50
WOW, thank you Stephen Emmott for your keen insight into an obvious issue and the parallel’s with another brilliant man of similar name.
– Dr Emmett Brown “Doc Brown” a scientist considered by many mad for not being following the laws of physics.
– Invents the “Flux Capacitor” that can produce 1.21 gigawatts of power (like your computer models).
– Propels a DeLorean to 88 mph to travel back in time (88mph being a crucial figure as CO2 feedbacks x 3 are in computer models).
– Ignored the “Recursive fury” of so called skeptics to prove his theories were correct (I’m sure your time will come).
Once again thank you Stephen Emmott for having the courage to face these “climate deniers” with such politeness (I know it must be hard) and know you have inspired me to do the same.
Yours sincerely Yonniestone.
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Jo,
You do know that these faux skeptics are just playing a game with you and the rest of us, don’t you? They aren’t worthy of your time.
Those who can see through the fraud are going to see right through the phony skeptics too. And the rest are going to stand there inviting the inevitable sucker punch like they always have.
50
Disagree. It is tedious, like a never-ending game of whack-a-mole, but these bits of charlatanry need to be called out whenever they appear, especially the latest tweaks. Put this one in the “POV, Dissembling” file, next to Dr. Richard Muller (of the loudly trumpeted but quickly debunked Berkeley BEST study), who disingenuously claimed to be a former skeptic but was then “convinced by the weight of the evidence.”
The dissemblers are insidious because most working adults – i.e., most voters – are too busy to look closely (and of course the “journalists” are too lazy/stupid/gullible/corrupt/vain to do their job). Jo and her fellow realist bloggers are performing an enormous public service by outing them.
BTW, it won’t be a sucker punch, and that is also an insidious and big part of the problem: Our standard of living and our liberty aren’t being lost to dramatic sucker punches, they are being chipped away in small bits. Put the frog in a pot of water at room temperature and slowly turn up the heat . . .
10
Just a few more thoughts on the con and fraud of CAGW.
EIA projections show OECD co2 emissions will increase by 2035 by just 6% while non OECD emissions will increase by 73%.( China, India etc)
So all those billions S spent on this mitigation of CAGW fraud is a complete waste of time and money.
The ice cores show us the lag time for co2 change after temp change is a few hundred years to several thousand years.
So much for OZ trying to reduce the temp by reducing our emissions of 1.2% by 5% by 2020. What a wasteful sick joke, every billions of dollars spent by OZ can’t change the temp or climate for thousands of years by a jot.
Of course if Murry Salby is correct then all bets are off about the CAGW theory.
60
Good post from Roy Spencer about Obama’s stupid response to so called CAGW.
Just fancy voting for this idiot or the return of our clueless Rudd govt.
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2013/06/obamas-boutique-energy-plan-hurts-the-poor/#comments
103
‘Good post from Roy Spencer’
‘Journal editor resigns over ‘problematic’ climate paper
The editor of a science journal has resigned after admitting that a recent paper casting doubt on man-made climate change should not have been published…by US scientists Roy Spencer and William Braswell, claimed that computer models of climate inflated projections of temperature increase…problematic in both aspects and should therefore not have been published’
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-14768574
19
So what was the problem with the paper? Or are you just happy to jump on the Ad Hom bandwagon?
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‘So what was the problem with the paper?’
I refer you to the BBC article!
13
No numpty.
The article discusses the resignantion of the editor, but doesn’t say what was scientifically wrong with the paper. The paper was NOT withdrawn or rejected, and still remains published.
I ask YOU again. What is wrong with the paper?
00
‘but doesn’t say what was scientifically wrong with the paper’ it doesn’t? Well what is this?
“Peer-reviewed journals are a pillar of modern science,” he writes in a resignation note published in Remote Sensing.
“Their aim is to achieve highest scientific standards by carrying out a rigorous peer review that is, as a minimum requirement, supposed to be able to identify fundamental methodological errors or false claims.
“Unfortunately, as many climate researchers and engaged observers of the climate change debate pointed out in various internet discussion fora, the paper by Spencer and Braswell… is most likely problematic in both aspects and should therefore not have been published.”
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What an own goal by ba4. Drawing attention to the resignation of Wagner is a damning indictment on warmist science credibility once you discover the resignation was forced on him by Kevin Trenberth.
Yeah, you might want to read about that, such as this summary from James Delingpole. But since you hate Delingpole so much, perhaps you’d prefer to hear the opinion of a publishing climate scientist instead, such as Roger Pielke Snr or Judith Curry.
Retraction Watch also found the whole situation to be highly unusual. The paper was not retracted and neither should it have been.
It’s not even the inadequate error analysis of Spencer&Brasswell2010 that is most important here, it’s the completely unusual and dramatic way in which the purported flaws were dealt with: don’t ask the authors to respond, shoot the messenger first, deal with the substantial issues later.
Covert pressure from Trenberth via Wagner’s dependency on Trenberth’s approval of data released from GEWEX is the connection that explains why Wagner’s response was so unusual in science journals.
You’ve drawn attention to the politicization of climate science and how the playing field is not level for all scientists, which occasionally results in events like the Wagner debacle. It just highlights how Global Warming is a scam.
Your warmist trolling will improve if you make the effort to understand the issues better and learn to pick your battles.
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‘such as this summary from James Delingpole’
JD interpreter of interpretations
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=36Xu3SQcIE0
Who by the way doesn’t do science!
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You try to back up what you say with links… but what you say is a fallacious argument.
He doesn’t ‘do’ science, yet I gave you links to opinions of two other publishing climate scientists who obviously ‘do science’ and who had the same opinion on this issue as Delingpole!
You’re going nowhere with that argument and you don’t even realise it. Or maybe you think smearing people is real progress on global warming.
ba4 you’re not quite the lamest troll we’ve ever had around here, but you are clearly gunning for the number one spot (as opposed to being taken seriously). Stop trying so hard and you’ll get there.
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‘such as this summary from James Delingpole’
So out of Andrew’s response, this is the only part you pick out?
The truth is you have no idea what was wrong with the paper. You just parrot whatever the left leaning media feeds you.
Good luck with that.
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‘You just parrot whatever the left leaning media feeds you’ so what do you do when you add 2+2=? come up with the answer 5, or do you just parrot and come to the answer 4?
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LOL. 😀
Really just spellbound right now. Jaw agape. Really.
1. Gets accused of parroting the Left.
2. Responds by parroting a post-modernist version of arithmetic.
Yep, that’s enough for me. I’m convinced.
Sillyfilly has bolted from the stable and now her crown is yours.
This is the Mariana Trench of your Jo-trolling career.
May ba4’s reign last forever! Please. I don’t want anyone to outdo him!
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From a purist perspective, being a skeptic doesn’t mean that you doubt everything and hold nothing to be true, but that whatever you do believe to be true, you hold that truth to be “provisional” not absolute and based solely on the facts and data, and spend your time honestly looking for evidence that might refute that “truth” or cause you to modify it. This is how science progresses and why all real scientists are also skeptics.
True Believers believe without questioning that belief and are thus anti-science.
True Unbelievers (aka deniers) disbelieve without questioning that disbelief and are thus anti-science.
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In that case, does anyone really Know any ‘deniers’? I sure don’t.
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Otter,
Therein lies the rub and this little pissing match that has been going on. Some Warmists would say “we got more than enough data that shows humans are altering climate, so your failure to accept this data is simply denial.”
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Who here denies that it has warmed? Who here denies that there is some anthropogenic effect?
Most warmists won’t say “we got more than enough computer models that diverge and track well above observed data that implies humans are altering climate catastrophically”.
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Heywood
The devil of course in in the detail, but then if you hide the data, hide the actual program, someone will eventually get a hockey stick to beat you over the head, metaphorically speaking of course, and by gosh nature loves to make fun of warmista!! Snow in much of Tasmania, the cold chill of defeat or more warming propaganda.
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There used to be a CAGW-believer, who used the moniker “R. Gates”, and who posted both here and at Anthony’s. Are you the same person?
I would request that we keep in mind, which camp has some real verifiable science, and which side uses pseudo-science, tries to hide their “data”, and prevent any members of the other camp from having a voice.
The side which allows dissent and invites criticism/critique (constructive) speaks volumes.
Your reply?
Mark H.
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Jo, it does not really matter how you call people who don’t have any problem with the “greenhouse effect”. Anyway, they apparently are not skeptical about the “greenhouse effect”, are they? Logically, people who support the notion of “global warming” are not skeptical about it either. There are, of course, people like me who know for sure that the “greenhouse effect” as presented by the IPCC is physically impossible and that the calculations of “global warming” have little to do with real science. I do not really care how you would call me, but please note that this group exists. Of course, those supporting the notions of “global warming” and “greenhouse effect” are louder on this blog and some others, true.
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William Kininmonth speaking at the launch of Dr Carter’s book explains a non-metaphysical “greenhouse” in this video.
There are links on that page to other presentations during the launch.
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He said at 05:36 “it is largely the back radiation from the atmosphere as against the heat loss from the surface which regulates the climate.”
This is exactly what I mean is physically impossible. Back radiation (toward the source) has no warming effect on the source, neither warming nor slowing down cooling is possible.
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He didn’t say that it warmed. He was explaining radiation.
Radiation from a body doesn’t “know” if the direction of radiation will result in a photon strike on a warmer or colder body. Radiative theory describes only the rate of emissions relative to the temperature and emissivity of the surface of the body.
Kininmonth’s “mistake” (IMHO) is to use the term “back radiation”. Such use supports the (mis)concept of heat being “trapped” between two bodies. He clearly states that “The greenhouse gasses don’t keep us warm” (@ about 4:36). And shortly after the point you noted, he stated that the increase in back radiation with temperature is always less than the increase in the radiation from the surface. (i.e. no “tipping point”, thermageddon, etc.)
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Let’s apply some logical thinking here.
He said that it was the back radiation which regulated the climate. Since a)the back radiation can not regulate the climate by having no effect on temperature and b)he could impossibly have meant a cooling effect, only one option remains: he meant it warmed.
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Radiation does not have a brain or any knowledge of anything. Nor can radiation make a decision to warm anything.
OK, to make it easier, here is an example. If you through a stone, the stone does not know that it should not land on the Moon. It does not know that it should not explode. It does not know that it should not become invisible. Are all those things possible just because the stone does not know?
Back/reflected radiation can not have a warming effect on the source for purely physical reasons, not for psychological ones.
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i blame the MSM. how does the MSM repeatedly allow such ridiculous statements as:
“And the reason almost everyone in the science community is of the view that climate change is happening is there are basically no other explanations for what we see.”
alarmists freaking over google, not because of their cooperation with the NSA, but:
July 11 – Lunch for Jim Inhofe
Where: Google Washington – 1101 New York Ave 2nd floor
http://politicalpartytime.org/party/34741/
5 July: Think Progress: Is Google Funding Climate Science Denial? Jim Inhofe Fundraiser Planned For July 11
by Brad Johnson, campaign manager for Forecast the Facts
Google’s motto is “Don’t Be Evil,” but it is supporting one of the worst deniers of climate science in the world: Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK). On July 11, Google is hosting a lunchtime $250-$2500 a plate fundraiser for Inhofe with the National Republican Senatorial Committee at its Washington, DC headquarters at 1101 New York Ave NW.
The Washington Post also recently revealed that Google was the biggest single donor to the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s annual dinner on Thursday, June 20, dropping $50,000 in support of this anti-science group. The dinner was headlined by radical global warming denier Sen. Rand Paul. CEI’s other donors include a who’s who of polluters: American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity, Altria (Phillip Morris), Koch Companies, and Koch’s Americans For Prosperity. CEI is famed for its ad promoting carbon dioxide emissions: “They call it pollution. We call it life.” …
“You can lie about the effects of climate change, but eventually you’ll be seen as a liar,” Google chairman Eric Schmidt said on June 6. It is unclear why Google is intentionally funding politicians the company has deemed liars. Google’s lobbying efforts are led by former Republican Rep. Susan Molinari of New York.
Google has been a corporate leader in fighting climate change pollution, and its support for liars like Inhofe is a glaring mistake. The climate accountability group Forecast the Facts has launched a petition calling on Google CEO Larry Page to cancel the planned fundraiser.
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/07/05/2257691/is-google-funding-climate-science-denial-jim-inhofe-fundraiser-planned-for-july-11/
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Barclays’ head coal trader to join London trading firm
LONDON, July 5 (Reuters Point Carbon) – Barclay’s top coal trader and former lead carbon trader has left to join a London trading house, sources said on Friday, three months after the bank’s managing director of both desks resigned…
http://www.pointcarbon.com/news/1.2448825
EU carbon prices down 5.5 pct as traders close positions
LONDON, July 5 (Reuters Point Carbon) – European carbon allowances ended Friday down 5.5 percent but up 2 percent on last week’s close, as traders squared off positions after one of the most turbulent weeks in the market…
http://www.pointcarbon.com/news/1.2449154?&ref=searchlist
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Australia hands out 50 pct of permits in CO2 scheme for free: data
OSLO, July 5 (Reuters Point Carbon) – Australia has issued another batch of free emission permits to its most energy intensive firms, taking the total to over 100 million for the financial year 2012-2013, nearly half of all emissions covered by the carbon pricing mechanism…
http://www.pointcarbon.com/news/1.2448817?&ref=searchlist
UPDATE 1: Britain sole carbon capture bidder for EU cash: document
LONDON, July 5 (Reuters Point Carbon) – A single Britain-based project to capture and store carbon dioxide underground has applied for funding in the second round of an EU scheme to help advance the nascent technology, a European Commission document showed Friday…
http://www.pointcarbon.com/news/1.2448797?&ref=searchlist
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Emmott himself states that his interests and research has diversified into other disciplines. Nothing wrong with that.
But why does he appear to think that others cannot or should not do likewise? It is one thing to claim Nigel Lawson has insufficient science training, but to presume he is incapable of learning, is simply rude.
Alas, many other people who self identify as non-scientists also assert that they are capable of judging the scientific merits of other peoples arguments. Hypocrisy is one word that springs to mind.
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more on Barclays etc:
5 July: Bloomberg: Matthew Carr: Barclays Energy Trader Karim Kanji Says He Has Quit Bank
Karim Kanji, head of coal, dry-freight and iron-ore trading at Barclays Plc (BARC) in London, resigned from the bank last week amid a financial-industry shift away from energy and commodity markets.
Kanji, 36, left after seven years, including more than four years as a carbon trader, he said yesterday by e-mail. He previously traded power for ConocoPhillips, American Electric Power Co. and Enron Corp…
JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) and Bank of America Corp. have shut units trading commodities because of tighter regulation in Europe and the U.S. after the global recession. Morgan Stanley (MS) will exit power and natural-gas trading in Bulgaria, the Czech Republic and Poland as it scales back involvement in commodities, a person with knowledge of the matter said in June…
Departures at the London-based bank this year include Louis Redshaw, the former head of carbon, coal and iron ore trading who left in April, and Trevor Sikorski, director of European energy-markets research, who stopped working at Barclays in February…
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-07-05/barclays-energy-trader-karim-kanji-says-he-has-quit-bank.html
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Too bad for Emmot the website name skepticalscience is already taken! 😉
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A bit off topic but does anyone know what has happened to the Climategate 3 emails which were unlocked by Mr FOIA back in March?? Surely some should have been released by now.
20
YAWN. —Yet Another Witch-Hunting Non-entity (or Neurologist …)
If Nigel Lawson has an economics degree and is a climate curmudgeon, then I don’t
need to wonder why. Economists are used to rigorous statistical analysis of large quantities of variable
data and have engineered significant valuable statistical tools for managing such multi-variate analysis.
I have read several papers over the last three years co-authored by climate researchers and
… economists. Together. It’s pretty obvious who did the statistical “heavy lifting” and that was why that
specialist was a contributor.
I haven’t seen any papers in this field co-authored by a neurologist, yet. Nor have I seen any statistical
analysis tools contributed from this branch of … science. Maybe we’re on the verge of a break-through?
The creator of the infamous hockey-stick temperature graph loudly claimed ” I am not a statistician”
when the methodological errors in his least squares calculations were exposed by Steven McIntyre.
The Mann algorithm preferentially selects hockey-sticks from even pink noise, as one of his
`team members’ pointed out to him prior to publication.
Has Emmott examined any of the data from the well-known data bases with his own statistical analyses?
Or is he expounding an opinion? I rather think the latter as he makes no effort to define his terms.
Whch is Very Careless. But it does enable circular and fallacious arguments to be used, to name just
two errors.
I recommend he reads Charles Dickens’s books and pays particular attention to all the weather
described by the good author. He can then list the major weather events described between 1790
and 1840 and stand by to tick them all off again from 2000 to 2050. Because the multi-variable
climate is a chaotic system, some of the events may not appear and those which do may not be in
the same sequence, which should keep him busy.
I’ll leave it as an exercise for the good professor to figure out why those years, and why that author.
A last word for Prof Emmot: there are no witches, and there is no such thing as magic
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Now you have done it. You said “A last word for Prof Emmot: there are no witches, and there is no such thing as magic”. Don’t you understand that undoes all the careful work done by Porf Emmot et.al.
He has worked so long and so earnestly to make witches and magic exist by believing very strongly in them. He even has achieved an imaginary 97% consensus among believers in witches and magic that they do exist. Then you have the audacity to say they don’t exist.
By your evil *denial*, you have made all of his careful work for naught. How can you live with yourself being such a denialist? All you have to do is *believe* and the world will be made right again yet you refuse to cooperate. All kinds of bad things will happen now and it will all be your fault.
In what passes for the good Professor’s mind, this is how reality works. Post modern Philosophy? No. It is more likely that it is a PhD induced psychosis. Oh sorry, that is a difference without a distinction.
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heheeee, that is brilliant Lionell. That means that as the world now goes through 30 years of cooling, the warminista will say “No! It’s not because of the sun, it’s cooling because the bloody skeptics got everyone to stop believing in global warming!”
We just can’t win, Lionell. We’re damned if we’re wrong and damned if we’re right. Everyone knows magic doesn’t happen unless you believe in it.
30
There is no doubt the climate is changing. It always has and it always will. The undeserved and unproven inference is: that mankind is involved with this change, or is the sole cause of this change.
The fact is: there is not one piece of empirical evidence linking mankind to climate change – NOT ONE! The only ‘evidence’ presented by the “consensus” is not evidence at all. All they can come up with is untraceable weather anecdotes, computer models which never pan out, and Hockey Stick FrankenGraphs cobbling two unrelated proxy data sets into a fantasy chart.
The historical data on the other hand shows that tmperatures have been much higher in the past than they are today. For the last 600,000,000 years temperatures have hovered around 10C about 14% of the time, around 25C about 50% of the time, and somewhere in between 36% of the time. Right now we are at 14.4C, about 29% above the bottom of the historical range. (Ref: Dr. Christopher R. Scotese‘s PALEOMAP Project at http://www.scotese.com/climate.htm).
The 0.4C rise in temperature since the Industrial Revolution pales in comparison to the 1.6C increase of the Medieval Warming Period, the 2.5C increase of the Roman WP, and the 3.2C increase of the Minoan WP using the IR as a baseline. The average temperature has been declining for the last 6,000 years of the present 10,500 year Interglacial Warmup. (Ref: Alley, R.B. 2000. The Younger Dryas cold interval as viewed from central Greenland, Quaternary Science Reviews, 19:213-226.)
We are at the very end of the present Interglacial WP. After this comes about 90,000 years of snow, ice, advancing glaciers, crop failures, fuel shortages, and loss of life. Enjoy the warmth while you can.
40
Well it’s like this Emmott. You just can’t ignore the mathematics and the tangent of 90 degrees. Ipso facto since there is basically no other explanation for what we see it must be Allah, or is it Bhudda, Poseidon or the Rainbow Serpent Dreaming? Emott thinks he has it all sussed and hail almighty Gaia folks.
10
Does anyone know how the warmist mob occupied themselves before they began this little crusade?
20
I don’t know, but if you really wanted to know you should try asking warmists on warmist blogs.
It’s kinda funny actually. Asking the regulars of a climate skeptic blog what warmists know is a bit like asking regulars at warmist web sites what climate skeptics believe. But of course nobody would ever do such a thing, would they?
30
I love the subtle use of language the warmists use in arguing their points.
This Emmott character, in lamenting that the MSM would allow “skeptics” their voice says climate SCIENTISTS vs. climate SKEPTICS, making sure that the uninformed reader/listener thinks one side has scientists and the other…..oh, I don’t know, non-scientists?
In every political debate (and that’s what CAGW has become, more so than a science debate), he who controls the language controls the debate. So long as people like Emmott are not confronted with their use of seemingly innocuous language, made to defend it if not define it, no matter the science those on the other side will be playing defense. Confront him with those on his side who are not scientists, and likewise name for him the scientists in opposition to him.
Now, getting a MSM reporter to do that, well…………
20
In any conversation that I am involved with, when the Scientist vs Sceptic labels are used, I always correct the speaker by asking, “You mean the differences in opinion between the Committed Scientists versus the Skeptical Scientists, right?”
This has the effect of leveling the playing field, which the propagandists hate.
It also has the added advantage of a subtle play on words, that imply that the non-sceptics should be locked away, following a psychiatric assessment. Mind you, I never outwardly make that point – it would spoil the fun.
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@Olaf Koenders seen as your reply button has been disabled, I’ll just have to post a few points here, the easiest ones to debunk!
‘Do you remember when an imminent “ice age” was predicted in the 70’s’
A new ice age is forecast in the 1970‘s!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K9RygL_bfQM
‘How is it that CO2 was many times higher than today even during deep ice ages?’
CO2 300,000 ppm but snowball Earth
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xrm1KXttqDA
‘You seem utterly convinced that man-made CO2 (still a tiny trace gas in our atmosphere at 0.0397%)’
How can small amounts of co2, influence global warming?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-3-Lf4-49M
‘Have you discovered Milankovitch Cycles – how the Earth has cyclical wobbles in its orbit being tugged on by other planets causing major changes in our distance from the Sun?’
Yep, but they are not going to be an influence for something like the next 16,000 years!
‘why was there never a runaway greenhouse, ever?’
I suspect, because the Earth is in the ‘goldilocks zone’, not like Venus, which is not, being much closer to the Sun! Which by the way is not as close as Mercury, but is generally HOTTER! I wonder if it has anything to do with the thick co2 atmosphere? What do you think?
13
I note in passing that much of the politeness and reasonableness ascribed to Prof. Emmett was actually editorializing by the interviewer.
My apologies if someone has already noted this – I skimmed over vast portions of this thread, which has been largely hijacked to far-off topics by an auto-troll.
00
The ability to reply is clearly stopped after a few generations, no doubt for practical purposes. It wouldn’t be deliberately disabled.
I’m not continuing my discussion above with blackadder now that my comments have been reduced to red herring status.
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