Skeptics have been making the case for some time that there’s something amiss in the climate change debate. At the heart of it is the failure of a few leading scientists to maintain scientific integrity above all other considerations. There is something peculiar about climate change that makes some of us want/need to believe in something despite contrary evidence or even lack of evidence. That’s not science. It’s religion. And thus certain leading climate scientists are finding themselves the butt of a growing body of climate change humor. So it goes.
Continue reading about Hide The Decline – Dissembling On The Road To Climate Change
Do these papers represent the absolute truth on climate change and man’s role in it? I doubt it. And that’s the point isn’t it. Science is all about doubting, questioning, challenging and searching for rational truth. When science become politicized as it has in the climate change debate, science becomes dysfunctional and a false means of manipulation and influencing public policy. We all need to do a little less “believing” and a little more “knowing” before we act and let others act on our behalf. The science of global warming is not settled. Read. Read a lot! Know more. Believe less. Warming or cooling, it makes for a happier, safer and calmer world.
Continue reading about 450 Peer-Reviewed Papers Supporting Skepticism of “Man-Made” Global Warming
One thing is for sure. It seems the debate about what is causing global warming is far from over. Indeed some would say it is hotting up.
“I think that this, at moderate scale, is what is going in the AGW debate. When one side finds the other denying the “obvious” relevance of some fact, the principle of charity breaks down. Either the other guy doesn’t know what he’s saying, or he’s too much a fool to be worth talking to. Which is a reasonable position, provided we note that what will seem obvious, or indeed “reasonable”, will depend upon one’s background theory and different background theories will lead to contrary conclusions about who is and who is not a fool. Thus the unalloyed mutual acrimony of the AGW debate.”
Continue reading about The Climate Change Debate – Why We Can’t Agree
Paltridge says that behind the climate change debate there are two basic truths seldom articulated. “The first is that the scientists pushing the seriousness of global warming are perfectly well aware of the great uncertainty attached to their cause. The difficulty for them is to ensure that the lip service paid to uncertainty is enough to convince governments of the need to continue research funding, but is not enough to cast real doubt on the case for action. The paths of public comment and official advice on the matter have to be trodden very carefully. The second basic truth is that there is a belief among scientific ‘global warmers’ that they are an under-funded minority among a sea of wicked sceptics who are extensively funded by industry and close to Satan. The difficulty for them is to maintain a belief in their own minority status while insisting in public that the sceptics, at least among the ranks of the scientifically literate, are very few.”
Continue reading about Fear & Loathing On The Road To Climate Change
Professor Svensmark concludes……”So in many ways, we stand at a crossroads. The near future will be extremely interesting and I think it is important to recognize that nature is completely independent of what we humans think about it. Will Greenhouse theory survive a significant cooling of the Earth? Not in its current dominant form. Unfortunately, tomorrow’s climate challenges will be quite different than greenhouse theory’s predictions, and perhaps it becomes again popular to investigate the sun’s impact on climate.”
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce wants the Environmental Protection Agency to hold a public hearing to put “the science of climate change on trial,” the Los Angeles Times reports today. And the Chamber already has another famous trial in mind:
Chamber officials say it would be “the Scopes monkey trial of the 21st century” — complete with witnesses, cross-examinations and a judge who would rule, essentially, on whether humans are warming the planet to dangerous effect. “It would be evolution versus creationism,” said William Kovacs, the chamber’s senior vice president for environment, technology and regulatory affairs.
Continue reading about US Chamber of Commerce Puts Climate Change On Trial
Richard Feynman was a delightful national treasure and Nobel Prize winning Physicist. You many remember him as the thoughtful scientist who nailed the root cause of the Challenger space shuttle disaster – cold 0-rings – which he demonstrated live during a presentation covered by the media by dropping some of the same 0-ring material into his glass of ice water. He also worked on the Manhattan Project. For Richard, being a scientist meant the truth was more important than being right. Integrity in science is paramount. Without it, science isn’t science and it will fail us. Or worse. We live in troubled pivotal times where money, politics and environmental fervor have created a heady cocktail that may be luring too many scientists – and society – astray. Richard warned his fellow scientist about going over to the dark side during his famous “Cargo Cult Science” commencement address that he gave at Caltech in 1974. If, like me, you’re grappling with all we’ve been told to date regarding global warming, climate change, carbon, and mankind’s role in it all, you could do a lot worse than read Feynman’s address regarding the slippery slope to bad science that he refers to as “Cargo Cult Science”.
Continue reading about Global Warming, Feynman, And Cargo Cult Science
Perhaps most surprising to me personally is the Vostok ice core data that goes back 100’s of thousands of years as shown plotted in the graph below. You’d be right if you concluded that this data shows a clear correlation between Co2 and temperature. But a closer analysis reveals (not discernible in the graph) that the CO2 lags behind the temperature by an average of 800 years! Temperatures do indeed appear to control carbon and not the other way around (perhaps through temperature driven solubility changes in sea water). And while it’s possible that carbon also influences temperature the data don’t show much evidence of that. As temperatures rise, on average it takes 800 years before carbon starts to move. The extraordinary thing is that this CO2 lag is well accepted by climatologists, yet virtually unknown outside these circles.
Just because you win an Oscar doesn’t mean you’re right – even if you’re a true “believer”. In this last of 4 videos, myth making is revealed in Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” (his book and movie). He runs fast and loose with the Vostok CO2 vs. Temp data (doesn’t everybody?!!). He projects a fantastic 20 foot rise in sea level by the end of the century when the best guess is 3 feet. There’s more but why spoil the fun.
Continue reading about Climate Change – Parts III & IV – Evolution of Myths
