Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement
Click on images
Beyond debate?
10 December 2009
The Copenhagen summit is in full force, and so too is the idea that man-made global warming is incontrovertible. But Martin Cohen argues that the consensus is less a triumph of science and rationality than of PR and fear-mongering
Is belief in global-warming science another example of the "madness of crowds"? That strange but powerful social phenomenon, first described by Charles Mackay in 1841, turns a widely shared prejudice into an irresistible "authority". Could it indeed represent the final triumph of irrationality? After all, how rational is it to pass laws banning one kind of light bulb (and insisting on their replacement by ones filled with poisonous mercury vapour) in order to "save electricity", while ploughing money into schemes to run cars on ... electricity? How rational is it to pay the Russians once for fossil fuels, and a second time for permission (via carbon credits) to burn them (see box page 36)? And how rational is it to suppose that the effects of increased CO2 in the atmosphere take between 200 and 1,000 years to be felt, but that solutions can take effect almost instantaneously?
Whether rational or not, global warming theory has become a political orthodoxy. So entrenched is it that those showing any resistance to it are described as "heretics" or even likened to "Holocaust deniers".
Paul Krugman, the Nobel prize-winning economist, professor of economics and international affairs at Princeton University and columnist for The New York Times, has said: "Is it fair to call climate denial a form of treason? Isn't it politics as usual? Yes, it is - and that's why it's unforgivable ... the deniers are choosing, wilfully, to ignore that threat, placing future generations of Americans in grave danger, simply because it's in their political interest to pretend that there's nothing to worry about. If that's not betrayal, I don't know what is."
Another columnist, this time for The Boston Globe, has written: "I would like to say we're at a point where global warming is impossible to deny. Global warming deniers are now on a par with Holocaust deniers, although one denies the past and the other denies the present and future."
Such pronouncements from these commentators and from other people highly placed in government, international organisations, the press, academia and science make the debate seem closed and the conclusion beyond dispute. Yet the plain fact is that there is something deeply unscientific about the theory of global warming. Despite this, it has gained such widespread, uncritical acceptance that any scientist expressing a doubt often finds his or her actions tarred with accusations of the rankest political and personal motivations.
How this situation came about says much about how science is co-opted to sway public opinion. The case is built, deliberately or not, on misleading images and interpretations that have been perpetuated by parties with a vested interest. It morphs into a tool for governments to intimidate their populations into passive acceptance of very real changes: from the tiny, such as accepting miserable fluorescent light instead of the incandescent light we've been used to; to the major, like welcoming nuclear power plants and obliging rainforest tribes to make way for biofuel plantations.
Indeed, much of what is presented as hard scientific evidence for the theory of global warming is false. "Second-rate myth" may be a better term, as the philosopher Paul Feyerabend called science in his 1975 polemic, Against Method.
"This myth is a complex explanatory system that contains numerous auxiliary hypotheses designed to cover special cases, as it easily achieves a high degree of confirmation on the basis of observation," Feyerabend writes. "It has been taught for a long time; its content is enforced by fear, prejudice and ignorance, as well as by a jealous and cruel priesthood. Its ideas penetrate the most common idiom, infect all modes of thinking and many decisions which mean a great deal in human life ... ".
But call it what you will, as long as you don't think that by calling it "science" it becomes irrefutable. Because that it ain't.
Consider the presentation in one of the most popular works arguing the case for global warming and the need for action. In Al Gore's film An Inconvenient Truth, the scientists are reduced to a walk-on part: they are, in essence, an audience invited to applaud the decisions of politicians. The former Vice-President unveils as the "scientific" highlight of his presentation a graph offering a clear correlation between CO2 and temperature, as discovered in core samples of polar ice. He goes on to state that as levels of carbon dioxide rise, the Earth's temperature increases because the atmosphere traps more heat from the Sun.
Driving his point home, Gore extends the lines on the graph to terrifying, if distorted, levels (see box, opposite).
To show that these effects are already being felt, the film presents striking images of "global warming", from forlorn boats in dried-up seas to that haunting image at the end of the film of polar bears clinging desperately to a shrinking block of ice (see box, above).
The film - like the theory it is advancing - is not defensible in terms either of factual accuracy or of argumentative logic.
Fine, you may say, but even if the case for global warming really boils down to a few media tricks, how come everyone believes in it? Yet, as Solomon Asch, a social psychologist, discovered in the 1950s via a series of experiments, people are quite prepared to change their minds on even quite straightforward factual matters in order to "go along with the crowd".
You can't blame folk for doing that. Especially when to do otherwise would mean taking a close look at the scientific issues in climate-change theory. Much of the argument for global warming is based on modelling. The mathematics is sophisticated and certainly intimidating to everyone but experts.
As some of the top climate-change modellers have remarked: "Modellers have an inbuilt bias towards forced climate change because the causes and effect are clear." (That comes from the paper "General circulation modelling of Holocene climate variability", by Gavin Schmidt, Drew Shindell, Ron Miller, Michael Mann and David Rind, published in Quaternary Science Review in 2004.)
And there is an impressive degree of consensus in their predictions. Take the modelling of one of the key components of "greenhouse theory", the degree to which warming of the oceans leads to more water vapour in the atmosphere "trapping" the Sun's heat. Advocates of the theory rely on this to show how a little bit of warming owing to CO2 can create very significant changes in the way the climate system operates.
A paper by Richard Lindzen and Yong-Sang Choi, called "On the determination of climate feedbacks from ERBE data", published in July 2009 in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, examined the modellers' case for CO2-induced global warming. It offered 12 graphs, 11 of them based on the most sophisticated climate models, all but one of which showed that as the temperature of the surface of the seas increases slightly, the amount of heat then trapped in the atmosphere by water vapour increases - a key element in accelerating the "greenhouse effect". We should be worried.
Yet there was that odd graph out, the 12th one. As Lubo? Motl, a sceptical physicist, joked, could it be that this was a tainted model - with its assumptions "tweaked" to fit prejudices by climate-change "deniers" funded by the oil industry? But no - the graph that contradicted all the others was the one based not on a model but on satellite measurements. It showed the Earth's oceans dampening the heating effect.
So what sort of factors mess up the models? Things like changes in ocean currents, changes in the amount of water vapour in the atmosphere, changes in cloud cover - just about everything that determines climate, really. Alas, there is as yet no way to calculate these. And so, the simple fact is, in our climate modellers' own words: "At present, no climate models have included the full range of effects."
Policymakers seem not to be aware of what the modellers know: that the results of their climate simulations are "likely to remain speculative for some time to come" and that people should be "extremely wary of extrapolating results to longer periods".
This demonstrates that the present climate-change models aren't just useless - by offering spurious precision, they are worse than useless.
How, then, does a theory that is incomplete and missing essential data become orthodoxy?
The reports of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) - whose landmark 2001 report paved the way to ratification of the Kyoto Protocol - are not based on any new or original research, but merely reflect the efforts of participants, including government representatives, to overcome uncertainties in knowledge. Policymakers then use the IPCC reports, nuanced findings or not, to demand that the public change their ways. And most of the public are inclined to fall in line.
Social scientists call it "cascade theory": the idea is that information cascades down the side of an "informational pyramid", like a waterfall. It is easier for people, if they do not have either the ability or the interest to find out for themselves, to adopt the views of others. This is, without doubt, a useful social instinct. As it has been put, cascade theory reconciles "herd behaviour" with rational choice, because it is often rational for individuals to rely on information passed on to them by others.
Unfortunately, it is less rational to follow wrong information, and that is what can often happen. We find people cascading uselessly - like so many wildebeest fleeing a non-existent lion - in so many everyday ways. A lot of economic activity and business behaviour, including management fads, the adoption of new technologies and innovations, not to mention the vexed issues of health and safety regulation, reflect exactly this tendency of the herd to follow poor information.
Some people say that what is needed in response is to encourage a range of views to be heard, even when they are annoying to the "majority" - for instance, one should allow people to contest global warming. Or let teachers in schools and universities decide what they are going to teach. But more people say, on the contrary, that what is needed is stricter control of information to stop "wrong views" being spread. It is that view that is cascading down the pyramid now.
One of the best examples of cascade theory is that of the entirely false consensus that built up in the 1970s around the danger of "fatty foods". In fact, this consensus still exists, even though it has never had any scientific basis.
The theory can be traced back to a single researcher, Ancel Keys, who published a paper saying that Americans were suffering from "an epidemic" of heart disease because their diet was more fatty than their bodies were used to after thousands of years of evolution.
In 1953, Keys added additional evidence from a comparative study of the US, Japan and four other countries. Country by country, this showed that a high-fat diet coincided with high rates of heart disease.
Unfortunately for this theory, it turned out that prehistoric "traditional diets" were not especially low-fat after all - indeed, even the hunter-gatherers of yore, if they relied on eating their prey, would have had more fat in their diet than most people do today. As Science magazine pointed out, in the most relevant period of 100 years before the supposed "epidemic" of heart disease, Americans were actually consuming large amounts of fatty meat, so the epidemic followed a reduction in the amount of dietary fat Americans consumed - not an increase.
Keys' country-by-country comparison had also been skewed, with countries that did not fit the theory (such as France and Italy with their oily, fatty cuisines) being excluded. The American Heart Association (AHA), considered to be the voice of experts, issued a report in 1957 stating plainly that the fats-cause-heart-disease claims did not "stand up to critical examination". The case for there being any such epidemic was dubious, too - the obvious cause of higher rates of heart disease was that people were living longer, long enough to develop heart disease. But it was too late: the cascade had started.
Three years later, the AHA issued a new statement, reversing its view. It had no new evidence but it did have some new members writing the report, in the form of Keys himself and one of his friends. The new report made the cover of Time magazine and was picked up by non-specialists at the US Department of Agriculture, who then asked a supporter of the theory to draw up "health guidelines" for them. Soon, scarcely a doctor could be found prepared to speak out against such an overwhelming "consensus", even if a few specialised researchers still protested. And all this was good enough for the highest medical officer in the US, the Surgeon General, in 1988 to issue a doom-laden warning about fat in foods, and claiming that ice-cream was a health menace on a par with tobacco smoking.
It was a pretty silly theory, and certainly not one based on good evidence. In fact, in recent years, in large-scale studies in which comparable groups have been put on controlled diets (low fat and high fat) a correlation has at last been found. It turns out that the low-fat diet seems to be unhealthy. But no one is quite sure why.
The fact is, science has always been about PR, and as this example shows, it is easy for opinion leaders and experts to be misled. These days, it is not merely fellow researchers but professional marketeers vying to press their agenda and that of their clients (see box, page 34).
At the Kyoto summit in 1997, Fenton Communications, a New York PR firm, was working with "green NGOs and leaders", including Gore and the IPCC, to advise on how to "mainstream the climate threat" and to "harness the public 'tipping point'" on the issue and inspire action, as its website today boasts. And indeed, the public have been well and truly tipped.
The IPCC reports, which are dull but widely used by governments as the basis for their policy discussions, have become steadily more dramatic. (Not for nothing does the head of the IPCC, R.K. Pachauri, have his own dedicated marketing adviser.) Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis says that "numerous long-term changes in climate have been observed (including) changes in Arctic temperatures and ice, widespread changes in precipitation amounts, ocean salinity, wind patterns and aspects of extreme weather including droughts, heavy precipitation, heat waves and the intensity of tropical cyclones".
Yet none of this is science. It certainly offends against the principle that Karl Popper calls "falsification" - in the case of climate change, there is no possibility of falsification. If you listen to proponents of climate-change theory, there is apparently nothing that counts as evidence against it. Increased rainfall in the northern hemisphere is evidence of climate change, but so is decreased rainfall in the southern hemisphere. Melting of ice in the Arctic is evidence of global warming, but cooling of the Antarctic is not evidence against, but attributed to "other effects".
The fact is, the IPCC report's statement quoted above is speculation and fear-mongering. So how did such language get in the report? Alas, it seems that the social and scientific reality is as Feyerabend describes, and that the language of fear has now "penetrated the most common idiom and infected all modes of thinking".
I have seen the effects of this up close, witnessing how truth can go out of the window in the rush to save the planet. I was co-ordinator of a small Yorkshire Friends of the Earth group, charged with protecting, among other things, the local river, the Wharfe, from a water company. In 1995, Yorkshire experienced just slightly less rain than normal, and the local water company found itself faced with the prospect of empty reservoirs. As standpipes went up in the cities of Leeds and Bradford, and trucks brought water in from afar, it desperately turned to the local rivers to try to make up the shortfall. The national press featured large photos of dried-up reservoir beds, waxed lyrical about how British society would soon break down in water wars, and urged its readers to sympathise with Yorkshire Water.
But our local group was not sympathetic because we felt that the company had failed to invest in its reservoirs and infrastructure. We proposed to put an advert in the Yorkshire Post highlighting this. And at this point, an official of Friends of the Earth formally instructed us that this independent line could not be permitted because it was national policy to attribute the shortages of water in the county that summer to runaway climate change. The "small is beautiful", "start locally" element of environmental tradition had disappeared. We were instructed that if we continued to argue that Yorkshire's water shortages were the result of anything other than global warming, we had to do so outside Friends of the Earth.
This highlighted the dangerous tendency of pressure groups to make specific statements for some supposed worthy campaign end. Ten years on, with Yorkshire racked by the usual floods, the director of Friends of the Earth, Tony Juniper, was pleased to warn against companies using climate change as an excuse. In The Observer on 3 July 2005, he said: "This situation emerges with depressing regularity, where you find insufficient capacity to meet people's needs because there's been a minor fluctuation in rain."
But that wasn't the line in the summer of 1995. Fortunately, our local group ignored the order to abandon our river to a water company and voted to continue to highlight what we saw as the "real causes" of the water supply problems, as an independent group.
Alas, in the climate-change debate, there is a worrying amount of irrationality, incomplete science and skewed presentation. The scientists apparently "cherry-picking" and hiding their data revealed recently in the University of East Anglia email scandal are only following in a long tradition that includes even Galileo "cheating" by saying that the Earth must orbit round the Sun - in a perfect circle. Yet, surely most objectionable of all is the use of gullibility and fear as tactics in campaigns. And if fear requires a world of zero risk, that certainly won't include those mercury-filled light bulbs and nuclear power stations.
Today, global-warming "deniers" have all been told they must fall into line with "the science". But this is not science, this is propaganda. And we are not being asked to be more rational but to suspend our own judgment completely. That, not "runaway climate change", is the most dangerous threat to the world today.
MISLEADING PORTRAITS
There are many ways to fool people, and linking images with complex theories is a good one.
One of the most potent images used to show the impact of rising global temperatures was that of fishing boats stranded in a desert that was once the world's largest freshwater sea. It features in Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth and in his 1992 book, Earth in the Balance: Ecology and the Human Spirit.
But the Aral Sea is actually not a sea, but rather a huge lake supplied by rivers, which have been gradually choked off since the end of the Second World War by Soviet-era irrigation schemes. Its plight has nothing to do with global warming.
Nor do polar bears.
When Gore used a picture of two polar bears supposedly stranded on a melting iceberg to support his claims about global warming, he chose a photo that had been taken by Amanda Byrd, a marine biology student, on a research cruise in August 2004, a time of year when the fringe of the Arctic ice cap normally melts. The image was later distributed by Environment Canada, a Canadian government department, to media agencies.
With that polar bear picture on the screen behind him, Gore says, "Their habitat is melting ... beautiful animals, literally being forced off the planet. They're in trouble, got nowhere else to go."
However, Byrd says that when she took the picture, the bears didn't appear to be in any danger. An Environment Canada spokesman, Denis Simard, told The National Post, a Canadian newspaper, that you "have to keep in mind that the bears aren't in danger at all. It was, if you will, their playground for 15 minutes ... they were not that far from the coast, and it was possible for them to swim."
The polar bear is still the symbol of the effects of global warming - but it is a cleverly designed marketing symbol, and not a rational, scientific marker.
GRAPHIC SLIPS
Although global warming theorists say they are concerned for the fate of the planet, it does not necessarily mean that their methods are beyond critique. Indeed, much of the "evidence" that makes up the "scientific case" is flawed.
In An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore unveils as the "scientific" highlight a graph offering a clear correlation between temperature and CO2, as discovered in core samples of polar ice, with these words: "The relationship is actually very complicated, but there is one relationship that is far more powerful than all the others - and it is this. When there is more carbon dioxide, the temperature gets warmer, because it traps more heat from the Sun inside."
He then asks "Do they go together?" and extends the lines on the graph to terrifying levels.
Well, hang on a minute. First of all, historically, CO2 levels and temperatures have not marched in "lock step". Over geological time, the only thing the two variables share is a random walk. The Late Ordovician period saw CO2 concentrations nearly 12 times higher than those of today - and it was also an Ice Age. In fact, over the past 600 million years, only on two occasions have CO2 levels been as low as they are now, at below 400 parts per million.
Even restricting our survey to the past 100,000 years, the relationship is not as Gore and others think. Far from increases in CO2 leading to higher temperatures, the ice-core record shows rises in temperatures preceding (by between 200 and 1,000 years) increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide.
Which is what you would expect. Slightly higher temperatures mean more plant and animal life, and that means more CO2.
Nor do claims of record high temperatures have anything to do with the theory of anthropogenic global warming. The theory concerns the amount of heat radiated back into space at night, not how much heat "gets in" during the day. It is interested only in the supposed warming of the surface of the seas at night under a cocoon of atmospheric CO2 - the greenhouse. And is that happening? Er, no, as recent satellite surveys have found.
But let's return to that graph. It's not that complicated. We can start by looking at the recent history of the climate and the so-called hockey stick curve. The chart, which correlates temperatures and carbon dioxide levels, is called the hockey stick because it depicts the northern hemisphere's temperatures over the past 1,000 years as a fairly regular flat line until the late 20th century, when it curves sharply upwards as runaway warming appears.
The graph contradicted all the previous research into climate, which had indicated that there was a warm period about 1,000 years ago followed by the "Little Ice Age" in the 14th century.
By the time climatologists had pointed out that the graph had missed both the well-known warm periods and ice ages alike, and by the time mathematicians had had a chance to challenge the methodology and sample size, it was too late.
The exact relationship between CO2 and temperature remains elusive.
BIG GREEN MACHINE
Those making the case for global warming present the theory as the unvarnished work of hard-working and sober scientists who have been guided by evidence.
That view would be underlined by anyone reading the glowing endorsement of the "science" behind An Inconvenient Truth published by the website RealClimate.org, which is edited by Gavin Schmidt, a mathematician at Nasa's Goddard Institute for Space Studies.
There, Eric Steig of the University of Washington's Earth and Space Sciences Centre answers the question "How well does the (Gore) film handle the science?" by saying unambiguously: "Admirably, I thought. It is remarkably up to date, with reference to some of the very latest research."
RealClimate's site is hosted by Environmental Media Services (EMS), which sounds very suitable until one discovers that EMS was a creation of Fenton Communications, a New York public relations firm.
The scientists writing on the site are not being paid for their campaigning. But clearly the debate is attracting groups outside science and policy that have interests of their own.
Global warming's believers are quick to note the presence of the fossil-fuel industry behind a variety of lobby groups and reports.
But the green side has its allies, too. Take Fenton, which prefers to be known as "a public interest communications firm". It describes itself as using "sophisticated communications tools that Madison Avenue executives and corporations use and harness[ing] them for progressive change".
And so, of course, it was at the Kyoto summit in 1997 working with people and groups including Al Gore and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to "highlight" the climate threat.
It has a presence in Gore's circle through Amy "Kalee" Kreider, Gore's communications director and environmental adviser, who can be spotted standing alongside him whenever he testifies on environmental matters to Senate committees, and who was a staffer at Fenton when the firm was advising Gore. Before that, she was a campaigner for Ozone Action in charge of handing out "ozone-friendly" strawberries to the press.
Fenton may hold no sway over Gore, but its involvement shows how sophisticated the forces involved in the debate are.
Fenton's campaigns are never random issues. It specialises in scary stories of the potential human health dangers of many substances such as Alar (a chemical used to control the growth of apples and improve their appearance), plasticisers (chemicals, especially phthalates, used in plastics) and bovine growth hormones.
In 1989, the firm played a pivotal role in the anti-Alar campaign, which resulted in sales of apples and apple products plummeting in the US.
Years after what would come to be known as "the great Alar scare", Fenton's biggest project is climate change. Among its clients are all the most respected names in the environmental business, from Greenpeace USA and Friends of the Earth US to the National Geographic Society and the UN Environment Programme.
Climate change is a big business, and it's not surprising that they want to have the world's biggest "public interest" PR firm running the campaign.
WITH ALL THE GAS AROUND, THERE'S SOME BLOAT
"We are witnessing the birth of the greatest and most complex commodity market the world has seen," wrote The Times' environment editor, Jonathan Leake, in a November 2008 article.
Carbon-trading schemes originate from the Kyoto Protocol on climate change. Governments adhering to the protocol impose limits on the CO2 that companies can emit; the firms are then obliged to buy annual permits to exceed them. Permits are bought from governments or from carbon traders in the City who charge a commission. In terms of dollars, the World Bank has estimated that the size of the carbon market was $11 billion (£6.6 billion) in 2005, $30 billion in 2006 and $64 billion in 2007. The money collected by the UK Treasury, for example, came mainly from UK power companies, with the cost added directly to heating bills.
Meanwhile Russia - because when the Kremlin signed up to the Kyoto treaty it was given an annual emissions limit based on the dirty old Soviet industries - has accumulated emissions permits for about 4 billion tonnes of CO2. Call it a £50 billion early Christmas present from Western consumers.
Many companies, too, have found the initiative profitable. SRF Ltd, which produces refrigeration gases at a chemical plant in India, made £300 million from selling certificates to transnationals including Shell and Barclays. It spent just £1.4 million on equipment to reduce its emissions, and used the profit to expand production of another greenhouse gas 1,000-fold.
Martin Cohen is editor of The Philosopher, and himself an environmental activist involved in many campaigns. His latest book is Mind Games (in press), which discusses the psychology of societies, and he is actively researching a critique of climate change for Pluto Press provisionally titled Climate, Chaos and Irrationality: How the Green Agenda Was Hijacked by Global Warming Theorists.
Readers' comments
This is absolutely brilliant. Well done THES and Martin Cohen. At last some rationality has been given the light of day. I am really concerned about the hegemony that currently holds over the 'climate change' issue. Why has n't the THES been publishing more of the scientific aspects of the debate earlier on - for example there has been very little discussion anywhere of the use of modelling programmes and the difference between the observed satellite data and the 'proxies' produced by the computer models. The THES did n't say anything about the refutation of the 'hockey stick'. We need more debate, more discussion on all aspects of this issue.
I
This isn't brilliant, it's anti-scientific drivel. Its perfectly possible to debate the scale and even the cause of climate change, it's just rather hard to deny it exists any more. Science isn't about PR, politics is, and perfectly legitimately so. What is leadership if not PR? Not everyone is able to rationally sift all the evidence, arguments and theories, but as a society we rely on the fact that some people can. Issues of public health and the environment are exceedingly complex. Scientists must come up with a consensus position, or politicians will be unable to act. If politicians are unable to act on expert opinion, what's the point of having experts? Or politicians, for that matter? Its their job to make the case for policy to the public that elects them, and that's a kind of PR. Mr Cohen confuses cause with effect.
Mr Cohen isn't bravely steering an independent intellectual course, he's trying to sell his book by pandering to people who are too afraid to face the risks and do something.
This is not a scientific article, and Andrew Peel might be right to say it is anti-scientific. We probably shouldn't expect anything else, after all, Martin Cohen isn't a scientist (at least, isn't engaged in empirical research in any of the natural sciences). What we might expect, given that this is an article in Times Higher Education, is an article expressing an academic or educational interest. Well, it appears that though Cohen is interested in education, and pedagogical practice, he doesn't have too much time for 'academia', so apparently we shouldn't expect that either. But Cohen IS supposed to be interested in 'philosophy', as an editor and contributor to The Philosopher. So, we might reasonably expect some kind of philosophical analysis, or critique, or even (let's be fair) description, of what is going on in the great 'climate change debate'. Unfortunately, we haven't had that either.
Cohen has made a hash of this article from the start: the second para. beginning 'Is belief...' and ending '...effect almost instantaneously?' begins the article with a host of assumptions, including: that "the madness of crowds" is a viable explanatory concept for the development of consensus; that 'rationality' and 'irrationality' are distinguishable categories, and that there exists a widely established understanding of how those categories are defined, and what they entail; that it is possible to employ the term 'rational' in the context of socio-political entities such as sovereign governments; that government level policy decisions are equivalent to, or the same as, the scientific research on climate change because that is the justification made by any particular government for such policy (implying that therefore it is the science which the policy is responding to that is 'irrational' not the policy itself).
This is both 'sloppy', in that it establishes an argument based on large assumptions, and logically incoherent. At the same time, the problem is compounded by unsubstantiated claims, that are based on a very peculiar interpretation of the core statements of those involved in the development of climate change policy. Cohen asks 'how rational is it to suppose that the effects of increased CO2 in the atmosphere take between 200 and 1,000 years to be felt, but that solutions can take effect almost instantaneously?' As I've already noted, it's very hard to say how 'rational' such a claim would be, unless one knows what definition is being employed. Regardless of the answer to that, I have never read, heard or seen such a claim being made. What I have heard is equivalent in logical structure to the following: if you carry on filling the bath with water, in half an hours time it will over flow. If you stop filling the bath with water, it won't (over flow in half an hour's time). If you, at the same time, pull the plug, the water will, in half an hour's time, have gone. Sorry to be pedantic, but another example, which I consider quite rational, is the following: if you continue to smoke through your lifetime, you have a much, much higher chance of suffering from some form of heart disease or cancer in your life, possibly 10 or even 40 years time. If you stop now, this likely hood will rapidly decrease. The 'effect' of not smoking is 'instantaneous', the danger of continuing to smoke still lies in the 'future'. Many people who smoke are warned that they have done so for so long that to stop would make no difference; many who are interested in the Earth's climate feel the same about CO2 emissions.
Rather than go through the article para. by para. like this (though I would recommend it to Cohen, if only to tidy it up), I would like to make two last points, one about how we should discern Cohen's purpose: if it is that 'climate change' is a misunderstanding of the problem of ecological damage, that has led to the misdirection, or falsification of policy intentions (which is covertly hinted at near the end of the article, to the effect that 'climate change' is a smoke screen for continued exploitation of human and natural resources by capital) that MUST be made clear, so that the article can be read in an appropriate framework. At the same time, if that is the purpose, then Cohen should clarify what his own understanding of the ecological problem is, and how it should be understood (something along the lines of what an appropriate 'earth' science might be). And the other point I would make, and something that has started to bother me, because I read it in a lot of popular, academic and trade press, concerns the 'big business' of environmental campaigning: anyone who uses the term in reference to 'organic farming' ('big business' according to Ben Goldacre of the Guardian) or 'climate change' ('big business' according to Cohen) should have some kind of comparison for us, so that we can see what is meant by 'big' and what is meant by 'normal' or 'average' or even 'small'. I would suggest that Goldacre compare the turn-over of the organic agro-industry in Europe with that of the non-organic agro-industry in Europe; and Cohen compare the publicity and advertising budget of Greenpeace with that of BP. Then we'll know what 'big' means.
Martin Cohen makes one or two specific points: Al Gore's polar bears, the 12th graph, temperature differences between Arctic and Antarctic, CO2 in a past Ice Age and the warming of the seas. Are there people more knowledgeable than me on these things (Nick Beech above perhaps) who could add a comment to say whether Cohen is correct on those points and why or why not and, if he is correct, whether arguments that take the opposite line or that ignore them have influenced political decisions on this subject. The issue, I think, is whether politicians might be being influenced by bad science, even if the conclusions of that bad science may be correct.
Martin - thank you for this. It restores my faith in journalism and in the UK media. You are spot on with the science - well done because it is not easy. I know because I have just published a book on the subject 'Chill: a reassessment of global warming theory' and it was referred to this last weekend in the Sunday Times as the work of a 'genuine scientific' critic - except they used the word 'sceptic' implying, of course, heretic! There is an article by me this week in TimesOnline - 700 words, to make my case. I am grateful for that because it is the sum total of attempts to get my case before the world's media.
How can the average person know whether to trust me or the IPCC? That's not easy either - especially when there are penalties for standing out from the crowd. It should help that my book is endorsed by the author of the first draft of the Kyoto Protocol - a marine biology professor. And my own credentials....thirty years as a policy analyst looking at science, including advising the UN. You will find a lot in my book that corroborates your take on the science - especially with regard to the satellite data. At first i could not believe the delusions of the modellers had taken such a hold - it ranks as the worst scientific error in the history of science - that is why it is so hard to get the orthodox to admit to a problem!
To answer some of your critics above - there would be no global warming scare without the warming from 1980-2005. For 40 years before that temperatures dipped into a trough. Luckily we have good satellite data from 1983 - and it shows that at least 80% oof the driving force comes from sunlight reaching the oceans - with a 4% drop in cloud cover that allowed this to happen, Cloud came back by 2% in 2001 and thereafter from 2002 the oceans stopped storing anymore heat and the 'trend' of temperatures levelled off, some would say, fell slightly over the last decade. We are at the top of a natural peak driven by a complex solar and ocean linked cyclic system - evidence for which goes back thousands of years (and it was this evidence the 'hockey stick' team tried to remove.
Well done - and I would like to learn more of this chap Feyerabend - I had thought there was no sociology to describe what I have witnessed.
I wonder if you could come round and fix my computer, Martin Cohen? It's been making a few funny noises. The IT guys says the hard drive is on the way out but - you clearly know a lot better than all the climate scientists who spend their lives studying the earth's climate - you must be great at fixing computers as well. While you're at it my cat's sick, vets say it's terminal, but what do you think? And my car needs an MOT, you'd know better than the mechanic what needs to be done, right?
Those blasting Mr. Cohen for not being a scientist are assisting in making his point for him; that AGW is accepted by so many is a social phenomenon, not a scientific one. And Martin Cohen has brilliantly made this point.
Now, if there is one you would like to blast for spewing anti-scientific drivel, you may consider Al Gore. Hello?
"Now, if there is one you would like to blast for spewing anti-scientific drivel, you may consider Al Gore. Hello?" If by spewing anti-scientific drivel you mean saying what the vast majority of scientists think, then he is guilty as charged. Al Gore didn't invent the science, he's just telling you about it. It would make not the slightest difference if he turned out to be the Devil himself tomorrow; the science would still be there.
At last a sensible piece of reporting on climate change. we all know how much we can trust scientific opinion when it becomes politicized - millennium bug, bird flu etc. The publication peer review system is fatally flawed so don't rely on getting a balanced view from there. All sides have vested interests. The only things we can be certain of is that the climate has always changed and the Copenhagen hot air and ETS will make no difference. King Cnut tried to make the tide go back 1000 years ago. Fitting that the world leaders should meet in Denmark. Shows how little has changed!
This sets out the case against the anthropogenic global warming theory very well. The madness of crowds is an excellent description of the phenomenon. It is very refreshing to see such a lucid exposition of the PR manipulations undertaken by the green lobby. Wasting the huge sums proposed for reduction of carbon dioxide will impoverish us all but hurt the poorest most by taking funding away from feeding the starving and providing clean water and effective sanitation in the poorer parts of the world. How to cure the madness before it is too late is the key question.
The science of the climate is there indeed.
It is much easier to make sarcastic comments and attack those who make informed comment on climate science than to discuss the technical details.
When you have read and understood all of Peter Taylor's work on climate science, then you might be in a position to know what you are talking about.
Peter is right, Martin Cohen is spot on with the science. Please explain to us where he is not.
I think most people in this debate who are not climate scientists are like me trying to arrive at a balanced view. Up to quite recently I felt that, on balance, though it was a very complex field, there probably was anthropogenic global warming. But as I read more and more I find that the views of the sceptics are cogent and refer to rather compelling evidence, while the responses of the "consensus" lobby are dogmatic and dismissive, as, with respect, seems to be the tenor of the comments of Andrew Peel and Nick Beech above. At least they are not saying Martin Cohen is "criminally irresponsible", which seems to be the general epithet applied to climate change deniers. But one of them does say he is speaking drivel, and that he is not a scientist. But the Chairman of IPCC, who is seen telling us on the front pages of our newspapers from Copenhagen that the "scientific consensus" will not be derailed by the email leak at UEA, is (will someone please confirm or deny) a railway engineer. I have never yet seen a person from the climate change "consensus" group of scientists (who mainly consist of a small tight network of 53 people and not 2500 "scientists" - will someone confirm or deny this?) actually answer cogently the sorts of criticisms put forward, rather than engage in invective. I'm not a climate change scientist, but I am a statistician and I do find the statistically based arguments of the sceptics very powerful. Maybe I've read the wrong stuff, and there are powerful non-invective based ripostes to the arguments of the sceptics. If there are these, please let me have references (but don't cite Hulme's book from the UEA stable, I'm waiting for that to arrive from Amazon). I would like to see a really good conference organised (by THES?), where we have matched speakers from either side of the divide (eg Lindzen and Jones?) speaking to a fairly carefully constructed agenda. And all the data and all the models to be freely and transparently available to all sides of the debate, so that we really can arrive at a "consensus". I think we need to do this before we spend ourselves back to the Dark Ages countering a threat that may not exist in the way it has been put forward. I think global warming is occurring, but I fear it may not be due to GHG's, and the theory that it is due to GHG's may be diverting our attention from more immediate problems of sustainability which we are not paying enough attention to, and which are causing the deaths of millions of people now, and not in some ill=defined period from 20-50-100 years from now. Can we have a proper debate with all the parties in the same room? Please, I want to arrive at a consensus.
Neuroskeptic: The vet knows your cat's sick because he's run tests and read the Xrays.
What if he simply told you that he's sick because he's 12 years old, overweight and brown, and most 12 year old overweight brown cats are sick according to statistical models. You're skeptical so you go to another vet who tells you he's run computer simulations proving again, that 12 year old overweight brown cats are almost always terminally ill. All the other vets in town say essentially the same thing.
Would you still have him euthanized?
Good comments Eamonn.
Yes, if we lived in a rational society we would have sensible debates about such issues.
The so-called "sceptics" have been calling for this debate for years.
I wonder why it has been denied.
Al Gore was foolish enough to engage with Christopher Monckton in the Telegraph a couple of years ago. His arguments were completely demolished by Monckton and he never came back for more.
Correct, Martin Cohen. The IPCC has taken a leaf out of the book of its sponsoring organization, the UNEP, and relies heavily on publicity to make its case. One only needs to read the words of former UNEP head Mostafa Tolba talking about what made the Montreal Protocol a success as far as he was concerned. I give details of this in "Climate Science Corrupted", see http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/images/stories/papers/originals/climate_science_corrupted.pdf.
On the subject of fatty foods, the great majority of health professionals agree that there are different kinds of fats. Some are better for one's health than others. This is not propaganda: it is demonstrably true, and quite plainly obvious to anyone who cares to use their eyes. We all know that there are health fads and sometimes they are ridiculous. But are these health professionals really succumbing to a cascade mentality? Or is the writer falling prey to that flaky thinking that is so evident in Paul Feyerabend's notoriously flaky book?
The effects of fats on human health and the effects of carbon dioxide on global temperatures share one feature in common: they are both vastly complex issues. However, politics and the cascade mentality always try to reduce these to simple and usually incorrect formulas, and usually for bad reasons.
Yes, these so-called health professionals have been duped into believing saturated fats are bad and cause high cholesterol which causes heart disease. If you go deeply enough into the science you will find out. There are many parallels with climate change.
Thank you Martin Cohen for this analysis.
I only recently got interested in the global warming debate (with the release of information from the CRU), but I have become stunned by the complacent response of those who wish to promote the consensus (if that is what it really is) view. Thus the hacked files reveal that:
Scientists were prepared to break the law by deleting material that was the subject of an FOI request.
Scientists were prepared to lean on journals to stop them publishing other points of view.
The raw data was stored in such a way that a programmer had to guess the layout of the data in the various files.
Scientists adopted a policy of not replying to emails from scientists suspected of being climate 'deniers'. The rationale for this seems to have been that these academics were simply trying to waste their precious time!
After all this, New Scientist has published an article entitled "Why there's no sign of a climate conspiracy in hacked emails".
Far from calming my concerns about the global warming consensus, this article crystallises in my mind what has gone wrong. That attitude seems to be, it doesn't matter what climate scientists (of the right kind) do, it must be right, because global warming is right!
Finally, to those who object that Cohen is not a scientist, I would just say that what he has written is based on science, readers could do worse than read Steve McIntyre's website
http://climateaudit.org/
Nigel Lawson (obviously not a scientist) also has new website which contains an interesting and growing collection of articles:
http://www.thegwpf.org/
I am assuming the CeeCee was referring to my posting. Its not too clear. But whether he/she was or he/she wasn't, the tone of this posting was typical of most of the riposte's from climate change supporters that you read: testy, condescending, invective-laden, but, alas, addressing in no way the serious points of the discussion.
Eamonn my post was directed to Neuroskeptic and the sick cat metaphor. I'm a proud denier and the point I was trying to make is that climate science is an uncertain science and based on computer based models which, like all computer models, are subject to a great deal of variability. I suspect that most climate scientists themselves would agree if asked off the record.
Sorry for the confusion.
Thanks to John McLean, Peter Taylor and a few others, the comments above are not totally dismissive of a very cogent and in my view, quite correct approach to the climate change debate. Cohen has collected his facts from reputable sources and presents them as a professional journalist - not as a scientist. By the way, I didn't see any reference in his article claiming he is scientifically trained. Were those above who commented on this matter, scientifically trained in physics or geology or chemistry or meteorology or hydrology (both the latter being branches of physics specialising in fluid dynamics) ?? From the lack of attemts to rebutt Cohen except by insult, I don't expect to see any responses to this note saying "Yes, I am a scientist in one of those most relvant categories"
Excellent article.... I am sure it will soon join the warmers librorum prohibitorum.
Andrew Peel 10 December, 2009
This isn't brilliant, it's anti-scientific drivel. Its perfectly possible to debate the scale and even the cause of climate change, it's just rather hard to deny it exists any more.
Goodness me - what tosh - could only come from an AGW cultist! I am a proud and forthright "denier", "contrarian", "naysayer", "denialist" - use whatever puerile epithet takes your fancy. I know of no-one, not one, who denies climate change. As a fact, it is obvious to the point of platitudinous. As to the suggestion that the public needs someone to interpret science since they have neither the time nor the capacity to do so for themselves, again what patronising claptrap. What Andrew Peel is advocating is an inchoate priesthood of all knowing "scientists" dispensing their lofty conclusions to a passive constituency of compliant nodding donkeys. Any half baked demagogue would approve wholeheartedly.
As to the AGW orthodoxy, "Climategate" (to use the inevitable cliché) has exposed it for the abortion that it has always been. However, it is in many ways far less about the "science" than about the integrity of the scientific process, an issue of immensely greater significance for people everywhere who value democracy and basic decency. AGW science has been exposed as a fraud, by far the gravest in the entire history of science. The AGW hypothesis itself is no better than a glib and distorted misrepresentation of a 100 year old speculation relating to the so-called Greenhouse Effect allied to so-called evidence concocted within the guts of a computer by individuals with a predetermined agenda. We now know unequivocally that much of this has been simply invented – not just the notorious Mann, Bradley Hughes hockey stick beloved of AGW propagandists but even the very temperature record itself.
The legalities of this are not immediately relevant. What is clear is that, for decades, a small group of so-called climate scientists pushing the AGW hypothesis (known to themselves as “The Team”) have:
• Concocted/fiddled the data. Forensic analysis of actual computer code undertaken within the last few days reveals this beyond possibility of credible contradiction;
• Suppressed or ignored any that were “inconvenient”;
• Staunchly refused to share data/computational algorithms with the wider scientific community, thereby denying the most basic requirement of scientific method, namely that there should be verification and replication;
• In some cases, physically vandalised contra-indicative evidence;
• Denigrated (often in luridly offensive terms) anyone, but especially other scientists, who had the temerity to exhibit a questioning approach;
• Taken over and corrupted scientific journals, hitherto regarded as objective organs for scientific speculation;
• Sought time and again to emphasise “peer review” in the knowledge that, in relation to so-called climate science, this actually meant “peer review” by colleagues and collaborators;
• In every possible way, obstructed Freedom of Information Act requests for data;
• Insinuated themselves into and corrupted academia and national institutes of scientific excellence.
Given that these are just a sampling of the gross scientific corruption and malfeasance that has been revealed by the publication of HadCRU (UK Met Office Hadley Centre and Climate Research Unit, University of East Anglia) and NASA GISS (NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies) emails recently on the internet, questions arise. For example:
• How could such a miasma of lies, self-interest and intellectual intolerance ever have gained traction at all, let alone come to dominate the political landscape for close to a couple of decades?
• What does it tell one about the integrity of the scientific community at large?
• What does it say about the financing of scientific research - especially out of public funds?
• What does it say about the relationship between government and certain selected industries?
• What does it say about the independence of the media?
• What does it say about the personal integrity, never mind the intellectual bancruptcy, of politicians/religious leaders - with a notable and honourable exception in the person of Cardinal George Pell of Sydney as well as, less unequivocally, Benedict XVI?
• What does it say about politicians and the democratic process?
• What does it reveal as to the rising influence of environmentalist NGOs and the threat they pose to the democratic process - in particular, by the deployment of rent-a-mob tactics?
• Who is financing these fascist anarchists and social parasites?
• What does it imply for the future education of the next generation, if it is allowed to prevail? Already school text books are carrying human induced global warming as an article of faith - and, yes, I'm talking about science text books/so called science examination papers! Worthless degrees and PhDs are being churned out with this vomit as their core premise!
AGW is a hypothesis that is intellectually so indefensible, so tawdry, so dishonest, so self-serving, so mean spirited, so corrupting that, quite simply, it cannot be espoused with honourable motivation; it has to be the product either of nefarious purpose or of mental aberration.
Any person who describes him/herself as a scientist, who promotes or condones AGW, is a charlatan, a mountebank, a liar. By virtue of that fact alone he/she is a scoundrel. Period - end of story -nothing more to be said!
RW
Fantastic article. Thank you very much. Ignore the haters proving you're point! How about bio fuels for a contradiction? Cars running on it still produce co2. The price of food shoots up and more people starve than before.
First of all, AGW depends on computer modelling. A scientist writing for the third assessment report wrote: " In climate research and modelling we should realise that we are dealing with a coupled, non-linear chaotic system, and therefore that long range forecasting of future climate states is not possible. Or as Freeman Dyson put it recently: " All computer models must be constantly checked against reality, and if you can't do that, don't trust the model."
Secondly, AGW proponents tell us that current levels of CO2 in the atmosphere at 385 ppmv are the highest for x hundred thousand years. ( Fill in your own large, scary number. I have seen everything from 200,000 years to a million years.) In 2007 Ernst-Georg Beck published, ( Energy and Environment, Vol 18 No 2,) an analysis of more than 90,000 contemporaneous measurements of atmospheric levels of CO2 between 1812 and 1961. The record starts in 1812 at 390 ppmv, (and that was the year of Napoleon's retreat from Moscow, when he arrived back in France with only 10% of the troops who had stared the march , most of them being lost to the arctic cold conditions encountered en route.) CO2 levels peaked in 1825 at 450 ppmv, (still in the little ice age, remember,) then fell back, and peaked again at 440 ppmv in 1942.
Thirdly, I believe the AGW hypothesis can be stated as: Increasing levels of CO2 in the atmosphere as a result of human activity are causing global warming. Since 1979 global temperatures have been recorded by satellite. The record shows that global temperatures decined between 1979 and 1993 by less than 0.1C, then rose again by about 0.2C until starting down again in 2002. Since 2002 sea surface temperatures have been monitored by the Aqua satellite and have shown a steady decline. Any other hypothesis so at variance with observations would have been binned long ago. Why is this turkey AGW still alive and kicking?
For more information from a scientist sceptic go to www. drroyspencer.com
Article 1, DEFINITIONS, of the UNITED NATIONS FRAMEWORK CONVENTION ON CLIMATE CHANGE states, inter alia:
For the purposes of this Convention: ...
2. “Climate change” means a change of climate which is attributed directly or indirectly to human activity that alters the composition of the global atmosphere and which is in addition to natural climate variability observed over comparable time periods.
This hijacking of plain English with this neat little piece of newspeak - they could have spoken about anthropogenic global warming, or even DEFINED a new term for the alleged phenomenon - encapsulates much of what is wrong with the AGW case in my opinion; after all, no-one is denying the climate is changing, but according to the above, to accept climate change (which is evidently the inescapable reality of the situation) one is already admitting to the human causation thereof. It is typical of the way this whole non-argument has been conducted. The science is in. There is no debate. To argue is to be a denier, to wish to see the planet and your descendant fry, for the sake of a buck or two. All of which, apparently, now justifies the calls for deniers to be jailed and for children to dob in their parents as part of their merciless indoctrination. AGW is not science; it is not religion; it is not even the new faith; it is dogma, pure and simple and apparently enforceable as such. Well, the science is NOT in - there is still so much we do not know about the climate that it beggars the imagination - the debate is NOT over - there are tens of thousands of reputable scientists who do not subscribe to the theory and the more the zealots try to shut down free speech and open discussion, the more they will inspire skepticism and resistance. The emperor may well be clothed in the aggregated projections of computer models, but the empirical evidence proclaims that he is naked.
This article was certainly needed. Its scientific part speaking against global warming, however, is too large - more convincing would be a debate. Valuable in the article is the part related to the social phenomenon produced by mass media ("Social scientists call it "cascade theory": the idea is that information cascades down the side of an "informational pyramid", like a waterfall."), related to many more "issues" and clearly showing the beginning of totalitarianism in the West. I appreciate references to food, medicine and light bulbs. I highly appreciate the repeated accusation against political orthodoxy of spreading fear in society. That's correct - individuals now fear to express their views on many subjects, and the list of subjects remaining politically neutral is being shortened time and time again. ----------------------- I am, however, very saddened by the fact that Martin Cohen has rather explicitly excluded the so-called deniers of Jewish holocaust from his list of deniers that are persecuted by the officialdom. He only touches the subject, but he touches it as would anyone belonging to the political orthodoxy which he, otherwise consistently, is denouncing. I quote: "Whether rational or not, global warming theory has become a political orthodoxy. So entrenched is it that those showing any resistance to it are described as "heretics" or even likened to "Holocaust deniers". ????? In which way "Holocaust deniers" are different? They express their views and support them with historical evidence that others deny as historical evidence. They bring to the light physical evidence that others deny as physical evidence. As in every other case with "deniers" and "heretics", there is one side which is trying to gain legitimacy and the opposite side which has governmental support, unlimited access to teaching young generation and to the mass media. In the case of the "Holocaust deniers" the other side has resorted to putting the "heretics" in prisons. I would say that a philosopher and a social activist like Martin Cohen had an absolute duty to put the case of the "Holocaust deniers" as the first example of ruthless political persecution by the political orthodoxy; they, I repeat, are put in prisons. How successful the struggle against political orthodoxy and against the first, although clearly discernible, beginnings of totalitarianism will become, depends in a large degree on the integrity of such leaders, teachers and writers as Martin Cohen.
So-called climate change deniers are not akin to Holocaust deniers, but rather the zealous proponents of climate change are akin to anti-Semites, to use an invective “argument” they will surely understand. Unfortunately, those who make coherent arguments are increasingly demonized, while those doing the demonizing do not actually argue their points, but rather resort to what can best be described as commentary in the absence of counter-argument. Sometimes majority opinions are correct and minority opinions rightly marginalized as in the case of the Holocaust deniers. However, we see anti-Semitism rapidly rising with all the same old arguments. Apparently perceivable stereotypes are reinforced by a mix of new eugenic theories and the resurgence of long-disproven conspiracy theories. People veil their antisemitism with anti-Zionism, claiming a distinct separation between the two, yet attack Jews and Jewish interests rather than solely Israel and Israeli interests, demonstrating that there is in reality no distinct separation, least of all in their own minds. The climate change phenomenon relies upon much of the same “logic”. The media bombards us with the undeniable imagery of perceptible climate change, and the accelerated speed of media imagery bombards us with an apparently never-ending torrent of natural disasters in one place in the world after another, reinforcing our local perceptions of climate change and setting off the alarm bells of looming global crisis. The Green movement jump on the bandwagon and claims that human activity is the root cause, especially industrial processes. Strangely, natural human processes, like breathing, which produces carbon dioxide, are generally excluded from greenhouse gas inventories because, it is argued, they are part of a natural closed-loop cycle of photosynthesis and respiration that maintains a balance of oxygen and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Yet deforestation, which upsets that natural balance is included, along with the natural processes of farm animals, and land-use changes, which includes farmland. Farm animals are included because they are viewed as being inextricably linked to human activity, and therefore, like industrial processes, are an intrinsic part of the whole anthropogenic global warming phenomenon. Of course, part of the complex equation is that due to land-use changes that have affected wildlife, there are fewer animals on the earth now than before industrialization, with the exception of human beings. Industrialization is part of the smokescreen in more ways than one. Firstly, industrialization facilitates human population growth through advances in agricultural technology and medicine. Secondly, the burning of fossil fuels not only releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere but the smog acts as a filter against the suns rays, which itself is slowly growing and heating up. However, the inconvenient truth about global warming is not that one cannot sideline natural human processes as being consumed as part of a balanced natural closed-loop cycle, when no such balance can exist when the ratio of human life to plant life is constantly shifting and has done so dramatically, but that despite all the known effects of human activity on the planet, and the privileging of our short-term collective account of perceptible climate change, there is no scientific evidence of an unprecedented shift in the Earth’s temperature, even during human history. The hockey-stick graph that the UN still employs has been proven to be based on flawed and deliberately manipulated data, which once corrected completely eliminates the hocky-stick effect. Moreover, average recorded temperatures for most of the last decade have been falling. And furthermore, medieval temperatures were greater than they are now. More inconvenient truths include the many falsities advanced in Al Gore’s film, and the fact that despite the thaw, polar bears are thriving. Can it also be ignored that many of the zealous proponents of global warming are heavy investors in the climate industry, and that the funding follows the approved science and approved scientists? And can it be ignored that science is rarely the final word? Science is evolutionary! The scientific “facts” of yesterday are often disproved by the science of today, and much of today’s scientific “facts” will likely be disproved or dislodged by the science of tomorrow. Consequently, whether global warming is a real phenomenon or not, it is poorly understood. And a little knowledge can be dangerous. Is it really happening in a meaningful sense? If so, how much is attributable to human activity and how much is attributable to natural cycles? Is that attributable to human activity significant? If so, how much is attributable to burning fossil fuels, and how much is associated with natural human processes inextricably linked to the size of the human population? And how much is inextricably linked to the production of food and healthcare to sustain that population? I hypothesize that if anthropogenic global warming is ever irrefutably proven, the tough questions will have little to do with manufacturing or energy production, but will rather centre around the unsavoury topic of how to reduce the human population of planet earth in double-quick time. However, are the apparent effects of global warming, like rising sea levels, really the curse they are made out to be? Okay, if you are resident in the Maldives, it is unlikely you will see the positive side. Are they an opportunity to make money from the climate change industry proper, and to burden individuals with higher costs of living, or are there positive aspects? One of the criticisms of desalinization, wrongly or rightly, has been depleting the oceans, and one of the consequences of melting polar ice is apparently the effects on ocean saline levels. Is it beyond the realm of nature that rising sea levels present themselves at a time when the human population has increasingly insufficient fresh water resources yet has increasingly sophisticated technology to desalinate seawater and possibly even raise saline levels with the by-product where appropriate? Of course, maybe if some nations captured water where it rains heavily, rather than building their reservoirs in drought-prone areas, would serve their populations better than increasing tax takes to fund unnecessary industrial schemes, institutes of climate pseudoscience, and fuel the climate-change industry, which of course brings us back to whether the sceptics are simply in denial, conspiracy theorists, Big Lie makers, concealers or revealers?
Martin Cohen is confusing the scientific case with the political one. The major scientific institutions (e.g. Royal Society, National Academy of Sciences) and climate research groups (e.g. at Met Office, NASA) as well as IPPC are clear that AGW is happening and poses a potentially catastrophic future - not . The political fixes (e.g. Kyoto carbon-trading) are another matter, as is Cohen's paranoia about energy-saving light bulbs!
Martin writes several times that the evidence for the science is flawed, or plain wrong - and then cites Al Gores film as his proof. The film is propaganda - the science base is the multitude of scientific articles in reputable journals. Is Cohen claiming Gore is a scientist? Almost as ludicrous as claiming that description for himself! The 2009 Lindzen & Choi paper he cherry-picks concerning climate models has had very serious criticism for its analysis and methods - not a paper to rely on to rebut the analyses in many other papers. The climate models it uses are restricted ones that do not allow the atmosphere to affect the surface - not the coupled models that are used for predictions. I presume Martin is the author of the op-ed in Philosophical Investigations on Climate Models (I hope so as he uses large chunks of it in this THES article without attribution!) - where he seems astonished that “The most important greenhouse gas is water vapour” and goes on to imply that therefore CO2 is not important. This ignores the science that shows increasing CO2 causes higher temperatures and so more water vapour. Not good science Martin!
If anyone actually wants to learn more about the science of climate change then go to the Met Office website, or National Academy of Sciences, or RealClimate (which despite Martin's disparaging throw-aways has detailed accounts and comments on the science of climate change). If you really want the detail, then read the IPPC WG1 reports.
Mr Cohen mentions Professor Lindzen and Yong-Sang Choi's paper on climate sensitivity to CO2. This issue is at the heart of the climate change debate. It asks the question: "By what amount does an increase in CO2 cause an increase in temperature?". Lindzen and Choi, using observational data, conclude that a doubling of CO2 concentration will cause a rise of 0.5 degrees C. Professor Shaviv at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, working theoretically, has estimated it at 1.1 degrees C. The IPCC (2007) report says 3.0 degrees C. Who is right?
The truth is that literally no one knows. It is well understood by all parties that as CO2 concentrations increase, the gas' power to warm tapers off in the shape of a logarithmic curve. However, there is too little data available to know what the overall shape of that curve is. It's a bit like trying to estimate the curvature of the earth from looking at the countryside out of your bedroom window. The margin of error will be so huge as to make your observation unusable.
What does all this mean? It means that it is impossible for anyone not to be sceptical. How can you be other than sceptical when the fundamental science is unknown? We are told that the scientific evidence for man-made global is "overwhelming". This is not only not true: it is not possible that it be true, just as it is not possible to put your socks on after your shoes.
Given all of this Martin Cohen is absolutely right to discuss the subject in terms of herd behaviour. But the most significant herd behaviour we observe is that of the scientists who understand only too well that the science is not "settled" but are cowed into submission because they rightly and very reasonably fear being excluded from the group.
CeeCee, I see you were not referring to my posting, I realised it a bit later. Looking at the subsequent postings, there seems to be a majority of "denier" postings, and not much postings from AGW proponents. Notable exception is Ian Love two postings back. This does start to engage with the arguments, but then drifts off back into saying the evidence is all there for anyone to read. I know we can't sort it all out in these postings, we need a conference such as I suggested. But lets follow one thread. Ian Love says Lindzen and Choi's article has been discredited. Has it? Could we have some response from the sceptics? Another useful thing we could do is simply make a list of the "scientists" on both sides of the debate (especially the 2,500 - 1,500? - who support IPCC) and categorise them into type of scientist: the generic term just won't do. (No one has come back to confirm or deny that the Chair of IPCC is a railway engineer. He is described in th press as the "top UN climate scientist". What are his actual credentials to be sitting up there on the podium in Copenhagen?).
Rajendra Kumar Pachauri, chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rajendra_K._Pachauri#Education
I just thought I ought to clear up the evident misunderstanding caused by the way I wrote my early post (following Andrew Peel at the top). It's upset a number of people—probably understandably—who think I am attacking him for not being a scientist. It probably does come across as rude to Martin Cohen, so I'll clarify what I meant. It is perfectly right that a 'non-scientist' should, and in this case does, speak about the climate change debate. I wasn't trying to attack Cohen for not being a scientist, and I apologise if that was how it appeared. I was trying to critique the article, on the grounds that it doesn't make logical sense to me. I did this because I am also a 'non-scientist' and I have NOT come to any full or proper understanding of the debate, such that I can make a political commitment to any particular policy. I read the article with some anticipation and was disappointed by it. There are clearly many people who have posted here who already have made up their minds—that's fine, and they probably have lots of good reasons for doing so, but these don't appear to be BECAUSE of the arguments presented by Cohen, rather, they are because of some research, knowledge, information, set of beliefs, etc. found elsewhere that are CONFIRMED by Cohen's quite rhetorical work. I just think that Cohen could of made his case much better had he gone through the issues with greater clarity, distinguishing between 'climate change' 'science' and 'research', and 'climate change' 'policy' and 'publicity', 'politics' and 'economics'. I know they're all wrapped up together, I just see it as his job to help us unwrap them. Finally, I think the whole 'Holocaust denier' issue is, frankly, repulsive in this context. I find it obnoxious that a journalist compare those who present alternative views on the science of climate change as such. But I really think that Cohen should put this in perspective: I haven't done a statistical analysis of this, so it is anecdotal, but I can assure Cohen that every week, in a wide range of newspapers (English) and journals (English, construction industry in particular) I read editorials presenting precisely the case he puts—that the science is not consensual, and that the proposition that human beings are causing catastrophic climate change through the production of CO2 is false. I hear that every week.
Thank you Nigel for the web link about the Chair of IPCC. He does indeed seem to be a railway engineer. But I am astonished to find that he shared a Nobel Prize with Al Gore, who seemed to have criticised his appointment in 2002. But I read somewhere else that the Bush Administration supported his appointment, so that could explain a lot. Maybe this discussion is pointless: the IPCC is a political and not a scientific body, so it may be too much to expect there to be an actual scientist who knows what he is talking about in charge of it.
"The science of the climate is there indeed. It is much easier to make sarcastic comments and attack those who make informed comment on climate science than to discuss the technical details."
If you want technical details I suggest you read http://www.realclimate.org/ which will answer any questions you may have. Martin Cohen's piece is not, however, informed. Just randomly picking a sentence out:
"Even restricting our survey to the past 100,000 years, the relationship is not as Gore and others think. Far from increases in CO2 leading to higher temperatures, the ice-core record shows rises in temperatures preceding (by between 200 and 1,000 years) increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide."
This is completely irrelevant because there has never before been an anthropogenic increase in CO2 levels; the fact that, in the past, CO2 levels have followed temperature increases which occurred for other reasons does not mean that increasing CO2 levels will not lead to warming. That is a quite separate issue.
I'm also still baffled as to what Martin's fascination with Al Gore is - "Gore and others" is technically true... but the others are 99% of scientists. One might as well say that my local primary school nurse, and others, believe in the germ theory of disease.
You do believe in the germ theory of disease, right? Just checking.
"Fantastic article. Thank you very much. Ignore the haters proving you're point!" Haters? Who are you, 50 Cent? This is supposed to be a debate.
"Finally, I think the whole 'Holocaust denier' issue is, frankly, repulsive in this context. I find it obnoxious that a journalist compare those who present alternative views on the science of climate change as such."
Repulsive, obnoxious? Why?
It boils down to the same: the slandering of people who have different views from the accepted mainstream thinking.
If we really believe in free speech, then we should tolerate the fact that others may choose to research and think differently.
Or do we think people should be put in prison for having certain beliefs?
For those interested in the present level of scientific understanding.
Table 2.11 from the Fourth Assessment report of the IPCC sets out the uncertainty assessment of forcing agents. Listed below are the agents and the level of scientific understanding
LLGHGs – high
Stratospheric ozone – medium
Tropospheric ozone – medium
Stratospheric water vapour from CH4 – low
Direct aerosol – medium to low
Cloud albedo effect (all aerosols) – low
Surface albedo (land use) – medium to low
Surface albedo (BC aerosol on snow) – low
Persistent linear contrails – low
Solar irradiance – low
Volcanic aerosol – low
Stratospheric water vapour from causes other than CH4 oxidation – very low
Tropospheric water vapour from irrigation – very low
Aviation induced cirrus – very low
Cosmic rays – very low
Other surface effects – very low
To the lay reader, this gives the impression of a science in its infancy. There appears to be a lot more here that is unknown than that which is known. This may be one of the reasons that prompted Professor Lundzen to describe the IPCC report as an argument from ignorance.
.
In the very recent past (October 2009) there has been released an exchange of emails between Kevin Trenberth and Tom Wigley in which they allegedly say
‘ Hi Tom
How come you do not agree with a statement that says we are no where close to knowing where energy is going or whether clouds are changing to make the planet brighter. We are not close to balancing the energy budget. The fact that we can not account for what is happening in the climate system makes any consideration of geoengineering quite hopeless as we will never be able to tell if it is successful or not! It is a travesty!
Kevin’
Tom’s reply
‘Kevin,
I didn't mean to offend you. But what you said was "we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment". Now you say "we are no where close to knowing where energy is going". In my eyes these are two different things -- the second relates to our level of understanding, and I agree that this is still lacking.
Tom’
To me this seems to reflect fairly clearly what the IPCC say in their report. The current level of scientific understanding is pretty low.
Copenhagen is about politics, not science. But the science will have its day.
http://www.realclimate.org - it is my opinion that this site is pure propaganda.
I am getting confused. Neuroskeptic is saying that because co2 increases have followed warming in the past, does not mean that now warming won't happen after an anthropogenic increase in CO2 as there has never been an anthropegenic increase in CO2 before . But why should it? Surely the argument is that CO2 levels have been several times higher in the past than they are now, but the temperature was lower. Have I got this right?
Could one of Cohen's supporters help me out here. I don't think Cohen wants to be compared to a 'Holocaust denier,' I don't think he should be, and I don't think I can be bothered to spell out to Richard.P why I have said what I have said. On the issue of the chair of the IPCC 'not being a scientist': 'Dr. Pachauri, a citizen of India, is a world-class expert in economics and technology, two areas critical to the IPCC.' http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/press/media-flash-20april2002.pdf
I don't think his role is as final arbiter of what is valid or invalid in terms of data and models of climate change. I think he is more of a 'communicator' or 'chair' between the specialised working groups. I'm pretty sure he isn't 'in charge of it', and I don't think that the IPCC sees itself as 'political not scientific'. Someone who knows about it better than me might explain his role more fully and the structure of the organisation, but I think the Panel itself has the actual authority on how things are understood and run, see http://www.ipcc.ch/organization/organization_structure.htm
Neuroskeptic: "the fact that, in the past, CO2 levels have followed temperature increases which occurred for other reasons does not mean that increasing CO2 levels will not lead to warming."
Firstly, the idea that, historically, temperature always follows CO2 levels is the central tenet of Al Gore's and the IPCC' hypothesis. The fact that it has been debunked is highly weakening to their whole premise. Why don't they publicly admit that they misled us?
Secondly: it is generally accepted that, yes, CO2 in the atmosphere is a greenhouse gas and will cause some warming. I don't see anyone denying that. The real question is what is the proportion of warming in comparison with other factors. If anthropogenic CO2 is causing increased global temperatures, show me a graph that shows the correlation, and then show the proof that correlation is causation. As far as I have seen, that correlation only exists for a 20 year period from 1980. For all other time periods there is no correlation.
Nick Beech - there seems to be a misunderstanding - no one is comparing Cohen to a holocaust denier. The comparison is with "climate deniers".
The point I am making is about slandering people by calling them such emotive terms as "deniers" "skeptics" "unbelievers", as if they are lesser human beings for speaking out what they believe.
Climate has always changed and always will, it is a rhetorical device to label those sceptical of Mann made warming due to fossil fuel CO2 as 'Climate change deniers'.
The very opposite may be argued, That climate changes of the past, the medieval climate optima and little ice age are being 'denied' by the Hockey team.
Nor is the extent of warming over the past 100 years clearly unnatural. Others are now re-analysing the original temperature records and finding crude, deliberate and artificial manipulation to find a warming trend when there is none. See the Darwin data here: http://wattsupwiththat.com/ and associated links for example.
The CO2 rise that lags temperature is inevitable as CO2 is less soluble in warm water, The oceans contain 50 times as much dissolved carbon (in various forms) as the atmosphere, it is their temperature that determines the equilibrium atmospheric CO2 concentration.
Martin Cohen has provided a very helpful article for discussion - thanks very much. I saw the Gore film 2 years ago and this raised serious concerns in me about the crusading style of AGW advocates. I knew then that some of the data he presented was wrongly interpreted, and have since come to see this applies to most of the content. What impresses me about the Earth's environmental systems is that they are characterised by negative feedback mechanisms. To get runaway warming, you need positive feedback to predominate. The assumption of "large positive feedback" in climate change models is described as "spurious" in the Lindzen and Choi paper mentioned by Cohen. Until the AGW people demonstrate the validity of significant positive feedback, their references to science deniers have to be interpreted as a polemical retort.
Richard P: "http://www.realclimate.org - it is my opinion that this site is pure propaganda." - OK. Do you have a reason for this?
Do you think Nature, the world's leading scientific journal, is pure propaganda too? Here's their editorial (http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v462/n7273/full/462545a.htm)l
"Stolen e-mails have revealed no scientific conspiracy...The e-mail archives stolen last month have been greeted by the climate-change-denialist fringe as a propaganda windfall ... This paranoid interpretation would be laughable were it not for the fact that obstructionist politicians in the US Senate will probably use it ... Nothing in the e-mails undermines the scientific case that global warming is real — or that human activities are almost certainly the cause. That case is supported by multiple, robust lines of evidence, including several that are completely independent of the climate reconstructions debated in the e-mails."
"The point I am making is about slandering people by calling them such emotive terms as "deniers" "skeptics" "unbelievers", as if they are lesser human beings for speaking out what they believe." I don't see how calling someone a skeptic is making them a lesser human being. Some people believe in something, you don't, that makes you a skeptic. You're denying something. You are therefore a denier. I'm a skeptic of homeopathy & a denier of creationism. I'm proud to be one. You are a skeptic and a denier too. Welcome to the club, friend! Unfortunately only some of us skeptics are right - unfortunately this club has lax entry requirements. Any idiot can not believe stuff.
Nck Beech has given what seems to be a reasonable response on the Chair of IPCC and his credentials.
Is it possible now to have a response on David Tyler's comment that the Earth's environmental systems are characterised by negative feedback mechanisms, but the anthropogenic climate change models are based on positive feedback mechanisms? This seems a basic issue to be clarified.
More pure propaganda -http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climatechange/news/latest/uk-science-statement.html - of course they don't know what they're talking about because they're experts, and therefore, biased. What we need are people with no qualifications to look at the evidence & come to an uninformed... sorry, unbiased conclusion.
I suggest that those who have nailed their colours so firmly to the mast of the IPCC take time to read Professor Ian Plimer's 2009 book "Heaven and Earth". Pseronally, the more I look into the current runaway global warming hysteria, the more convinced I become that it is spurious unfounded and untenable nonsense - like that of the Ariistotelian establishment which closed their minds to Galileo's arguments because they didn't fit in with their presuppositions (and dragged the Vatican in to try and bolster their stupidity!
I think how to stop the climate change which has to start from India, China and Africa,because where have a lot of people and manufactures which is a history problem.Rich countries should less investment a lot of low quality manufactures to other countries and those always present a large number of CO2. We are living in the same world so we all need to save energy for future. I am a chinese and I know my country has water problem at prensent because climate change. Last month Workington also faced flood damaged.
In fact it is not Cohen's article, but the notion that science works by consensus and the very notion of "settled science" that is anti-scientific drivel.
An example where there really was a consensus and in which science seemed settled for about 180 years should be instructive: Newtonian physics.
Fortunately at the time it came apart, science had not become a world of grant-funded sinecures. There were no furtively sent letters lamenting that it was a travesty that physicists couldn't account for the photoelectric effect or the constancy of the speed of light. No campaign of vilification against scientists whose observations and public work disagreed with the regnant consensus.
Scientists got down to the hard work of figuring out, not what is "really true", but how to give a better description of reality, and quantum mechanics and general relativity were born.
The twelfth graph in the Lindzen-Choi paper is in fact more devastating to the consensus position for anthropogenic global warming than the photoelectric effect or the precession of the orbit of Mercury were to the consensus for Newtonian physics. The cooling of continental Antarctica represents a falsification of about the same order as the precession of Mercury's orbit did in the older theory: the proponents of the theory of AGW propose various "gaseous Vulcans" to explain it away. The failure to observe an expected 'hot spot' over the tropics predicted by CO2 driven warming turned one of the leading Australian proponents of the Kyoto Accords into a "climate skeptic". It is indeed a travesty, as Terenberth wrote in one of the leaked CRU e-mails, that the AGW theorists can't explain the current lack of warming, but only because they are not willing to do the hard work of science and correct their models, not with a jury-rigged fix that explains just the current lack of warming, but by getting enough other phenomena correctly modeled that stochastically the models correctly retrodict the fluctuations in climate since the beginning of the present interglacial period--including periods warmer than the present like the Medieval Warm Period and the Roman Optimum. Other scientists whose work focuses on the sun rather than the atmosphere can quite easily account for the current lack of warming.
The indisputable fact that there is some natural phenomenon not included in their models which is strong enough to blot out the predicted warming draws into question whether the models have omitted a natural phenomenon strong enough to explain the warming trend from the end of the Little Ice Age to the present of from the 1970's to the present without appeal to human agency.
No one denies that the earth's climate changes. No one denies that the earth got wamer from the end of the Little Ice Age to the present, nor from the 1970's to the 1990's. But a great many of us are *for sound scientific reasons* unwilling to regard a causal theory for which the only proof offered are discrete computer models of a chaotic dyanmical system with, what is worse, unmodeled and potentially unknown inputs, as in any way proven, and will flatly deny that it is proven when the predictions of those models are falsified by real observations.
Such denials are in no way akin to denying the Holocaust. The real question is are they more akin to denying the universal applicability of Newtonian physics in the face of the photoelectric effect, to denying the existence of phlogiston, or to denying the Piltdown Man?
An excellent article, Mr Cohen. Your reasoning, your scope, your grasp of the issues all do you credit. I speak as one qualified in two of the major disciplines relevant to climate science, and note with dismay but not surprise, the vituperation which your perfectly sensible article has drawn out from some of the commenters here.
How to creative world manufactures probem and lead to solve climate change which only scientists can do.I only can do is how to save enery and advise my fmily to save resource.DNY, I agreen with you.
as the 'lead' author of the article, may I say how much I have enjoyed and been illuminated by these comments! I would urge the Higher to make a separate articel presenting someof the key ideas here - both 'pro' and 'con'.
Re. the latter... 'Neuroskeptik' asks (and who might they be?) if the Journal Nature is to be counted as propaganda. My response to that is 'why not?'. Excessive deference to 'authority' is the problem here. Nature is dominant in the field, but by no means superior to and separate from the rest of the academics battling it out. And I can't help but recall that one of those 'emails', perhaps the most famous one, puts the Journal and its 'neutrality' in a most unflattering light. Professor Jones to Climate theorist Ray Bradley:
"Once Tim's got a diagram here we'll send that either later today or first thing tomorrow. I've just completed Mike's Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) amd from 1961 for Keith's to hide the decline"
"The models say this" and "the models say that"!!! As somebody who has actually done a bit of climate modeling, wrote one for my Masters thesis and worked a wee bit on hydroclimatology at Los Alamos labs, I can say unequivocally that what climate models do, at best, is represent in mathematics what the modeler *thinks* he knows. The same can be said for all the data that gets "cleaned up" before input. So, please, pretty please, stop having so much faith in models!
Oh, you should also take a look at the trends in the records from weather stations that have been properly sited and maintained for long periods - there is no trend to speak of. Well, not until the "scientists" perform the aforementioned "clean up", i.e., apply to it what they *think* they know.
Excellent article Martin.
Hello Martin, thank you for looking through the comments. I was wondering if we might press upon your time further, and if you would mind answering a few of the following questions:
1) what definition, or guide, do you follow in your principle of 'rationality' and its correlative 'rational behaviour'? For example, I'm still not clear why it is necessarily 'irrational' to ban a particular light bulb whilst encouraging the development and use of electric cars (if, for example, your policy is directed toward the reduction of 'fossil fuel' consumption, so reducing that in the instance of the light bulb and changing it in the case of the car, which we can speculate could now be run on renewable or nuclear energy). Maybe you could use a particular philosophical, or political, or even fictional account that might help us understand where you are 'coming from'.
2) could you clarify, and distinguish, between—the argument that 'anthropogenic global warming' (AGW) is a 'non-scientific' theory, or set of theories; the argument that 'science', as an explanatory system, and practice, cannot provide 'authoritative' grounds for any particular action/policy/argument; and how these two link with 1) your definition of rationality.
3) to what extent the examples you have used in the article (excluding those that are clearly and simply 'illustrative' or metaphorical/allegorical–like the fatty issue) of government policy are, in your view, guided by claims of AGW, and to what extent you think they are driven by concerns lying outside of that debate (economic issues, perhaps the rise in price of oil, gas, and coal, or the rise in price of grains, or the desire to develop new markets in carbon trading);
4) to what extent you are arguing that the AGW debate is deliberately driven to particular ends. In some instances you seem to suggest that it is driven by a social phenomena of 'cascade', in other instances you seem to suggest that particular, and particularly (startlingly) powerful agents are at work to encourage and saturate the debate, to the exclusion of others.
5) to what extent are these phenomena (4) related, and how does this fit in with your conception of (1) rationality and rational behaviour;
6) what is it, specifically, about being labelled a 'denier' or 'skeptic' that you think is problematic for debate? Richard Dawkins 'denies' that there is a God, Creationists 'deny' the evolutionary explanation of the origin of species, I am 'skeptical' about the government's nuclear energy programme, I deny the existence of the neo-liberal conception of the 'free' market. I don't think in any of these cases, certainly not mine, there is a problem with openly accepting the terms 'skeptic' or 'denier'. Is it because you see these terms as subsuming the debate, such that finer points, or alternative problems (such as deforestation, decimation of fish stocks, and other clearly worrying environmental problems) are swept out of the discourse?
6) are you, in fact, a 'radical' skeptic, or 'cynic', such that authoritative claims by any empirical science, or political power (democratic or otherwise) are held to be inherently problematic or epistemologically 'weak'?
Sorry for the long message, hope it doesn't get thrown into either the 'pro' or 'con' box, just wanted to clarify where you are at with all this.
Neuroskeptic - are you skeptic of neurones?
Or why did you choose such a weird name?
It seems your main aim is to disrupt this blog. Yes, I stand by what I said, and this should be obvious, people are labeled with derogatory terms, "climate change denier" and "holocaust denier" in order to put them in a category and set them apart from the consensus view. I prefer not to label people, but rather try to look at the facts objectively. So I prefer not to be welcomed in your club of deniers. As was mentioned by Ian above, "The very opposite may be argued, That climate changes of the past, the medieval climate optima and little ice age are being 'denied' by the Hockey team." Let's get beyond meaningless labels and speak plainly.
Sorry to be repetitive, but would anyone care to commen on my earlier question: "Is it possible now to have a response on David Tyler's comment that the Earth's environmental systems are characterised by negative feedback mechanisms, but the anthropogenic climate change models are based on positive feedback mechanisms?" I like to sort clear questions out one at a time.
Neuroskeptic, I like your persistence against this barrage of criticism from "deniers". But you are wrong to imagine that you are asking a rhetorical question when you write: Do you think Nature, the world's leading scientific journal, is pure propaganda too? Here's their editorial: "Stolen e-mails have revealed no scientific conspiracy…". This is an extraordinarily revealing sentence and you have done us a great favour in bringing it to our attention. When the "world's leading scientific journal" can say something that is so blatantly false, it is time for everyone to be concerned. In fact your point illustrates even more clearly than Martin Cohen's article, the extent to which group-think has taken possession of much of the scientific world.
Neuroskeptic, I believ you can stop posting now. You seem to have expressed the entirity of your opinion:
1) Cohen is not a scientist, and is not qualified to fact sceck scientists.
2) It does not matter what CO2 concentrations have been in the past, AGW CO2 is created by man, so its different.
3) Deniers are political but scientists are not.
4) Al Gore is a non-scintific straw man to knock down.
I would retort:
1)Cohen is a thinking man, and viewing the evidence before him. I welcome his opinion.
2) CO2 molecules don't care who made them, they all do the same thing.
3) I've never met a PhD who was truly apolitical. Thinking people form opinions, and successful thinking people are able to guide thought for others. Sometimes they steer people down dead end roads.
4) I agree. Someone on "your side" should get that man to shut up.
A very thoughtful and well-written article Mr. Cohen! As expected, you have enraged "The True Believers." Eirc Hoffer would certainly of had something to say on the Climate Change Charge.
An open question to Neuroskeptic and all the other believers out there. Would you bet your life savings on the accuracy of climate models? No platitudes about us gambling our childrens future and the like please. Just answer the quesion directly.
Dear Eamonn, Good you keep persevering. I will try to give a short answer to your question. Those who promote AGW have done so by largely concentrating on positive feedback mechanisms and ignoring the negative ones. This goes back to the early days of the IPCC. One view was that increasing temperature will give rise to more sea evapouration which increases water vapour in the atmosphere, which is a greenhouse gas, thereby amplifying the greenhouse effect. Richard Lindzen (then a member of the IPCC) argued the opposite, that the water vapour could turn into clouds and thus cause cooling. He was ignored. The other famous positive feedback mechanism is the melting of the ice which leads to less reflected and more absorbed radiation - hence warmer world. On the other hand, all living systems - and I include the earth and the atmosphere - exhibit homeostasis - the ability to resist change and remain fairly constant. Indeed life could not be imagined if homeostasis did not function. Homeostasis obviously depends on negative feedback. Think of a fridge thermostat - it switches the pump on when the temperature goes up - thus maintaining stasis. If someone were to wire it differently - like an oven thermostat - it would quickly go out of control. The fact that life on earth has continued, admittedly with a somewhat rocky ride at times, for millions of years through periods of high and low CO2 and higher and lower temperatures, means that negative feedback mechanisms on all levels must have worked well enough. Why should they fail us now? Obviously both negative and positive feedback mechanisms work in the real world. Those who want to scare us with "runaway" global warming have consistently ignored the negative mechanisms. They have thereby ignored the one of very basics of life - homeostasis.
I believe that in these comments there could be really valuable new arguments, but I would like to see the end of the persecution of "heretics" first. I have no doubt that scientific debate on climate change will not be resolved any soon. Yet, the herd mentality and the totalitarianism must be dealt with now. For this purpose, it doesn't matter what constitutes science and what doesn't, doesn't matter by how many degrees a kilo of CO2 raises the temperature. Just let the scientists have their fights, but let the people to live their lives. If there is any emergency today, it is in the political spheres: a horrible return to the persecution of "heretics". IF ANYONE THINKS THAT IN SUCH POLITICAL CLIMATE THE SCIENTIFIC PROBLEMS CAN BE SOLVED - HE IS A FOOL. Therefore, the Earth is in danger for as long as "heretics" are persecuted. And I mean - all the "heretics"! If anyone thinks that persecution of the deniers of the Holocaust cannot set the Earth on fire, he is a fool also. We live in the times of CULTS whose crimes against humanity exceed anything committed in the past: last century lost over 100 millions of people just to one cult - the communism. The efforts must now be directed against the cult of Jewish nationalism, but here is another one - global warming is coming. Which one of them will set the Earth on fire, no one knows, but each one creates political orthodoxy persecuting "heretics", never admitting mistakes, fighting to the last. Let's improve the political atmosphere first! Take away the power from the zealots!
Thank you for the article. It is good to see so many comments acknowledging truth. We will win and although humans do pollute, it is NOT with the profitable, CO2. I cannot believe the EPA and the potus--they MUST be in on the scam, sadly.
What pres would deny facts solely to pass an agenda? A manipulated one to be sure. Our pes has been given evidence of fraud and there he is... geez.
Thank you Richard. Alas you are from the contra side, so you have responded to a point made by someone on the contra side. I am looking for some one the pro side to confirm or otherwise that AGW climate models rely on positive feedback mechanisms to produce their predictions, and are these mechanisms in the models reproducing processes which occur in the real world?
I had another question earlier that I don't think has been addressed in the postings, so can I persist in being persistent? Once these are answered there is still another one not yet answered. The question I asked earlier is: "I am getting confused. Neuroskeptic is saying that because co2 increases have followed warming in the past, does not mean that now warming won't happen after an anthropogenic increase in CO2 as there has never been an anthropegenic increase in CO2 before . But why should it? Surely the argument is that CO2 levels have been several times higher in the past than they are now, but the temperature was lower. Have I got this right?" Again, I think someone on the contra side has addressed this, but can someone on the pro side give an answer?
Reading the second paragraph alone was enough to convince me that the rest of this article wasn't worth reading.
As ever, rather than properly weighing up evidence, a journalist chooses a "controversial" standpoint (that aligns nicely with the inner desires of most of us - we'd dearly love to *believe* that climate change isn't our fault or isn't happening - though secretly we know that it is) and tries to use wordplay to turn decades of sound science into a "myth" or "conspiracy" for our reading pleasure. How many times do we have to be subjected to this damaging tripe?
Times "HES"?
I am disappointed to read this junk here.
"....it's anti-scientific drivel. Its perfectly possible to debate the scale and even the cause of climate change, it's just rather hard to deny it exists any more...."
The question is not whether the climate is changing. The question is not whether it is warming. The question is whether any warming that is occurring is the result of rises in CO2 levels.
This is something it is perfectly reasonable to believe is not settled.
Superb. Simply superb! Thank you Martin.
Michel, you seem sure of your facts. Please show us a graph that demonstrates a correlation between anthropogenic CO2 and global temperature. Then give the proof that this correlation is in fact causation and that the data has not been tampered with.
Sorry Michel. The above comments should have been addresses to Phil Dixon.
Michel, actually the warming occurred from the end of the 1800's to about 1940, then it cooled until about 1975, then it warmed until about 2000. Then there was little change until about 2007, then it started cooling significantly again. The signs are that it will probably carry on cooling for a while longer. CO2 is in fact a minor greenhouse gas, so it will have caused some degree of warming - most likely a very small amount - maybe 10% or 20% of the observed rise, which is itself only about 0.7 degree centigrade (plus or minus 0.2 degrees). The words "much ado about nothing" spring to mind. It is worth mentioning here that the mathematical effect of CO2 on temperature is logarithmic, which means that further increases in atmospheric CO2 are going to cause less and less greenhouse action. None of this means that I believe it is fine to continue to pump gigatons of CO2 and noxious gases into the atmosphere. We need to find ways to change our behaviour, but the AGW scare, propaganda, distortion of science and carbon trading is not the way to do it.
Now back to the climate science proper. I have built a little climate model, still in my imagination, a very simple one, a deterministic scheme of perturbations. No details here at the time, but I came to a conclusion: Local perturbations cannot give rise to a global perturbation (i. e. the change of the entire Earth climate/temperature/etc. as compared with another point in time) unless there is a change in the amounts of the chemical components. My question now is this: Does anyone know if the last ice age was a GLOBAL perturbation, or it was a LOCAL perturbation? I leave this latter possibility open because everything I remember from what I have seen (the pop literature) only describes the change aroung the pole(s).
Al Gore's Inconvenient Truth contains 35 errors of fact. If the case for AGW were strong it would not contain any errors at all - there would be no need for them!
What is truly unforgiveable is that the lies and propaganda in this film (and in the subsequent book) create serious anxiety in our schoolchildren - my own grandchildren included. They are made to feel guilty by some of their teachers if their parents have a 4x4 or take them on holiday by air.
That sums it up succinctly and accurately. Meanwhile, the lemmings march unfalteringly over the cliff in Copenhagen, a Bruegelesque parade of the mad, the ignorant, and the evil.
Excellent essay, Martin. In my 2007 book, Science and Public Policy: the Virtuous Corruption of Virtual Environmental Science, I discuss the reasons for the failure of usual quality assurance checks in this and other areas of environmental science that rely heavily upon computer modelling (such as conservation biology) - though I take an agnostic line on the big question of climate change.
I do include some additional facts about Fenton Communications and their creation RealCLimate that strengthens your analysis of its links to Gore:
'The president of EMS was Arlie Schardt, who worked on Al Gore’s presidential campaigns in 1988 (as national press secretary) and 2000 (as communications director) and was also Senior Counsellor at Fenton.'
So would someone be able to tell me what lies behind all the propaganda and the distortion of science and the Copenhagen summit. Is it all a big mistake, is it all greed - to cash in on carbon trading? Is it collusion, cock-up or conspiracy? Does anyone know what they are really doing there in Copenhagen?
One explanation is that it is a collection of different factors that accumulated together to gather momentum, and like a runaway express, will not be stopped until it hits some enormous buffer. One strand is that the AGW thesis started to gather real momentum after the fall of Communism, when one of the narratives people use to make sense of their lives disappeared ("the good guys versus the bad guys", "boy meets girl", "fathers and mothers", "striking it rich", etc). The Communists were gone, and there was no one going to blow us to smithereens any more. The "bad guys" of AGW filled the bill. Another strand is the liking of the media for scare stories, which sell. Anyone who wants to get noticed knows hey ave to egg he puddig a bit, or no newspaper will take it up. Then many environmental pressure groups needed a reason for their continued existence after the original reason for their formation passed on. Then a further strand was that AGW formed a good basis for getting countries to act together who would see no reason to otherwise, the UN, the EU, to further their own agendas. Then as money started to coalesce around it, careers in academe, in NGO's, in related businesses started to depend on it (climate change deniers are critiised for being supported by one oil company another, but the amount of money going into AGW work is astronomical - CRU alone at AEU is reputed to have got about £14 mn in grants). Then it becomes a religious crusade. In the end, there are so many people who depend on the truth of the idea for careers, politicians with their political agendas (maybe toally unrelated to AGW, but its a good cover), self esteem, a reason for living, etc, that the idea it could be wrong is unthinkable. It can't, like Communism, be stopped, it is immune to argument, until it collapses under the weight of its own internal contradictions. Which does not mean everything is a waste of time. There are innumerable issues of environmental sustainability unrelated to AGW which thousands of people are dying of everyday which need attention. Thats one explanation of it all. I'm still trying to grapple with the pure scientific arguments from either side and I'm not getting too many answers to the earlier questions I posted.
Nick Beech: Fact is that both the IPCC and the media almost always present Pachauri as the UN's top climate scientist. He's clearly not a climate scientist, but maybe he is the UN's top "climate scientist". And furthermore, he acts, and seems to think of himself, in the "light" in which he is portrayed. Seems quite symbolic of the truth the organization portrays to me.
Another explanation is that communism did not die - it migrated from Russia to the West. Communists in the West held power since WWII. They were actually the people in whose hands the power fell after the war: people won the war, but commies won the power. With Gorbachev in Russia, the West (Old Bush) proposed to him to build communism together. Gorbachev fell, Eltzin fell, their oligarchs fell, the disappointment in the West was complete. The West then split (they actually split before, but there was some confusion about who will have Russia; it appeared - nobody) into two parties: commies that by degrees became anti-Jewish (they follow Stalinist communism) and Neocons (former Trotzkiists, mainly Jews). None of them are pleasant people. The plot to take power by the first party found the grounds in climate change, feminism, etc. The second party seeks to kill a lot of the population starting with Moslems and never losing Russians from their aiming device. In the comment of Eamonn Judge you will find the accessories used by both parties, but not classified in any way.
Michael Pyshnov: In response to your comments about Holocaust deniers: 1) The typical Holocaust denier does not actually bring new historical evidence to light but rather denies the historical evidence, because much of the key physical evidence has been destroyed. It is the Big Lie syndrome by omission, which if public debates were not so suppressed in our societies today, would be easily exposed for all to see. 2) Yes, their free speech is limited by hate speech laws that would seem to push the hate speech underground and has the majority in society apparently unaware of the extent of the hatred simmering under the surface of society, which simply allows it to fester, and therefore one wonders who it is that hate speech laws are actually protecting. Of course, while you will not see much if any of it in the media, and discussed and debated in society, the hate is evident on the Internet in spades. I would personally like to see the Holocaust deniers debated in public so that their "evidence" could be well and truly exposed as the fraud that it is, but of course fraud is a criminal offence, which generally carries a prison sentence. Arguably, the biggest problem in our societies today is the suppression of free speech and the lack of public debate on important issues. So-called media “debates” are almost always rigged by inviting a strong proponent of the favoured position, and a weak proponent of the unfavoured position or even someone sitting on the fence. Such media spectacles are simply exercises in propaganda by captured media. What I find very sad is that holders of the majority opinion generally do not debate the issues, but rather claim that everything is settled and simply resort to ridiculing opponents. In the case of Holocaust denial, it is failure to keep teaching the Holocaust and defending such teaching, due to certain societal pressures, that allows the Holocaust deniers their opening to undermine the truth. And robustly demonstrating the error of Holocaust denial should be integral to society’s Holocaust education. In the case of global warming, let alone anthropogenic global warming, the bulk of the evidence has yet to be gathered, so to have closed the debate at this stage only feeds the conspiracy theories. Anytime debate is closed, just like in the case of the Holocaust, some people are going to rightly question what there is to fear if the evidence supporting the majority position is robust. And anytime the debate is closed due to claims of urgency, we generally see fools rush in. Time for honest and robust debate to be restored to the public sphere, not marginalised to the realm of Web commentary, but I am no longer sure such is possible in such a highly politicized world in which governments and major media outlets are captured by the likes of the UN where the majority voice is undeniably that of totalitarianism.
Excellent essay, Martin. In my 2007 book, Science and Public Policy: the Virtuous Corruption of Virtual Environmental Science, I discuss the reasons for the failure of usual quality assurance checks in this and other areas of environmental science that rely heavily upon computer modelling (such as conservation biology) - though I take an agnostic line on the big question of climate change.
I do include some additional facts about Fenton Communications and their creation RealCLimate that strengthens your analysis of its links to Gore:
'The president of EMS was Arlie Schardt, who worked on Al Gore’s presidential campaigns in 1988 (as national press secretary) and 2000 (as communications director) and was also Senior Counsellor at Fenton.'
Ian Love:
"Martin Cohen is confusing the scientific case with the political one. The major scientific institutions (e.g. Royal Society, National Academy of Sciences) and climate research groups (e.g. at Met Office, NASA) as well as IPPC are clear that AGW is happening and poses a potentially catastrophic future"
Mr Love, I think that the distinction between science and politics is not nearly so clear cut as that. Actually, when has the RS ever *not* been political? You mention NASA- but NASA/GISS is headed by the fanatically political James Hansen.
A cynic might also observe that billions in grant money hinge on the existence of a Looming Disaster to be fought.
_________________
Neroskeptic: realclimate is run, as Mr Cohen ponts out, by Fenton Communications. Its most active bloggers and moderators are Gavin Schmidt of GISS and Michael Mann: both deeply implicated in Climategate.
Michael Pyshnov: Your talk of a “cult of Jewish nationalism” brings upon you the same charge that you place upon others. Why single out Jewish nationalism? Jewish nationalism is founded in C19th European nationalism. Jewish hatred ultimately carries over from the exceptionally heavy losses inflicted on the Romans by the Jews in defence of their religious sovereignty, most significantly and symbolically exemplified in the Roman creation of “Palestine” (the very application of the name from its inception and still today being fundamental to displacing the Jews and wiping them from the map). This (arguably jealous) hatred carried into Roman Christianity, and so forth. All the Jews are guilty of as a collective group is their refusal to give in to overwhelming majority pressure and relentless oppression. The ongoing survival of the Jewish people is nothing short of remarkable. As is said, what starts with the Jews does not finish with them. The pattern of demonization employed against such groups is surely all too familiar. Of course, some Jews are also guilty of being successful at those few occupations they were allowed and encouraged to pursue by the majority oppressors. Setting someone up as a moneylender, then borrowing heavily from him without any intention of paying him back, refusing to do so, then demonizing and expelling his people as a means of discharging the debt, is a classic bait and switch scenario that played out throughout Christendom. Sure, in order to carve out a national homeland for the Jews some people were inevitably going to be displaced, but why are the people the Jews displaced considered so differently to other similar cases? The world powers continued to happily displace large numbers of various peoples after WW2. The British were happy to import Arabs into “Palestine” before and during WW2, transfer Mandatory territory out of their control, and institute anti-Jewish decrees, against their League of Nations mandate and the promises they had made to the Jews. Promises to the Jews, even enshrined in extant International Law, have been repeatedly gone back upon. The UN invented a new definition of refugee and new rules for managing refugees just for the Arabs displaced in and from “Palestine”, which are applied nowhere else, while a greater number of Jewish refugees are not even recognised. A people that never existed were later created simply to create a national movement to oppose Jewish nationalism. And inconvenient extant International Law is repeatedly ignored, while international consensus is re-termed international law and incessantly spoken of in such terms to mislead world publics. So, ignoring whether the international community (a misnomer if ever there was one) still accepts the once-accepted historical claims to “Palestine” itself, I would ask you to consider the promises made by the international community to the Jews that were made well before the Holocaust, many of which are enshrined in extant International Law, the promises made by the British and their perfidious actions during their Mandate and during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, and the ongoing reinvention of international consensus as “international law”, where the conspiracy lies and who the members of the cult are, and I think you will have no choice but to conclude that the lead actors are the same as those leading, controlling and disseminating anthropogenic climate change theory.
DNY: Well said!
Richard.P: It is my personal belief that Copenhagen, more than anything else, is about firmly establishing a mega money-making industry for the world elites in exchange for accepting and imposing the spreading tentacles of UN world government. Okay, it fits the pattern of a conspiracy theory, but the money-trails and the gravy-trains are blatantly undeniable.
Hugh Davis: The manipulation, corruption and traumatization of children is probably the most unforgivable aspect of this whole scaremongering business.
Nigel, let me first answer the denial question. 1) The Holocaust obviously happened, just from the fact of transportation to the camps. 2) Some claims, among them of the most monstrous crimes, that were made after the war proved to be wrong; which has been admitted by all. 3) A research that is going on now puts in doubt the claim of gas chambers. The existence of mass graves containing tens of thousands bodies is likewise in doubt. 4) For me personally, the number of victims is not something that must be defended by putting people in prisons, and so the truthfulness of other claims. 5) For me it is enough that some claims were found false. That tells me that prohibiting further debate is political persecution. 6) Recently, the access to Vienna archives was closed to researchers, some of whom are Jews, Israelis. The researchers resigned from the Board of this archive. Something quite disgusting is going on, which serves only the deranged extremists. It reminds me the struggle between communists in Russia when they decimated their own ranks. It's not that I care about their ranks, but it just ridiculous, all of it, crazy, self-destructive and is a totalitarian persecution of the "deniers". ---------------------- On the second question. I was, happily for a short period, among the cult, not of course among the extremists. I know the feeling, I remember the songs, I spoke the language and was in the army. My personal opinion, and it coincides with the opinion of many others, is that it's an unworthy business, that's the Jewish side of it. The other side of it, the Arab side, is horrifying. I was there in the '70s but it was clear where the thing goes because the seeds of savagery were sown in the brains of this most brainwashed people of Earth. It's a cult. ------------------ Jews have suffered terrible degradation (I would say more than others, although all culture is going down). We had to pay attention to the fact that somehow Jews who are known to have made great contributions to civilization were not much Jewish in their culture. That of course is a matter of taste. It's a matter of individual choice and values. I value the product of one's life. I do not value the material of which God made you. Now, you can understand how I view the involuntary "sacrifices" that Arabs are required to make in the name of Jewish cult. And, by the way, I am not interested in the past historical events that are taken to prove the rightfulness of today's actions; that approach I consider a fraud: it's not the same people that they are talking about; often, it's even not the same land. If you go with transferring the mentality, crimes and reactions across the lands and times, you probably get what the apocalypse is about.
Martin (and THES) - thanks for an excellent essay. Also good to see Peter Taylor's latest thoughts (and so many other good comments). Eammon, you are asking the right questions and your analysis is spot on. Richard P is correct - as far as I know, the twenty or so key climate models all assume that increased water vapour will be a positive feedback, whereas the opposite is much more likely the case. The whole case for CO2 is based on massive assumptions, which render the GIGO climate models almost worthless. I have a first class science degree, and went along with AGW for 15 years, mainly because I believed (and still do) in the precautionary principle. But the science degree is of little significance, I rate critical thinking as much more important, and as universities don't seem to value that nowadays, maybe that's why so many scientists and supposedly intelligent people in other fields have not just gone along with AGW, but are actively driving it. Like Richard P., I am a sceptic, but have come to that position after many many hours of reviewing the arguments and science, in the last year or so. The key reason being that the planet has not been warming for almost 10 years now, despite significant increases in CO2 emissions from the west, India and China. And it is also very probable that much of the 0.7C warming in the 20th Century is due to UHI and dubious data manipulation. I don't dispute that the 90s were warmer than the 80s, but until the alarmists can prove (with observational evidence, and not computer models) that it was due to CO2 and not longer term oceanic/solar cycles, noise, or natural variation the game is a bogey. If you want answers to specific scientific questions I suggest you visit www.wattsupwiththat.com which is a sceptic site but is much more balanced and credible than www.realclimate.com . The former is populated by some very sharp minds (and highly respected climate scientists), but is has got a bit more political since climategate broke, which is probably unavoidable. As Martin suggests, the fact is that most AGW scientists (not just the IPCC and CRU, but the Met Office, the EPA in the US, SEPA in Scotland, Nature, New Scientist and many other journals) have all succumbed to this green groupthink, and have lost rationality and credibility as a result. The impact a binding Copenhagen treaty will have on the northern hemisphere economies through increased energy taxes for individuals and businesses, and the needless diversion of funds which would be much better spent on clean water and better nutrition in the developing world, now mean that stakes are very high. Sadly, I think it will be another five years before the realities of a cooling planet and the unproven CO2 hypothesis will penetrate the entrenched positions of the AGW scientists and our idiot politicians. A few cold winters may speed this up, but either way, the politicisation of the science now means it is too important to be left to scientists, and much will depend on the media. Despite the CRU scandal (and others in Belfast, NZ, Australia and the USA - see Wattsup) it seems that the press and TV in the UK and Europe are still hopelessly blinded by the faith. But they are losing their religion in Australia, Canada and the USA, and the internet could play a significant role in precipitating a return to rationale.
Let's face it AGW and the Copenhagen gabfest are not about saving the planet. It simply about money-grubbing on the one hand to make cash from a) handouts from developed countries, b) bankers and governments making money from the sale of carbon credits. Secondly, it allows politicians to big note themselves as leading the charge against global warming ( climate change by another name.) The process has become a political pissing contest, and has nothing to do with the rights and wrongs of the scientific case.
Richard.P Said - "11 December, 2009
So would someone be able to tell me what lies behind all the propaganda and the distortion of science and the Copenhagen summit. Is it all a big mistake, is it all greed - to cash in on carbon trading? Is it collusion, cock-up or conspiracy? Does anyone know what they are really doing there in Copenhagen?"
Monkton is bloging every day from Copenhagen at SPPI if you are interested.
I find him to be highly informed and a very good read.
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/ - see the blog page...
Cheers
Jim
A previous poster has appealed to an editorial in Nature as indication that AGW is unaffected by ClimateGate. As a retired biologist from Down Under, I was unimpressed by Nature's defence of the ClimateGate crew. Their behaviour was outrageous - suppressing and fiddling inconvenient data, subverting peer review by cronyism, refusing to make full data available to others on feeble pretexts, trying to silence dissenting voices. I do not think this flatly disproves all AGW but it does point to an unhealthily influential clique promoting climate alarmism.
Nature pointed to rising sea levels but did not tell us that even the IPCC only predicts a rise by 2100 of about one foot. Nature spoke of shrinking ice sheets at the poles. Down in Antarctica the continent has not warmed significantly since the early 1970s. The exception is one small section, the Antarctic Peninsula, which projects out far enough to contact a warm current. Ice loss in the Arctic is at least in part related to natural cycles like the Arctic Oscillation. Nature did not discuss the possible role of another natural cycle, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, in global climate change. Nature gave the impression that the Earth was heating up spring by spring - in fact its warming has paused, for the moment at any rate, for more than a decade.
It is often claimed that the last decade was the hottest on record. True if you start from the beginning of the thermometer record in 1850; but that was an exceptionally cold time, the end of the Little Ice Age. While temperature has risen by 0.7 deg C since then, at least half of this must be natural - solar for instance - because it occurred prior to 1940, and our CO2 emissions did not take off until about mid-century. The Medieval Warm Period was probably as warm if not warmer than today since the Vikings could colonise Greenland then.
Nature argued that there was a consensus in support of strong AGW - only a few cranks and paranoids were dissenting. I have seen two empirical studies of attitudes of climate scientists. Both showed about 10-20 per cent strong believers in strong AGW; about the same proportion were equally strong disbelievers; and the remaining majority were spread out across the spectrum between.
I would not be surprised if there was some AGW sooner or later, but I am sceptical of the alarmist versions of this thesis. I have no basic objection to precautionary cuts in emissions, but doubt if deep cuts can be achieved without serious impact on factors like unemployment, unless nuclear power is adopted - consider nuclear France with her relatively good record on emissions. The Green lobby will not love me for saying that.
Excellent essay, thank you. Yes, if we dare to question the so called global warming believers and preachers, you are shouted down and are made to feel so dumb for daring to question there science or should I say scare propaganda.
Once again, thank you for this excellent essay.
In Australia we have an Opposition Leader with guts, and his prepared to question an ETS fiasco which our Government is pushing onto us the People.
Excellent essay, thank you. Yes, if we dare to question the so called global warming believers and preachers, you are shouted down and are made to feel so dumb for daring to question there science or should I say scare propaganda.
Once again, thank you for this excellent essay.
In Australia we have an Opposition Leader with guts, and his prepared to question an ETS fiasco which our Government is pushing onto us the People.
Thank you Jim R from Australia for pointing to Christopher Monckton's blog from Copenhagen. (here: http://sppiblog.org )
I am having increasing respect for this man - as someone fully versed in politics as well as climate science. This is part of what he wrote yesterday (11th December):
"How do we stop the march of this neo-Fascist movement, with its crude denigration of opponents, breaking-up of meetings, taxpayer-funded propaganda at every street corner, and vast, expensive Nuremberg Rallies such as that which is now taking place at the Bella Centre? (Copenhagen)
Simple. We call it what it is, and we continue to speak freely and fearlessly, whether they like it or not, until they actually get to the point of putting us on trial for “high crimes against humanity”. We will not, repeat not, repeat not, be silenced."
You say "how rational is it to pass laws banning one kind of light bulb [...] in order to "save electricity", while ploughing money into schemes to run cars on ... electricity?"
Why would it be irrational? Are you worried we'll use up all the electricity in the world? To point out the obvious here, the first method reduces energy consumption, the second moves direct fossil fuel consumption toward electricity which can be generated via renewables.
There are some potentially valid political & social points in this polemic. However they are undermined by such scientific illiteracy. I am no climate scientist myself but I am scientific literate and anyone who can write that about electricity clearly has not even a basic understanding of the science.
Philosophers can spout about stuff they don't understand just like managers can manage stuff they don't understand. But it doesn't make them good at it.
Update on non-warming in Copenhagen: As emergency AGW conference continues, it is perhaps ironic to calmly study some weather information readily available on the internet. I apologize that the figures are not absolutely precise because they are taken from graphs at weatheronline.co.uk. Anyone can check my calculations, which took about 20 minutes and were not taxpayer funded.
In the last 28 years (as far as the online records go back), the highest December temperature in Copenhagen was 11 degrees C and that was back in 1983. Over these years, the average highest December temperature was around 7 C.
First day: a high of 7 C, exactly the same as the average high of the last 28 years and 4 degrees COOLER than the high of the last 28 years.
Second day: a high of 7 C, the same.
Third day: a high of 6 C, 5 degrees COOLER than the December high of the last 28 years.
Fourth day: a high of 6 C
Fifth day: a high of 5 C, 6 degrees COOLER than the December high of the last 28 years.
Can someone please point this out to the Met, the BBC and all the eminent and learned delegates?
Eamonn Judge:
I speak as a skeptic ("lukewarmer"), but it is clear that positive feedback is the lynchpin of AGW theory. And I doubt any AGW advocate would disagree.
1.) Temperatures warmed 0.7C during the 20th century -- stipulating that CRU, NASA, and NOAA adjustments are correct.
2.) The doubling of CO2, sans feedback of any kind, positive or negative, is said to result in warming of between 1C and 2C. (Most AGW advocates and skeptics agree on this point.)
3.) The IPCC projects a bit less than a doubling of CO2 by 2100, yet the midstream IPCC projection is a warming of c. 3.5C if measures are not taken to prevent it. Therefore (taking into account a cooling trend of c. 0.15C so far since 2001) the rest of this century's warming would have to occur at a rate of well over five times the rate of that of the 20th century.
Thus, belief in a robust positive feedback is logically necessary to standard AGW theory.
A terrific article by Martin Cohen, for which many thanks. But as importantly, some wonderful postings, too. This has to be the most intelligent discussion I have yet seen on the AGW issue.
Incidentally, is there something about paragraph breaks? The longer responses are difficult to read because there don't appear to be any. As an experiment, I'm posting this as two paras and will see if they appear as such.
I see that my paragraph break did not appear. Any chance, THE, that this could be addressed for the future?
Why don't we all just focus on reducing the climate change in our own areas by using smarter design and an efficient use of our energy intake? We use a lot of inefficient materials that trap radiant energy or don't use the energy efficiently, like asphalt for example. Most of the temperature data in the city areas is totally skewed by all of the infrastructure we build.
The problem doesn't really seem to lie with the CO2 emissions, but in the way we use the energy we create or collect. There's definitely smarter, more efficient ways to design things. Frankly, I'm a bit glad the whole global warming scare has kick-started people into thinking in more energy efficient ways. It's a smarter use of our energy and materials, and it saves the people paying for the bills a decent amount of money.
Michael Pyshnov: In response to your statement: "A research that is going on now puts in doubt the claim of gas chambers." As I said previously: "The typical Holocaust denier does not actually bring new historical evidence to light but rather denies the historical evidence, because much of the key physical evidence has been destroyed. It is the Big Lie syndrome by omission, which if public debates were not so suppressed in our societies today, would be easily exposed for all to see." I am always willing to read any research on the topic. Please post a project link if available. However, there remains irrefutable physical evidence in this particular regard, even if the deniers question the scale due to destruction of other physical evidence.
Richard.P: RE: "until they actually get to the point of putting us on trial". Please do not forget the camps that have been built in the US, apparently to house dissidents!
One of the most intelligent documentaries on AGW is here:
http://thedogatemydata.blogspot.com/2009/12/sbs-greenhouse-documentary-from-1990.html
The surprising thing is that it is nearly 20 years old, and yet still very relevant. Back then, things could be, and were, questioned.
Well done, Martin and the other contributors to this discussion. I particularly enjoyed the comments about how scares get out of control, and thought the following article might also be interesting: http://nzclimatescience.net/images/PDFs/green%26armstrong-agw-analogies.pdf. The authors list 26 previous scares which they say have features in common with the AGW scare: they are all (1) based on forecasts of material human catastrophe arising from effects of human activity on the physical environment, (2) endorsed by scientists, politicians, and media, and (3) accompanied by calls for strong action. Their list includes: DDT and cancer (1962), Global cooling (1970), Industrial production and acid rain (1974), Organophosphate pesticide poisoning (1976), Electrical wiring and cancer (1979), CFCs, the ozone hole, and skin cancer (1985), Listeria in cheese (1985), Radon in homes and lung cancer (1985), Salmonella in eggs (1988), Environmental toxins and breast cancer (1990), Mad cow disease (1996) and Dioxin in Belgian poultry (1999) - sadly at 50'odd I'm old enough to remember all of these! With hindsight, the authors are able to conclude that "none of the 26 alarming forecasts that we examined was accurate". Despite this, the unreasonable response to scares can cause immense harm. DDT may set the record, with many millions of unnecessary deaths resulting from the response to the scare. Way to go, global warming!
Mr. Cohen, thank you for an excellent article. I have taken the liberty of posting some excerpts (along with some excerpts from Peter Taylor's response) on my blog:
http://hro001.wordpress.com/2009/12/12/delusions-of-climate-modellers-and-the-madness-of-crowds/
As one who in the past spent many hours combatting the oft-recycled drivel of the Holocaust deniers, I find it ironic that so many AGW alarmist proponents find it necessary to resort to the "debating" tactics of such "revisionist scholars".
One of the responders advised newcomers to this issue that a visit to Steve McIntyre's ClimateAudit.org would be time well-spent. I would definitely second that motion.
A reasonably intelligent thread of comments in the MSM, thank God, seeing the danger this gagging of science poses to the foundations of democracy.
I taught myself the science itself, in order to understand the whole story, and make the science accessible to ordinary intelligence - a year before ClimateGate. I wrote it all up as a primer. I think it might interest a lot of readers here. Should have got a PhD for it, but who would have given it to me?
www.greenworldtrust.org.uk/Science/Curious.htm
Dear Anne Stallybrass, Wonderful "primer" you have written at www.greenworldtrust.org.uk/Science/Curious.htm - one of the most enjoyable, comprehensive and light-hearted serious studies I have seen. Congratulations! I would give you a PhD.
JUNK-SCIENCE's self-chosen disability
Deterministic systems, ideological symbols of abdication
by man from his natural role as earth's Choicemaker,
inevitably degenerate into collectivism; the negation of
singularity, they become a conglomerate plural-based
system of measuring human value. Blunting an awareness
of diversity, blurring alternatives, and limiting the
selective creative process, they are self-relegated to
a passive and circular regression.
Tampering with man's selective nature endangers his
survival for it would render him impotent and obsolete
by denying the tools of variety, individuality,
perception, criteria, selectivity, and progress.
Coercive attempts produce revulsion, for such acts
are contrary to an indeterminate nature and nature's
indeterminate off-spring, man the Choicemaker.
Until the oppressors discover that wisdom only just
begins with a respectful acknowledgment of The Creator,
The Creation, and The Choicemaker, they will be ever
learning but never coming to a knowledge of the truth.
The rejection of Creator-initiated standards relegates
the mind of man to its own primitive, empirical, and
delimited devices. It is thus that the human intellect
cannot ascend and function at any level higher than the
criteria by which it perceives and measures values.
Additionally, such rejection of transcendent criteria
self-denies man the vision and foresight essential to
decision-making for survival and progression. He is left,
instead, with the redundant wreckage of expensive hind-
sight, including human institutions characterized by
averages, mediocrity, and regression.
Humanism, mired in the circular and mundane egocentric
predicament, is ill-equipped to produce transcendent
criteria. Evidenced by those who do not perceive
superiority and thus find themselves beset by the shifting
winds of the carnal-ego; i.e., moods, feelings, desires,
appetites, etc., the mind becomes subordinate: a mere
device for excuse-making and rationalizing self-justifica-
tion.
The carnal-ego rejects criteria and self-discipline for such
instruments are tools of the mind and the attitude. The
appetites of the flesh have no need of standards for at the
point of contention standards are perceived as alien, re-
strictive, and inhibiting. Yet, the very survival of our
physical nature itself depends upon a maintained sover-
eignty of the mind and of the spirit.
It remained, therefore, to the initiative of a personal
and living Creator to traverse the human horizon and
fill the vast void of human ignorance with an intelli-
gent and definitive faith. Man is thus afforded the
prime tool of the intellect - a Transcendent Standard
by which he may measure values in experience, anticipate
results, and make enlightened and visionary choices.
Only the unique and superior God-man Person can deserved-
ly displace the ego-person from his predicament and free
the individual to measure values and choose in a more
excellent way. That sublime Person was indicated in the
words of the prophet Amos, "...said the Lord, Behold,
I will set a plumbline in the midst of my people Israel."
Y'shua Mashiyach Jesus said, "If I be lifted up I will
draw all men unto myself."
As long as some choose to abdicate their personal reality
and submit to the delusions of humanism, determinism, and
collectivism, just so long will they be subject and re-
acting only, to be tossed by every impulse emanating from
others. Those who abdicate such reality may, in perfect
justice, find themselves weighed in the balances of their
own choosing.
"No one is smarter than their criteria."
Jim Baxter
semper fidelis
- from "2010 AD: The Season of Generation-Choicemaker"
http://www.choicemaker.net/
DEDICATION
Sir Isaac Newton
The greatest scientist in human history, a Bible-Believing Christian, an authority on the Bible's Book of Daniel, committed to individual value and individual liberty!
Daniel 9:25-26 Habakkuk 2:2-3 selah
"What is man...?" Earth's Choicemaker Psalm 25:12 Joel 3:14 kjv
Nigel, I do not collect these papers. I regularly look at www.whatreallyhappened.com and significant events in this area are reported there. I trust this guy, again, probably because I don't trust sources that are suppressing the discussion. You cannot trust papers or government officials that applaud putting people in prisons for their views; and that's the bottom line. For that reason it was not difficult for various bloggers and the "unofficial" news web sites to find a niche :).
Good posting!
A great article that answers a few questions that I had. Hans Christian Andersen wrote a delightful fairytale called 'the emperor's new clothes'. It is ironic that the 'great climate change conference' is happening in Copenhagen.
For me, I am far more afraid of mental manipulation by mindbending mercenaries than any climate change.
see http://sppiblog.org/ for Christopher Monckton's blog of Copenhagen. There are also some videos on youtube of disruption of his meeting by a group of young people called SustainUS. Unfortunately he calls them Hitler Youth and the videos show him to be highly confrontational with them. Although I can see the analogy with Fascism, this attitude is only causing polarisation and creating alienation. - - - Is this your intention Lord Monckton? - - - Don't you think that a more Christian way would be to treat them as human beings and engage in real dialogue with them? - - - Do you think it is their fault that they have succumbed to the AGW indoctrination? - - - Is refusing to shake their hand going to engender respect for you or your message?
Like Martin Cohen, I am a trained philosopher, and one of the main areas of professional expertise of philosophers is to evaluate arguments. Obviously, as philosophers our expertise doesn't run to detailed mathematical or statistical techniques, but it does cover broader issues about the relation between empirical observations, the use of reason, and the drawing of practical conclusions. What shocks me about all the scientists in the current debate is their gross epistemological naivety. They claim to be telling us about reality, but without any understanding of the issues about the relation between reality and our knowledge of it. For example, Steve Jones is reported as saying that the facts speak for themselves, meaning that global warming is an unarguable fact. What he doesn’t seem to understand is that facts don’t speak for themselves, and they certainly don’t speak for what will happen next. Facts don’t speak at all, and in order to be turned into speech they need to be conceptualised and contextualised. Concepts and contexts are not given in the way that immediate perceptions are. They require an intellectual contribution. If science were merely a matter of gathering facts, we wouldn’t need scientists with brains. In the present case, even the concept of an average global temperature is problematic, let alone whether it is changing over time, and if so why. The nearest we get to straight facts is the fact that a certain person observed a certain thermometer reading at a certain place at a certain time. But the average of such readings doesn't give us a global temperature, partly because thermometers are unevenly distributed, and partly because some readings are unreliable (e.g. they are in weather stations surrounded by urban growth). We need scientists to adjust the figures in order to produce a meaningful global average. But the reliabilty of the result is crucially dependent on the skill and objectivity of the scientists, and should in any case be accompanied by an estimate of the margin of error. What the UEA affair reveals is not just group think affecting the objectivity of the results, but a lack of information about what the original readings were, how they have been adjusted, and what the margin of error is. If faith in the predictions of climatologists is to be restored, we need far more transparency about how they were arrived at. Until then, as a sceptic, my position is that politicians shouldn't take drastic and perhaps unaffordable action to reduce CO2 unless and until there is stronger evidence of actual global warming. The money would be far better spent addressing problems about the reality of which there can be no doubt – overpopulation, deforestation, pollution, clean water, adequate food, mineral resources, etc.
Martin Cohen uses a comphresensive collection of facts and logic to show that Copenhagen is really the appropriate place to discuss climate change.
You can fool some people some of the time, but not all people all the time
How come the Emperors have not yet discovered they have no clothes ??
Well argued Mr Cohen! This is more like it! As someone with no affiliation to either camp, but who is simply trying to understand what the heck's going on, I found your article illuminating to say the least. The whole human race should be considering these questions.
A number of arguments.
What an excellent read. What people like Neuroskeptic don't seem to "get" is that "consensus science" is an oxymoron, and a fundamental misunderstanding of the scientific method. When I was taught science in the 60's there were meteorologists and there were climatologists. Now we have "climate scientists". Isn’t “Climate Science” just a field invented by and for subscibers to AGW "consensus" who either choose not to call themselves meteor-/climatologists, because that’s not where the grant money is, or who in addition may not do so because they are in fact neither? If so it should neither surprise nor impress us if they "overwhelmingly" endorse AGW.
"Overwhelming weight of opinion" in scientific matters should arouse as much suspicion as confidence. When it exists in the absence of repeatable experiment, and in a cloistered, priestly ciircle it should arouse our contempt.
Readers who have pursued this rather good thread to the bitter end might be interested in exploring further the connections between the fascist movement and in particular the German National Socialist party and the environmentalist movement.
This is one of my favourite bits:
<a href=”http://www.ecofascism.com/review11.html>Review of Bramwell's Hidden History of Environmentalism</a>
There's a ton of material on this fantastic site - “Environmentalism is Fascism” - which explores in depth and at length that identity.
Another great article on that site (I won't link in case I look like a spambot) is “Uekoetter's 'Green and Brown' Condensed and Critiqued”.
I would rather this thread did not get diffused too much by discussion of important but not on theme issues like Holocaust Denial, but it has to be said that there are some interesting parallels between current discussions of enviromental issues, and concern with the environment in the Nazi period, and with resource shortages. And for Michael Pysznov to seem to say that the Holocaust has been exaggerated in the light of the evidence is very odd as the evidence is so totally overwhelming that it happened. But doesn't me saying that sound a bit like the AGW proponents responding to the climate sceptics, who keep saying, as in this thread, that the earth is cooling, whereas as we read in our daily papers the reports from Copenhagen that it is warming even more rapidly? Today, the headline is that the Met Office is saying that next year will be the hottest year ever (despite having got the forecast for this year so horribly wrong). But look at the small print under the headlne and you see the prediction hedged around with all sorts of caveats. But they have grabbed the headline! What I would like to see is a common data base of key variables that both sides agree are the basic data, so that anyone can run some analyses and see how what both sides produce with the same data compare with what you produce yourself. But that would be too simple, wouldn't it?
And very good site at:
http://www.greenworldtrust.org.uk/Science/Curious.htm
Andersen wrote it for kids. Now Emperor goes naked before large audience and does it often. He and his security people are watching who opens the mouth. Every time less and less people do. For the Emperor this is a public opinion poll. The results are published.
The political aspect of this protest is shocking. The protesters this time are the conservatives. It's hard to overestimate, this is the tables turned. The crowd may be nearly the same, but the ideas of the crowd are directly the opposite to the usual ones. It's still anti-globalism, but now of the opposite colour. The leaders are all new. 1000 arrested, not just a small group either. For how long this direction will hold is difficult to predict, because globalists will try they best: first, as usual, to make substitution in leadership, but with this new understanding of what globalism actually represents, manipulations will be much more difficult. And, this is the middle class; the leaders are scientists and good ones. There is some danger in that the class named, generally speaking, aims at keeping their holyday travel and SUVs, and therefore, the understanding of the problems is not deep. Another danger, more serious, is that neo-cons can very easily be recruited to betray the cause, and given the seats, etc. So far, the only prediction for the future would be that a smaller than usual number of kids will be conceived by the demonstrators.
The relationship between CO2 levels and temperature are not elusive if you choose the right thing to measure the temperature of. There is a straight line relationship between average ocean temperature and atmoshperic levels of CO2 as predicted by Willian Henry way back in 1803. For more information see www.bosmin.com/HenrysLaw.pdf
Good article Mr.Cohen, even if setting up Al Gore as your straw man might be piling on a bit :-). Anyway, there is substantial evidence that the AGW promoting community is, at a minimum, guilty of maintaining poor data integrity practices as well as showing questionable process integrity issues in terms of compliance with the basic scientific method principle of repeatability of results. Why then is there not more widespread public and scientific scepticism? The start of the article tantalised us with a question I have yet to see addressed. Specifically what is the mass psychology driving this irrational orthodoxy? I personally don't pretend to know of course, but I am sceptical that there is any kind of conscious conspiracy. My suspicion is that Freud and Jung would quickly have surmised that the motivations behind the attitudes and behavior of both the AGW scientists and their acolytes are mostly unconscious. Given your reference to Paul Feyerabend I think I am not out of scope to introduce another, if extreme, example of mass irrationality, presented in Jungian context. See the website that follows, hopefully for some, this will, in a small way, help to inform the mystery of this societal phenomenon. http://www.michaelgellert.com/pdf/michael_gellert-eruption_of_the_shadow_in_nazi_germany.pdf. By the way I would love to hear some qualified Psychonalysts weigh in on all of this.
And may be all worries about CO2 are excessive in any case:
http://www.opednews.com/populum/linkframe.php?linkid=102860
And may be atomic reactors can be made safe and nice:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.09/china.html
And may be you don't have to give a penny or an inch of your freedom to global crooks.
Just read www.whatreallyhappened.com and get the good news!
@Richard P
"Although I can see the analogy with Fascism, this attitude is only causing polarisation and creating alienation. - - - Is this your intention Lord Monckton? - - - Don't you think that a more Christian way would be to treat them as human beings and engage in real dialogue with them? - - -"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZw8yF5alkM
Monkton and the GreenNazi Youth.
See for yourself. You decide.
Thanks DavidNcl, Yes I have already seen that video. I am not condoning their actions. The real question is who put these young people up to this behaviour? But have you seen this one:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ne-X_vFWMlw&feature=related
in which Monckton refuses to shake hands with an "activist" and explains his actions by saying they are Hitler youth? Good for creating controversy through polarisation, making headlines, but not in any way furthering rational debate or reconciliation. In the thesis - antithesis - synthesis paradigm that dominates public life, Monckton is the antithesis of the AGW agenda, and as such, is probably the controlled opposition. Shakespear said all the world is but a play. Instead of being consumers, let's start thinking in terms of who is writing the script.
Y2K, Eugenics leading to castration of minorities in California and then the Holocaust, Swine Flu hysteria, Millions dieing from Malaria due to banning DDT when no scientific evidence exists of harm to humans caused by DTT, saturated fats killing us leading to too many carbs being consumed instead, causing Diabetes type II and obesity epidemics....all of these are similar disasters and hysterias caused by the herd following junk science.
What is wrong with sorting out the climate science with real valid peer review since the global has been either plateaued temperature wise or cooling the last 10 years? What;s the big rush?
But then many still have a consensus that Communism actually works (110,000,000 murdered in the name of Communism and counting, more than 1 billion currently enslaved to Tyranny in so called Communist countries that all turned Fascist).
My favorite Cascading theory for herd mentality is how many people actually believe in the Darwin mythology that some how if you zap rocks hard enough with lightning, you will get life. No such science exists! And then there are the hard core NeoDarwinists that refuse to see the results from the human Genome project. In order for NeoDarwinism to be true there must be thousands of genes controlling puppet like, our human characteristics. Unfortunately according to the real science, there is only 300 genes separating a filed mouse from a human, making NeoDarwinism impossible. Of course the fossil record destroys both mythologies also. But look how many of you never question the Gatekeepers of information!
So why is it so difficult to admit Communism is an abject failure, or science doesn't know how the climate is controlled, nor how humans got here? Or is it that these inconvenient truths don't fit pre-conceived political agenda templates?
Is global warming science the only branch of science to have the official support of the Church of England? The bells are to be rung from cathedrals at 3.00 p.m. GMT today.
Thank you George for this tantalizing piece of information. Could you explain the significance?
A Question to Martin Cohen and the other Philosophers out there.
How do you classify/explain/categorize the Aristotelian behavior which confronted Galileo about velocity and the denial of the physical evidence? All your commentators of course will interpret this story to suit their own perspectives/agendas. Which must be another interesting part of human nature.On full transparent disclosure is my main interest. Further disclosure; I put the climate conspirators into the Aristotelian category, but others will of course disagree -which starts a whole tangential debate; yet another category of human nature. The Uncertainty Principle applied to us all, we all affect the outcomes of our observations, thus the necessity for full transparency (if AGW proponents have nothing to hide, why all the secrecy behind not releasing all documentation regarding CRU and GISS data bases and exactly how they were derived-as a for instance) and full transparent peer review with out ideational Fascist suppression of debate and publication. Healthy skepticism is important to science, so I of course invite all to provide real data to counter any of my blind spot biased mistakes.
But, to the story to categorize from Galileo. Galileo confronted the Aristotle philosophers at the time, threatening their "grant money", their "tenure", their status and fame. [Much like AGW skeptics are doing GW consensus today]. The scientific "consensus" at the time said that a 10 Lb. weight would fall faster than a 1 Lb. weight. When Galileo dropped both out of the Leaning Tower of Pisa, the 10Lb. weight should have hit the ground 10 times faster than the 1 lb. weight. Of course it did not. BUT, the 10 lb. weight did hit the ground a couple of inches before the 1 Lb. weight, so the Aristotelian philosophers confronted by Galileo claimed victory! Galileo's victory in wider circles of course brought his increasing influence, but taking on the Italian establishment of the day and their consensus was eventually his undoing, which in many ways parallels today's events. Only today it is science that is conducting Inquisitions and declaring heretics unfortunately.
Anyway, I would be interested in knowing how this is classified in the social sciences. All of our current human predicaments have to pass through all these human nature hurdles to get fixed, one way or another. So I find it more interesting to study human nature than the problems. Because if you can't solve the human nature obstacles to the problem solving, the science one way or another doesn't matter, and matters follow a course that forces actions, rather than actions planning for results. The problem is still there and remorphs again and again. And from what I can tell, we have never properly sorted out the root cause problem that caused Galileo's downfall even today, almost 400 years later. Which is a huge downward drag on real science and real solutions to real problems.
Dear Alamodude, good questions. thanks. OK I know I am in danger of talking too much, but here goes. The dilemma you point to, and indeed has dogged public debate for centuries, is between science and politics. Science seeks out the truth and therefore welcomes transparency. Politics, as it is practiced, is predominantly about maintaining the power of the few over the many, therefore by necessity must be dishonest, manipulative, secretive and conspiratorial. Science works by formulating a thesis, exploring the antithesis and arriving at a synthesis. Politics seeks to control all aspects of thesis, antithesis and synthesis for the sake of maintaining power. Discuss.
Richard.P,you are working with politics, you have potential ability as dishonest,manipulative,secretive and conspiratorial so you try to work with global warming, you can use your mouth to fight dirty water,overpopulation,pollution and adequate food,deforestation and mineral resources.Wow
A very thought provoking article. It looks as though we are programmed for herd mentality and it doesn't matter how recent the last mass-hysteria : tulips South Sea bubbles, the holocaust, fatty foods, dot com bust (?), millenium bug, swine flu and now possibly global warming. Is it a kind of entertainment ?
The interesting thing about human nature is it affects each of us. Here is an interesting piece on the cascade theory + herd mentality affecting the Oil & Gas Industry as they ignore the science and still march to the mythological drum beats of carbon dioxide sequestration, in spite of the pure folly as suggested by real science. http://www.oilonline.com/Magazines/OffshoreEngineerNews/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/23833/Carbon-storage-just-doesn146t-hold-water.aspx
To Richard P., yes, the very nature of Politics lends it's self to manipulation, and in theory, the very nature of science is the opposite of politics, to undo bias and manipulation through transparency and real peer review. The reality seems to be in between, due to the nature of Duality in creation, and the Uncertainty Principle. Politics and Science are Uncertainty Twins, like Velocity and Position, you can't completely isolate politics from science or the reverse. Because in the end, Politicians are subject to scientific rules of physics, biology and chemistry, while scientists have to make a living and pay taxes (aka scientists are humans too). The question we all have to ask, and then solve is, how do we de-politicize science and how do we base public policy affecting us all based on sound science? What in the study of human nature will help us to see around our own bias blind spots to get at the truth and then also what will drive the politicians to do what is in the best public interest, not in the best interest of the politicians and their special interest groups?
I am not a scientist by profession...... but until now I have always thought of science as *mostly* objective in the way it is practised.... but in the same way that blind faith in complex derivatives led to the credit crunch, it seems that blind faith in complex modelling may have led to an AGW illusion.... "trust me I'm a doctor / derivatives analyst / climatologist" .... if AGW does turn out to be an illusion then the public may never trust scientists again.... but we can't all be experts at everything...... maybe the trust will need to be replaced by something like an ISO standard with procedures, annual audits and accreditation for those who call their work "scientific"...... seems to work in IT - which is my field - but it isn't much fun..... I tried inserting ellipses to make more readable ( paragraphs and spaces are trimmed)
So, if we are "skeptics" does that make the other side "gullible"?
One of the good things about the new information and communications technologies is, is that it creates the possibility for real and meaningful feedback and debate over articles. But as with ICT in general, and as with newspaper essays in particular (as most of us will have seen elsewhere, e.g.. on the Guardian website) the 'promise' is seldom realised. ( (and that is the subject of my PhD, at Exeter University) by the way, to settle one of the queries about what my academic background.) My background is philosophy and social science, in fact, with technological aspects. I'm not an expert in anything, but a generalist. I'd happily give an opinion on Neuroskeptik's cat and computer, albeit not an 'expert' one). And who are the experts on Climate Change? But that is one of the strange things about this topic, there aren't any. Instead it is more as the excellent Bob Carter of James Cook University in Oz has put it:
"Science reality
My reference files categorise climate change into more than 100 sub-discipline areas of relevant knowledge. Like most other climate scientists, I possess deep expertise in at most two or three of these sub-disciplines. As Canadians Essex and McKitrick have observed "Global warming is a topic that sprawls in a thousand directions. There is no such thing as an 'expert' on global warming, because no one can master all the relevant subjects. On the subject of climate change everyone is an amateur on many if not most of the relevant topics"....."
Most blogs consist of short, thoughtless responses and where there are new ideas, they are drowned out in the ceaseless churn of the net. But here, honestly, at the Higher, we have a better balance. Less comments , but better ones, real ones, thoughtful ones. It's a virtual philosophical forum!
Nonetheless, no one knows quite how to handle the possibilities. It's an evolving area. But for my part, I think it is appropriate to try to respond to one or two points, as readers have responded to the article, and also to offer a sort of summary in the manner of a seminar chair. That's a bit cheeky, I know, as I am also the invited 'speaker', but then, the Chair of the IPCC is scarcely a neutral chair either, but a protagonist and a political appointee. And that is one of the interesting things that has emerged in this discussion - which certainly had slipped me by - that the much respected IPCC boss is in fact, by training, a railway engineer [ Eamonn Judge, 10 December, 2009] and thus makes a very fitting partner for Al Gore at the head of the public campaign to persuade people that there is 'manmade Climate Change'. (There's a revealing review of the way the UN operates here, "No Enchanted Palace", for interest, by the way. http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=26&storycode=409186 )
Another good and useful point was made by [ Anthony 11 December, 2009] reminding us that the choice of the term 'Climate Change' here by the UN panel, was entirely misleading, as what they are referring to in their own words is the 'greenhouse effect', or more specifically, the possible consequences of increased human production of CO2 in strengthening the greenhouse effect. 'Climate Change', on the other hand, is a tautology - climates change, that is what climates do, to quote Bob Carter again.
Several more holes in the man-made Global Warming theory have emerged in the discussions, notably J.M. Davidson's post concerning CO2 Levels. Are they as high as we're told repeatedly? Certainly, most Climate Change theorists start with the 'brute fact' of 'record CO2 levels' - higher than they have been since recorded time. But, J.M. Davidson reminds us of a book published in 2007 by Ernst-Georg Beck, ( Energy and Environment, Vol 18 No 2,) that gives a different story. "An analysis of more than 90,000 contemporaneous measurements of atmospheric levels of CO2 between 1812 and 1961. The record starts in 1812 at 390 ppmv, (and that was the year of Napoleon's retreat from Moscow, when he arrived back in France with only 10% of the troops who had stared the march , most of them being lost to the arctic cold conditions encountered en route.) CO2 levels peaked in 1825 at 450 ppmv, (still in the little ice age, remember,) then fell back, and peaked again at 440 ppmv in 1942."
Ian (11 December, 2009) clarifies helpfully why CO2 levels will follow temperature rises 'other things being equal', as they often are not, of course, in climate science, saying:
"The CO2 rise that lags temperature is inevitable as CO2 is less soluble in warm water, The oceans contain 50 times as much dissolved carbon (in various forms) as the atmosphere, it is their temperature that determines the equilibrium atmospheric CO2 concentration."
Richard.P (11 December, 2009) offers a good insight into the complicated issue of 'feedback', writing:
"Those who promote AGW have done so by largely concentrating on positive feedback mechanisms and ignoring the negative ones. This goes back to the early days of the IPCC. One view was that increasing temperature will give rise to more sea evapouration which increases water vapour in the atmosphere, which is a greenhouse gas, thereby amplifying the greenhouse effect. Richard Lindzen (then a member of the IPCC) argued the opposite, that the water vapour could turn into clouds and thus cause cooling. He was ignored. The other famous positive feedback mechanism is the melting of the ice which leads to less reflected and more absorbed radiation - hence warmer world. On the other hand, all living systems - and I include the earth and the atmosphere - exhibit homeostasis - the ability to resist change and remain fairly constant. ... Those who want to scare us with "runaway" global warming have consistently ignored the negative mechanisms. They have thereby ignored the one of very basics of life - homeostasis."
But several people have noted a strange lack of defenders of the theory - only the odd ad hominem attack launched it seems almost without reading the article, let alone other people's comments. But that impression, I fear, is very much the reality of this debate. The political impetus is entirely on one side, the newspapers and media with close links to their respective governments obediently in tow. It seems to me that on his site anyway, the sceptics have 'won' the argument, and that the theory lies in tatters. Not, that is to say, that Climate Change is not a problem, and that measures to address it are inappropriate, but that the unprecedented diversion of resources into reducing 'emissions of CO2' is, as Peter Taylor (10 December, 2009) puts it above "as the worst scientific error in the history of science".
(p.s.. by the way, [re. Ian Love 11 December, 2009] www. philosophical-investigations.org serves a little bit like a public lecture hall/ seminar room, set up by myself and Pierre-Alain Gouanvic, and yes, those are my 'lecture notes'. Please feel free to join in there, and start related or indeed quite separate discussions!)
Also to Richard P, The science of manipulation is fairly well understood, and both Sales/marketing and lawyers use it to manipulate; as do politicians more and more. Technology seems to be driving it to new heights never seen before. Equally true, the business science of "Best Practices" is also well known. But still human nature get's in the way of de-manipulation techniques, and of trying to implement "Best Practices". Politicians are mandated to do "Best Practice studies, which they do and then they put them bound on their book shelves and move on. [This really happened in the US Congress]
Anyone who has tried to deal with "Best Practices" in real life knows that the first thing to happen is a huge argument about who's practice is best, and the manipulation of data begins. Cortisol and Adrenaline over ride the analytical part of the brain and cause the irrational cascade+herd mentality affects. You can over ride this by increasing the DHEA your body manufactures using several techniques well known and documented. DHEA erases the stress hormones that over ride analytical thinking. But still, as per human nature, the satirical counterpart of this comes from a recent comedy, Taledega Nights, "I can't regulate my heart rate, there's a mountain loin on my chest!". it seldom is implemented in real life and thus seems to date to be impractical.
I am amazed that while it should be a simple question to at least ask, the vast majority of "leaders", whether they be scientific or political, have not asked the #1 first question to be answered. And that is "Where are we all "going" to?" I'm very sure you can't "get somewhere" unless you 1) know where you are and 2) know where you are going to. Thus, the Blind leading the blind with herd mentality. Perhaps the first step would be to set out to define scientifically, where are humans going to? How else can we align policy and science? What is the point of science in the first place? I have never heard any scientist state what the point (not the purpose but the point) of science is. By definition, no point = pointless.If you don't align these fundamentals, all the tangential debates take off in endless parallel universes and efforts become incandescent rather than LASER like. My take any way. It seems simple, but if it's so simple, how come no one is doing it? (pardon the Zen please)
To Charly:...... Your reference to "the other side" is interesting..... following the AGW debate is like watching a kind of battle with both sides completely divided ...... maybe it is a surrogate for physical wars by people who want to fight ...... not necessarily search for truth..... if so we must all be careful we do not overlook the causes of future problems........ how would we resolve the fallout from a failed Copenhagen and the new tensions in global politics that seem to be arising ?...... this is a job for politicians I think.
Martin Cohen, saying that nobody knows anything is not a good way to start propagating your own ideas. You have to be concrete, and you were concrete, specific, when you explained the social side of the GW. The specific scientific knowledge is delivered in another thread by Piers Corbyn - http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?storycode=409510
On this thread here, as I understand, we are supposed (I hate this expression) to accept that GW is a junk science and move on to discuss social implications. But how you can discuss anything when I am not even sure that the last comment here signed Martin Cohen is written by you?
Jon Y, again, Science (in theory) has no "sides", it is supposed to be truth at all costs. Politics has sides by it's very multi-perspective nature. They are opposites. What is needed is like a Salt compound, where two unstable elements combine into stability, Sodium and Chloride for instance. Politics and Science for instance.
We need "both" balanced to create sound public policy. You can't eliminate one in favor of the other, or you end up with an unbalanced Uncertainty Principle, like Eugenics, or superstitious witch hunts. Politicians and scientists are "people" also, and subject to human nature like the rest of us. So how do we as humanity, overcome the human nature hurdles to solve real problems with real solutions? And before that even, where is it humans are "going" to? How can any one get "somewhere" unless they know where they are going to in the first place? Where is the destination? What is the "point" of science in the first place? With out laying down the "absolute" metric base lines from which to navigate first, it's all relativity spun around by human emotions driven by hormones. You'll either get somewhere very slowly and inefficiently, mostly by accident, or you will get nowhere at all.
A question for all of the AGW proponents. Let's assume for the sake of argument, you are correct, humans are guilty. Please explain to all of us in a clear scientific, non emotional manner how taxing Plant Food in the atmosphere is going to help anything. We need the extra plant food to increase the efficiency of crops, in order to feed the extra 3 billion humans projected to be here by 2050. Aren't you "herd mentality" running the wrong way? How will you feed them? Inquiring minds would like to know. Thanks, it's perplexing to rational minds.But perhaps you have a rational solution. We are listening.
Sorry - the bell ringing which will still be going on as I write was not organised by the Church of England, but by the World Council of Churches. See http://www.oikoumene.org/en/events-sections/countdown-to-climate-justice/bellringing.html.
A Question for all of you now. You all obviously "care" about this debate to some degree or other, or you would not be here. What is it about human nature then, that allows you to he herded by some "scientists" at Oxford who claim the Universe is all accidental, nothing matters, and Ergo you and your life have no meaning? If that were scientifically true, 1) why do they care, and 2) why do you/we care? Until you solve this fundamental hurdle, the circus in Copenhagen will continue, with no direction, driven by Relativity, based on whom ever has the most leverage at the time. Because this is fundamentally what is giving the incorrect impression that science and technology have no function accept to drive individual selfish agendas-politically driven science. Once you re-couple the intent, the destination and the direction, you have a navigable compass from which to navigate. The Oxford bunch has managed to herd you all into a Relativistic Universe that only exists in their imaginations. Based on science, what they claim can't be true, or if it was then no one would care.....about anything. You can't get somewhere, unless you know where the destination is.
Martin, excellent article. You ask: "And who are the experts on Climate Change?" Well, I asked the BBC that question and they have refused to tell me!
There is a June 2007 BBC Trust report called "FROM SEESAW TO WAGON WHEEL Safeguarding impartiality in the 21st century" which may be found at http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbctrust/assets/files/pdf/review_report_research/impartiality_21century/report.pdf On page 40 there is an explanation of how the BBC decided to skew the reporting of climate change against scepticism. Here is the relevant quote:"The BBC has held a high-level seminar with some of the best scientific experts, and has come to the view that the weight of evidence no longer justifies equal space being given to the opponents of the consensus."
Intrigued to know who these "best scientific experts" were, I sent a Freedom of Information request on the whatdotheyknow website asking for the names of the "best scientific experts" and for the
minutes of the seminar.
Last Thursday the BBC replied to me that they would not release the name of the experts or the minutes.
"The information you have requested is excluded from the Act because it is held for the purposes
of ‘journalism, art or literature.’ The BBC is therefore not obliged to provide this information to
you and will not be doing so on this occasion. Part VI of Schedule 1 to FOIA provides that
information held by the BBC and the other public service broadcasters is only covered by the Act
if it is held for ‘purposes other than those of journalism, art or literature’. The BBC is not required
to supply information held for the purposes of creating the BBC’s output or information that
supports and is closely associated with these creative activities."
The BBC have voluntarily told me that the seminar was attended by 30 of the "best scientific experts" and the key speaker at the seminar was Robert McCredie, Lord
May of Oxford.
Whilst I accept that the BBC's reporting of climate change is certainly creative, I do not accept that the list of 30 experts who advised the BBC can be described as being information for the purposes of journalism, art or literature. I will be appealing against the BBC's ruling. It is merely a record of who were the "best scientists" who had been invited to advise the BBC - a public corporation.
It appears to be the nature of climate "science" to keep information secret, but given the paranoid secrecy displayed by the BBC, it seems there may be something to hide. I cannot help speculating that a significant number of the "best scientific experts" may star in the Climategate emails.
My FOI request may be followed at:http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/request_list_of_scientific_exper#incoming-59662
"The whistleblower deep in the basement of one of the ugly, modern tower-blocks of the dismal, windswept University of East Anglia could scarcely have timed it better.
In less than three weeks, the world’s governing class – its classe politique – would meet in Copenhagen, Denmark, to discuss a treaty to inflict an unelected and tyrannical global government on us, with vast and unprecedented powers to control all once-free world markets and to tax and regulate the world’s wealthier nations for its own enrichment: in short, to bring freedom, democracy, and prosperity to an instant end worldwide, at the stroke of a pen, on the pretext of addressing what is now known to be the non-problem of manmade “global warming”... Quoted from Lord Christopher Monckton - see it all here at http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/originals/climategate.html .
So that's the game - a grab for world power based on lies about the environment. What a sad show. Even sadder that the herd is duped into believing it a victory for the environment. Let the bells ring out, 350 times one for each part per million of CO2 in the atmosphere. Can you believe it? - see here if you don't believe me: http://www.oikoumene.org/en/events-sections/countdown-to-climate-justice/bellringing.html - thanks for the festive cheer George (MacDonald Ross) Perhaps we should give up Christmas in favour of "Carbondioxidemas".
Good article.
Just as an aside on the AHA and fats etc:
Anyone remotely interested in that topic (and much more related to it) should really read "Good Calories, Bad Calories" by Gary Taubes.
(also known as "The Diet Delusion" in the UK).
Just one comment: consensus is for politicians not scientists.
Mike Post 13 December, 2009 points out that back in 2007 the BBC "held a high-level seminar with some of the best scientific experts, and has come to the view that the weight of evidence no longer justifies equal space being given to the opponents of the consensus". This reveals that they are aware that they are only reflecting one view, and yet, as another poster commented, properly constructed academic surveys of 'scientists' in this area, have found opinion is split, with the great majority still reserving their opinion. The circle can only be squared, if you like, by asking just the minority with a strong opinion in favour of the theory if THEY think the theory is 'established science or not'. No wonder the Beeb wanst to keep the names of their experts 'secret'! But I would agree with Mike, releasing this list is about releasing information about a management strategy to comply with a legally binding responsibility to be 'impartial'. It seems to have nothing to do with the (claimed) exemption for journalists. Whether there is any pont taking the BBC on, I doubt - they remember all to well what happened last time (with the Iraqi nuclear weapons)!
The warming deniers might not realise what kind of snake is wiggling under their foot. Let's remember that the Masonic idea that was the driving force of the industrial revolution and the further development of capitalism (the stock market and the banking that eventually transformed private business into a corporate business) were founded on the application of principles of science (as Masons saw them) to the society. Masons blasted religion and put "scientific principles" to work for "progress". Then, communism was never just a communism, it was "scientific communism". I would say that all fraudulent operators who ever "worked" for "progress", revolution and "change" used science. And I would say that science never refused to play a prostitute, i. e. it was never difficult to find "scientists" who would do it for money or just for the glory of it. The good example is Darwinists whose science stands still for about a century, but who, during all that century, are feeding themselves and raising kids on that politically secured science. Another example is the science of economics that wouldn't move an inch away from the bizarre corporate dogma (essentially - corporations can do business on the taxpayer's money) pronounced by the socialist non-scientist K. Gabraith. Other areas of science (pharmaceutics, genetics, vaccines, electronics, etc.) are just beginning to feel the sweet taste of political usefulness. The efforts of banks in destroying private farmers are continued by geneticists. Now, it is apparently the first time in history that the fraudulent science behind political manipulations is under attack. There is something to celebrate, because somehow it so happened that "science" was in each of the previous cases used to put down the individual and install an authoritarian rule.
As Always, follow the money trail! I see no solutions from AGW proponents about how to feed an extra 3 Billion people by 2050 after taxing plant food in the atmosphere hampers crop efficiencies. Let's look at the short term agendas behind Carbon Cap & trade shall we? Then we see why this insane plan to tax plant food exists. The profits are in the Billions, and right in the heart of London and Mumbai. Research reveals the European Union's cap-and-trade exchange is vulnerable to a sophisticated form of corporate extortion in which EU bureaucrats in Brussels are manipulated into paying hundreds of millions of dollars in carbon permit bribes to keep companies from moving jobs to Third World nations.
In fact, it appears the scam is already under way.
The crux of the scheme is this: European steelmakers have threatened to leave the EU for India, eliminating the jobs of thousands of workers in the process, unless the EU grants the steelmakers free carbon credits worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
Eurofer, a European trade group, is at the center of the scheme. The web of the plot, however, weaves in not only several companies, but also the United Nations' climate change chief:
• Among its members, Eurofer represents two EU steelmakers, Corus Redcar and ArcelorMittal, each of which has ties to India as well as to Rajendra K. Pachauri, the Indian industrial engineer who has been chairman of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, since 2002.
• Eurofer appears to have coordinated a threat to the European Union Greenhouse Gas Emission Trading System that its steelmakers would move their operations from the EU to India unless the EU cap-and-trade exchange issued them – at no cost – carbon emissions permits worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
• Once the bureaucrats in Brussels acquiesced, Corus Redcar and ArcelorMittal maneuvered to cash in windfall profits from the EU carbon permits given them at no cost.
• Additionally, Corus Redcar has now announced a decision to close operations in Great Britain nonetheless and relocate its steelmaking activities to India in order to gain additional U.N. carbon credits.
Ironically, EU and U.N. officials who might have thought requiring cap-and-trade permits would operate as "protection racket" in which EU companies need to buy carbon credits to continue operations, have now found themselves on the losing end of the reverse scheme.
In the final analysis, the winners are the European Union corporations willing to play hardball with the European Union Greenhouse Gas Emission Trading System, and the losers are the EU middle class workers that are held hostage in the scheme.
Furthermore, research on the EU emissions trading system continues to suggest "follow the money" may explain the enthusiasm the U.N. has shown in pursuing global caps on carbon emissions, despite doubts surfacing in the scientific community about the validity of the underlying global warming hypothesis.
a Mumbai-based Indian multinational conglomerate with ties to IPCC Chair Pachauri stands to make several hundred million dollars in carbon credits simply by closing Corus Redcar, a steel production facility in Britain with the loss of 1,700 jobs.
Another carbon trading scam tying back to Pachauri involves Great Britain's richest man, Lakshmi Mittal, an Indian citizen who resides in London.
Mittal stands to gain a £1 billion windfall, not from the operation of his ArcelorMittal steel company, but from carbon credits given his company – at no cost – by the EU emissions trading scheme.
The London Times has reported that after ArcelorMittal and Eurofer intensively lobbied EU bureaucrats in Brussels, the company was granted far more carbon permits than the company needed in order to operate under EU carbon emission regulations.
According to the Times, the steelmakers represented by Eurofer threatened to move plants to India at a cost of 90,000 European jobs, to take advantage of lower labor costs in India and additional carbon credits that would be issued by the U.N. for relocating to a Third World country.
ArcelorMittal, now free to sell its surplus carbon permits on the market or hoard them for future use, stands to gain around £1 billion by 2012, when the prospect the eventual gain could be even greater.
Currently, EU carbon permits are worth about £12.70, but the EU has stated an intention to drive the price above £30.
"Between 2008 and 2012, ArcelorMittal stands to gain assets worth £1 billion at today's prices for scant effort," Anna Pearson, an expert on the trading system known as ETS, told the Times. "For them the ETS has been turned into a system for generating free subsidies."
EU steelmaker has ties to U.N. climate chief
On Dec. 10, 2007, U.N. climate chief Pachauri accepted the Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of the IPCC – which shared it with Al Gore – for their work on global warming.
But Pachauri also has a role in the businesses working the system to profit from carbon trading credits.
In 1974, the TATA Group – which operates the Corus Redcar U.K. plant – provided the financial resources to found the Tata Energy Research Institute, or TERI, a policy organization headquartered in New Dehli, India, of which Pachauri has been chairman since the group was formed.
As reported last week, Corus Redcar accumulated a reported 7.5 million EU surplus carbon allowances, or EUAs, given the company free by the ETS after the lobbying effort with Brussels bureaucrats.
Continued business ties between TERI and TATA are demonstrated by a press announcement on the TERI website dated Feb. 4, 2009, in which Jairam Ramesh, the Indian minister of state for commerce and industry as well as minister of state for power, announced a joint venture with TERI and TATA power to extract and use carbon dioxide for the propagation of micro-algae.
Strong-arm tactics win carbon permits in cap-and-trade exchange
The European Union Greenhouse Gas Emission Trading System, or EU ETS, began operations in January 2005, billing itself as "the largest multi-country, multi-sector Greenhouse Gas Emission Trading system world-wide."
The ETS acts as a cap-and-trade exchange in which EU bureaucrats set carbon emission limits for various corporations emitting carbon in their operations.
Corporations emitting more carbon than permitted under the EU carbon emissions scheme are required to buy carbon permits on the ETS exchange.
Corporations with excess carbon permits are permitted to sell those permits on the ETS exchange.
The Corporate European Observatory, a public interest research group headquartered in Brussels, documented in a Dec. 7 report entitled "The EU: A Hollow Champion for the Climate" how the financial crisis (and intense lobbying) let "polluting industry off hook."
The report concluded that the ETS is vulnerable to extortion-like tactics exerted by corporate groups, such as the steelmakers represented by Eurofer.
The report also indicates EU corporations seeking concessions on carbon credits have employed strong-arm tactics, including threats to move operations to lower-cost countries with less onerous carbon emission restrictions outside the EU, which would result in substantial numbers of European jobs lost.
Social scientists call it "cascade theory": the idea is that information cascades down the side of an "informational pyramid", like a waterfall. It is easier for people, if they do not have either the ability or the interest to find out for themselves, to adopt the views of others. Aka, The path of least resistance. So again I have to ask, where is the herd going to? What destination are the leaders of the herd heading to? If you don't know where you are going, how can you get "there"? Other than selfish self centered agendas for the "leaders", what is the end game, the destination of the "Leaders" of the herd? How many of them even have a destination they are aiming for other than selfish goals? How many of them have bothered to even ask the question, "Where are WE going to?" What is it about human nature that makes the majority of us run around tagging along as the Blind lead the Blind in circles with out any defined destination? it seems simple enough to question where we are going to, and then focus on getting the herd to move in that direction. So how come no one is doing this? Define and verify scientifically, an absolute baseline, and you will see which direction humanity is moving towards. Then use navigation tools to verify the movement is correct. But you can't get from A to B if you don't know what B is, or where you are in relationship to A & B..
Neuroskeptic - 11 Dec:" This is completely irrelevant because there has never before been an anthropogenic increase in CO2 levels; the fact that, in the past, CO2 levels have followed temperature increases which occurred for other reasons does not mean that increasing CO2 levels will not lead to warming." Ok, so where is the warming over the last 10 years of CO2 increases, if what the warmers are saying is true? We have increased CO2 emissions over the last 10 years, but global temps have either stayed the same or declined slightly. As in " HIDE THE DECLINE". So, ERGO, it must be a bit more complex than CO2=warming, as a scientist, don't you think? If you want to clean up the atmosphere, great, good on you! Follow NASA's recommendation and reduce SOOT! Burn cleaner fuels like natural gas, Gas to Liquids, etc. Eliminate slash and burn, burning wood, animal dung and dirty coal fired power. Put in place incentives to use Diesel filters on buses, trucks, trains and boats. But don't tax and cap plant food, which we need to feed the 3 billion extra people in 2050.
Neuroskeptic - 11 Dec # 2, here is the science behind why CO2 increases don't necessarily actually lead to warming in some simple formula: http://www.c3headlines.com/ . Again, with all the increases of CO2 in the last 10 years wouldn't we see corresponding increases in GWing? And yet there is a global cooling trend on now! Imagine that. Resulting in playing "HIDE THE DECLINE." Increasing atmospheric CO2 does not by itself result in significant warming. http://www.appinsys.com/GlobalWarming/WaterVapor.htm A 2004 NASA study using satellite humidity data found that “The increases in water vapor with warmer temperatures are not large enough to maintain a constant relative humidity” resulting in overestimation of temperature increase.
Here is the play book, the template of manipulation. Let's examine a much smaller example to put this in perspective.
Way back in the 1970s, when no one had yet dreamed up the possibility of catastrophic, man made "global warming," the big threat in environmental circles was PCBs or polychlorinated biphenyls.
These chemicals were widely used for three decades in electrical equipment because of their insulating properties until Renate Kimbrough of the Centers for Disease Control decided to feed massive quantities of PCBs to lab rats and found they caused liver cancer.
Not long afterward, in 1976, Congress banned the use of PCBs.
Almost 25 years later, Kimbrough revisited the subject in a peer-reviewed study in the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine and found no link between PCBs and human health problems. That study, by the way, focused on more than 7,000 people who worked from 1946 to 1977 in GE power plants on the Hudson River – plants that dumped massive amounts of PCBs into the river.
Even though PCB levels in the Hudson were dropping every year as nature took its course, and despite the new study by Kimbrough, the Clinton administration decided to invest in a major dredging operation of the river. The Bush administration later green-lighted the project at an estimated cost of $460 million.
All along the way, critics explained the worst possible thing you could do if the goal was to reduce PCB levels in the Hudson was to dredge. They said dredging would actually raise the levels of PCBs in the river.
Scheduled to begin in 2003 or 2004, the project finally got under way last spring – with a new price tag of $780 million.
Would you like to guess the results?
Almost immediately, the PCB levels in the river began to rise. They're still rising. But, instead of halting the dredging operation, the Environmental Protection Agency has simply assured the public there are no health dangers.
Of course, that begs the question: If there is no health threat associated with rising PCB levels, why dredge them out in the first place?
Because it was never about PCB dangers in the first place. This was about doing something – about politicians taking action that would make them heroic figures, about make-work projects, about payoffs and so-called "green jobs."
That little story is the climate-change scare in microcosm.
Who's on first? No, who is no second, what is on first. Who's in charge? Where are we going? Under what authority is this derived from? And, human nature steps in to alter the direction of the herd, which is directionless, and has no clue what the destination is, nor how getting to this unknown destination will be achieved. Talks at the Copenhagen climate change summit have been suspended after a walk-out led by the African delegation and backed by the G77 group of developing nations.
News wires Monday, 14 December, 2009, 12:26 GMT
The main sessions of the United Nations-backed conference were halted after the protest, which came after the developing nations bloc accused developed countries of trying to back out of the Kyoto Protocol on carbon emissions.
Sources said the developing countries walked out of working groups at the start of the second week of negotiations, angered that the conference was weakening in support for the Kyoto Protocol, the core emissions-curbing treaty.
"They have walked out, I am advised, of the working groups," one Western minister told Agence France-Presse on condition of anonymity.
"This is salvageable. It depends if people want to be constructive."
African delegate later said they were angry at what they see as moves by the Danish host government to sideline talks on more emission cuts under Kyoto.
As news spread around the conference centre, about 200 activists responded with chants of "We stand with Africa - Kyoto targets now".
It is unclear how matters will proceed now, though informal talks are likely, the BBC reported.
Blocs representing poor countries vulnerable to climate change have been adamant that rich nations must commit to emission cuts beyond 2012 under the Kyoto Protocol.
But the European Union and the developed world in general has promoted the idea of a new agreement. Developing countries fear they would lose many of the gains they made when the protocol was agreed in 1997.
Last week, developing countries accused the Danish organisers of ignoring their concerns.
"The president of the summit (Danish climate minister Connie Hedegaard) is absolutely committed to violate any democratic processes," said G77 chief negotiator Lumumba Di-Aping as he explained the latest development.
The Global Warming Policy Foundation, a sceptical organisation, has adopted as its logo a graph showing the changes in average global temperature so far this century. Being numerate folk, they take the first year of the century to be 2001 (the first year is numbered one), and the last year so far to be 2008, because 2009 isn't over yet. With ups and downs inbetween, the graph goes from 14.4 to 14.3, and anyone drawing a line representing the overall trend would make it slope slightly down to the right, showing a slight cooling. The blog of a believer in warming, Roger Pielke Jr, points out that if you include the previous year, which was colder at 14.24, and 2009, which he predicts will be warmer at 14.44, a line representing the overall trend would slope up to the right, showing a slight warming. This means that the same figures can be part of the evidence either for cooling or for warming, depending on what precedes or follows them. The conclusion a sceptic will draw is that you can't validly extrapolate a trend from a short run of figures. It may be the case that global warming has peaked (as the GWPF suggests), or it may simply have paused for a while (as happened after World War 2). Independent evidence is needed if either is to be asserted dogmatically.
George MacDonald Ross, seeing your figures, a sceptic will find them crazy anyway. There is no such thing as average global temperature, but there could be such thing as average modeled global temperature. The advantage of the deniers is sanity and it should be kept this way.
@Alamo dude (14 December):
Re: the PCB story: this study by Kimgrough is simplistic and outdated. For an update on PCBs and other synthetic estrogens that you and I have in our bodies, see breastcancerfund.org. I find it interesting, if not amusing, that this Kimbrough first gave "massive amounts" of PCB and later revisited her conclusions (negatively). When the only tool you have is a hammer...
Re: World leaders ("What destination are the leaders of the herd heading to?"). may I reiterate the suggestion by Martin Cohen: join us at philosophical-investigations(.org), were such broad question will be given ample space? (just enter "world leaders" and make yourself at home).
Here, in this discussion thread, the linear format makes it difficult, if not impossible to follow up on all that you (and others!) are saying. Sorry if this look shamelessly self-serving. This non-profit wiki-style site is for everyone, not for me.
@ George MacDonald Ross (14 December) : "... drawing a line representing the overall trend would make it slope slightly down to the right, showing a slight cooling. The blog of a believer in warming, Roger Pielke Jr, points out that if you include the previous year ... a line representing the overall trend would slope up to the right, showing a slight warming."
on dogmatic assertions, I agree, but here, I'd point out that the key word is "slight". Whether you go with one or the other side, one thing is for sure: nothing remotely resembling the enviro-terrorism we are exposed to these days - no?
An interesting and stimulating debate but one important angle has been missed. Never trust email! If you want to make remarks ot a colleague of a sensitive nature -use the phone. IF its important put it in writing. With email the evidence is there, it can be copied, relayed, misconstrued and published between bedtime and your cornflakes.
On the 'science' of global warming it is about as credible as when I first heard about it at the UEA some 30 years ago. Then of course they were the contrarians because most people thought we were entering into another ice age. The problems with the UEA team are manifold: if sea levels do increase significantly then they will be the first to go, (ii) great chunks of the university's research budget come from the research into climate change (iii) they never see the sun in Nowich so the concept of global forcing just wouldn't occur to them and (iv) like moths they have flow too close to the politcal light and they are getting burnt. If this was a spat over the Higgs Boson I doubt that anybody would bat an eyelid. However, it is a spat over the single biggest topic facing the international community and they are the ones with reputations to lose. If AGW is falsified I doubt whether Monkton et al will ever be offered a Nobel Prize, but the UEA group will disappear into history as the promoters of the biggest scientifc mistake in history. Cold water fusion will have nothing on this!
Bravo, Martin Cohen.
Never mind the tired invective and non-scientific innuendo's of the warmists. They have not managed to refute a single one of your points on this website.
The ruder and sillier they get, the clearer it becomes to the general public that their case is untenable.
I'm no scientist and cannot honestly say that I can determine which side is right. But why is it that scientific debates - whether conducted by scientists or not - seem to have to employ such demagoguery? Why invoke metaphors of holocaust deniers and anti-semitism? That's a very cheap trick. We are talking about a very grave issue here, so perhaps we could try to refrain from mud slinging? And the skeptics or deniers seem to be missing one important point: even if we cannot be one hundred percent sure that man-made CO2 emissions have the effect that we are told, we are making one hell of a gamble to ignore the risk completely.
As for Paul Feyerabend, whom Cohen invokes, he drove relativism to the extreme, when claiming in effect that in scientific theory, "anything goes", ie evidence based scientific research is no better than astrology!
I'm no scientist and cannot honestly say that I can determine which side is right. But why is it that scientific debates - whether conducted by scientists or not - seem to have to employ such demagoguery? Why invoke metaphors of holocaust deniers and anti-semitism? That's a very cheap trick. We are talking about a very grave issue here, so perhaps we could try to refrain from mud slinging? And the skeptics or deniers seem to be missing one important point: even if we cannot be one hundred percent sure that man-made CO2 emissions have the effect that we are told, we are making one hell of a gamble to ignore the risk completely.
As for Paul Feyerabend, whom Cohen invokes, he drove relativism to the extreme, when claiming in effect that in scientific theory, "anything goes", ie evidence based scientific research is no better than astrology!
CeeCee 11 December, 2009
"Would you bet your life savings on the accuracy of climate models?"
Nope...
Excellent article, Mr Cohen. Well done, and please write more on this. Forced warming propaganda needs to be constantly fought with the truth and scepticism.
In the interests of scrupulous scientific honesty, as an ex-forest science researcher, I found only one statement you made which could need correction, or at least qualification:
"Slightly higher temperatures mean more plant and animal life, and that means more CO2."
I believe the first part of that sentence is true (up to "life") but the second part is at least questionable ie. it is, I believe, generally accepted that the more plant life there is, the more carbon must necessarily get 'fixed' (in the form of cellulose or wood) -- and therefore there MIGHT be LESS CO2. (On the other hand, this fact could be offset by higher CO2 release rates because of faster decomposition of dead organic matter under higher temperatures -- and so you might yet be right).
Have to be careful about being too categorical when the NET RESULT (in terms of CO2 production) of the world's massively complex systems are not really known.
There is NO scientific data to support Global Warming. There IS data to support climate change. Some places are getting colder and some are getting warmer. If Al Gore and his one-world government crowd were honest, they'd see that their argument is WRONG but an argument for changing weather patterns is right. Unfortunately (for them), they can't scare enough people if they just say climate is changing.
As a Californian, I'm GLAD that we haven't been having the scorcher summers that we had before. If the heat that we aren't getting made more frozen land usable, that'd be a good thing. If it went to growing deserts, that's a bad thing. How about the TRUTH about how the weather patterns are changing instead of LIES about how the world is getting warmer?
I have a few quotes and comments to offer those who BELIEVE in Anthropogenic Global Warming or is it Climate Change or is it Catastophic Anthropogenic Global Warming?
Einstein:
"Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods."
(Flat Earth Theory)
"The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing."
(Einstein the denier?)
"To defeat relativity one did not need the word of 100 scientists, just one fact."
(Consensus on Mann-made Global Warming or is it Climate Change?)
Oliver Cromwel:
"I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken."
(Cause of most peptic ulcers is acid/stress/food - no a bacterium)
History remembers these 2 chaps, how will history remember the believer? Answer: babies should sleep on their side, no their backs, no their side.
Enjoy the interglacial.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/12/12/historical-video-perspective-our-current-unprecedented-global-warming-in-the-context-of-scale/
Check it out and find out what temperatures you should really be worried about.
Re. Tim McCarthy 14 December, 2009, fair point, actually, I felt I was treading on thin ice a bit there as I wrote it but ...! And surely you are right to caution the claim of a simple, linear relationship when most of the article is talking aobut the complexity of the relation of CO2 and temperatues. Ian's earlier point (11 December) about the 'outgassing' of CO2 is more improtant in any case ( He says: "The CO2 rise that lags temperature is inevitable as CO2 is less soluble in warm water, The oceans contain 50 times as much dissolved carbon (in various forms) as the atmosphere, it is their temperature that determines the equilibrium atmospheric CO2 concentration.") This is a welcome additional piece in the jgsaw, but of course there we still have to take into account all the other factos that determine temperature - including CO2 levels themselves. Which gets us back to the confused state where not so much the 'scientists' but rather the spin-masters can keep us in thrall!
Speaking of which, re. the at BBC decision (Mike Post 13 December, 2009) to formally disallow any news space for'sceptical voices' in this crucial debate, (on the grounds that their expert committee considered the science irreproachable) - actually it would be enough to demand the 'methodology' used to select their experts - not the names of the experts themselves, which I can well understand, need protecting, these over-reaching egotists being in effect responsible for a one of the great folies recent times.
(BTW) The Higher tell me they are actively looking at the 'paragraph break problem. That's one science may be able to solve!)
You wrote an article supposedly discussing the legitimacy of global warming as science, and you don't even mention the proposed mechanism, or the evidence of it? The absorption spectra of various gases mean that they absorb infrared radiation; warm bodies release infrared radiation as a means of dispersing heat, so as the earth releases infrared radiation, this radiation is absorbed in the atmosphere by these gases instead of being released into space.
If this effect were real, you'd expect to see differences in outgoing infrared radiation over time, as atmospheric CO2 concentrations have increased. Indeed, satellite observations confirm that this is exactly what's occurred.
http://www.eumetsat.eu/Home/Main/Publications/Conference_and_Workshop_Proceedings/groups/cps/documents/document/pdf_conf_p50_s9_01_harries_v.pdf
When this infrared radiation is absorbed, its released once again as infrared radiation, some of which comes back down. You'd expect, based on this knowledge, that you could observe incoming infrared radiation, and based on the emission spectra of these gases, possibly attribute the contribution of individual greenhouse gases to the greenhouse effect. This, too, has been done.
http://ams.confex.com/ams/Annual2006/techprogram/paper_100737.htm
There are also studies demonstrating temperature increases, but these are subject to natural variability that can obscure genuine trends with statistical noise. An analysis of the total heat content of the earth still demonstrates warming, however.
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2009/2009JD012105.shtml
What's unscientific here?
What's unscientific here? It's all getting unscientific and the Warmists will use this thread to counter the emails scandal.
Michael Pyshnov: When you say that for you it is enough that some falsities are found [in a whole in order to dismiss the whole], it is disappointing that you do not apply this to the website you have promoted herein. For me, it is enough that glaring falsities surround apparent truths in order for me to start questioning the apparent truths, because Big Lies are impossible in the absence of apparently obvious truth.
In order to reduce human-emitted carbon dioxide, I see the eugenicists have reared their ugly heads to raise the unsavoury topic of how to slash the (carcinogenic) human population of planet earth in double-quick time.
This thread is indicative of the hurdles necessary to jump in order to affect a change in human nature and human behavior. We are all affected by both negative and positive aspects of human nature, including myself. The questions and answers abound, but no one has put up a base line from which to navigate, nor how to positively check negative human nature. How can we metrically measure whether we are herding humanity in a positive coherent direction or one of negative unintended consequences? I see no base lines of navigation, no destination defined and no reasons for actions other than selfish power grabbing and enrichment.There is no base line of authority for enforcement, and more importantly no baseline of absolutes to try to convince a change "by free will". For a human convinced by force is a human not convinced. Still, there is no defined destination. Tony Blair says it doesn't matter whether the science is valid or not, we need to move. Can you spell Relativism? Classic Blind leading the Blind. Move where? To do what? To accomplish what? And Why? Who is in charge and where did they derive their authority from? The Chinese have now brought in population control to the mix. The poor countries showed up with their Swiss bank accounts, Millions are not enough, they want to go home with Billions. The EU just switched monies already allocated for poor countries and called it Climate help instead of Poverty help. The lobby groups are trying to attach habitat encroachment and conservation issues to climate, to get their cut of the money. There are plenty of good ideas and initiatives out there not getting any air time, like NASA's advice of removing SOOT from the atmosphere, but you can't make billions from carbon trades with that. Follow the money, that seems to be all Copenhagen is really about. It sounded logical at the time that a 10 Lb. weight would fall 10 times faster than a 1 Lb. weight, until Galileo proved the Aristotelians wrong. That is why Einstein called Galileo the Father of modern science. Because Logic with out Physical Proof is empty, to paraphrase A-man. Then, the last 30 years of his life, society called Einstein "senile", because he would not accept Bohr's conclusion that Bohr's model was a complete solution to describe the full nature of reality. Today, science has all but vindicated Einstein yet again, and Bohr was the one who was not senile, but Egotistical. It may seem "logical" that if we keep putting pollution into the atmosphere we are guilty of screwing up the climate. But the physical measurements of Carbon Dioxide and it's affect on global temperatures does not match that logic and the agenda to tax plant food outputs into the atmosphere. And, as mentioned in previous posts, Global mean averages have little real scientific value, except for entertainment. The interaction of Micro climates and how they are governed locally, solar affects, cloud issues, cosmic rays forming clouds, ocean currents, and sub sea volcanics or El Nino affects on ocean temperatures have vastly more affect on climate than plant food in the atmosphere. So why the fixation on plant food in the atmosphere? We need the plant food to feed the population growth of an extra 3 billion by 2050. No Chinese initiative at population control will work by then. Why not do the things that will work? Because you can't get rich and powerful doing that. Cap and Trade is not even logical if plant food were an issue. If I pay a starving Ethiopian Fat offsets, I'm not going to loose weight. But I might feel better about my guilt at not having self control. Similarly, Prince Charles, Albert Gore Jr., and Sir Richard Branson can now pay carbon offsets to assuage their guilt for their greed atr having mansions/boat /airplanes they don't need, using 40-100 times more water and energy than the rest of us, and using limos and private jets. Show me a "Communist Socialist" system that has not devolved into abject fascism anywhere in the world as soon as the power is grabbed. So why would we want to install this failed system globally, when it is currently responsible for the murder of more than 110,000,000 humans and the current enslavement of more than one Billion? Carbon taxes start the road to Pseudo Communist (actually fascist) Global Governance and makes a few at the top of the pyramid rich. It's really that simple. Give the masses busy work to keep them amused and fixated, while the few at the top get richer. It's human nature. Unless you check and balance the negative qualities of human nature, it always devolves into fascism, in spite of all the good intentions in the beginning. All the science in the Universe, Pseudo or Real, has very little value unless you figure out a way to check and balance the negative qualities of human nature. One would suggest starting with systems that at least attempt to do this and tweak what is already partially working in the right direction. One can measure these systems by how much human liberty they have added to humanity over the last 150 years. This is easily quantified and metrically measured. Or, we can keep looking for where John Galt is.
Greg, as far as I read the science no one is disputing the spectral evidence on CO2. However, the impact of CO2, ceteris paribus, is minimal. In order to achieve the temperature changes in the range of 2-4C you need to assume a positive feedback mechanism whereby increased CO2 leads to increased water vapour in the atmosphere. This is where it all breaks down. This is the causal link that does not on my reading appear to have been made out. The evidence for a positive feedback mechanism of this type is very limited, the impact of clouds is very poorly understood and there is little good evidence that varying CO2 translates into warming in the causal way that the current climate models suggest.
Whilst agreeing with you (I think) Alamodude I am not sure that hyperbole is the best ways to get the issues across. Both sides in this debate are engaged because it really matters. It maybe that the AGW side have it right in which case we need to act, if they have it wrong then we need to focus on the social and environmental issues that really matter. Rhetoric is language designed to impress, reason is language designed to convince. Let's stick with the latter.
Bob Ryan...OK. So, where is the baseline to navigate from? Where are we going to when get it? We can't define a path of "how", until we lay out the basics of "where". If you don't address the basics of human nature either, then the above is similarly pointless. Science is needed to define objectively the baselines and metrics to measure by. But everyone seems to be starting in the middle, not knowing for sure where they are heading. This article is about classifying the phenomenon of human nature via the Cascade affect. I make the point that this is helpful, but unless you start with the basics, it still devolves into Relativity. The study of clouds made little progress for thousands of years, until a clever fellow decided to classify clouds. Now clouds are maybe the most important aspect of understanding Climate controls. We only last decade discovered how clouds are actually formed, the physics and chemistry behind it.But clouds were around before humans. So, I'm now suggesting we do the same here. We have a start at classifying the human nature behind the climate debate and all the various agendas. Now baseline the destination. Where are we now?Where are we going to? Then develop the path around the human nature hurdles to get there. You can't get anywhere unless you know where you are going to. Where is that? And thus, the very basic root cause problems that have evolved into Copenhagen. No one has defined anything, except for their own Relativistic selfish self interests. There is no baseline to measure from or navigate from. There seems to be some basic common interests at stake here. Do they go in a coherent direction to a destination, or not? If so, define them. If not we are all wasting our time here.
Greg 15 December, 2009 complains "You wrote an article supposedly discussing the legitimacy of global warming as science, and you don't even mention the proposed mechanism, or the evidence of it?". Come on Greg, read a bit, then post.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Equally, although the fact that there is a greenhouse effect is very old science (as noted elsewhere in the threads too), exactly how much heat is trapped by CO2 agreed. One view is that we could double present CO2, or quadruple them without any effect on temperature, as the gas affects only a small part of the relevant infra-red spectrum, and may well have no more role to play no matter how high CO2 levels go. Hence the efforts lately, for example, to bring in 'new problems' to be caused by CO2.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
The Science supplement of the Times, 'Eureka', devoted a whole issue to the evidence of the acidification of the oceans themselves, and the dying of marine life due to man-made CO2. Not a tad of evidence for that, save the statistic that over the last 250 years - not over the last few decades like the 'warming phenomenon', the oceanic ph has changed.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
The Times has a duty unlike evidently, the director of the Climate Change Unit at the University of East Anglia, to distinguish between fact and comment. Or indeed between crude propaganda and science reporting. The Eureka special 'on Climate Change' clearly failed to do this. It was a farrago of misinformation and downright nonsense using pretty pictures of rare and delicate marine organisms to propagandise. The scientific case for carbon dioxide driving global temperatures is not settled science, the climate change experts at the front of the special were not climate change experts (mostly professional campaigners), the dying of parts of the Barrier Reef has much more to do with nitrates spewing out from Queensland's farms than the 0.079 decrease in Ph since 1750.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Journalists and editors should be ashamed of themselves, for betraying readers' trust. But, no! Quite the opposite, a few days later in the Times, Science editor, Antonio Senior popped up to 'convey' her 'sense of responsibility about climate change' and her- this is a quote! - duty to 'lead the fight'. Elsewhere you can read her on her search for a flatmate: "“My name’s Antonia Senior and I am a dreadful flatmate. I once nicked my flatmate’s white sheet for a toga party, covered it in booze and fag burns and pretended it had been stolen by someone else.” And these are the experts who drive public opinion?! Give over, Greg.
The Chinese initiatives to control populations are at least more or less in the open. What about the eugenic founding principles of UNESCO, the likes of the Optimum Population Trust that seeks to slash the human population, and those environmentalists who consider human beings as cancerous growths on the planet? We're not talking about controlling growth so much as a mass cull of human beings.
Nigel, yes and add to your post that John Holdern, Obama's "Science" Czar (look up the definition of Czar) is a forced population control advocate who has worked with the author of The Population Bomb for years. Obama will weigh in at Copenhagen later this week. So human nature and multiple agendas have hi-jacked all the good intentions, fueled by poor- to- junk science. The only way to turn the herd in the correct direction is to go back to basics in science. Baseline and metrically measure, define destinations/objectives and then pathways to get there overcoming negative human nature. The Chinese come at it from the Survival of the Fittest angle. The Greens from the Compassion angle. Real Scientists from the Truth as we can measure it. Politicals want power and fame. Business wants profits. We all want to live in a better world. The definition of that "better world" is both relative and absolute. Baseline to the absolutes and drive the herd with that. or, we will have more of this: China has declared that controlling population growth is the final solution to climate change.
This pronouncement officially linked the zeal for population control with climate hysteria, surfacing an issue that has been quietly at the heart of Malthusian writings since Obama science czar John Holdren began writing college textbooks on "Eco-science" with Paul Ehrlich of "Population Bomb" infamy.
"Dealing with climate issues is not simply an issue of carbon dioxide emission reduction, but a comprehensive challenge involving political, economic, social, cultural and ecological issues, and the population concern fits right into the picture, Zhao Baige, vice minister of National Population and Family Planning Commission of China said at the U.N. Copenhagen Climate Summit.
China's population control measures have resulted in 400 million fewer births, translating into 18 million fewer tons of carbon dioxide emissions a year, Zhao claimed.
Thomas Wire of the London School of Economics has advanced similar research.
In an August 2009 paper titled "Reducing future carbon emissions by investing in family planning," Wire argued that for every $7 spent on family planning, carbon emissions would be abated by one ton.
Wire's research was motivated by a U.N. effort to show family planning as a population control measure could be justified on a cost-efficiency basis.
"Each $7 spent on basic family planning would reduce carbon emissions by more than one ton," whereas it would cost $13 for reduced deforestation, $24 to use wind technology, $51 for solar power, $93 for introducing hybrid cars and $131 for electric vehicles, Wire concluded.
Since we seem to be stuck in "science" and skipping over human nature and the Cascade theory, here is a question for you science junkies. What is the mass/volume of the atmosphere, and how does it fluctuate? All arguments and data I see assume the atmosphere is some how static and of a fixed mass and volume. Shouldn't we consider the dynamics of volume and mass in the observations before we rush off with conclusions based on only part of the data? If we are taxing based on static assumptions, but the atmosphere mass and volume is variable, will not the taxes be based on falsehoods predicated by incomplete and or cherry picked "per agenda" scientific analysis? Perhaps I just missed this part due to my preoccupation with human nature.
In recent years, too much science was released by human activity. It was absorbed unwisely and it is now released back into the atmosphere making it cloudy.
Michael Pyshnov...very astute! The whole nutshell in a problem. Have you seen John Galt anywhere?
Yet another human nature tangential debate, who was right, Al Gore or the Danish Scientist? And these are the people leading the herd? From Climate Depot: [Climate Depot's Editor's Note: The issue of whether Gore cited Maslowski's work accurately is a very serious one scientifically and ethically. It appears Maslowski did indeed tout his extreme model predictions of a nearly ice-free Arctic within a decade or less and that Gore accurately cited his work. A larger point to be made though, is that Maslowski's “predictions” are nothing more than wild-eyed computer model scare scenarios.
The UK Times reported: “This is an exaggeration that opens the science up to criticism from skeptics,” Professor Jim Overland, a leading oceanographer at the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said. [...] As MIT climate scientist Richard Lindzen noted: “He's just extrapolated from 2007, when there was a big retreat, and got zero.”
While some have complained that this article is less than "science", what is REALLY less than science is the outright obfuscation and data adjustments going on at the Hadley CRU for quite some time.
I suggest before any high and mighty Worshipers of Global Warming get their tights in a snit they evaluate what happens when their gospel has been found to be completely artificial.
That the earth may be warming some is not a problem; a slight increase in CO2 is the best thing that can happen to this planet (have you heard the Sahara is greening up?), and those that have lied and distorted (or believed the lies and distortions) for the extremely questionable objectives represented by AGW should wake up.
Our Governments do not believe that significant climate change is caused by mans consumption of fossil fuels heating up the atmosphere but they recognise that the worlds energy resources are not infinite. With a global population exceeding six billion people it's a long time since we could live as individuals in a sustainable fashion, we cannot all grow our own potatoes so we live by participating in a game created by the people who control the worlds finances. The Western markets are saturated and the economies, based on the flow of money and consuption of oil, are grinding to a halt. New market places are needed to keep the flows going but we cannot continue to use up what's left of the oil and gas at the rate we have done up 'till now.
While we are busy debating whether or not mans activities are destroying the planet our Governments are busy in Copenhagen trying to get agreement for the new rules by which we will live our lives from now on. They are creating a new global economy that will use carbon as it's currency to enable the gravy train of the last hundred or so years to continue. MMGW has been invented to make the new rules acceptable to us in the West as they will change the way we live and many will not be to our liking.
As a new-comer to this debate, I have found the article and the posts fascinating. Thanks to all who have contributed. My question is, where do we go from here? A few suggestions.
1) Worry less about how warm the world was and more about how warm the world is. What I think I have learned in the last few weeks is that there are different ways to measure the temperature of the earth and that, even now, they do not always agree. Moreover, there are adjustments made to the raw data, perhaps for perfectly legitimate reasons, that nonetheless can be debated. Maybe when all the raw data are released and all the math behind the adjustments are made public, we will be able to have an informed debate about how to best measure the temperature of the planet right now. It does not seem to be settled to me.
2) Worry about specific types of climate changes that could be dangerous to human existence. Extinct polar bears, extra hurricanes and heat waves in certain parts of the globe are local phenomenon and may be balanced out by beneficial climate changes elsewhere. With apologies to the polar bears, they do not warrant a globally coordinated response. But some climate changes could be truly catastrophic. I am not a climate expert, but I would guess that the razing of all the world's rain forests would be globally bad. Can we identify the very serious climate changes, agree on how we would decide whether or not they are happening, and determine at what point we would declare something a global emergency necessitating a global response?
3) Take action that will make a difference. The most amazing part of the current situation for me is not the debate about if and how much the planet is warming, not the hacked emails, and not the predicted consequences of warming. The most puzzling aspect is that the policy responses, such as caps on carbon emissions or investing in solar power, would do very little to change the course of climate change. This is by the admission of the proponents of these policies. What would make a difference? Investment in nuclear power maybe. I don't what else would realistically make a difference. I am sure others would have ideas.
Thanks again for all the thoughts.
This Is what I have learned.
Global warming is 'man made', if you mean men in lab coats who angle for government grants by fudging the data or Scientists Caught Fudging Data .
That's correct. The greatest fallacies were destroyed by satire. Although I cannot remember any examples right now :)
Cee Cee
I did engage recently with Greg Laden, a well know Klimate Koolaider here in America. I suggested we bet a mere $100 on any 5 year climate prediction of his choice. ( I even offered to send HIM the $100 in advance. He refused.)
His main problem though, is not that he is a kool aid drinking climate change believer, it is that he cannot believe that anyone who believes in Evolution, wants health care reform(here in USA), is liberal-left in politics, can doubt the overwhelming consensus about AGW. He seems to think that it is only tea-bagging, bible-thumping republican loonies, supporters of Sarah Palin types, who are brainwashed by the right wing media, that could possibly doubt AGW and the inevitable projections if offers.
Per haps some of you could go over to his blog http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/ and let him know that you aren't all in that category.
thanks
Oh boy, a dense nest of AGW deniers, none with any background in climatology, just some cherry-picked google results. Well, I'm not a climatologist either - but I'll take their consensus over yours any day:
http://www.usnews.com/articles/news/national/2008/04/23/survey-tracks-scientists-growing-climate-concern.html
However! I agree with you that we don't need to fundamentally change our economy because of this foreseeable threat of higher sea levels. We should spend a little money on planning how to cope with it, because climate will always change, whether humans force it or not. So fantastic, we can tell which direction it's going for a while - warmer. No need to panic, buy flip flops. Don't get an ocenfront condo. Better this than an ice age.
The real "problem", from which ALL these other resource based dilemmas arise - is the fact that we are coming up on 7 billion people. 7 billion. Do we really need 7 billion people? 10 billion? Hell no! But, for some reason, it's become passe to panic about overpopulation, it's carbon now. Go figure!
Pete Ballard: Contrary to what Al Gore would have you believe, there is much evidence that polar bears are in fact thriving! Soon environmentalists will probably be suggesting a humanitarian cull, and blaming AGW for necessitating such an unnatural phenomenon upon the poor old polar bears.
While the scale and rate can be disputed, the fact of global warming cannot be. The evidence is also hard to contest.
However, even if there is a 1/1000 chance it is a made made problem, man needs to take action as the consequences are so severe.
blueshifter: There is no such thing as an expert climatologist! As a scientist at Australia's James Cook University said, he has identified more than 100 sub-disciplines and that no single person is an expert in more than two or three of them. Everyone is an amateur!
Re. Tmo (16 December,2009) Greg Laden, kool-aider, sounds rather like our own George Monbiot - panicking these days, and with his web commentators turning on him, as can be seen by the high proportion of comments he censors immediately on suspicion of being 'funded by oil interests' . (No really, Monbiot announced he would be doing this some months back...). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
But re. blueshifter (16 December, 2009) who says "Oh boy, a dense nest of AGW deniers, none with any background in climatology, just some cherry-picked google results", this remark (we've had it a few times) is kind-of depressing as how does he think research evolves? No one lives by things they have measured first hand, we all have to build up our knowledge frameworks through reliance on other people's accounts. Google leads you to a paper, say, from what looks like a serious source (=definitely NOT Wikipedia!) that showspolar bears are flourishing. Do you disbelieve it just because you have not been on a twenty year foot and snowmobile survey of the Frozen north yourself? Or do you stick to what Al Gore said, (perhaps on the advice of a marketing expert) because surely that is 'the consensus', and the consensus never needs backing up with evidence, does it?
John Curry: How can humanity take action when it has not identified the problem or a logical objective? And the science is not settled for global warming let alone AGW. Sure, most people perceive climate change, including me, but perceptions, even mass perceptions fuelled by the speed of media imagery, are not scientific evidence - except in the social sciences. And if our perception of global warming, or global cooling, is real, the science indicates that it is well within historical cyclical limits. I humbly suggest that climate change is far from problematic for the planet, but rather business as usual. It is only a problem for humanity in that most of us are resistant to change and do not want to deal with new realities. Seemingly, the majority in the West would rather be taxed to death to pay for their collective guilt, perceived or real, for being so audacious to employ their God-given human creativity, than face reality. Taxes are widely believed to be a disincentive to human creativity, hence their selection as a mechanism for reducing human activity, and the rejection of suggested non-profit alternatives that would not facilitate enriching Al Gore, et al, through their world governmental supranational trading schemes. Follow the money/power trail and you will find the (lack of) hard science.
Timo: Why so demonize as “loonies” those who you do not associate yourself with? What makes you think they have mental problems and have been brainwashed by anybody, and that people you associate yourself with do not and have not? Maybe leftism is a mental disease propagated by the predominant leftwing media? Do you also believe that atheism is not a (religious) belief system?
Perhaps I deserve it, for my original post seems to have set up a 'micro-climate debate' of its very own. I don't think it matters a jot whether Martin Cohen, or anyone else, is a climate scientist, or any kind of scientist, in adding to the 'debate'. What I do think is that, given Cohen has experience in philosophical thought, in philosophical presentations of problems, he might add some philosophical insight. So far, all that has happened as a result of his, what I still think is a rather rhetorical, article, is a very clumsy (because random and unspecific) slanging match between those who ALREADY ACCEPT global warming as a result of human activity producing increased levels of CO2 and those who ALREADY ACCEPT global warming as a result of processes far beyond human activity, and not as a result of human produced CO2. I still don't know what Cohen's actual point is. If his point is that he can find 'scientific' papers that support his case that there isn't any human determination of global warming, so what? Clearly others can find 'scientific' papers that support the opposite view. We've all known that since the 'debate' began. If his point is that 'science' cannot resolve the debate, and therefore the debate is about something else—could he tell us what that is? If his point is that there is a fundamentally 'irrational' aspect to the whole debate, could he illuminate us to what his understanding of 'rational' is, and why he feels he is able to continue contributing to that debate, whilst remaining 'rational' (if that is, in fact, what he feels he is). Please, could the philosopher comment on the philosophical issues (of epistemology, of ontology, of politics, of ethics) rather than these pseudo-debates about who has the 'right science'.
Alamodude: My understanding is that the original underlying principle of the Chinese approach to population control is wanting to be able to feed everyone. I know many of the methods are at best questionable and at worst abhorrent, but maybe the original intentions were not so sinister. The Greens come from the perspective of privileging nature and all other life forms above humanity. Somehow nature is both all powerful and in need of defence. And somehow pitiful human understanding can pit its wits against nature’s (managerial) responses to human activity better than nature can. Of course, such thinking comes from a secular mindset that believes some forms of humanity are superior to others, with those leading the new ADW mega-religion at the top of the heap, and opponents self-selecting themselves for the first mass cull. The Holocaust, which was conceived by the same people who conceived the Green movement, was just a trial and precursor in the sinister evolution of radical environmentalism. We know new “transit” camps have already been built. Sadly, any good intentions of remediation of environmental scars and raising living standards in undeveloped and developing countries have denigrated into recycling even when contraindicated, and reducing “low-level” wealth in developed countries by implementing taxes that will inflict severe suffering on the poor, including making many more millions homeless, and “moving them on” so they will be unseen and forgotten…after being showcased before the undeveloped and developing countries to demonstrate the success of this global levelling strategy. What is even more alarming is that this is not a hidden strategy conceived and executed by a conspiracy of evil scientists, but is a mainstream strategy being promoted by elected officials and media personalities such as David Attenborough. Of course, who better than generally respected media personalities who have been welcomed into people’s homes for decades to get the general population to sign their own death warrants? I also believe that our highly politicized education system - including the deception of a supposedly higher level of education for the masses, which also involves them taking on debt – not only facilitates most people thinking themselves more capable than they are and therefore more gullible, but is all part of the new cyber-capitalism that seeks to create new industries (and new “permissions” structures) out of virtually nothing…or virtual realities played out in the “real world”. Ultimately, it seems the new paradigm for 21st century Western capitalism is based on creating industries on the back of requirements for regulatory compliance…increasing layers of educational requirements, increasing professional licensing requirements, enforced recycling, emissions trading…higher fees, more and bigger fines for non-compliance, higher property taxes, more and higher consumption taxes…more regulatory, enforcement and collection authorities. And if you cannot afford the taxes to cover your carbon footprint, which naturally includes just breathing, you must be eliminated. Maybe if you voluntarily submit to euthanasia, you will be credited with carbon credits to cover funeral expenses and be allowed to bequeath any surplus credits? Following the “Chinese/LSE” formula, should Germany and its allies be credited in perpetuity with the carbon savings the Holocaust brought about, or the peoples of the victims? Of course, Germany should also be charged for the carbon emitted. And will the Russians be asking Germany for credits, and also applying for credits for the victims of its own purges? Such would spawn more regulatory industries and the need for more regulatory technologies…technology of course being prerequisite. Has the commercial imperative for new technologies and scientific research turned heavily towards regulatory control of humanity and away from aiding productivity and making our lives easier/better? Has the commercial imperative’s “need for speed” brought about the seemingly widespread acceptance of shortened scientific methods, and consequently pseudoscience, which can only lead us back into the dark ages, in more ways than one?
Ernie S., Welcome to this ideational La La land, and thanks for bringing up the "Human Cascade Theory" from a totally different perspective. One from the perspective of those who control the major energy commodity currently, OIL. Don't believe in the "Peak Oil" hype. The real facts are, they have been saying we're running out of Oil now just about since we discovered how to extract it efficiently in the early 1900's. Oil by the way (petroleum, crude, hydrocarbon extraordinaire) saved the whales back then from extension (they were being hunted close to extinction for whale oil back then). We have enough Oil based on current reserves for the next 300-550 years, based on how technology advances, projected usage increases, increases in conservation and efficiencies, etc. Currently, we are lucky to get maybe 25%-30% of the oil in a reservoir out of the ground. Current technologies aim to double that or more, almost instantly doubling the estimated "recoverable" reserves in a few years. We have not even started to mine Gas Hydrates yet, frozen natural gas; a small cube of which can power an average house (not Al Gore's mansions) for a year. Then there are the Oil Sands and Oil Shales; North America has vast quantities, more then Saudi's oil, and so does Africa. The Bakken play in the USA covers several states, that is how big it is; it's light crude (easy to refine), but thin beds. However, now horizontal drilling and other advances makes this play viable. Large offshore deep water reservoirs are being discovered every year, one just in Brazil recently. The Red Sea is virtually unexplored, an area 3 times the size of the US Gulf of Mexico, right next to.....Saudi Arabia. So, long story short, we aren't running out of oil any time soon. You might make the argument for cleaner fuels, like natural gas, gas hydrates and gas to liquids (GTL) fuels, which produce much lower soot and byproducts. "Peak Oil" is a scare mongering strategy by various agendas on the other side of the climate scare mongers, but the "Cascade Theory" works still the same, even for them. See, isn't it interesting? Regardless of gender, race, ideology, perspectives or culture, human nature pretty mush follows the same patterns. So if you want to accomplish things with humans, the same "best practices" apply. The same root causes are the culprits for all human problems, the negative aspects of human nature. By the way, a clean source of electrical energy is just down the road. Plasma Fusion should be commercial around 2035-2050 or so. So don't let the herd panic and go for dirty nuclear energy now, there is no safe way to dispose of current nuclear waste which will be around 25,000 years or longer! Now that would be some major ecological unintended consequences for our children's children's children! Chernobyl the whole world, ouch, and all because Al Gore wants more than his current net worth of 110 Mil. What a scientific observation! We are all human after all. And the Uncertainty Principle applies to each of us individually-as does human nature/both positive and negative, even though we live our lives and make "scientific" observations like it doesn't apply to us personally. You can't get somewhere unless you , 1) know who you are, 2) know why you are here & 3) know where the destination is. With out answering the basics first, it's all relativity, spun around by the Uncertainty Principle. Where is the reference point for navigating with any of these problems or pseudo problems brought up in this thread? The reason the Cascade Theory works is because most people have lost their baseline referenced compass and don't know how to navigate. Without a baseline reference, a compass can point anywhere you want it to. Physics 101, and Q. E. D.
Jon Y, I personally hope that Copenhagen will fail ignominiously and that as a result, while politicians lick their wounds, concerned scientists will try to get the science right rather than play politicians themselves. There is more than one hypothesis for climate change but those who are looking at other options but CO2 are branded as skeptics and even deniers while not given much breathing space not to speak of funding for their legitimate research. Copenhagen to fail? Good, it is premature anyway. And for the end of the world coming down on us from 5 to 10 years from now, it will just have to wait for a few more years.
Martin Cohen said: "Or do you stick to what Al Gore said, (perhaps on the advice of a marketing expert) because surely that is 'the consensus', and the consensus never needs backing up with evidence, does it? "
hahah - yes, i'm a mindless drone, following the Al Gore herd... look babe, the consensus does need evidence, and evidence it has - in spades. The data is exactly what drives the consensus, multiple, empirical, independent lines of evidence tying anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions to the warming trend of the last 150 years. THAT is why climatologists are done debating this - because of the overwhelming scads and piles and tons of data. It's not solar spots. It's not milankovich cycles. It's something else. Let's see, is there any other atmospheric anomaly that correlates with overwhelming statistical significance to the warming? Oh, why yes! The CO2 we've been pumping into the air! look at that. I KNOW you are cherry picking, because for that one paper you mention on polar bears being hunky dory, there are thousands of peer reviewed, cross validating papers detailing the accelerated loss of polar ice. The data is there, you just don't want to look at it, cause you've made up your mind ahead of time that AGW is false. So you only search for info that validates your view, thus reinforcing it. And you know what? That's fine. It doesn't matter - the water will rise regardless of your take on it.
OK, this is my second post here, and is partly an apology to Martin, and partly a complaint!
First, I must say that once I got past the fact that the first paragraphs wound me up and read the rest of the article, I found this on the whole to be very well written and well reasoned, and it certainly drew my attention to a few matters. Therefore, I apologise to Martin for my initial over-reaction.
My intention was not to suggest that anyone should consider AGW to be 100% proven (nor that an article along these lines should be suppressed); I was simply reeling against some language in the introductory paragraphs (and another mid-way through the text) that I considered to show "intent to mislead".
Therefore, my one criticism - with due respect to the well reasoned and well supported points made by Martin - is that Martin appears to have felt the need to take "a position" on global warming - that it is a "myth" - rather than sticking to presenting an unbiased expose of weaknesses in the evidence.
The fact that some of the 'evidence' may be flawed or used in the wrong way; the possibility that some of the proponents of AGW may exaggerate or falsify aspects of that evidence - none of this should lead us to immediately condemn AGW as a "myth"; exactly as the evidence for AGW should be considered carefully before we adopt AGW as a given.
As I scientist, I welcome the scientific debate on the matter, but I worry VERY much that if (as the majority of the scientific community has concluded - rightly or wrongly) the threat of AGW is real, then we risk a great deal by presenting the public (who would *love* to believe it's not) with the idea that it might just be a myth. Dealing with global warming is going to be extremely challenging, and many of us are only too keen to shy away from that challenge at the least justification.
[Continuing here from Nigel rant] ...And look for the most important indicator - quality of the product. It's going down dramatically, every year you notice - it's worse. No one is interested in maintaining quality. Huge production lines make the amounts of product that are in fact not needed. It's all junk and computer games. Food, building materials, leather, wool, watermelons, you name it, are atrocious, buy and put it in the garbage. Even computers, hardware and software, are junk. You soon be forced to buy, trust me. Middle Ages were a prosperous society. 400-year old chair is in the museum, to make one of these now will cost 20000. Middle Ages saw freedom too. This was freedom to produce good things. Now, the only source of pride is your salary. In your hart you know that your product is junk. Buy a new book, would you read it? I would not. Buy a newspaper - it's toxic, by the fumes from the paper and by the content. The only people who continue to make good product are in India and China (of course those that are not produced there by the corporations). All western product has no cultural value, no trace of the maker, no trace of culture, it only has international quality - it's a garbage-ready product. And this is what I am telling you - you judge civilization by its product.
blueshifter: 1) What about the physical evidence that the seas are warming due to previously undiscovered large-scale undersea volcanic activity, which is also the underlying cause of tsunami waves? Did industrialisation cause this activity? 2) The peer review process is a double-edged sword that can suppress minority/unpopular opinions and evidence that does not follow the money. I argue most strongly that stating the scientific case is ever closed is unscientific, anti-science, and totalitarian. As I said earlier: “Science is evolutionary! The scientific ‘facts’ of yesterday are often disproved by the science of today, and much of today’s scientific ‘facts’ will likely be disproved or dislodged by the science of tomorrow.” ‘Scientists’ that argue against this should be seen as part of the problem, not part of the solution. I find far too many people believing they know it all or all the important stuff, whereas the sign of a true ‘expert’ is one who recognizes that the more they know the more they realize how much more they do not know.
blueshifter: And why can't polar bears be "hunky dory" despite or because of cyclical loss of polar ice? Why can't it be coterminously true that both the polar bear population is rising while the polar ice is receding? Or do you reject the very possibility of this simply because it doesn't fit your preconceived notions of what is logical?
Among all the Greed, Jealousy and Lust for Power in Copenhagen, there are some cool technologies coming out now. The Chinese incidentally had a cool battery pack, rechargeable to power bikes in the city, but they outlawed them. They wanted to force people to use polluting diesel buses and not let the common folks get too much independence. Remember, what really set off the American dream of Liberty was 3 events in 1903, the Airplane, the first trans-continental car trip across America and the first around the world Telegraph.
Technically, this is not the largest leap in technology, but since we all deal with rotating devices and tools all the time, this is not a bad idea for saving excess energy for when we may need it later.
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2009/ratti-copenhagen-1216.html
Since MIT’s very good at publicizing, there was also some press in the New York Times.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/15/science/earth/15bike.html?scp=2&sq=mit&st=cse
Enjoy!
Is Copenhagen and the global focused attention large enough to cause a Cosmic Convergence (See Princeton University research) the size of the OJ trial or larger, like 9/11? And does the observer affect the observed in heretofore un-noticed ways? BIG NEW SUNSPOT: Just yesterday, sunspot 1035 was nearly invisible. Today, it is as wide as seven planet Earths. The fast-growing active region burst into view on Dec. 14th with a magnetic polarity that clearly identifies it as a member of new Solar Cycle 24. If the expansion continues apace, it could soon become the largest sunspot of the year. Check http://spaceweather.com for movies, photos and updates. Very hard to get scientific verification obviously, but perhaps some food for thought. Does human negative actions/nature like the substantial greed, lust for power and jealousy being displayed in amplified manners in Copenhagen for all the world to get disgusted with affect our surroundings? Anecdotally, the severity of cholera became less as people became interested in cleaning up the environment, and the bay they lived by got cleaner and "healthier". Perhaps the intentions are good, but taxing plant food is not the best way to attack the problems? As demonstrated by current events in Copenhagen?
And don't forget how DeLorean's stainless steel car was killed (in Britain). India is making a car running on compressed air (nothing is burning), but no doubt - you won't see it on roads.
This is the nearest thing I've seen to a reasoned debate on a subject which has been clouded by political position taking and nailing of colours to masts ever since I tried to understand it. I thought the article argued well that the scientific debate has been hijacked. Am I wrong in thinking that the real issue is that we can bearly feed the 7B or so humans now. With a bit of stress caused by climate change (by whatever cause) I assume we'll be even less able to do so going forward. With the population headed towards 9B won't we hit the Malthusian limit with a nasty bang? I'm just hoping that I'll be dead from natural causes before the poo goes into the fan!
Re: Nick Beech (11 and 16 December, 2009) who asks: 1) what definition, or guide, do you follow in your principle of 'rationality' and its correlative 'rational behaviour'? and Jon Butterworth (12 December, 2009) and perhaps this was a query in other people's minds too, I think it is a good question and if I did not respond earlier it is because it seemed to me to be tangential to the 'debate' here, even though (admittedly) it is about the 'rationality' of policies based on a supposed problem with man-made CO2. Anyway, without wishing to 'personalise' the issue, here is what I had in mind when I raised the spectre of irrationality!. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
As many of us will know, in social science circles, rational behaviour is any behaviour that is 'in accord with your aims'. Weber offers various jargony levels of rationality, of which being 'logical' is of course much admired. Now I don't personally go along with any of this, as indeed it has rightly been pointed out that the Nazi death-camps were a very rational exercise, given their aims. In fact, I don't even go along 'personally' with a weaker' kind of worship f rationalism that seems to be there when people defer to 'scientists' and ' experts' with their 'evidence'. The reason is that 'personally', I want to allow primacy for values, that is to say, a policy is correct if it is harmonious (consistent with) certain values.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
To cut to the quick, I am using rationality here as a measure of consistency - if you hold one thing to be true or important, then you should not do things that assume it to be either not true, or unimportant. For example, if you are a scientist who believes in the integrity of your data, you should not make irregular and bizarre adjustments to it to force the data to fit your desired pattern. The 'hockeystick' and indeed claims about 'global' (atmospheric? /sea surface? deep ocean?) record high temperatures all seem to me to be irrational in this sense. Even 'if' I had excellent CO2 and temperature records, say for the shed at the bottom of my garden, and these showed higher levels of the one preceding the other by say 200-1000 years (as it is supposed to require) it is completely 'irrational' to grub around for recent evidence of 'unusual' weather events - and everyone knows that - even the people doing it! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Another kind of irrationality in that it involves contradiction, is there in the green movement supporting this theory, when the effects are to hasten deforestation and species loss, to encourage Nuclear power and to disempower local communities at the expense of governments.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
A third instance of irrationality it seems to me is there in the actions of those who nominally defend social justice and the 'poor countries' in supporting a politics which is premised on a transfer of resources from the poor majority to the rich minority. We see this already within countries where fuel taxes affect the weaker members of the community far more than the George Monbiots and Antonia Seniors (the London Guardian and London Times' Climate Change 'experts' respectively). Let alone the gifts to the well-off to help them buy new cars! In the wider, macro-economic context, the profferred intention to help poor people living on atolls or in dry African savannahs, is held despite the fact that the developed rich world makes its profits out of 'low energy' innovation, design and services, while the developing world has only those energy intensive industries and CO2/ methane producing agricultural activities.
You can’t cut through the clutter by adding to it. Technology/Media is amplifying the clutter affect. This article/thread is basically a sales pitch by all the various agendas. Mostly using scare tactics, trying to "make ya look" with the biggest catastrophe, moving from Climate to "we're all gonna die because we are running out of...food, oil, water, "You Name it" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ifFWFYfQi2k&feature=player_embedded#at=19 As a study of human nature, it's quite interesting, but we can predict who will win. Who won this battle of the one-man bands in the PIXAR bit? Not surprisingly, the answer is “no one.”
The same thing happens in real-world sales of XWZ. You and your competition are blasting messages and new XYZs into the marketplace/ideological consumption place, hoping something sticks. The moment you announce a new XYZ, your competition is meeting (and beating) your innovation. You shout louder, they shout even louder. You get the picture. We’ve been there.
Companies/Nations/Ideologies create war rooms and fight plans and all kinds of competitive battlefields. In fact, the competitor can begin to consume your attention. Can you spell EAU and CRU?
If you stop and think about it…who is missing in action from this battle? Only the person that matters most — your buyer, aka us, we the people of the Globe.
What is your war with the competition doing to your prospects? Confusing them (us), that’s what. The amount of information your prospect must sift through to find the answer to our problems is increasing by 33% every year. We are already overloaded with information, and the incessant battle of the competitive bands is only contributing to our malaise. It’s no wonder we and our competitors all begin to sound the same. It literally becomes a din of noise.
These street musicians didn’t care what their young patron wanted or needed to hear. They were too obsessed with outdoing each other. They were sure if the “buyer” heard one more thing she would surely want to pay them.
You can’t cut through the clutter by adding to it.
Notice how when the little girl picked up a single instrument and began to play a completely unique tune, someone gave her a whole bag of money. It didn’t take “more power” to win the deal. It took a simpler, well-placed message that stood out from the crowded, noisy marketplace.
Where has your message gotten too complicated? Where can you cut back on the noise and focus on that simple story that sets you apart? How can you make it easier for customers (We the People of the Globe) to choose you? if you want to be serious about changing human behavior, study it.That's a good beginning. And you can't get somewhere if you don't know where the destination is.
Here is where the herd is headed, would any one like to follow this herd? Copenhagen summit veering towards farce, warns Ed Miliband.
The climate change summit in Copenhagen was in jeopardy tonight with the complex negotiations falling far behind schedule as the climate secretary, Ed Miliband, warned of a "farce". One Man Bands....must = farce? Is the Cascade Theory for the case of Climate in danger of being.........Scattered, disrupted? Meaning it's attached to the Strong nuclear forces, which can be disrupted? Or is it going to remain intact, meaning it's attached to the Weak nuclear forces, which can not be broken? Can Entanglement save the day? Or will there be a severe nuclear reaction as the Strong forces are disrupted and the herd scatters? Stay tuned....
Confirmation more each day AGW data was manipulated/is being manipulated. A discussion of the November 2009 Climatic Research Unit e-mail hacking incident, referred to by some sources as “Climategate,” continues against the backdrop of the abortive UN Climate Conference in Copenhagen (COP15) discussing alternative agreements to replace the 1997 Kyoto Protocol that aimed to combat global warming.
The incident involved an e-mail server used by the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia (UEA) in Norwich, East England. Unknown persons stole and anonymously disseminated thousands of e-mails and other documents dealing with the global-warming issue made over the course of 13 years.
Controversy arose after various allegations were made including that climate scientists colluded to withhold scientific evidence and manipulated data to make the case for global warming appear stronger than it is.
Climategate has already affected Russia. On Tuesday, the Moscow-based Institute of Economic Analysis (IEA) issued a report claiming that the Hadley Center for Climate Change based at the headquarters of the British Meteorological Office in Exeter (Devon, England) had probably tampered with Russian-climate data.
The IEA believes that Russian meteorological-station data did not substantiate the anthropogenic global-warming theory. Analysts say Russian meteorological stations cover most of the country’s territory, and that the Hadley Center had used data submitted by only 25% of such stations in its reports. Over 40% of Russian territory was not included in global-temperature calculations for some other reasons, rather than the lack of meteorological stations and observations.
The data of stations located in areas not listed in the Hadley Climate Research Unit Temperature UK (HadCRUT) survey often does not show any substantial warming in the late 20th century and the early 21st century.
The HadCRUT database includes specific stations providing incomplete data and highlighting the global-warming process, rather than stations facilitating uninterrupted observations.
On the whole, climatologists use the incomplete findings of meteorological stations far more often than those providing complete observations.
IEA analysts say climatologists use the data of stations located in large populated centers that are influenced by the urban-warming effect more frequently than the correct data of remote stations.
The scale of global warming was exaggerated due to temperature distortions for Russia accounting for 12.5% of the world’s land mass. The IEA said it was necessary to recalculate all global-temperature data in order to assess the scale of such exaggeration.
Global-temperature data will have to be modified if similar climate-date procedures have been used from other national data because the calculations used by COP15 analysts, including financial calculations, are based on HadCRUT research.
Excellent article, Martin, and well done TES for publishing it. Those who attack it as "drivel" and "unscientific" only demonstrate the good sense of your conclusions. I am extremely weary of this type (who seem to be in the majority within the AGW believing community) who consistently use ad hominem (whether express or implied); who state or imply that if you are not a climatologist you do not have the qualifications to understand the complexity of the issues involved; and if you are a climatologist and dissent you are either a crank or in the pay of big oil. In other words, nobody is qualified to speak on the subject unless they agree with CO2 driven AGW. I hate to break it to you guys, there are other brains on this planet who are not climatologists and who are perfectly capable of understanding the science, have made it a point to consider the science very carefully and have come to their own conclusions. They will hold these conclusions until there is real evidence to the contrary.
Thank you Martin (who knows if you are, but I'm assuming that for the purpose of our conversation) for attending to my question, I'm very grateful. I think you're being a bit 'descriptive' in your definition of 'rationality' and it's causing some problems in your critique, so I'd just like to clarify the position......(I like this touch of .... to produce para. breaks by the way).................................................................. 1) You begin by asserting that a particularly popular definition of rationality is expressed in the relation between aims and actions: that if actions are consistent with aims then they are 'rational'.......................................................................................... 2) You then qualify this, on the principle that certain actions—and you use the Nazi death camps as an example—could, on that basis, be defined as 'rational', as they are consistent with aims, though they appear to be ethically or morally repugnant. You therefore add an ethical limiter on the definition of rationality at this point, arguing that you place primacy on 'values' .......................................................................................................... 3) At this point it would have been useful for some kind of account of how you're using values to limit the scope of rational action: I realise you're only responding in a blog, but classical humanist; liberal; egalitarian; socialist; etc. short-hand might have been helpful. I say this because it seems to me that you are using 'rationality' and 'irrationality' on universal, or at least 'general' lines, such that, if we can agree on what defines 'rational' action (later you say 'policy', not quite the same, but it will do for our purposes) then we can also agree on what is 'right' action. But what if our 'values' are different, and impinge on the interpretation of the action differently? .......................................................................................................... 4) Anyway, it doesn't really seem to matter, because you pretty quickly develop a new definition of rationality, similar to (1): 'To cut to the quick, I am using rationality here as a measure of consistency - if you hold one thing to be true or important, then you should not do things that assume it to be either not true, or unimportant.' And you give some descriptions of things that you understand as, what I think you mean, logically inconsistent. So it is logically inconsistent (or 'irrational') to believe A and at the same time to believe not-A. Actually your examples are closer to (1), as what you suggest is that it is irrational to 'believe' in the integrity of 'data' whilst conducting 'actions' that affect the interpretation of that data (that's something we should bare in mind here, that the action in this instance is an action of interpretation: the data still exists, it hasn't been 'destroyed' or 'ignored', it's been interpreted). I'm not sure what the 'garden shed' allegory actually adds to this, so I'll leave it, it doesn't seem to me either rational or irrational according to your criteria, you're just talking about collecting a random set of data and then saying 'this is random'. What you do add, is that 'rationality' is not just a case of consistency of aims and actions, it is a consistency of sets of beliefs. ............................................................................................................. 5) You then go on to argue that those in the 'green movement' are acting irrationally when they argue for a policy, based on AGW that will lead to deforestation, nuclear energy, etc. According to your definitions of rationality provided in (1) and (4) you MIGHT be right, this might be inconsistent with 'green movement' aims. I guess that depends on the faction of the 'green movement' that you are talking to. Some members of the 'green movement' (famously James Lovelock) seem to place AGW on a higher priority list than preventing nuclear proliferation, the policy (action) that produces this is not then, under your definition, irrational according to (1) but might be according to definition (4) if you can show that you cannot logically (consistently or coherently) hold the two aims/beliefs at the same time. But you haven't actually done that—they seem logically consistent to me, as long as the first (AGW) is understood to be so catastrophic that the second (nuclear proliferation) just isn't as bad. Even if you can show they are inconsistent, you can't impute it to the 'whole' green movement, because there remains a politics to that movement, it isn't just a 'block', many people disagree with Lovelock's proposition. You could also introduce (3) again, and suggest that there is a 'value' limiter on the action. But we don't know what that might be (because nuclear energy is 'undemocratic' or 'non-egalitarian', or what?). ..........................................................................................................
6) At the same time, it does assume that the 'policy' (for our purposes the 'action') really is connected with the 'aims' of the 'green movement': ie. that the action is of the same subject as the aim. It would be pretty rich of us to accuse proselytising vegetarians of being 'irrational' because supermarkets are driving down the price of meat and so encouraging the consumption of animal products. The 'vegetarians' have a particular set of aims (not eating meat) but they are not 'acting' in this example; the supermarkets are. Similarly, the 'green movement' (assuming now that it is a coherent movement) may have the AIM of both reducing CO2 emissions and protecting/nurturing natural habitats, winding down nuclear energy production, etc. These may not be considered in the development of policy — the ACTION — being conducted by states and corporate interests who are NOT of the 'green movement'. The policy generated at Copenhagen is NOT the same as the evidence produced for Copenhagen: the IPCC does NOT set policy, it offers evidence of what is going on in the climate. Many in the 'green movement' accept that evidence, and have developed a set of 'aims' based on that evidence. None of this is 'irrational' according to your criteria. States represented at Copenhagen develop the policy. They are not the same and are contradictory to the aims of the 'green movement' (hence protests, arrests, anger from greens in the press, etc.) Again, however, this is not 'irrational' according to your criteria, because we are discussing different subjects: the green movement with its aims, and states with their actions. ............................................................................................................ 7) The problem I raise at (6)—how does your definition of 'rationality' apply to two different 'subjects' holding different aims and actions— is relevant to your final paragraph. You impute a set of actions (policies) to a group of people who do not support those actions, and hold different aims from those who have acted (developed those policies). George Monbiot, for example, has been quite explicit in rejecting all kinds of policies of the UK and US governments (and others) that have the stated 'aim' of solving 'global warming'. He has specifically attended to the problems of 'carbon trading' and non-progressive tax policies that CLAIM to be consistent with HIS aims, but are in fact contradictory. It is not then in the 'green movement' that you need to look for 'irrational' behaviour, but in those government departments that develop policy (are conducting the 'action' which you see as contradicting the 'aim'). .................................................................................................... 8) Of course, it might be true that with a full account of (2) you can argue that even without the 'action' of government policy, there is an 'irrationality' WITHIN the 'green movement'. You could do so by demonstrating that the ethical limiter that you introduce at (2) is such that it would be necessarily contradictory to hold principles of social justice at the same time as accepting the evidence for AGW and aiming to act on that evidence. I don't know how that argument could be constructed and it would be interesting to hear what you think. I don't think you can just 'assume' that responding to AGW 'necessarily' means transferring resources from 'poor' to 'rich', nor that responding to AGW 'necessarily' means further deforestation and local environmental degradation. A lot of the literature I have read suggests quite the opposite. But it might be possible, and I'd be interested to see where you start (perhaps there is some radical 'disjunction' between the concept of 'climate' and concepts of the 'social', such that social justice cannot be conceived within both sets?)................................................................................................... 9) Finally, sorry for the length of this message, but I am relieved that we are getting somewhere with the discussion. It seems to me important, because it 'untangles' the logical, ethical, and political questions from the issue of 'science'. I don't actually hold that 'science' is free from these concerns, and I get frustrated when 'science' is treated as a value free, 'empirical' in a crude sense, 'function' that doesn't operate in the world that everything else does. BUT, that doesn't mean that, when faced with problems generated within scientific debate, we can abandon centuries of hard work gone into thinking through logical and ethical dilemmas. For all those (it probably is only few) people reading this conversation, be aware, that I am not suggesting that Martin Cohen, or anyone else, is 'right' or 'wrong' on any of these issues. I am trying to find out what they 'think'...'
Nick, thanks for your coments too. I think (as mentioned already) that to pursue tangential strands in the 'debate' such as philosophical definitions of rationality, we need to do it selsewhere. If you like email me direct, or (better) start a page on philosophical-investigations.org. The points you are making are worth exploring, but this is not really the place to do so...
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Thanks to everyone who has participated, the invitation is there likewise, and I'm hoping the Higher can (and urging them to!) enlarge their commenting system to create something that reflects the uniquely thoughtful and well-qualified community the magazine serves.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
In the meantime, all readers of course can 'carry on commenting' here, though!
I'm not sure I understand why you think this is tangential. Do you think that you have offered something else to the debate, other than the claim that to 'believe' in AGW is irrational? What else have you added to what we already know? Are you saying that there are people on this thread who have unearthed some devastating evidence against AGW? I haven't seen any. You don't offer an epistemological difference to those who accept AGW. Your whole article is rhetorical and you have said yourself it isn't about 'science'. So what else is there to 'debate' if it isn't the logical foundations of your argument?
This article was published in Times Higher Education, but I do wonder how many of the people leaving comments are scientists (I don't included philosophers or 'social scientists' in that term for the present purposes). The discussion seems to have been dominated by proponents of the George Bush school of policy-based evidence. Perhaps, having recently been left unemployed by the advent of Barack Obama, they have nothing better to do.
Martin Cohen asks "so what sort of factors mess up the models?" refering to the computer models. I suggest that the computer models are simply mathematical assertions of the modelers beliefs. You can assert: "increases in CO2 will result in an increase in global temperature," or you can write a computer program that plots a line showing the same thing when you input data that shows CO2 increasing. I could do this in Excel!
Further to my last contribution that you have not published: copy of letter ending subscription to the THE:
Dear Mdm/Sir, Further to our phone conversation, I would be glad if you could send £29.48 (= the amount outstanding on my annual subscription to the THE) to Ethiopiaid POB 31052, London SW1X 9WB now that I no longer wish to receive copies of the 'dumbed down' 'flat earth' magazine to which the THE has been reduced. Please confirm when you have done this. Patrick Ainley.
(I realise that this gesture on my part makes little difference to a magazine whose owners obviously do not care what is published in it as long as the adverts keep coming in but adverts are getting rather thin on the ground of late and are likely to get thinner, so subscriptions will become more important to them and they will be unlikely to allow the current staff to go on recycling press releases in the manner to which they have become accustomed. Hopefully we will then see an end to such 'opinion pieces' as last week's climate change denial which for me was the last straw! Even more hopefully, the gap left in the market by the degredation of the THE creates a space for a genuine news service dedicated to reflecting opinion and events in education. I intend to set up a Facebook Group to this end.)
I found your article concise and valuable. Perfect reading for every school teacher in the USA.
To your detractors I can only comment, how strange it is that a preponderance the data that is open to scrutiny shows that CO2 is not the cause of warming.
I guess you really need to be in the fold to interpret properly.
Patrick Ainley: I guess your "genuine" news service will dedicate itself to reflecting only your pre-approved opinions and events. Seems to me the vast majority of news outlets, whether print, TV, radio, or new media, already conform not only to editorial agendas, but the very kind of editorial agenda you appear to espouse. What's the problem? Is it that there are still a few outlets that dare to think differently, or that THE dares to publish the odd non-conformist article in the pretence of balance...maybe 5% of the time?
100 reasons not to follow the herd and tax plant food;
http://www.dailyexpress.co.uk/posts/view/146138
Great Blizzard pics of the final day in Copenhagen yes? I guess the science of the "Albert Gore Jr. Affect" is well understood and can now be accepted as fact. When ever AG Jr goes to a climate meeting in the winter, a blizzard always ensues there. Perhaps, this is why he chose to name his boat the BS-1?
Refreshing article - many thanks. A reminder of why universities should support and encourage their philosophy departments!
The Global Experiment for Survival
– My proposal to the UN
The rate of global warming and sea level rising
requires man to return to an agrarian civilisation.
But he won’t do so for any conceivable reason,
until we prove 100% the warming is our doing.
The solution is to conduct a Global Experiment –
stop all industry and development for five years,
with minimum activity sustaining the hibernation.
This would be fair, viable and, above all, decisive.
By that time, if the situation does not improve,
we can sigh, oh, nature has its own destination!
If it does improve, we will not only be convinced,
but have got use to a pre-industrial way of living.
Chengde, Why do you need the rest of us? Show us the way Oh Enlightened farmer dude! I'm sure the Chinese and India middle class will listen to your logic. Start farming and they will follow. But just remember, every 2 Goggle searches uses enough energy to boil a tea pot of water. I challenge you to do with out cell phones, media, internet, cars, public transportation, grocery markets, electricity and modern health care for 6 months.Farm, and maybe the herd will follow you.
ALL, Are we there yet?
When we see back the history who sent the huge number of dirty things(air,water) to the earth,and then these countries had became rich .Global warm is not China and India make it. Chinese and India people need to develop so they can't do as developed countries. They can't mandate all factories to close prioe to the whole countries,because their people need work to order food, cloth and their children need to be educated by individual account to make this generation/next generation know what is global warm and what is their responsibility to the world.If a lot of people no work and the local government will get a big problem.I hope every people has seen the statistical of how much SU send dirty things to the earth?!
Gap, Where is it you want the herd to go? It's not clear in your post. You might want to consider the fact that scientifically, the data looks like earth's climate is still following historical trends, so we are not even close to some red line tipping point of catastrophic warming due to man made causes. But, if India and China would install programs to remove soot, like developed countries, those huge pollution clouds over both countries will dissipate just like they have in developed countries. It is not necessarily a given except in the media hysteria that there is such a thing as man made global warming, is the point. If it is that you are worried about pollution and not man made global warming, then great. You will find that countries and societies over all of human history that have robust economies based on transparency and trading have provided their respective societies with raised standards of living. This gives these societies both the idle time (not spending every minute trying to survive) and the luxury to consider such things as conservation and cleaning up pollution. Which means, for India and China to have a chance at attacking their respective problems, they need to raise the standards of living for the majority of their populations first.
Alamodude, from statistics average US people is 4 times chinese to send pollution to the earth in last 20 years. Chinese magazines has reminded chinese people to save world energy( eg, UK, be learned some UK people to live in countryside,leap farm productivity.) On the other hand,the business world wants chinese people to spend their money to reduce world economic distress from the economic way.I believe chinese people really have to change their respective proplems to raise their standards of life,but the major capital group of china is last generation who haven't been educated at Universities,they are working hard for luxury life!
So someone's finally had the guts to voice what most people are thinking already. Well done to the THES - I thought for a while that i must be the only educated, left-leaning person out there who thought this global warming was more about fear and panic then science.
The comments from some of the haters who support the idea of man-made global warming only serve to underline his point, i think.
Sincere congrats to the THES for this one.
Man is the most selfish,dangerous and ugly animal in the world! Scientists,new technology may can save the world.
Chengde Chen and Gap: Do you realise you are espousing Nazi ideology?
China and India at the governmental/policy/planning levels have largely rejected the agrarian way of life for industrial and post-industrial ways of life. If the ways of the West were so bad, why is it okay to follow, but to follow without many of the safeguards that modern technology allows? Oh, to raise the standards of living of their people, just as the West has done. So, how come it's okay for the likes of China and India to be so motivated but not for the West? And how come it's okay for Chinese, Indian, etc industries to have an economic advantage over Western industries? One of the reasons Chinese and Indian goods are as cheap as they are is because of the lack of environmental controls that have so significantly impacted the cost of production in many Western countries. Of course, social policies keep down other costs of production, because, just like early Western industrialization, it's not so much about the health, wealth and living standards of the nation, but of the select few. If Western nations were to reject goods produced in factories that did not comply with Western environmental standards, Western safety standards, and that were produced with slave labour, it would cripple the Chinese economy. So, I guess the West is to blame for its insatiable desire for cheap goods, which largely doesn't care that much about where and how the goods are made and at what cost to the environment or about worker conditions. But what about the impact on the West of allowing the likes of the Chinese to supposedly raise their living standards by becoming the factory of the world? Not only is the West to blame for its own environmental problems but apparently for everyone else's too. And if the West as a whole deindustrializes to the extent Britain has, can Western living standards be maintained on the back of service and regulatory industries? I very much doubt it! Those that don't produce real goods are destined to fail/fall. Western service industries are already moving East and will likely continue to do so at pace. Is the objective a completely deindustrialized and poverty-stricken West? If so, the elites will continue to reap at someone's expense as they have always done, while poor people will suffer as they have always done. However, as "[m]an is the most selfish,dangerous and ugly animal in the world" [sic], it's one way to reduce the population. Isn't it interesting that the environmental Nazis, who openly voice their hatred of humanity (other people's humanity rather than their own) always seem to end up with the same number, or rather the same proportion of worthy human beings, ie, 1/7, being approximately representative of the elites and their hangers on, few of whom actually produce anything tangible themselves. So, there isn’t enough suitable land for everyone alive to start subsistence farming, man’s (especially Western man’s) creative abilities are an evil that brought about better healthcare, food yields, standards of living, at the expense of mother nature, that diverting man’s efforts from food producing technologies and healthcare towards saving the planet will regulate man’s creative tendencies, leading to a reduction in the human population, and survival of the fittest 1/7? But is the 1/7 they think is the fittest really the fittest? Only in a regulated environment; hence the dramatically increasing regulatory aspect. If it ever became every man, woman and child for him/her-self, the fittest 1/7 would likely be a very different constituency. Of course, if the climate crisis mongers are correct, the measures they admit to wanting to put in place are very unlikely to deliver their stated objectives quickly enough. Creating a series of world pandemic diseases is one “solution”, but one that requires the elites to have immunity or access to effective medicines. And of course there are other proven methods of mass slaughter to cull “the most selfish,dangerous and ugly animal in the world" [sic] (sick!), conceived by the most selfish, dangerous, ugly, hypocritical, deranged and evil minds in the world.
Gap, I'm still not clear what you want the herd to do? Follow the cascade theory of fear mongering or come up with sensible solutions? Here I'll help you along. 95% of problem solving is assigning blame to some one else. So, It's all my fault. Everything in the world. I'm a greedy human American consumering energy wasting white anglo-saxon red neck pick up driving dude. So, it's all my fault clearly. Now what? How are you going to solve the problems of clean water, removing soot over China and India, adequate supplies of food and shelter, and a robust economy so people can grow up with hope for a better life; unlike murdering 70,000,000 people in the name of Dear leader, including all the technical leaders of the time, and then hope for the best. The murder of 70 million Chinese in the name of dear leader is my fault also, by the way, so don't get distracted by it. Move on, give us some solutions.
1)Eg, Carbon capture and storage technologies. 2)the solar and wind industries need to be creative and carbon capture technologies need to be innovated.3) create a demand of new technologies in the market( cleaner coal technology);found research with a strong emphasis on energy engineering and science.4) developing ways to produce fuel from algae and straw.5) encourage, some bright young people rid civilisation of fossil fuels with their idealism are to get an education in engineering to their choice of career path.
Gap, OK, some good ideas. 1), CO2 sequestration doesn't work if you look at the science, Volume and Pressure don't support the types of reservoir structures we have versus what is actually needed, I posted that science awhile back. And if you pump CO2 into the ocean you will scare Al Gore. 2)Solar and Wind can fill in some small gaps, but are no where near taking the place of hydrocarbon fuels, and what do you do with all the batteries and heavy metal pollution resulting from Wind and Solar? China is now at max production for rare earths necessary to make the magnets for current demand for wind and hybrid batteries/electric motors. What happens when you ramp it up? Where do the rare earths come from and what do you do with the extra pollution resulting from the manufacture of the magnets and electronics? This is not a something for nothing Universe. 3) This is your best offer, clean Coal for China and India will do a huge amount to reduce soot in the atmosphere, it's proven and available today. There is a lot of research and engineering going on now already. If you tax plant food, companies have to cut back on this research by the way, to pay the taxes, as well as pass those taxes on to you and me. 4) Already done and quite promising, but not ready for prime time. There is a great initiative that takes waste plastics and turns 80% back into fuel, a win/win. Except Green Peace is against it because it actually works. Green Scare is a better description of that evangelical outfit. 5) the most promising fuel in the horizon is Plasma Fusion, clean nuclear with out the toxic waste. Some where around 2040 or so it should be commercialized, so don't be in such a hurry to trade something that works well now for something that doesn't work with out huge subsidies and tax monies. Besides, we need CO2, aka plant food, to boost crop efficiencies to feed the extra 50% population predicted for 2050. Good luck getting your initiatives going now.
Speaking of social reforms to make the world a better place. Before 19 th century. the "policy" was clear: let's trust individuals in that nobody is going to do harm to himself, hence - let everything belong to the individuals, be their private property. Kings owned everything, but they did not produce; the production was in the hands of the individuals, everyone did just a little. This, was of course not a policy, it came historically as the only way of living. That way of living was destroyed by Masons, industrialisation and the opportunity to produce and to use too much. Moreover, individuals conspired to organise companies that acted as a single brain. Next, the companies learned to draw funding from the entire population but again, acting as a single brain. So, the only remedy now is to close the stock market and restrict the ownership to single individuals and families. They will know how to manage their business.
I know China has a big responsibility for the climate change because which is just 1/4. Why the world has Olympic Games and Economic Challenge,but each country can't challenge who saves more environment to the world. which is not a business topic for people to discuss!
For the avoidance of doubt, and for absolute clarity, here is the root cause agenda for Copenhagen and beyond, what the Pyramid scheme regime has planned for the herd utilizing the cascade theory and the hysteria driven media for.........Christopher Booker, author of "The Real Global Warming Disaster," estimates that carbon permits traded in global exchanges such as the European Union Greenhouse Gas Emission Trading System, or EU-ETS, now worth an estimated $126 billion, will soon be valued in the trillions, "making carbon the most valuable traded commodity in the world," outpacing even oil. For Big Oil to Big Carbon, is the agenda. Al Gore's net worth has gone up since investing in carbon from US$ 7 mil to currently more than US$ 110,000,000.
Gap, here is a reasonable way forward from a former Technology officer at Microsoft, if you really want to get the herd heading in a realistic direction, and it works regardless of whether you think Humans are guilty or not. http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/2511875/nathan_myhrvolds_anti_global_warming.html
Go get 'em, gap.
Martin Cohen, Any Comments on the exponential affect of Media and Technology driving the Hysteria Factor necessary to have a successful Cascade Theory Event? As for instance, years ago there was no social networks, no Wiki, no Internet connecting and driving the Cascade affect. Here is an interesting piece about how the Medieval Warming Period was systematically erased in Wikipedia for the express reason of driving the AWG agenda, since this was perceived to be a huge stumbling block (never let facts get in the way of a Fascist/Socialist driven agenda). So to suppress decent and un-educate the herd, all traces of MWP and are still being scrubbed from Wikipedia.
A new report reveals a British scientist and Wikipedia administrator rewrote climate history, editing more than 5,000 unique articles in the online encyclopedia to cover traces of a medieval warming period – something Climategate scientists saw as a major roadblock in the effort to spread the global warming message.
Recently hacked e-mails from the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit expose a plot to eliminate the Medieval Warm Period, a 400-year era that began around A.D. 1000, the Financial Post's Lawrence Solomon reports.
The warming period is said to have improved agriculture and increased life spans, but scientists at the center of the Climategate e-mail scandal believed the era undermined their goal of spreading concern about global warming as it pertains to today's climate.
Solomon noted the warming period presented a dilemma long before the Climategate e-mail scandal.
A 1995 e-mail predating the recent Climate Research Unit scandal was sent to geophysicist David Deming. A major climate-change researcher told Deming, "We have to get rid of the Medieval Warm Period."
Some scientists later expressed concern about erasing the period.
One chief practitioner identified as Keith Briffa, said in a Sept. 22, 1999, e-mail, "I know there is pressure to present a nice tidy story as regards 'apparent unprecedented warming in a thousand years or more in the proxy data' but in reality the situation is not quite so simple. … I believe that the recent warmth was probably matched about 1,000 years ago."
Briffa and other scientists, with the help of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, published a well-known symbol of their movement: the hockey stick chart, an illustration reproduced in textbooks, media reports and the pages of the 2001 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, report.
However, the graph showed stable temperatures over the last 1,000 years and omitted any indication of the warming period.
"But the U.N.'s official verdict that the Medieval Warm Period had not existed did not erase the countless schoolbooks, encyclopedias, and other scholarly sources that claimed it had," Solomon wrote. "Rewriting those would take decades, time that the band members didn't have if they were to save the globe from warming."
Instead, the group created a website called RealClimate.org. One e-mail addressed criticism of the hockey stick graph and any suggestions that today's temperatures were not the hottest on record.
"The idea is that we working climate scientists should have a place where we can mount a rapid response to supposedly 'bombshell' papers that are doing the rounds" in aid of "combating dis-information," a Dec. 10, 2004, e-mail to the Climate Research Unit from Gavin Schmidt explained.
The RealClimate.org team consisted of Schmidt, Mike Mann, Eric Steig, William Connolley, Stefan Rahmstorf, Ray Bradley, Amy Clement, Rasmus Benestad and Caspar Ammann.
Solomon revealed that Connolley, one man in the nine-member team who is a U.K. scientist, a software engineer and Green Party activist, took control of Wikipedia's entries to see that any trace of the true climate history would be erased.
Beginning in February 2003, Connolley rewrote Wikipedia entries on global warming, the greenhouse effect, the instrumental temperature record, the urban heat island, on climate models and on global cooling, according to the report. In February, he began editing the Little Ice Age. By August, he began to rewrite history without the Medieval Warm Period. In October, he turned to the hockey-stick chart.
"He rewrote articles on the politics of global warming and on the scientists who were skeptical of the band," Solomon explains. "Richard Lindzen and Fred Singer, two of the world's most distinguished climate scientists, were among his early targets, followed by others that the band especially hated, such as Willie Soon and Sallie Baliunas of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, authorities on the Medieval Warm Period."
Through his role as a Wikipedia administrator, Connolley is said to have created or rewritten 5,428 unique Wikipedia entries.
"When Connolley didn't like the subject of a certain article, he removed it – more than 500 articles of various descriptions disappeared at his hand," Solomon wrote. "When he disapproved of the arguments that others were making, he often had them barred – over 2,000 Wikipedia contributors who ran afoul of him found themselves blocked from making further contributions."
Meanwhile, followers who adhered to Connolley's climate views "were rewarded with Wikipedia's blessings," Solomon contends.
Through his control of the Wikipedia pages, Connolley is said to have "turned Wikipedia into the missionary wing of the global warming movement."
Facts about the Medieval Warm Period and criticism of global warming doctrine were purportedly scrubbed from Wikipedia's pages.
"With the release of the Climategate e-mails, the disappearing trick has been exposed," Solomon declared. "The glorious Medieval Warm Period will remain in the history books, perhaps with an asterisk to describe how a band of zealots once tried to make it disappear."
A Wikipedia arbitration committee has stated in the past: "William M. Connolley has, on a number of occasions, misused his administrator tools by acting while involved."
A July 31, 2006, article in the New Yorker described Connolley as a "victim of an edit war over the entry on global warming, to which he had contributed."
"After a particularly nasty confrontation with a skeptic, who had repeatedly watered down language pertaining to the greenhouse effect, the case went into arbitration," the report states.
"User William M. Connolley strongly pushes his POV [point of view] with systematic removal of any POV which does not match his own," his accuser charged in a written deposition. "His views on climate science are singular and narrow."
Connolley said Wikipedia "gives no privilege to those who know what they're talking about."
Just today, Connolley has made edits in numerous Wikipedia entries, including articles titled, "Public opinion on climate change," "Climate," "Scientific opinion on climate change," "RealClimate," " Global cooling," "Climate change" and the biography of scientist William M. Gray, writing that Gray's "views on global warming are controversial."
What happened to Termites?
Polluting pets: the devastating impact of man's best friend
AFP
Polluting pets: the devastating impact of man's best friend AFP/Getty Images/File – A man walks his dog in the snow in the East Village on December 19 in New York City. Man's best friend …
by Isabelle Toussaint and Jurgen Hecker Isabelle Toussaint And Jurgen Hecker – Sun Dec 20, 3:23 pm ET
PARIS (AFP) – Man's best friend could be one of the environment's worst enemies, according to a new study which says the carbon pawprint of a pet dog is more than double that of a gas-guzzling sports utility vehicle.
But the revelation in the book "Time to Eat the Dog: The Real Guide to Sustainable Living" by New Zealanders Robert and Brenda Vale has angered pet owners who feel they are being singled out as troublemakers.
The Vales, specialists in sustainable living at Victoria University of Wellington, analysed popular brands of pet food and calculated that a medium-sized dog eats around 164 kilos (360 pounds) of meat and 95 kilos of cereal a year.
Combine the land required to generate its food and a "medium" sized dog has an annual footprint of 0.84 hectares (2.07 acres) -- around twice the 0.41 hectares required by a 4x4 driving 10,000 kilometres (6,200 miles) a year, including energy to build the car.
To confirm the results, the New Scientist magazine asked John Barrett at the Stockholm Environment Institute in York, Britain, to calculate eco-pawprints based on his own data. The results were essentially the same.
"Owning a dog really is quite an extravagance, mainly because of the carbon footprint of meat," Barrett said.
Other animals aren't much better for the environment, the Vales say.
Cats have an eco-footprint of about 0.15 hectares, slightly less than driving a Volkswagen Golf for a year, while two hamsters equates to a plasma television and even the humble goldfish burns energy equivalent to two mobile telephones.
But Reha Huttin, president of France's 30 Million Friends animal rights foundation says the human impact of eliminating pets would be equally devastating.
"Pets are anti-depressants, they help us cope with stress, they are good for the elderly," Huttin told AFP.
"Everyone should work out their own environmental impact. I should be allowed to say that I walk instead of using my car and that I don't eat meat, so why shouldn't I be allowed to have a little cat to alleviate my loneliness?"
Sylvie Comont, proud owner of seven cats and two dogs -- the environmental equivalent of a small fleet of cars -- says defiantly, "Our animals give us so much that I don't feel like a polluter at all.
"I think the love we have for our animals and what they contribute to our lives outweighs the environmental considerations.
"I don't want a life without animals," she told AFP.
And pets' environmental impact is not limited to their carbon footprint, as cats and dogs devastate wildlife, spread disease and pollute waterways, the Vales say.
With a total 7.7 million cats in Britain, more than 188 million wild animals are hunted, killed and eaten by feline predators per year, or an average 25 birds, mammals and frogs per cat, according to figures in the New Scientist.
Likewise, dogs decrease biodiversity in areas they are walked, while their faeces cause high bacterial levels in rivers and streams, making the water unsafe to drink, starving waterways of oxygen and killing aquatic life.
And cat poo can be even more toxic than doggy doo -- owners who flush their litter down the toilet ultimately infect sea otters and other animals with toxoplasma gondii, which causes a killer brain disease.
But despite the apocalyptic visions of domesticated animals' environmental impact, solutions exist, including reducing pets' protein-rich meat intake.
"If pussy is scoffing 'Fancy Feast' -- or some other food made from choice cuts of meat -- then the relative impact is likely to be high," said Robert Vale.
"If, on the other hand, the cat is fed on fish heads and other leftovers from the fishmonger, the impact will be lower."
Other potential positive steps include avoiding walking your dog in wildlife-rich areas and keeping your cat indoors at night when it has a particular thirst for other, smaller animals' blood.
As with buying a car, humans are also encouraged to take the environmental impact of their future possession/companion into account.
But the best way of compensating for that paw or clawprint is to make sure your animal is dual purpose, the Vales urge. Get a hen, which offsets its impact by laying edible eggs, or a rabbit, prepared to make the ultimate environmental sacrifice by ending up on the dinner table.
"Rabbits are good, provided you eat them," said Robert Vale.
Following on from the first of Alamodude's two posts above: the influence of Wikipedia and the importance of who controls the pages should not be underestimated. My interest is in passive smoking and I've noticed the similarities between this and global warming. The Wiki Passive smoking page is controlled by a small group of mainly anonymous contributors, some of whom also contribute to global warming pages. One of this group attempted to discredit Lindzen's views on global warming by stating that Lindzen didn't believe passive smoking to be harmful. I've just looked and this has been watered down somewhat - now just a vague connection with smoking. As with global warming, one of the tactics of the passive smoking group is to appeal to "peer reviewed publications", even when their conclusions are later shown to erroneous on the publication of the statistics for the whole population. For example, there are tens of papers "proving", using small samples and obviously incorrect methodology, that heart attacks decrease following smoking bans. One of these papers, by Pell and relating to Scotland, even found its way into the NEJM, one of the most prestigious medical journals; yet, even before its publication date, the official statistics for the whole of Scotland became available and showed no decrease beyond the long term downward trend. It is difficult to counter this tactic without without appearing anti-scientific, although the recent climate-gate scandal has perhaps persuaded the mainstream media that those previously regarded as cranks, with inferior qualifications and expertise, are sometimes worth listening to. With any other than than the completely non-controversial topics, I have found the history and discussion pages for wiki articles often as informative as the articles themselves.
AMBOY, Calif. — Democrat Liberal Senator Dianne Feinstein introduced legislation in Congress on Monday to protect a million acres of the Mojave Desert in California by scuttling some 13 big solar plants and wind farms planned for the region.
But before the bill to create two new Mojave national monuments has even had its first hearing, the California Democrat has largely achieved her aim. Regardless of the legislation’s fate, her opposition means that few if any power plants are likely to be built in the monument area, a complication in California’s effort to achieve its aggressive goals for renewable energy.
Developers of the projects have already postponed several proposals or abandoned them entirely. The California agency charged with planning a renewable energy transmission grid has rerouted proposed power lines to avoid the monument.
re. Jonathan Bagley (22 December, 2009), yes the Wikipedia take on this issue is pure propaganda, bya handful of anonymous POV pushers, to use some of thier own silly jargon. (Point-of-view). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Not worth worrying about, I'd say, Jonathan, although for sure journalists are copying the material off the site uncritically all the time. Not worth worrying about becuase the journalists are being led by the same forces anyway that drive Wikipedia editors. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Anyway, I noticed that several people, including one of THE letters writes (17 December 2009) say they cannnot see why I argue in the that outlawing incandescent light bulbs while encouraging cars to switch to electricity was 'irrational'. The remark was intended to be a little tongue-in-cheek, but I still think is basically correct. How many ways shall we count it? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
First of all, the sheer amount of electricity that can be saved by swapping to 'low-energy' bulbs is, in terms of the amount of energy that the sun heats the atmosphere by each day, entirely negligible. The idea that 'saving' this energy could affect the earth's climate is risible.That is one form of irrationality. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
It is rather a symbolic action - but it is a symbolism with a heavy price in terms of environmental pollution and human comfort. (Similarly, cars run on electricity require highly polluting metals in the new batteries.) Since the action is proffered out of concern for the environment, that is another form of irrationality. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
If we allow the symbolism that any saving of electricity is good, we surely have to also accept that any new use of electricity must be B.A.D. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Thirdly, in terms of the 'CO2' theory, now formally ditched at Copenhagen, electricity for light bulbs could in any case be from virtuous 'low CO2' sources, such as wind turbines - or more likely nuclear power. Thus the electricity 'wasted' by the bulbs may be said to have nothing at all to do with the CO2 emissions full stop. In France 95% of domestic electricity is thus produced - but of course all the lightbulbs still have to be changed! That is another form of irrationality. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Fourthly, cars run on electricity have to charge their batteries somewhere. Using a grid system, that source will include oil-fired, gas and coal power stations. Electric cars are thus producing the dreaded CO2 again. What's more irrational, is favouring the conversion of a usable energy source, like oil or coal into a different from, electricity in the grid, and then again into electricity in a battery, at all stages 'wasting' energy - in order to appear green and 'virtuous' in terms of energy use. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
I'm sure there are more reasons why the policy is irrational, but that's surely enough to be going on with. After all, computers also use up energy, and not disputing unnecessary points could perhaps be a vital tool in the struggle to help save the planet!
What will it take to have all those people look at the inconsistencies of the Hockey Stick Chart, at the Inconvenient Truth of the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Glacial Age, at the sad reality of the chain of emails now called Climategate?
.......................................................................................................
This is not a scientific matter, it's entirely an Internet Age problem. Some contributors here, holding tight to this discussion thread as if it was a lifeboat, send floods of information. In doing so, they undermine their own goals.
.......................................................................................................
The Internet is, at its best, a collaborative space. I wish that more people could learn, like I did thanks to Dr. Cohen, about those compelling anomalies. Thanks to the THE, really, but as long as someone like the "science" blogger Colqhoun (a neurochemist and of course climate change specialist, ipso facto), above, can spill venom ("The discussion seems to have been dominated by proponents of the George Bush school of policy-based evidence. Perhaps, having recently been left unemployed by the advent of Barack Obama, they have nothing better to do.") in a kind of hit and run manner, without being unanimously condemned, how can such discussion threads can lead to real changes?
.......................................................................................................
Perhaps there's wisdom in letting those many hateful comments remain unanswered. But, unless this THE thread becomes the vortex of an online revolution, I only see haters winning easily the whole "battle", after a while, if they are not confronted here for their despicable manners.
.......................................................................................................
We should wonder about how to communicate crucial information beyond privileged communities like this one.
Excellent article. More than sociology is needed. There is also room for psychology. The catastrophic AGW side is replete with persons with hypersensitive reactions to any one possible fact that may conflict with their belief structure. Why? Partly this is a reflection of political rhetoric for imposing vast and suspicious schemes--it has to be enacted quickly.
In my experience, dealing with blind faith believers who have some science background, it is useful to distinguish for them the CO2 doubling temp theory, 1.1C, and the "feedbacks" theory that IPCC science pushes warming up to 2 or 3 or 4 degrees. Is it 5C now? Everyone I know like this assumed the whole temp increase was correlated to CO2 molecules and were unaware about the feedbacks theory. Get them interested in discovering for themselves about feedbacks. It is weak, yet very expensive to our wallets.
@ Jake: "the "feedbacks" theory that IPCC science pushes warming up to 2 or 3 or 4 degrees. "
-- Please explain more in depths.
Martin 23 Dec post, additionally, add to irrational the hydrogen fuel cell. It takes natural gas or other hydrocarbon forms of energy to get the hydrogen, an explosive gas. The Hydrogen fuel cell is just a battery storing energy, and it's much less efficient than pure electric, so why bother? On top of that, the by product of hydrogen fuel cells is water vapor, which makes up . 90% of GW gases. Just get a bridge to plasma fusion, and then we have clean electric power with out dirty nuclear waste. Clean Coal and natural gas fit the bill just fine. Remove soot, not plant food, from the atmosphere.
Here is some more of what will not work: Tom Friedman’s macabre wish for destructive storms to punish sinners aside, his Sunday New York Times column is a tutorial in green shibboleths. The tract is yet another confession of Rev. Tom’s green faith, but it contains two key beliefs echoed by other green disciples that, when put under the microscope, make no sense.
Belief #1: The “moon shot” myth. “In the cold war, we had the space race: who could be the first to put a man on the moon,” writes Friedman. “Today, we need the Earth Race: who can be the first to invent the most clean technologies. All (Obama) needed to do in (Copenhagen) was to look China’s prime minister in the eye and say: ‘I am going to get our Senate to pass an energy bill with a price on carbon so we can clean your clock in clean-tech. This is my moon shot. Game on.’”
Greens love the moon-shot analogy as an example of government spurring tech innovation to reach a goal. So we beat the Russkies. But what did the space race create that was sustainable? Nothing. It was a dead end because there was no other rational economic reason to be on the moon. So it is with federal green goals. Sure, we can beat China to electric cars, but if there is no market for them, they will be a waste of money.
Belief #2: Taxes and regulation create prosperity. “The goal of Earth Racers is to focus on getting . . . an energy bill, with a long-term price on carbon that will really stimulate America to become the world leader in clean-tech,” claims Friedman. “Population is projected to rise, and more and more of those people will want to live like Americans. In this world, demand for clean power and energy efficient cars and buildings will go through the roof.”
No it won’t. Americans live like Americans because, for the most part, consumer markets have been allowed to work. The result is a rich economy based on cheap electricity, cheap gas, cheap products. Friedman’s solution of a high-cost, heavily regulated American market is the very antithesis of what made America an economic magnet.
And for an author who once understood this in his free-market tutorial, The Earth is Flat, it is a stunning regression.
Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!
At least this one doesn't cost 100 Bil $$$ a year: http://www.accuweather.com/video-on-demand.asp?video=28984389001&title=UN%20Says%20Free%20Condoms%20Can%20Battle%20Climate%20Change
I seem to recall that one person in this thread commented that AGW was a "scare" story, and that in New Zealand there had been 26 of these (and no doubt a similar number in most countries), most, if not all, of which had, after the expenditure of substantial, or even enormous, sums of public money to counter the "threat", turned out to be nothing at all. I read in Dr Sheridan le Fanu's column in the Daily Telegraph of 28 December 2009 that swine flu seems to have joined the pantheon of unfounded scare stories. The number of deaths from this flu has turned out to be so miniscule that it surely ranks as the mildest flu epidemic ever, but the UK government has stockpiled £1bn worth of the vaccine, which the public won't take, and which doctors or nurses are even less willing than the public to take. This is enough to build four hospitals, or to pay for all the hip replacement operations for the next 30 years.
The public's respect for physicists is as nothing towards their and credulity towards medical experts. That millions of people agree to make themesvles ill (via innocluations of 'weakened' forms of disease) on the basis of the opinions of these 'wise ones' perhaps shows that we have not moved so very far from the days of the witch doctors drilling holes in skulls to release evil sprits...
As the editor of 'Energy&Environment' and co-author of 'International Environmental Agreements: The Failure of the Kyoto Process, 2002 with A. Kellow),and former Senior Research Fellow at SPRU, University of Sussex,I argue that we need cheap energy for poverty reduction and development. I liked the original article and much of the subsequent debate, except when it degenerated into a discussion of anti-semitism.
Science has often been used and misused by the 'powerful' as well as the weak in order to persuade, gain legitimacy or slander opponents.In a world of many gods, the UN's appeal to science as utlimate source of authority should not surprise, but has failed. This is good for science, for 'the warmers' have grievously misused climatology, but a real problem remains for governments with so many agendas tied to the warming threat.
As a contribution to the debate I would like to point out two facts that seem to have been overlooked, but have long formed part of my 'sceptical' or rather agnostic position, a position based on a over a decade of research into the IPCC and climate change politics: the IPCC was set up as an intergovernmental body by a small number of imported energy-dependent states when the era of high oil prices came to an end, in 1986-87. Many energy and R&D, not to mention environmentalist,interests and agendas saw this as a threat and called for regulations that would protect noncarbon based fuels and technologies. Hence the activities of the much ignored working group three of the IPCC. It, not the science group, provided the 'solutions' to a problems that had to be dangerous global warming warming. Only be respnding to dangrous warming could the high cost of carbon energy be maintained in order to support its competitors.
Seconldy, the 1992 Framework Comnvention on Climate Change, did not ask the IPCC to study the evidence for climate change and its possible causes (as it should have) but required it to support a convention that assumed, and enshrined in international law, that global warming was approaching as emissions kept on rising, that it was caused by these emissions and that it was dangerous. Large areas of scientific study were therefore excluded or downgraded, many scientists in fact persecuted. What remained of climate science and its supporting disciplines, all was then funded (not by the IPCC but its member governments), selected and interpreted by officials from environment agencies, research organisations and UN bureaucrats, to 'underpin' this claim of dangrous man-made warming. This claim has not been disproven, in part because science has been selectively used to support it.
The rest is history.... or is it? The interests and agendas calling for a higher price for carbon fuels by regulation and taxation, continue though the world recsssion may reduce their strength. How will they fare without the climate threat?
Watch the price of 'traded carbon' and the new debates about energy security and ocean acidification, and population. The Malthusian ideoplogy is by no means dead.
If their is global warming on the scale suggested - insisted - by the AGW folk (and I am a substantial sceptic) surely it is impossible to prevent given the world population, its continuing increase, and the demand for energy which will not be reduced by wastefully converting one form of energy into another, or poisoning the planet even more thoroughly with nuclear. Instead, we should be preparing to combat its impact, and that is where resources should be directed, not to futile attempts to reduce CO2 output. But that would call for engineers, horticulturalists etc, not physicists and meteorologists. Shame.
An old friend in the UK forwarded me RW's comments with the note, "an excellent comment on 'Climate Change', if you have the time to read this".
My response:
I didn't know you are a 'Flat Earther' - grin!
I find this piece excellent only because it illustrates type of person that seem to make up most of the 'denialists'.
Apart from the fact that it's badly written (can I assume that the first two sentences are a quote?) the writer exposes him/herself as an emotional rather than logical person and one who prefers to base their arguments on name calling rather than fact.
The terms that jump off the page, in order of appearance are:
Tosh
Puerile
Claptrap
Half baked demagogue
Fascist anarchists
Social parasites
Vomit
It's mildly amusing though in that the writer argues for democracy and
decency yet cites Cardinal George Pell as a person of integrity and
intelligence. Pell is an intolerant reactionary who treats all people as
lesser beings who must unquestioningly follow his belief. The author forgets that Pell's fictional god is not a democrat but a jealous dictator.
Overall the author sounds like a typical American Republican of average
education and unthinking piousness but lacking the grace and humility that
that concept implies (But I now guess he/she is a fellow Brit?).
People like this are potentially dangerous to the world, having the Nero mentality of 'Fiddling as Rome burns'. Hopefully RW is not a policy or decision maker.
RW reveals the minimal value of his/her ability to discuss a topic in the
last few words: "end of story -nothing more to be said"
There's a lot more to be said - or we may indeed see the' End Of The Story'.
It does feel like this thread is coming to an end, but it is a pity it is doing so with more invective trying to counter invective. I will try to avoid that. At the end of this contribution I will pose a question for the AGW lobby..... Martin Cohen quoted Feyerabend. I doubt many scientists have read 'Against Method', which for me is one of the great books of the second half of the last century. It is not an easy read, and you need to have quite a bit of scientific knowledge as well as an understanding of three strands of the critique of modern, positivistic science - history, philosophy and sociology of science. As A N Whitehead once observed, "Science repudiates philosophy: it does not seek to justify its faith." Or words to that effect. And the sciences are perhaps alone in not making a study of the foundations of the discipline(s) a requirement for undergraduates. The few scientists who do venture into the study of the nature of the scientific method (if there is one, which has yet to be authoritatively described if it does exist, and many have tried) call themselves 'Popperians', in my experience. They are largely unaware that Kuhn and Feyerabend have 'falsified' falsificationism (and students at the LSE in the 60s know only too well how dogmatic and cross Popper was in his lectures if anyone dared challenge falsificationism). However, for the moment I am prepared to be a Popperian and pose the question his Demarcation Criterion poses to anything claiming to be science rather than 'metaphysics' (Feyerabend claims all science is metaphysics, which does not mean he is saying it is 'bad' at all). The question Popper posed to Marxists, Freudians, and some claim should be posed to Darwinians, is: what empirical evidence would you take as definitely falsifying your hypothesis/hypotheses? I pose it here to AGW hypothesis believers. Clearly you do not take any of the contrary evidence currently put to you as being sufficient to falsify your beliefs. What would you take? Popper argued that if there is nothing proposed as potentially falsifying an hypothesis, it must be a metaphysical belief, like a belief in God, and not scientific knowledge. I look forward to some suggestions! It will at least help to keep the thread going in a non-abusive way - I sincerely hope.
Yes, thanks 'doublesceptic', the topic is more philosophical than sometimes our digressions make it appear! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
And right now, if we idle some time on George Monbiot;s global warming newsletter (graciously funded by guardian.co.uk) we see his successful planting of crops in recent winters as evidence for 'climate change' with the current freeze counting as definitely nothing to do with climate processes, but merely fluctuations in weather patterns. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
French meteo advise likewise (Le Monde etc.) that the current cold weather is 'caused' by a reverse in the North Atlantic Oscillation. Great jargon! (And we know that the rain is caused by the clouds too...) This is also 'weather', not climate change. And both experts agree, that 2010 will be warmer than ever before - not only in line with 'AGW' but more 'evidence' supporting it....
Here's some fresh fact:
http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/news/20100121/
To the cold facts of the greenhouse effect and anthropogenic increases in carbon dioxide concentrations, you can add another, freshly reaffirmed: the world is getting hotter.
I won't be surprised if the sceptics here choose to believe this is a fabrication by Nasa researchers unable to break from the consensus. It seems to me that some people just *won't* apply their reason.
I would like to know what motivates you sceptics. I will tell you what motivates me: I see our great civilisation throwing a toolboxful of spanners in the works of our life support system. It's obvious some harm will come, quite possibly catastrophic harm. It could easily take geological time to get back to where we are today. And the cost of insuring against this existential risk? 1% of GDP annually for the next 50 years. To me this seems like a no-brainer. I guess you think it is too expensive?
It's nice to see there are still a few 'true believers' left- and it's good of you to spare a moment to pop in and enlighten us. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
But your evidence is just more of the same. Did you spot that your 'source' is the Goddard Institute, and Gavin Schmidt, editor of realclimate.org (set up by the PR company that Al Gore's environmental advisor was a staffer for). Did you notice that Gavin Schmidt and Michael Mann - of the now discredited 'hockey stick' graph are both colleagues and chums? Or that the Goddard is run by James Hansen, one of Global Warming Theories' founding fathers, so to speak, who has such an 'extreme' position the matter that he has fallen out with most of the others in the pro-camp. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Quoting them is like quoting Liverpool Supporters Club on 'who are the greatest' football team. Or maybe like using George Monbiot's vegetable patch as a marker for global climate change. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Look at the details too- Gavin and co admit (in the small print) that their 'record temperatures' result from spikes in measurements in the Arctic and 'parts' of the Antarctic - data sources that are considered so poor that the Met Office and other climate centrers do not incorporate at all into their models. But the Goddard not only uses theses dubious statistics, as they say themselves, they then mathematically extrapolate them 'over the entire land mass' - obtaining many more record high temperatures! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
No wonder they are very pleased with their figures - which seem to bear no relationship to the practical reality we are experiencing in the Northern hemisphere, of cool summers and long winters. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
And, in accusing us of not reading anything, did you consider that point much discussed in the comments above - about what it means to talk of 'a global temperature'? Especially when some people included temperatures in the air - a hundred or a thousand meters up and some of the sea - the, a hundred or a thousand metres down! But as far as the CO2 theory goes, it is these temperatures that matter. So all this talk about 'record high temperatures' over the land masses is just empty propaganda from those who brought us the polar bear stories.
You might be interested in an article I have written about science and scepticism in climate change. The reference is Irwin, Ruth "Climate Change and Heidegger's Philosophy of Science" in Essays in Philosophy 11 (1) (2010) article 4.
Scepticism is a relic of a particular view of science - one where correctitude and concensus is the criteria for truth rather than a high correlation (for want of a better phrase) with evidence.
What I really hate about this article is the way it accuses those who accept climate change of propagandising and then uses blatant propaganda techniques itself.
My personal least favourite is the "heretics" and "holocaust deniers" line. I only ever see these terms mentioned by skeptics, usually just after the accusation that anyone who might agree with the views of the IPCC etc is "brainwashed" or a "zealot".
For some people this is powerful stuff emotionally, but amongst people who are genuinely interested in answers, it doesn't really do you any credit Mr Cohen.
From what I can make out all of the criticism leveled at Mr Cohen is mere opinion of the kind he is being accused of.His critics do not stop for a moment and think that he may well be right in his assessment of the situation they just do the thing they accuse others of doing and discount what he has to say out of hand. I have have studied the findings of scientists that oppose the idea that man is responsible for warming the planet or indeed that the planet is warming at all. There is no proof that one could point to and say " there it is, proof positive we are all going to die". Climate change works on lengthy time scales, it really isn't overnight and in between big ice ages we get warming and small ice ages as with the period known as the Maunder Minimum, where millions of people died from cold and disease but history attributes the deaths in that time almost exclusively to the Black Death. Propaganda history. The fact is many well respected scientists believe we are heading into a small ice age, rather than warming, due to the absence of sun spots which was a factor during the Maunder Minimum when the lakes, rivers, and seas froze solid all over the northern hemisphere. A detail left out of the IPCC calculations among many others. Even the recent super cold spell has been attributed to warming. It beggars belief the level of stupidity that seeming intelligent people have demonstrated. Weather, without question has been politicised so that a few rich men can get richer by taxing and selling us the air we breath and all you smart arse idiots are going along with it without the slightest questioning. I think Mr Cohen gave a good account of himself and his critics in this posting are morons because even if he is wrong it it better to err in favour of common sense than the kind of crass stupidity that would give in with out a fight. The truth is none of us know anything for sure and the fact is we will all have to wait 100 years to find out who was right and who was wrong by which time we will all be dead and buried and the men that profited from this appalling lie will be long out of reach of the law. It is interesting to note that those of whom I speak men are all Wall Street men, in particular, Goldman Sachs. But they wouldn't lie to us now would they?
Disclaimer: All user contributions posted on this site are those of the user ONLY and NOT those of TSL Education Ltd or its associated trademarks, websites and services. TSL Education Ltd does not necessarily endorse, support, sanction, encourage, verify or agree with any comments, opinions or statements or other content provided by users.