The Climate thread

[GRHorn 105]

Ok this is a long year in review write up written by a organic chemist from Cornell that has made a bit of name for himself as a smartass online commentator. There’s a section devoted to the dive he took into the climate change debate for the first time this year. He makes no profound conclusions, but takes a look at a lot of the science that’s often cited. Has plenty of citations in there as well. 

Spoiler

Climate Change

“I had dinner with Obama’s Secretary of Energy on Saturday night (Steven Chu). He said there are no credible scientists who doubt global warming: none.”

~ Collum email, 9/11/16

“I know things that 1000/1000 PhD chemists would assure me are true that are wrong. For this reason, I am agnostic on global warming.”

~ Collum email, 2017

“[Climate change is] too complex a problem for me to dedicate enough bandwidth so as to formulate a strong opinion. My colleagues in the sciences that I ask all seem to believe it, but I am not sure how relevant that data is.”

~ Collum email, 2/12/17

“If I had to bet a paycheck, I would bet anthropogenic global warming is real. If I had to bet ten paychecks, I would bet that we are going to do the experiment despite the best intentions of those who worry.”

~ David Collum, 2018 Year in Review

I noted in last year’s YIR that I had not done my 10,000 hours of homework needed to form an educated opinion and merely criticized my scientific peers who seem unconstrained by such ignorance. However, the debate is less lopsided than the popular press portrays with countless credible scientists who have not answered the siren call to save the world from hominids. With prods from friends and family to “do the right thing,” I finally dove into this plot, and, while I am not done with my readings, I’m less agnostic.

“My god, you’re a total disgrace to Science. A whiny, doctrinaire little man with libertarian leanings. Please “back away” from the debate and refrain from winging about it on podcasts. Your involvement is toxic.”

~ Gerry Mueller, professional Collum emailer

Jeepers Gerry: If you can’t be kind, at least have the decency to be vague. There are a few facts and concepts that are uncontentious and possibly agreed upon by those who believe climate change is a problem—‘changers’—and those who question significant portions of that story—’deniers’. (Many deniers will be irritated by my binary categorization.) Sucking carbon-sequestered fossil fuels from the ground and burning them will, necessarily, alter the CO₂ cycle. The climate is always changing and sea levels rise and fall, but both appear to be on the rise to varying degrees and depending on the time frame (20 versus 20,000 years). Humans have also been beating the crap out of the flora and fauna ever since we formed our first mobs and satisfied our Quest for Fire. Critters in our way adapted or died. This blue orb of ours has finite resources, and, as physicist Albert Bartlett would say,…

“’Sustainable growth’ is an oxymoron”

~ Albert Bartlett, UC–Berkeley physicist

We can consume finite resources for a while, but our inability to understand the simple math of the exponential function is a problem. Vast resource depletion and ubiquitous plastics and micro-plastics in the environment are deeply disturbing; generic pollution is less troubling. If we learned anything from the Gulf oil spill and Iraq oil fires, Earth is adaptable. I fully support technological advancements (Facebook aside) and think environmental and energy needs could drive the Mother of Technological Revolutions (MTR).

“The great tragedy of science is the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact.”

~ Thomas Huxley

There is a natural asymmetry to the climate debate: it is far easier to weed whack theories with an “ugly fact” than to develop them. The debate, however, is about distinguishing Nature’s Wrath from “negative externalities” of the human existence. How much environmental damage should we tolerate to fully enjoy the benefits of human ingenuity? At what point must we clean up our act? However, many try to smuggle pollution and depletion arguments into the climate debate. It is this debate that seems to be lacking guard rails and may be careening off a cliff. It is exacerbated by the fact that we all seem to have personal tipping points beyond which it would take devine intervention to change our minds. I confess that I am close to that tipping point. I’ve crossed paths with many changers who are now deniers; I am unfamiliar with the reverse. The problem is that nobody fully understands the interactions of the geologic, meteorological, solar, atmospheric, chemical, oceanographic, and biologic systems well enough to comprehend their ramifications. Here is one maxim I am positive is true:

“Nobody on the planet—not one person—knows what will happen to the World’s climate and ecosystem 50 years from now. We are all guessing, some more than others.”

~ Me

I am addressing those who still have a chance of finding the buried bodies in the climate crisis debate. The 26 so-called “maxims” listed below should not be construed as “general truths” but rather conversation starters. Preface everything I say with an implicit “supposedly”, “it is said that,” or “according to some guy on the internet.” Politics has invaded the debate so profoundly that truly unequivocal assertions are now on the endangered theses list. I can assure you that every single statement I make casting aspersions on the narrative has been attacked (debunked). Not one criticism goes uncontested. None.

“I no longer know what to say to students and postdocs regarding how to navigate the craziness in the field of climate science.”

~ Judith Curry, former chair of Atmospheric Sciences at Georgia Institute of Technology

(1) Sincere climate scientists deserve our sympathy. The serious ones are trying to get it right despite being surrounded by a cacophony of intellectual goulash. Stepping out of line—contesting any aspect of the climate change story—risks serious pain and suffering. Science has become a political football. Signing off on climate change immunizes you from criticism, but tripwires are everywhere. Science is hard enough to get right under the best of circumstances, let alone when barraged with conflicts. I doubt I could negotiate these waters.

“Every five years the UN-based International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) publishes a ‘consensus of the world’s top scientists’ on all aspects of climate change. Quite apart from the dubious process by which these scientists are selected, such consensus is the stuff of politics, not of science. The claim that the IPCC has the world’s top 1500 or 2500 scientists is simply not true.”

~ Paul Reiter, Professor of Medical Entomology at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, contributor to the third IPCC Working Group II, employee of the Center for Disease Control for 22 years.

The IPCC, the UN-based International Panel on Climate Change, is an inherently political organization staffed by people with wildly different backgrounds.¹ (Let us not forget that U.N. Human Rights Council members include Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Somalia, Nigeria, Qatar, Egypt, and Cuba. And joining in 2020 we have China, Venezuela, Mauritania, Sudan, and Libya.) The IPCC was founded to study global warming not just the climate. It has separate scientific and policy study groups.² According to a recent Forbes article, “Climate scientists are starting to push back against exaggerations by activists, journalists, and other scientists.” I guess there is hope of regaining our balance.

“It’s shocking to hear someone with your education espouse climate denial. You really should be ashamed.”

~ Gerry Mueller, toxic emailer again

“If you have the facts on your side, argue the facts. If you have the law on your side, argue the law. If you have neither, attack the witness.”

~ legal aphorism

“Climate experts have been attacked by these people, and they claim that we should be much more radical. They are doomsters and extremists; they make threats…The IPCC reports have been read in a similar way to the Bible: you try to find certain pieces or sections from which you try to justify your extreme views. This resembles religious extremism.”

~ Petteri Taalas, Secretary General of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO)

(2) Credible scientists and thoughtful individuals who doubt popular narratives are in the minority. The changers have countless organizations set up to defend the authenticity of their cause. We’ll cover the magnitudes on that below. By contrast, the openly skeptical deniers are more of a rag-tag bunch of individualists who are largely free-balling it. You can find lists—or should I say blacklists—to humiliate them.³ Through a judicious choice of quotes and affiliations in the shadowed boxes, however, I have tried to underscore that many have serious chops. I urge you to pay attention to the quotes and the credentials.

“It does not matter who you are, or how smart you are, or what title you have, or how many papers your side has published, if your prediction is wrong then your hypothesis is wrong. Period.”

~ Richard Feynman, winner of the 1965 Nobel Prize in Physics (and one of the greats on that scale)

”Consensus science is not science. Consensus science is politics.”

~ Michael Crichton, best-selling science-fiction author and denier, RIP

(3) Consensus means jack squat. “We declare, with more than 11,000 scientist signatories from around the world, clearly and unequivocally that planet Earth is facing a climate emergency.”⁴ Really? Unequivocally? If this is really what they signed verbatim, we have located 11,000 scientifically trained nitwits. Here are just a few equivocators:

• The Global Warming Petition Project rounded up over 31,000 scientists (9,000 with PhDs) equivocating that the panic over climate change is bullshit. Worldwide there are 21 million degrees in science, from bachelor degrees to PhDs, blurring what “scientist” means in these petitions.⁵
• A letter sent by 49 former NASA scientists and astronauts, all with PhDs in tow, urged NASA to dial back their support of the global warming narrative.⁶
• A letter authored by 500 carefully vetted scientists—big swinging dicks and ovaries of steel—urged the UN to acknowledge there is no climate crisis.⁷
• In 2015, 30 Nobel laureates got huge media attention by signing a letter asking for immediate action on climate change while it went unnoticed that 35 other Nobel laureates sitting in the room did not sign.⁸

The most popular of all statistics declares that “97% of climate scientists believe anthropogenic global warming (AGW) is a significant problem.” A colleague and climate change activist at Cornell recently claimed in a debate at Cornell, “that 97% number is not even debatable.” He’s right; it’s complete garbage. Over 11,000 abstracts from papers supposedly on climate change were culled down to 79 papers, of which 77 said climate change was a problem.⁹ The one chard of truth: 77 of 79 is about 97%. Here is a nice critique of an assortment of polls.¹⁰

“The time for debate has ended….The science is settled, even if political opinion is not.”

~ Marcia McNutt, the editor of Science magazine

(4) Science is never settled. No disrespect intended, but any scientist who claims that climate science is settled is an idiot. The notion of “settled science” is merely a rallying cry used by catastrophists to shut down debate and get governments to yank out their checkbooks. Physicists of the late 19th century were confident that they had it right, too, until Einstein proved them wrong. Opinions are like butts; everybody has one.

“The vast majority of the climate models the IPCC uses as the basis for its predictions have repeatedly incorrectly forecast higher temperatures. According to an analysis by the Cato Institute, 105 of the 108 models predicted a higher surface temperature for the period between 1998 and 2014 than the temperature actually recorded.”

~ Petteri Taalas, Secretary General of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO)

“The climate system is a coupled non-linear system and, therefore, long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible.”

~ IPCC report, 2001, that was subsequently purged because…?

“The models were tuned, should we say… they are all parametrized…if I translate parametrized into English: fudged….we forced the models to include human influence.”

~ Patrick Michaels, former professor of Climatology at University of Virginia, senior fellow at the Cato Institute, president of American Association of State Climatologists, and co-author of 2007 report of the International Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

(5) Beware of models and models of models. Cancer researcher Howard Skipper noted, “A model is a lie that helps you see the truth.” Not only that, many climate models are built on precarious foundations also derived from models. Models that include the presumption of a CO₂-temperature causal relationship are a problem. What if that presumption is wrong? From my read, climate scientists (or at least activists) use the process of elimination. After modeling all known variables, left-over effects are attributed to human activities. “What else could it be?” I get that rhetorical question from chemistry students with some frequency. I invariably respond, “All the things you are too ignorant or too stupid to understand or ponder.”

There are compendia of predicted calamitous climate change events that failed miserably:¹¹droughts, flooding, famine, pestilence, plague, ice ages, and epidemics of kidney stones.¹²One astute scientist was early to conclude the arctic ice was melting so rapidly, it would soon be ice-free. That was in 1814.¹³ Of course climatic predictions often fail. It happens in all disciplines of science. More disturbingly, these seriously colossal failures do not seem to have made the climate modelers (or, to be fair, their activist spokespersons) any more circumspect.

Figure 13. Failed predictions in the media (left) and relative to measured reality (right)

“The unavoidable conclusion is that an anthropogenic air temperature signal cannot have been, nor presently can be, evidenced in climate observables.”

~ Patrick Frank, physicist Stanford Linear Accelerator Laboratory, Stanford University

Patrick Frank, a Stanford physicist with limited experience in climate science but serious chops in statistics and error propagation, had noted that climate change projections often lack error bars. He offers some arcane details of error propagation and then hits us with this gem: if you take the errors on current climate readings and propagate them out to the popular target year 2100, the projected global temperature rise has an error bar of +/- 15 °C.¹⁴ That’s considerably larger than the actual projected single-digit increases. Curiously, intellectual challenges to Patrick’s methods came from physicist and an A-list climate scientist and denier, Roy Spencer. Roy was the Principle Investigator of NASA’s satellite-based temperature monitoring program that found no warming over the few decades of its existence.¹⁵ In any case, a heated debate (a bar fight) broke out.¹⁶ It looked to me like Patrick Frank won. If so, his argument destroys the most polarizing temperature projections.

“Global mean temperatures before 1980 are based on untrustworthy data.”

~ Mototaka Nakamura, International Pacific Research Center School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology, University of Hawaii

“The computer models are predicting seven times more warming than is being observed.”

~ Patrick Michaels, former professor of Climatology at University of Virginia, senior fellow at the Cato Institute, president of American Association of State Climatologists, and co-author of 2007 report of the International Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

(6) Beware of temperature measurements, especially those that form hockey sticks.Accurate temperature measurements rely on both the quality of the thermometers and their placement. Both changed over the last 100 years. How could they not? The fixed monitoring stations are by definition more influenced by humans now than 100 years ago. Some started life in open spaces and are now proximate to shopping malls inadvertently recording what is called the “urban heat island effect”.¹⁷ They show warming. Go figure. Others have been relocated. Corrections for that have been made. Right. There is mounting evidence that somehow the corrections end up reducing the temperatures retrospectively, providing the sought-after positive slope.¹⁸ To repeat, Roy Spencer reports that NASA satellites haven’t registered any temperature changes in the upper atmosphere;¹⁹ this appears to be an awkward talking point for the warming crowd. Figure 13 shows how 102 IPCC-sanctioned models diverged from reality.

“Do I expect you to publicly denounce the hockey stick as obvious drivel? Well, yes.”

~ Jonathan Jones, Professor of Atomic and Laser Physics, University of Oxford

What about climate scientist Michael Mann’s infamous hockey stick, the one that formed the centerpiece of Al Gore’s road show?²⁰ It has been debunked with prejudice. Mann was accused of stitching together two very different data sets, causing both the discontinuity and the slope in Figure 14.²⁰ He massively over weighted tree-ring data from a single stand of bristlecone pine trees in California to create the NHL-ready hockey stick and attain his goals.²¹ A hacker unleashed a cache of 2,000 emails, which revealed skullduggery and launched “Climate-gate”.²² The emails showed that the IPCC was in cahoots with Mann to make the temperatures match their models and mental constructs. One of Mann’s peers, Keith Briffa came to the opposite conclusion. Mann et al. decided Briffa’s data risked “diluting the message…a potential distraction/detraction” and found a way to correct Briffa’s lapse in judgement. It is a colossal black-eye for climate science. Ironically, in 2019—the Year of the Whistleblower—the email hacker remains anonymous.

Figure 14. Michael Mann’s Hockey Stick

“Better that nothing appear than something unacceptable to us…Excuse me while I puke.”

~ Ray Bradley, a coauthor of the Mann’s hockey stick article, on Mann’s hyperbole and overreach

Mann is what my mom would call “a piece of work”. On several occasions Mann mentioned his Nobel Peace Prize, referring to the award the IPCC 200-member organization shared with Al Gore. He was on roll when he became Time Magazine’s Person of the Year:

Figure 15. Michael Mann’s Nobel Price and his Person of the Year award.

Statistical analyses by statistician Steve McIntyre and others snapped that hockey stick right over their knees as part of Climate-gate.^22,23,24 Mann has been called the “Jerry Sandusky” or “Joe McCarthy” of climate change. I would say “Wayne Gretzky” because he took his data to where the conclusion would be. Others using rational models and valid data failed to replicate the hockey stick. Using Mann’s model with any random data produces a hockey stick. Oops. In an attempt to silence critics, Mikey sued journalist Mark Steyn and climate scientist Tim Ball for libel. Steyn’s public criticisms are hysterically unfiltered.²⁵While the Steyn case is still in the courts, a recent decision in the Tim Ball suit declared that Mann failed to present evidence of his model’s validity during the course of an eight-year trial.²⁶ Mann declared he did not need to provide the evidence. The court ruled he was in contempt and responsible for Tim Ball’s considerable legal fees.

“Did Mann et al. get it wrong? Yes, Mann et al. got it wrong.”

~ Simon Tett, Professor of Climate Science, University of Edinburgh

In the wake of Mann’s humiliating defeat, the hockey stick has been decommissioned and placed in the archives of flawed science. Just kidding. Activists, including the IPCC, still use it to scare people. The IPCC guys should know better. After all, they all have Nobel Prizes.

“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary.”

~ H.L. Mencken

(7) The boundaries between propaganda and lying are fuzzy. While climate-gate and the hockey stick are low-water marks in the climatic swamp, there are other unmentionables slithering in the muck. Avid deniers like Steve S. Goddard (a.k.a. Tony Heller) and Greenpeace founder Patrick Moore show how easily cherry-picked statistics can morph into fraudulent conclusions as seen in these videos.^27,28 Goddard brings dollops of snot as he emphasizes outright fraud.²⁸ I would simply point out that conclusions depend on the referenced starting date as illustrated in the following three examples:

Global temperatures over 20 years…

Global temperatures over 140 years…

Global temperatures over 10,000 years…

Here is a simple example of some high falutin’ hooey that I stumbled into during a spat with a climate activist professing to be a scientist. I was prompted to check out a definitive report on the impact of global warming on the Southwestern US and quickly glommed on to Figure 16 (left) showing acreage burned.²⁹ I told her it looked fabricated. It takes a special kind of delusion to think you can deconvolute human-derived climate effects, natural environmental effects, and the countless other demographic and land management changes occurring in the region (like 6 million people moving into California over the last few decades).³⁰ Also, using cumulative effects is dubious because they always go from lower left to upper right. (Imagine how bleak the world would look if you plotted the cumulative deaths from cancer over the last century.) With serious swagger and ‘tude she suggested I read the primary literature, so I did. The original paper was models upon models using data from models. The authors knew it; they were just doing their day jobs. Then I noticed the fib: the report had removed the word “modelled” from the y-axis. That’s a curious typo, wouldn’t ya say? Now, for laughs, look at the burn acreage in the US measured over the 20th century and presented annualized.³¹ You can see the slope there too but you get a different impression. I suspect the data from the Southwest would look similar if they had gone pre-1985…but they didn’t.

Figure 16. Burn acreage in the Southwest over 30 years and in the US over 90 years

Many use tree ring data as a proxy for global warming. Bristlecone pine tree experts, of which I consider myself one having written a five-page B^– freshman term paper on them in 1973, say the tree ring densities reflect a composite of stresses on the pines…in specific locations…during the summers…during the day. Temperature is just one variable. An email from climate scientist and IPCC contributor Tom Wigley to Michael Mann noted that Wigley’s son doing a science fair project found tree rings to be more sensitive to moisture than temperature. A high school kid debunked the hockey stick and the use of tree ring data to measure temperature.

Of course, the media runs with the most interesting narratives and then sensationalizes them. One sleuth rounded up all the headlines claiming that global warming would be twice as bad in their region.³² These unfortunate regions include Canada, Russia, Arctic, Norway, Finland, South Africa, China, all of Africa, Tibet, “The Mountains”, Alaska, Japan, Korea, Iceland, Britain, Adirondacks, Spain, Australia, Himalayas, Singapore, and Lake Wobegon. I also suggest you beware of a common gimmick of using lots of red on temperature maps. You can make those reds look so bright you need sunscreen. Damn! That looks hot!

“Vintners in France haven’t seen such a succession of hot weather and dry harvest since the 14th century, during a time called “the Black Death.”

~ Bloomberg news, inadvertently noting it was hot 600 years ago

(8) The world has been warmer in the past. I am not talking eons but merely centuries. Vikings grew barley in Greenland 1,000 years ago.³³ The nasty glitch in the catastrophe storyline is that the world was hotter during the Medieval Warm Period (MWP) from 950 – 1250 AD.³⁴ Glaciers are melting as they tend to do. The receding Mendenhall glacier in Alaska revealed tree stumps from 1,000 to 1,200 years ago.³⁵ They must have grown there 1200 years ago, right? Mediterranean grapes were cultivated throughout Great Britain.³⁶The MWP is one of the bogies that Mann et al. got caught trying to eradicate from the data in Climate-gate. Changers also fear the Black Death will emerge from thawing arctic graves,³⁷ ignoring the efficacy of modern antibiotics and the fact that they must have been buried in warmer times.

“People are complaining about the weather. Why don’t they fix it?”

~ Old Joke

(9) There is no optimal global temperature. The warm period 7,000 to 5,000 years ago witnessed ancient Egypt and Greece prospering.³⁸ Flourishing civilizations developed during the Roman Warm Period (RWP) from 250 BC to 400 AD.³⁹ The Medieval Warm Period (MWP) from 950 – 1250 AD saw the resurgence of civilization and ushered in the beginnings of the Renaissance. In contrast, the 18th century cooling period, The Little Ice Age, brought in famines and death.⁴⁰ Given the choice of feast or famine, I’ll take feast every time.

“Tripling CO₂ in Earth’s atmosphere will be a major benefit to life on Earth.”

~ Will Happer, Physicist at Princeton and former director of the Department of Energy’s Office of Science

(10) The correlation and causality of the relationship between CO₂ and temperature are nuanced. Look at the stacked plots in Figure 17. That is a serious correlation of CO₂concentration and temperature, and that little arrow showing today is supposed to scare the bejeesus out of you. What you cannot see is the statistically significant 800-year lag of CO­₂ concentrations behind the temperature movements.⁴¹ We’ve got causality backwards: higher temperatures are causing more CO₂. Why? As oceans warm they release CO₂. It’s called “degassing” and you learn about it in freshman chemistry (or so I’m told).

Figure 17. CO₂ (top) and temperature (bottom) over the last 800,000 years.

Meanwhile, the dreaded greenhouse gas effect of CO₂ has a non-linear (logarithmic) relationship: the more CO₂ you pump into the atmosphere, the less effect it has. Princeton physicist William Happer says we are close to the point of maximum influence—saturation.⁴² It is one of the countless poorly understood (and often ignored) feedback loops that render the climate-change debate complex.

[That] “CO₂, the life of plants, was considered for a time to be a deadly poison…will be remembered as the greatest mass delusion in the history of the world.”

 

~ Richard Lindzen, MIT physicist, and former head of the National Academy of Sciences

(11) CO₂ is plant food. Let’s bullet this idea:

• The pre-industrial CO₂ of 280 PPM is now up to 400 PPM.⁴³
• Greenpeace co-founder Patrick Moore notes that at 280 ppm we were nearly carbon starved compared with prior ages. Even 400 ppm is starved by historical standards.⁴²
• Greenhouses crank CO₂ levels to >1500 ppm to promote growth.⁴⁴
• The CO₂ content in a Nebraska cornfield at high noon is 50% lower than at night as the corn gobbles it up.⁴⁵
• Nobel Prize winning physicist, Ivar Giaever, submits that the CO₂ spewed into the global atmosphere by all the cars in the world is equivalent to sitting in a 20x20x8 room lighting one match every three years.⁴⁶
• There has been a demonstrable greening of the planet during the past 30 years, an area two times the continental US.⁴⁷ Al Gore forgot to mention this.
• CO₂ suppresses excess moisture loss in plants by closing pores, aiding in drought resistance.⁴⁸
• Nobody knows the optimal level of CO₂ in the atmosphere, but plants love the stuff.

Figure 18. Tree growth at CO₂ levels: ambient, +150 ppm, +300 ppm, and +450 ppm.

“A strong negative feedback of the clouds is missing [from the models]…we have practically no anthropogenic climate change…the low clouds control mainly [sic] the global temperature.”

~ Finnish and Japanese scientists working independently

“The effects of CO₂ are very small, maybe a few percent of the effects of water vapor.”

~ Reid Bryson, former professor of geology and meteorology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, founder of University of Wisconsin’s Department of Meteorology and Center for Climatic Research, first director of the Institute for Environmental Studies

(12) Clouds are a profound contributor to the greenhouse effect and are nearly impossible to model. There is 50-fold more water vapor in the atmosphere than CO₂ and it’s estimated that water makes up 80% of the Earth’s greenhouse gas.⁴⁹ According to NASA in 2008 “the heat-amplifying effect of water vapor is potent enough to double the climate warming caused by increased levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.”⁵⁰ The article now carries a warning that some of its contents might be questionable. (That was so long ago…and so inconvenient.) Higher temperatures also increase the atmospheric moisture content and clouds, offering yet another feedback loop thwarting even crude modeling efforts. There is not a snowball’s chance in hell (or even Greenland apparently) that these guys can predict the influence of clouds years into the future.

“Climate change is all solar, and the CO₂ has never been shown to be causal.”

~ Nir Shaviv (@nshaviv), chairman of the Racah Institute of Physics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. 

(13) Don’t forget the sun! The most demented of alarmists have claimed that methane from cow farts threaten the climate and go on to argue that we should have fewer cows. Meanwhile, they ignore the mighty influence of that 10³⁰-kilogram ball of fusion that we call the sun, radiating unimaginable energy onto the globe. Why is this? Of the dozens of IPCC members, only one is a solar scientist.⁵¹

Figure 19. The collective effects of changes in the Earth’s movements on its climate over thousands of years.

Legions of solar physicists, drawing on their expertise in rhythmic solar cycles, including sunspot activity and 100,000-year Milankovitch cycles (interactions between the Earth’s movements and the climate),⁵² think the sun influences the climate rather profoundly.⁵³ Go figure. Here are words from two prominent ones:

“CO₂ emissions don’t play the major role [in climate change]. Periodic solar activity does. Based on the increase of solar activity during the twentieth century, it should account for between half to two-thirds of all climate change. That, in turn, implies that climate sensitivity to CO₂ should be about 1.0 degree when the amount of CO₂ doubles….All of it shows the same thing, the bulk of climate change is caused by the sun via its impact on atmospheric charge, which means that most of the warming comes from nature — a freshman physics student can see this…The climate of the last millennium was presented as basically fixed until the twentieth century. This is a kind of Orwellian cherry-picking to fit a pre-determined narrative.

~ Nir Shaviv (@nshaviv), chairman of the Racah Institute of Physics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. 

“Neither the rate nor the magnitude of the reported late twentieth century surface warming (1979-2000) lay outside the normal natural variability, nor was it in any way unusual compared to earlier episodes in Earth’s climatic history. Furthermore, solar forcings of temperature change are likely more important than is currently recognized.”

~ Willie Soon, PHD, solar astrophysicist, Harvard–Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics

You know what these solar physicists are now warning about? We are heading into a significant Maunder minimum, which means we are gonna freeze our asses off.

“Glaciers Are Retreating. Millions Rely on Their Water.”

~ Headline, New York Times

(14) Melting glaciers are deceptive and great doom porn. Pictures of melting glaciers call people to arms. While the ice is receding in the arctic and elsewhere in the north, it is growing in Antarctica.⁵⁴ Beware of claims about shrinking ice masses because the total mass of ice appears to be holding constant…⁵⁵

“Why is Antarctic sea ice at record levels despite global warming?”

~ Headline, The Guardian

Greenland used to be much greener and has been getting colder for decades. The Jakobshavn glacier in Greenland, known for being one of the fastest shrinking ice and snow masses on Earth, is growing again.⁵⁶ An arctic climate tour boat carrying a film crew to document global warming got stuck in the ice between Norway and North Pole twice. It is meaningless but funny.

“A senior U.N. environmental official says entire nations could be wiped off the face of the Earth by rising sea levels if the global warming trend is not reversed by the year 2000.”

~ AP News, June 29, 1989

“There is robust evidence of disasters displacing people worldwide but limited evidence that climate change or sea-level rise is the direct cause.”

~ IPCC

(15) Rising oceans will not drown us. Nobody doubts the oceans are warming and levels rising, in part, through thermal expansion. The internet is loaded with projections like this one showing an exponential rise in sea level:

Looks kinda scary but one wonders about the origins of that exponential curvature. I stare at plots for a living and can’t grasp what physical model would justify putting an exponential into that function. As we shall see below, the data does not show such exponential growth. Quite to the contrary.

The sea level has been rising for 14,000 years following the last glaciation. At the current rate, by the year 2100 sea levels will have risen 10 inches. OMFG! Can you guess how much they rose in the 20th century? Yup, 10 inches. Remember all those catastrophes? Me neither. Over the last 8,000 years, sea levels have risen on average 10 inches per century. To be fair, some models put the projected rise over the next century as high as 30 inches (assuming exponential growth, of course). Nonetheless, you get a very different perspective if you look at these changes over different timespans

25 years of sea level rising…

100 years of sea level rising…

20,000 years of sea level rising…

As Tony Heller would say,²⁸ after 400 ft of rising sea levels, those last few inches are our fault. And as the guy in “The Graduate” said to Dustin Hoffman:

“I have just two words. Are you listening? Sump pumps.”

~ The Graduate

(16) Human-driven extinction has been going on for millennia. The arrival of hominids was bad news for many species. I am not ready to seriously weigh in on the biology of global warming, but here are some fun facts and thoughts:

• Habitat loss and pollution, both consequences of human impacts, are said to be primary causes of extinctions. Climate change is on the list somewhere.⁵⁸
• It is rumored that polar bears die. If you happen to see a photo of a late-stage polar bear, that beast might look rather pathetic (Figure 20). Do you think this wretched soul is starving because he has run out of ice? Are there no fish in that water? They eat a lot of seals but can dine on a wide array of stuff (including fish) or, as they say, “anything they want.”⁵⁹ How about that brown bear known as Beadnose? It is a sad story: he eventually lost the battle to a dominant bear.⁶⁰ As an aside, the polar bear population has tripled since the 1970s. Come on folks: think.

Figure 20. Malnourished polar bear and brown bear. The latter is Beadnose Bear #409.⁶⁰

• Word from some Caribbean Islands is that some coral reefs have flourished over the last two years. The islanders attribute the reefs’ good health to recent hurricanes ruining the tourist seasons, giving the corals a break from greasy sun-screened hands and flippered feet.⁶¹ (Hurricanes also beat them up pretty seriously.) Professor James Ridd of James Cook University criticized the veracity of the research claiming reef damage was due to global warming. He got fired but was awarded $1.2 million by the courts.⁶² He’s probably snorkeling in the Caribbean as I type.
• Daniel Rothman, professor of geophysics and co-director of the Lorenz Center in MIT’s Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences, paints a dire picture of our impact on ecosystems.⁶³ Of course, his new and improved climate-biology model that he is pitching has two—count ‘em, two—differential equations. When he adds a lot of CO₂, the model goes bonkers. I betcha he engineered the equations to go nuts. My bullshit detector is flickering.
• The IPCC claimed malaria would spread north seemingly unaware that the highest death toll recorded from Malaria occurred in Siberia during the 1920s. There is an ongoing debate about which malaria we are talking about.⁶⁴
• Here is a thought: if predatory bird populations—bald eagles and osprey—were depleting right now, would our obsession with climate change cause us to overlook the role of DDT?

“These fires were not caused by climate change…the Amazon is not the ‘lungs of the world’…It’s bullshit.”

~ Dan Nepstad, Executive Director of and Senior Scientist at the Earth Innovation Institute, a lead author on the 5th IPCC Assessment Report, and world’s expert on the Amazon forest.

(17) Serious climate change is undetectable to the naked eye. Tell your pot-headed nephew majoring in sociology at Christmas dinner the yearly changes are microscopic on an annualized basis even if we are totally screwed. That hurricane last week or the snow-free January tells you nothing, zero, nada, zippo. Annual sea level rises are the thickness of a penny. The wildfires in Brazil stem from slash and burn agriculture, not global warming, and, more importantly, they are not above the norm.⁶⁵ Deep dives into the extreme climate events (hurricanes, typhoons, tornadoes) back to 1900 show no statistically significant change.⁶⁶ And if they did, your lyin’ eyes could not detect the change. I promise to not denounce global warming because it was cold last winter if y’all promise not to declare it a crisis ‘cause it was hot last summer.

“The world is going to end in 12 years if we don’t address climate change.”

~ Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez (AOC), bartender turned climate activist

“Pompous little twit. You don’t have a plan to grow food for 8 billion people without fossil fuels, or get the food into the cities. Horses? If fossil fuels were banned every tree in the world would be cut down for fuel for cooking and heating. You would bring about mass death.”

~ Patrick Moore (@EcoSenseNow), PhD and Founder of Greenpeace, to AOC

(18) The “precautionary principle” is a double-edged sword with a big price tag. It basically says that when in doubt, play it safe.⁶⁷ Many of my friends instinctively view the climate change movement as “why not?” without looking at the monetary and political ramifications. Should we spend trillions of dollars on Green New Deals or let the climate change unabated and risk global catastrophe? Both carry a price. Milton Friedman, when confronted with the notion that one human life lost is too many, noted that a billion dollars was too much to pay for a life.⁶⁸ Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s (AOC’s) and Elizabeth Warren’s Green New Deals to address climate change could top out at wildly guestimated >$100 trillion.⁶⁹ AOC is a former bartender, for Christ’s sakes. The Paris Accord is also estimated to cost a wildly guesstimated $100 trillion dollars to lower the temperature 0.25 °C.⁷⁰ Adaptation would be a lot cheaper. I am with Milton and joining the Fryers Club of Rome.

“Just because there is a problem doesn’t mean that we have to solve it, if the cure is going to be more expensive than the original ailment.”

~ Bjorn Lomborg, former director of the Danish government’s Environmental Assessment Institute

People understand the costs, albeit in the most self-serving way. A recent poll showed that the majority of Americans were willing to address climate change if the personal cost to them was $1 per month but balked at $10 per month.⁷¹ In a psychology study,⁷² a survey of 600 American adults identified them as climate “skeptics,” “cautious worriers,” and “highly concerned.” Questions pertaining to their life styles showed the “highly concerned” were most supportive of government solutions and least likely to take actions as individuals. By contrast, the “skeptics” were most opposed to policy solutions and most likely to live “green.” What this study might be showing is that worrying stems from a sense of losing control. This hypocrisy is breathtaking, causing the skeptics to view the changers with deep-seated ligma.⁷³

“According to the global-warming people, I say what I say because I’m paid by the oil industry. Of course I’m not, but that’s part of their rhetoric. If you doubt it, you’re a bad person, a tool of the oil or coal industry.”

~ Freeman Dyson, legendary physicist at Princeton’s Institute of Advanced Study.

“The few who push back against the propaganda, such as Roger Pielke Jr., find themselves on the receiving end of abuse and career-threatening attacks, even though they have all the science in their corner. Something has gotten scary and extreme, but it isn’t the weather.”

~ Professor Ross McKitrick, professor of economics at the University of Guelph specializing in environmental economics and policy analysis.

(19) Conflicts of interest are profound. There seems to be a prevalence of old men in the outspoken denial camp, possibly because they have little to lose except their dignity. They are often accused of taking money from “Big Oil” and other corporate interests, but I have had little success making such connections. Alex Epstein, a relative moderate advocating for human adaptation, complained that Big Oil has been pathetically unsupportive. After he failed to get a corporate sponsor for a debate with an activist Alex paid for it personally.⁷⁴

Those who focus on “Big Oil” funding are missing the “Big Government” funding problem. A group called the “Climate Policy Initiative” estimated that $359 billion was spent globally on climate change in 2013 and suggested that such money “falls far short” of the $5 trillion per year that would do the trick.⁷⁵ Vast international organizations, branches of government, non-profit organizations, scientific research programs, university departments, and well-paid administrators are funded to solve the problem. The US Department of Transportation allocated funds to study the effect of climate change on car accidents. Really? Car accidents? Carbon credits are allocated to corporations to be spent like medieval Catholic Church Indulgences for their sins of emission.⁷⁶ Tesla sold theirs to more legitimate automakers to stay solvent.⁷⁷ Wall street banks are salivating over trading carbon credits. HSBC, JP Morgan, and Blackrock refer to “the climate opportunity”.⁷⁸ All this will simply vanish if global warming is declared a dud. What are the odds it will be declared a dud? Zero.

“It helps to be old. I do not have to worry about finding another job.”

~ Freeman Dyson, legendary physicist at Princeton’s Institute of Advanced Study.

There are numerous stories of papers going unpublished and careers destroyed because scientists did not endorse climatism. I have decades of experience with the peer review system and would be stunned—stunned—if a grant that smacks of denialism could be funded by a Federal agency in the current climate. The term “never” comes to mind. When pressed, chemistry colleagues who are warm to the idea of global warming largely agree with this assertion. Lennart Bengtsson calls it “McCarthyism” in his letter of resignation:⁷⁹

“I had not expect(ed) such an enormous worldwide pressure put at me from a community that I have been close to all my active life. Colleagues are withdrawing their support; other colleagues are withdrawing from joint authorship.”

~ Lennart Bengtsson, former head of the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts and director of the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg

Judith Curry, atmospheric scientist and climatologist, was forced into early retirement from Georgia Tech for expressing reservations about the more extreme claims by climate scientists.⁸⁰ Polar bear expert Susan Crockford was dismissed from the University of Victoria after deviating from the narrative that the polar bears are dying off.⁸¹ Nir Shaviv puts the problem in stark terms in a Forbes article: 

“The real problem is funding from funding agencies like the National Science Foundation because these proposals have to undergo review by people in a community that ostracizes us…If you believe what everyone believes, you are a good person. If you don’t, you are a bad person. Who wants to be a sinner?”

~ Nir Shaviv, chairman of the Racah Institute of Physics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Shaviv’s Forbes article was pulled within hours “for failing to meet our editorial standards”. Open debate shouldn’t be this hard.

And here is the really funny one. Michael Moore began a documentary on alternative fuels, undoubtedly with an eye toward hammering Big Oil, only to discover a corrupt and convoluted world of Big Wind and Big Solar. His long-term collaborator and producer noted:⁸²

“It turned out the wakeup call was about our own side. It was kind of crushing to discover that the things I believed in weren’t real, first of all, and then to discover not only are the solar panels and wind turbines not going to save us … but (also) that there is this whole dark side of the corporate money … It dawned on me that these technologies were just another profit center.”

~ Jeff Gibbs, co-producer with Michael Moore of “Planet of the Humans”

Gibbs goes on to say, “This is not a film by climate change deniers; this is a film by people who really care about the environment…We all want to feel good about something like the electric car, but in the back of your head somewhere you’ve a nagging thought, ’Yeah, but where is the electricity coming from?’” Michael Moore adds, “I’m one of those people who wanted to believe all of these years that we were on the right path.” Moore’s and Gibb’s documentary, “Planet of the Humans,” aired at film festivals this summer but has yet to be released to the general public.⁸³

“I feel very strongly that China and India getting rich is the most important thing that’s going on in the world at present. That’s a real revolution, that the center of gravity of the whole population of the world would be middle class, and that’s a wonderful thing to happen. It would be a shame if we persuade them to stop that just for the sake of a problem that’s not that serious.”

~ Freeman Dyson, Princeton Physicist

“Go and explain to developing countries why they should continue living in poverty and not be like Sweden.”

~ Vladimir Putin, head of Russia’s Climate Denial Bureau, to Greta Thunberg

“We are gonna have to eat the babies.”

~ Detractor spoofing AOC

(20) Modern humans have been pulled out of grinding poverty by capitalism and fossil fuels.Those leaning hard left are determined to eliminate both “evils.” If we eliminate fossil fuels abruptly—decades—humans will starve. Returning to the lifestyle of the noble savage will require knocking decimal points off the world’s population, and it ain’t gonna be the rich who suffer. Environmentalists used to support natural gas and wind power. Now they fight fracking and pipelines while raging against bird-killing rotors. Municipal leaders like the Berkeley City Council have banned natural gas from new residential construction.⁸⁴ The shale boom seems to be waning anyway,⁸⁵ so peak oil discussions may reappear soon. Nonetheless, keep fighting that pipeline because it would be a disaster to get yet another…

Figure 21. Natural gas pipelines.

The green revolution was powered by fossil fuels. We are not in a position to force the world carbon-free. Dutch farmers have started a “no-farmer, no-food” movement to push back against Draconian measures.⁸⁶ The one potentially limitless source of power—nuclear energy—is not even on the table in the US. How many years will it take to build the next plant? In the wake of Fukushima, Japan is reverting back to coal by bringing 12 new coal-fired power plants online, 15 more are being built, and 10 in the planning stage.⁸⁷ The beloved biofuels—beloved by the corn lobby—is a complete non-starter unless you can harvest the shrubbery from oceans because the world’s topsoils are depleting.⁸⁸ What are the odds India and China will forego their fossil-fuel-driven economic renaissances? Zero.

“Isn’t the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn’t it our responsibility to bring that about?”

~ Maurice Strong, former Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations and the first executive director of the United Nations Environment Program

(21) The global warming movement is about political control. The IPCC, largely a political body, is controlled by a relatively small core group. There is a not-so-subtle undercurrent of cultural Marxism. Let’s look at a few more nuggets to convey how much of a political tool climate science has become:

“…one has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. Instead, climate change policy is about how we redistribute de facto the world’s wealth…”

~ Ottmar Edenhofer, IPCC official speaking in November 2010

“We’ve got to ride the global-warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right things in terms of economic policy and environmental policy.”

~ Tim Wirth, Senator, chair of Clinton-Gore Campaign, and UN official

“The Green New Deal wasn’t originally a climate thing at all … we really think of it as a how-do-you-change-the-entire-economy thing.”

~ Saikat Chakrabarti, Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez’s handler and founder of the Justice Democrats

“Climate change: Firms failing to tackle crisis will be delisted from stock exchange.”

~ Headline, The Independent

The wildly popular Paris Accord provides support for poor countries to develop alternative energies while requiring no emissions cuts.⁸⁹ Who couldn’t like that? For starters, the poor within the prosperous countries would be hurt by mandatory fossil fuel reductions. The Green New Deal is yet more government control and will be incompatible with the US Constitution and capitalism. Some view that as a win. Then there is this gem from a scientist-turned-activist:

“We are not just scientists but human beings as well. And like most people we’d like to see the world a better place, which in this context translates into our working to reduce the risk of potentially disastrous climatic change. To do that we need to get some broad-based support, to capture the public’s imagination. That, of course, entails getting loads of media coverage. So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have. This ‘double ethical bind’ we frequently find ourselves in cannot be solved by any formula. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest.”

~ Steve Schneider, Professor of Environmental Biology and Global Change at Stanford University, deceased

As noted in the section on the Fed, central banks around the globe have begun chattering about roles central banks will play to solve climate crises going forward. A global network of roughly 40 central banks have formed the Network for Greening the Financial System (NGFS),⁹⁰ an initiative intended to “manage risks and to mobilize capital for green and low-carbon investments.” I cannot tell if our banking overlords view this as yet another opportunity to destroy the free market and maintain power or simply establish an alibi for when it fails. I view that group as largely mid-level, intellectually incontinent bureaucrats.

“In coming decades the only policies that can effectively be used to manage the immediate effects of climate variability and change will be adaptive.”

~ Roger Pielke Jr, former Director of the Center for Science and Technology Policy Research at the University of Colorado Boulder

(22) Humans adapt. I am less afraid of global warming than of the political solutions. Hominids made it through ice ages, crossed the Bering Strait, and eventually crossed the Atlantic Ocean (to conquer those who crossed the Strait.) There is a place in Russia with a record single-year temperature range of –90 °F to +114 °F; the residents adapt. Alex Epstein, author of The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels, articulates the case for human ingenuity and adaptation.⁹¹ While the climate changed throughout the 20th century, deaths from severe climate events dropped 97%.⁹² Alex emphasizes maximizing human progress and the human existence while accepting the requisite tradeoffs; we always have.

 

“Of all the tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under the omnipotent moral busybodies.”

~ C. S. Lewis

(23) Nobody—not one person on the planet—knows what will happen. Of this, I have no doubt. We are all guessing. Here is my gripe. The climate is so complex with so many feedback loops we cannot possibly fully understand it. The best we can do is apply the “precautionary principle” by balancing mitigation and sacrifice. What makes debates with climate activists so problematic is that so many suffer from the ‘’noble cause’’ syndrome. “I’m right so I’ll fight!” I have engaged in contentious debates on many subjects, but none like this. I have never seen a more mean-spirited gaggle of pseudo-experts so quick to deploy scorched Earth tactics. Their sanctimony impedes serious discussions. They really can be serious douche bags. Go back and read those Gerry Mueller emails: what a dick.

“The arrival of Greta Thunberg in New York on Wednesday was one of many recent events that illustrate how rapidly modern environmentalism is degenerating into a millenarian cult.”

~ Niall Ferguson, senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and former senior research fellow at Oxford and Professor at Harvard and New York Universities.

(24) Pedophrasty is for the gullible. Using children as political pawns or shields—so-called pedophrasty—is commonplace. Young girls are optimal given that counter-attacking looks particularly distasteful. A young Kuwaiti girl was used to generate support for the Gulf War. Countless children are props during abortion protests. David Hogg was the face of gun control. (I still have that vomit aftertaste.) One study claims that teenage girls are best at convincing their parents climate change is a problem.⁹³ Who in their right mind would turn to teenagers for wisdom on globally important geopolitical topics? There is also a cost. A group of psychologists from the University of Bath have documented an epidemic of children who are ‘terrified’ of climate catastrophe and have “eco-anxiety.”⁹⁴ Of course, these may be the snowflakes in an otherwise warming environment.

The climate pedophrasts found what they thought was the perfect prop—a young girl “on the spectrum” named Greta Thunberg—who, by her own admission, should be picking marshmallows from her Lucky Charms and heading off to school. Her vapid speeches add absolutely nothing of substance to the debate. I suspect she even has to fake her sneers because of her high function whatever. She is a Child of the Corn—a weaponized Shirley Temple—straight out of 17th century Salem, MA. In a ridiculous media stunt Greta crossed the Atlantic in a zero-emissions sailing boat, fitted with a diesel engine and made from carbon fiber that required 14 times more energy to produce than a conventional boat.⁹⁵ Six crew members had to take trans-Atlantic flights. She gave the most cringe-worthy speech to the UN, chastising the audience for taking air flights to the same meeting while the fawning crowds of nitwits did the baby shark dance. After a snafu got her stuck on the wrong side of the pond,⁹⁶ a shadowy cabal of handlers realized they had created a big optics problem: How do they get her back across the Atlantic without emitting carbon? The virtue-signaling Tidepodler had to put out her thumb:

“Now I need to find a way to cross the Atlantic in November… If anyone could help me find transport I would be so grateful.”

~ Greta Thunberg, hitching a ride because a meeting was moved from Chile to Spain

Let us not forget the lucrative speaking fees, which I could not track down, but likely total in the millions of dollars. Speaking tours are lucrative. She was “snubbed for the Nobel Peace Prize”, instead giving it to Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed for ending the 20-year Eritrea conflict.⁹⁷ The prize money would have bought her a yacht stocked with carbon-free food and crew. She will probably never have to learn to code. She is now Time Magazine’s Person of the Year. She shares this with Donald Trump and a host of other deplorables. I actually think it is a valid decision given it is not about good or evil.

 

No doubt as a homework project for her home-schooled civics class, Greta (and her tutors) filed a legal brief accusing five countries—Germany, France, Brazil, Argentina, and Turkey—of inaction on global warming in violation of the 30-year-old UN Convention on the Rights of a Child.⁹⁸ French prime minister Macron was pissed.⁹⁹ German drivers sported “F*ck you Greta” bumper stickers.¹⁰⁰ At some point, she will head off to college, maybe Harvard where she could team up with David Hogg. Meanwhile, you have never been a parent if you are getting your jollies from a 16-year-old sneering at you.

“There’s no point bleating about the future of pandas, polar bears, and tigers when we’re not addressing the one single factor that’s putting more pressure on the ecosystem than any other – namely the ever-increasing size of the world’s population.”

~ Chris Packham, BBC host of a wildlife show

“Fully half of all the fossil fuels ever burned throughout all of history have been burned since 1990….How many more doublings do you think we’ve got?”

~ Chris Martenson (@chrismartenson), Peak Prosperity

“The raging monster upon the land is population growth. In its presence, sustainability is but a fragile theoretical construct.”

~ E. O. Wilson

“Anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist.”

~ Kenneth Boulding, economist and peace activist

(25) Overpopulation and other pressing issues. I believe we are polluting the planet and rapidly strip mining it of critical resources. For this debate, however, do not conflate the human-driven consumption and destruction of the Earth’s resources with the specific issue of climate change. We are consuming limited resources, dumping plastics into the oceans, and spewing goo into the air and waterways. We really should stop. The Great Pacific Garbage patch is comprised of recycled yogurt containers from the US sent to China. Recycling isn’t green; consuming less shit is. We may consume ourselves back to the stone age and take the planet with us, but I am doubtful that we will fry in the process. The climate change debate is sucking the oxygen out of these other environmental debates.

“Today in chapel, we confessed to plants. Together, we held our grief, joy, regret, hope, guilt and sorrow in prayer; offering them to the beings who sustain us but whose gift we too often fail to honor. What do you confess to the plants in your life?”

~ @UnionSeminary

“Those plants think you’re all morons.”

~ Mark Dice (@MarkDice)

(26) The climate change movement is a bug light for whack jobs. I can’t tell if I actually doubt global warming or if I doubt the movement, which is increasingly populated by the ill-informed. Last year I wrote through the lens of an atheist about the social glue of religion and how pushing religion to the margins has a cost. We are replacing religion with social causes, whether it be hatred of Trump, support for the second amendment, or, yes, fear or denial of climate change. The newly formed “Extinction Rebellion” movement, a subset of the sanctimony-climate complex, aims to disrupt the function of society to emphasize their angst over climate change. The common folk, living from paycheck to paycheck, would have none of it as they dragged the Rebels off the tops of subway cars and then adjusted their attitudes.¹⁰¹ Rebels superglued themselves to the streets,¹⁰² seemingly oblivious to the concept of “road kill”. Marinating in ignorance, some activists have recommended making skyscrapers out of wood.¹⁰³ I’m sure the Truthers will find that a novel idea. If the catastrophists took the time to understand why some of us don’t believe them instead of just assuring us we are crazier than them while acting like crazies, maybe we could optimize the precautionary principle. Until it is safe for the scientists—all the scientists—to engage in honest debate without fearing reprisal, this seems like a pipe dream.

Figure 22. Extinction rebels saving the planet.

“As the climate warms, human beings are more likely to get dehydrated, which increases the risk of [kidney] stone formation.”

~ Kevin R. Loughlin, Harvard Medical School literature online

And in a final comment, two gentlemen in this debate whom I have never directly interacted with and who likely detest each other with passion, have finally found a point they can agree on…

At least Steve McIntyre is still talking to me. Somebody please tell Tony I’m an admirer and that I like his T-shirt. I suspect this may be the last I write on the subject. It has not been that fun. I am unknown to the climate denial community, but I won’t be surprised if I get to know some changers soon. I should also say that, while my research in chemistry is funded by Big Government, I have never received a penny for my views from Big Oil. But as an academic scientist, if you guys want to send me a big honkin’ check I’d be up with that.

“Science is a culture of doubt. Religion is a culture of faith.”

~ Richard Feynman, winner of the 1965 Nobel Prize in Physics (and one of the greats on that scale)

“Climate change is the religion for people who think they are too smart for religion.”

~Tom Nelson (@tan123)

Given its length, we’ve had to break this report in half so as not to crash your browser.

 

 

[JBJ 3829]

1 hour ago, Bateshorn said:

What I can tell you is the kind of granularity you are trying to divine (and I'm assuming your motives are pure here) is the reason denialist argument's continue to gain traction despite being bunk. 

The way the GCMs work is by taking a set of ~all~ known variables, hooking them up to a RNG containing the known ranges for these variables, and running the model thousands of times.

Theoritically, this produces a range of all possible outcomes.  Then, you set range limits within these outcomes (75%-95% is common).  So you can make declarations that X is "highly likely" because it falls with the 95% range.

The problem is when the observable data breaches that "highly likely" range early into the model's life and hovers around that lower threshold going forward.

What you declared to be "highly likely" is now "50/50" and what was "somewhat likely" is now "unlikely enough to be trivial."

So you hit the reset button and start building a new model around the CMIP6 specifications.

 

Harkening back to an old model that projected a warming rate of 0.09*C/dec doesn't make the current projections accurate.  Hansen '81 is more accurate because it predicts less than half the warming of the CMIP5 models.

Edited January 16, 2020 by JBJ

[GRHorn 105]

On 1/10/2020 at 10:42 AM, GSU&UT said:

In 2020 people with degrees from the The University of Texas say humans don't contribute to global warming and that any research suggesting we do is funded by the government (?????) and Al Gore for their own personal monetary interests.

There are large conflicts of interest involving the field and the scientists studying it. Read my link. There’s a lot of details in there. 

On 1/8/2020 at 5:54 AM, Bookman said:

It's not physics? So is it metaphysics?

And I understand what an experiment is. I did graduate from the sixth grade.

Aren’t you an oil and gas attorney?

[Bookman 4769]

7 minutes ago, GRHorn said:

There are large conflicts of interest involving the field and the scientists studying it. Read my link. There’s a lot of details in there. 

Aren’t you an oil and gas attorney?

Yes

[Pato del Muerto 53581]

2 hours ago, GRHorn said:

Ok this is a long year in review write up written by a organic chemist from Cornell that has made a bit of name for himself as a smartass online commentator. There’s a section devoted to the dive he took into the climate change debate for the first time this year. He makes no profound conclusions, but takes a look at a lot of the science that’s often cited. Has plenty of citations in there as well. 

  Reveal hidden contents

Climate Change

“I had dinner with Obama’s Secretary of Energy on Saturday night (Steven Chu). He said there are no credible scientists who doubt global warming: none.”

~ Collum email, 9/11/16

“I know things that 1000/1000 PhD chemists would assure me are true that are wrong. For this reason, I am agnostic on global warming.”

~ Collum email, 2017

“[Climate change is] too complex a problem for me to dedicate enough bandwidth so as to formulate a strong opinion. My colleagues in the sciences that I ask all seem to believe it, but I am not sure how relevant that data is.”

~ Collum email, 2/12/17

“If I had to bet a paycheck, I would bet anthropogenic global warming is real. If I had to bet ten paychecks, I would bet that we are going to do the experiment despite the best intentions of those who worry.”

~ David Collum, 2018 Year in Review

I noted in last year’s YIR that I had not done my 10,000 hours of homework needed to form an educated opinion and merely criticized my scientific peers who seem unconstrained by such ignorance. However, the debate is less lopsided than the popular press portrays with countless credible scientists who have not answered the siren call to save the world from hominids. With prods from friends and family to “do the right thing,” I finally dove into this plot, and, while I am not done with my readings, I’m less agnostic.

“My god, you’re a total disgrace to Science. A whiny, doctrinaire little man with libertarian leanings. Please “back away” from the debate and refrain from winging about it on podcasts. Your involvement is toxic.”

~ Gerry Mueller, professional Collum emailer

Jeepers Gerry: If you can’t be kind, at least have the decency to be vague. There are a few facts and concepts that are uncontentious and possibly agreed upon by those who believe climate change is a problem—‘changers’—and those who question significant portions of that story—’deniers’. (Many deniers will be irritated by my binary categorization.) Sucking carbon-sequestered fossil fuels from the ground and burning them will, necessarily, alter the CO₂ cycle. The climate is always changing and sea levels rise and fall, but both appear to be on the rise to varying degrees and depending on the time frame (20 versus 20,000 years). Humans have also been beating the crap out of the flora and fauna ever since we formed our first mobs and satisfied our Quest for Fire. Critters in our way adapted or died. This blue orb of ours has finite resources, and, as physicist Albert Bartlett would say,…

“’Sustainable growth’ is an oxymoron”

~ Albert Bartlett, UC–Berkeley physicist

We can consume finite resources for a while, but our inability to understand the simple math of the exponential function is a problem. Vast resource depletion and ubiquitous plastics and micro-plastics in the environment are deeply disturbing; generic pollution is less troubling. If we learned anything from the Gulf oil spill and Iraq oil fires, Earth is adaptable. I fully support technological advancements (Facebook aside) and think environmental and energy needs could drive the Mother of Technological Revolutions (MTR).

“The great tragedy of science is the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact.”

~ Thomas Huxley

There is a natural asymmetry to the climate debate: it is far easier to weed whack theories with an “ugly fact” than to develop them. The debate, however, is about distinguishing Nature’s Wrath from “negative externalities” of the human existence. How much environmental damage should we tolerate to fully enjoy the benefits of human ingenuity? At what point must we clean up our act? However, many try to smuggle pollution and depletion arguments into the climate debate. It is this debate that seems to be lacking guard rails and may be careening off a cliff. It is exacerbated by the fact that we all seem to have personal tipping points beyond which it would take devine intervention to change our minds. I confess that I am close to that tipping point. I’ve crossed paths with many changers who are now deniers; I am unfamiliar with the reverse. The problem is that nobody fully understands the interactions of the geologic, meteorological, solar, atmospheric, chemical, oceanographic, and biologic systems well enough to comprehend their ramifications. Here is one maxim I am positive is true:

“Nobody on the planet—not one person—knows what will happen to the World’s climate and ecosystem 50 years from now. We are all guessing, some more than others.”

~ Me

I am addressing those who still have a chance of finding the buried bodies in the climate crisis debate. The 26 so-called “maxims” listed below should not be construed as “general truths” but rather conversation starters. Preface everything I say with an implicit “supposedly”, “it is said that,” or “according to some guy on the internet.” Politics has invaded the debate so profoundly that truly unequivocal assertions are now on the endangered theses list. I can assure you that every single statement I make casting aspersions on the narrative has been attacked (debunked). Not one criticism goes uncontested. None.

“I no longer know what to say to students and postdocs regarding how to navigate the craziness in the field of climate science.”

~ Judith Curry, former chair of Atmospheric Sciences at Georgia Institute of Technology

(1) Sincere climate scientists deserve our sympathy. The serious ones are trying to get it right despite being surrounded by a cacophony of intellectual goulash. Stepping out of line—contesting any aspect of the climate change story—risks serious pain and suffering. Science has become a political football. Signing off on climate change immunizes you from criticism, but tripwires are everywhere. Science is hard enough to get right under the best of circumstances, let alone when barraged with conflicts. I doubt I could negotiate these waters.

“Every five years the UN-based International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) publishes a ‘consensus of the world’s top scientists’ on all aspects of climate change. Quite apart from the dubious process by which these scientists are selected, such consensus is the stuff of politics, not of science. The claim that the IPCC has the world’s top 1500 or 2500 scientists is simply not true.”

~ Paul Reiter, Professor of Medical Entomology at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, contributor to the third IPCC Working Group II, employee of the Center for Disease Control for 22 years.

The IPCC, the UN-based International Panel on Climate Change, is an inherently political organization staffed by people with wildly different backgrounds.¹ (Let us not forget that U.N. Human Rights Council members include Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Somalia, Nigeria, Qatar, Egypt, and Cuba. And joining in 2020 we have China, Venezuela, Mauritania, Sudan, and Libya.) The IPCC was founded to study global warming not just the climate. It has separate scientific and policy study groups.² According to a recent Forbes article, “Climate scientists are starting to push back against exaggerations by activists, journalists, and other scientists.” I guess there is hope of regaining our balance.

“It’s shocking to hear someone with your education espouse climate denial. You really should be ashamed.”

~ Gerry Mueller, toxic emailer again

“If you have the facts on your side, argue the facts. If you have the law on your side, argue the law. If you have neither, attack the witness.”

~ legal aphorism

“Climate experts have been attacked by these people, and they claim that we should be much more radical. They are doomsters and extremists; they make threats…The IPCC reports have been read in a similar way to the Bible: you try to find certain pieces or sections from which you try to justify your extreme views. This resembles religious extremism.”

~ Petteri Taalas, Secretary General of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO)

(2) Credible scientists and thoughtful individuals who doubt popular narratives are in the minority. The changers have countless organizations set up to defend the authenticity of their cause. We’ll cover the magnitudes on that below. By contrast, the openly skeptical deniers are more of a rag-tag bunch of individualists who are largely free-balling it. You can find lists—or should I say blacklists—to humiliate them.³ Through a judicious choice of quotes and affiliations in the shadowed boxes, however, I have tried to underscore that many have serious chops. I urge you to pay attention to the quotes and the credentials.

“It does not matter who you are, or how smart you are, or what title you have, or how many papers your side has published, if your prediction is wrong then your hypothesis is wrong. Period.”

~ Richard Feynman, winner of the 1965 Nobel Prize in Physics (and one of the greats on that scale)

”Consensus science is not science. Consensus science is politics.”

~ Michael Crichton, best-selling science-fiction author and denier, RIP

(3) Consensus means jack squat. “We declare, with more than 11,000 scientist signatories from around the world, clearly and unequivocally that planet Earth is facing a climate emergency.”⁴ Really? Unequivocally? If this is really what they signed verbatim, we have located 11,000 scientifically trained nitwits. Here are just a few equivocators:

• The Global Warming Petition Project rounded up over 31,000 scientists (9,000 with PhDs) equivocating that the panic over climate change is bullshit. Worldwide there are 21 million degrees in science, from bachelor degrees to PhDs, blurring what “scientist” means in these petitions.⁵
• A letter sent by 49 former NASA scientists and astronauts, all with PhDs in tow, urged NASA to dial back their support of the global warming narrative.⁶
• A letter authored by 500 carefully vetted scientists—big swinging dicks and ovaries of steel—urged the UN to acknowledge there is no climate crisis.⁷
• In 2015, 30 Nobel laureates got huge media attention by signing a letter asking for immediate action on climate change while it went unnoticed that 35 other Nobel laureates sitting in the room did not sign.⁸

The most popular of all statistics declares that “97% of climate scientists believe anthropogenic global warming (AGW) is a significant problem.” A colleague and climate change activist at Cornell recently claimed in a debate at Cornell, “that 97% number is not even debatable.” He’s right; it’s complete garbage. Over 11,000 abstracts from papers supposedly on climate change were culled down to 79 papers, of which 77 said climate change was a problem.⁹ The one chard of truth: 77 of 79 is about 97%. Here is a nice critique of an assortment of polls.¹⁰

“The time for debate has ended….The science is settled, even if political opinion is not.”

~ Marcia McNutt, the editor of Science magazine

(4) Science is never settled. No disrespect intended, but any scientist who claims that climate science is settled is an idiot. The notion of “settled science” is merely a rallying cry used by catastrophists to shut down debate and get governments to yank out their checkbooks. Physicists of the late 19th century were confident that they had it right, too, until Einstein proved them wrong. Opinions are like butts; everybody has one.

“The vast majority of the climate models the IPCC uses as the basis for its predictions have repeatedly incorrectly forecast higher temperatures. According to an analysis by the Cato Institute, 105 of the 108 models predicted a higher surface temperature for the period between 1998 and 2014 than the temperature actually recorded.”

~ Petteri Taalas, Secretary General of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO)

“The climate system is a coupled non-linear system and, therefore, long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible.”

~ IPCC report, 2001, that was subsequently purged because…?

“The models were tuned, should we say… they are all parametrized…if I translate parametrized into English: fudged….we forced the models to include human influence.”

~ Patrick Michaels, former professor of Climatology at University of Virginia, senior fellow at the Cato Institute, president of American Association of State Climatologists, and co-author of 2007 report of the International Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

(5) Beware of models and models of models. Cancer researcher Howard Skipper noted, “A model is a lie that helps you see the truth.” Not only that, many climate models are built on precarious foundations also derived from models. Models that include the presumption of a CO₂-temperature causal relationship are a problem. What if that presumption is wrong? From my read, climate scientists (or at least activists) use the process of elimination. After modeling all known variables, left-over effects are attributed to human activities. “What else could it be?” I get that rhetorical question from chemistry students with some frequency. I invariably respond, “All the things you are too ignorant or too stupid to understand or ponder.”

There are compendia of predicted calamitous climate change events that failed miserably:¹¹droughts, flooding, famine, pestilence, plague, ice ages, and epidemics of kidney stones.¹²One astute scientist was early to conclude the arctic ice was melting so rapidly, it would soon be ice-free. That was in 1814.¹³ Of course climatic predictions often fail. It happens in all disciplines of science. More disturbingly, these seriously colossal failures do not seem to have made the climate modelers (or, to be fair, their activist spokespersons) any more circumspect.

Figure 13. Failed predictions in the media (left) and relative to measured reality (right)

“The unavoidable conclusion is that an anthropogenic air temperature signal cannot have been, nor presently can be, evidenced in climate observables.”

~ Patrick Frank, physicist Stanford Linear Accelerator Laboratory, Stanford University

Patrick Frank, a Stanford physicist with limited experience in climate science but serious chops in statistics and error propagation, had noted that climate change projections often lack error bars. He offers some arcane details of error propagation and then hits us with this gem: if you take the errors on current climate readings and propagate them out to the popular target year 2100, the projected global temperature rise has an error bar of +/- 15 °C.¹⁴ That’s considerably larger than the actual projected single-digit increases. Curiously, intellectual challenges to Patrick’s methods came from physicist and an A-list climate scientist and denier, Roy Spencer. Roy was the Principle Investigator of NASA’s satellite-based temperature monitoring program that found no warming over the few decades of its existence.¹⁵ In any case, a heated debate (a bar fight) broke out.¹⁶ It looked to me like Patrick Frank won. If so, his argument destroys the most polarizing temperature projections.

“Global mean temperatures before 1980 are based on untrustworthy data.”

~ Mototaka Nakamura, International Pacific Research Center School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology, University of Hawaii

“The computer models are predicting seven times more warming than is being observed.”

~ Patrick Michaels, former professor of Climatology at University of Virginia, senior fellow at the Cato Institute, president of American Association of State Climatologists, and co-author of 2007 report of the International Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

(6) Beware of temperature measurements, especially those that form hockey sticks.Accurate temperature measurements rely on both the quality of the thermometers and their placement. Both changed over the last 100 years. How could they not? The fixed monitoring stations are by definition more influenced by humans now than 100 years ago. Some started life in open spaces and are now proximate to shopping malls inadvertently recording what is called the “urban heat island effect”.¹⁷ They show warming. Go figure. Others have been relocated. Corrections for that have been made. Right. There is mounting evidence that somehow the corrections end up reducing the temperatures retrospectively, providing the sought-after positive slope.¹⁸ To repeat, Roy Spencer reports that NASA satellites haven’t registered any temperature changes in the upper atmosphere;¹⁹ this appears to be an awkward talking point for the warming crowd. Figure 13 shows how 102 IPCC-sanctioned models diverged from reality.

“Do I expect you to publicly denounce the hockey stick as obvious drivel? Well, yes.”

~ Jonathan Jones, Professor of Atomic and Laser Physics, University of Oxford

What about climate scientist Michael Mann’s infamous hockey stick, the one that formed the centerpiece of Al Gore’s road show?²⁰ It has been debunked with prejudice. Mann was accused of stitching together two very different data sets, causing both the discontinuity and the slope in Figure 14.²⁰ He massively over weighted tree-ring data from a single stand of bristlecone pine trees in California to create the NHL-ready hockey stick and attain his goals.²¹ A hacker unleashed a cache of 2,000 emails, which revealed skullduggery and launched “Climate-gate”.²² The emails showed that the IPCC was in cahoots with Mann to make the temperatures match their models and mental constructs. One of Mann’s peers, Keith Briffa came to the opposite conclusion. Mann et al. decided Briffa’s data risked “diluting the message…a potential distraction/detraction” and found a way to correct Briffa’s lapse in judgement. It is a colossal black-eye for climate science. Ironically, in 2019—the Year of the Whistleblower—the email hacker remains anonymous.

Figure 14. Michael Mann’s Hockey Stick

“Better that nothing appear than something unacceptable to us…Excuse me while I puke.”

~ Ray Bradley, a coauthor of the Mann’s hockey stick article, on Mann’s hyperbole and overreach

Mann is what my mom would call “a piece of work”. On several occasions Mann mentioned his Nobel Peace Prize, referring to the award the IPCC 200-member organization shared with Al Gore. He was on roll when he became Time Magazine’s Person of the Year:

Figure 15. Michael Mann’s Nobel Price and his Person of the Year award.

Statistical analyses by statistician Steve McIntyre and others snapped that hockey stick right over their knees as part of Climate-gate.^22,23,24 Mann has been called the “Jerry Sandusky” or “Joe McCarthy” of climate change. I would say “Wayne Gretzky” because he took his data to where the conclusion would be. Others using rational models and valid data failed to replicate the hockey stick. Using Mann’s model with any random data produces a hockey stick. Oops. In an attempt to silence critics, Mikey sued journalist Mark Steyn and climate scientist Tim Ball for libel. Steyn’s public criticisms are hysterically unfiltered.²⁵While the Steyn case is still in the courts, a recent decision in the Tim Ball suit declared that Mann failed to present evidence of his model’s validity during the course of an eight-year trial.²⁶ Mann declared he did not need to provide the evidence. The court ruled he was in contempt and responsible for Tim Ball’s considerable legal fees.

“Did Mann et al. get it wrong? Yes, Mann et al. got it wrong.”

~ Simon Tett, Professor of Climate Science, University of Edinburgh

In the wake of Mann’s humiliating defeat, the hockey stick has been decommissioned and placed in the archives of flawed science. Just kidding. Activists, including the IPCC, still use it to scare people. The IPCC guys should know better. After all, they all have Nobel Prizes.

“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary.”

~ H.L. Mencken

(7) The boundaries between propaganda and lying are fuzzy. While climate-gate and the hockey stick are low-water marks in the climatic swamp, there are other unmentionables slithering in the muck. Avid deniers like Steve S. Goddard (a.k.a. Tony Heller) and Greenpeace founder Patrick Moore show how easily cherry-picked statistics can morph into fraudulent conclusions as seen in these videos.^27,28 Goddard brings dollops of snot as he emphasizes outright fraud.²⁸ I would simply point out that conclusions depend on the referenced starting date as illustrated in the following three examples:

Global temperatures over 20 years…

Global temperatures over 140 years…

Global temperatures over 10,000 years…

Here is a simple example of some high falutin’ hooey that I stumbled into during a spat with a climate activist professing to be a scientist. I was prompted to check out a definitive report on the impact of global warming on the Southwestern US and quickly glommed on to Figure 16 (left) showing acreage burned.²⁹ I told her it looked fabricated. It takes a special kind of delusion to think you can deconvolute human-derived climate effects, natural environmental effects, and the countless other demographic and land management changes occurring in the region (like 6 million people moving into California over the last few decades).³⁰ Also, using cumulative effects is dubious because they always go from lower left to upper right. (Imagine how bleak the world would look if you plotted the cumulative deaths from cancer over the last century.) With serious swagger and ‘tude she suggested I read the primary literature, so I did. The original paper was models upon models using data from models. The authors knew it; they were just doing their day jobs. Then I noticed the fib: the report had removed the word “modelled” from the y-axis. That’s a curious typo, wouldn’t ya say? Now, for laughs, look at the burn acreage in the US measured over the 20th century and presented annualized.³¹ You can see the slope there too but you get a different impression. I suspect the data from the Southwest would look similar if they had gone pre-1985…but they didn’t.

Figure 16. Burn acreage in the Southwest over 30 years and in the US over 90 years

Many use tree ring data as a proxy for global warming. Bristlecone pine tree experts, of which I consider myself one having written a five-page B^– freshman term paper on them in 1973, say the tree ring densities reflect a composite of stresses on the pines…in specific locations…during the summers…during the day. Temperature is just one variable. An email from climate scientist and IPCC contributor Tom Wigley to Michael Mann noted that Wigley’s son doing a science fair project found tree rings to be more sensitive to moisture than temperature. A high school kid debunked the hockey stick and the use of tree ring data to measure temperature.

Of course, the media runs with the most interesting narratives and then sensationalizes them. One sleuth rounded up all the headlines claiming that global warming would be twice as bad in their region.³² These unfortunate regions include Canada, Russia, Arctic, Norway, Finland, South Africa, China, all of Africa, Tibet, “The Mountains”, Alaska, Japan, Korea, Iceland, Britain, Adirondacks, Spain, Australia, Himalayas, Singapore, and Lake Wobegon. I also suggest you beware of a common gimmick of using lots of red on temperature maps. You can make those reds look so bright you need sunscreen. Damn! That looks hot!

“Vintners in France haven’t seen such a succession of hot weather and dry harvest since the 14th century, during a time called “the Black Death.”

~ Bloomberg news, inadvertently noting it was hot 600 years ago

(8) The world has been warmer in the past. I am not talking eons but merely centuries. Vikings grew barley in Greenland 1,000 years ago.³³ The nasty glitch in the catastrophe storyline is that the world was hotter during the Medieval Warm Period (MWP) from 950 – 1250 AD.³⁴ Glaciers are melting as they tend to do. The receding Mendenhall glacier in Alaska revealed tree stumps from 1,000 to 1,200 years ago.³⁵ They must have grown there 1200 years ago, right? Mediterranean grapes were cultivated throughout Great Britain.³⁶The MWP is one of the bogies that Mann et al. got caught trying to eradicate from the data in Climate-gate. Changers also fear the Black Death will emerge from thawing arctic graves,³⁷ ignoring the efficacy of modern antibiotics and the fact that they must have been buried in warmer times.

“People are complaining about the weather. Why don’t they fix it?”

~ Old Joke

(9) There is no optimal global temperature. The warm period 7,000 to 5,000 years ago witnessed ancient Egypt and Greece prospering.³⁸ Flourishing civilizations developed during the Roman Warm Period (RWP) from 250 BC to 400 AD.³⁹ The Medieval Warm Period (MWP) from 950 – 1250 AD saw the resurgence of civilization and ushered in the beginnings of the Renaissance. In contrast, the 18th century cooling period, The Little Ice Age, brought in famines and death.⁴⁰ Given the choice of feast or famine, I’ll take feast every time.

“Tripling CO₂ in Earth’s atmosphere will be a major benefit to life on Earth.”

~ Will Happer, Physicist at Princeton and former director of the Department of Energy’s Office of Science

(10) The correlation and causality of the relationship between CO₂ and temperature are nuanced. Look at the stacked plots in Figure 17. That is a serious correlation of CO₂concentration and temperature, and that little arrow showing today is supposed to scare the bejeesus out of you. What you cannot see is the statistically significant 800-year lag of CO­₂ concentrations behind the temperature movements.⁴¹ We’ve got causality backwards: higher temperatures are causing more CO₂. Why? As oceans warm they release CO₂. It’s called “degassing” and you learn about it in freshman chemistry (or so I’m told).

Figure 17. CO₂ (top) and temperature (bottom) over the last 800,000 years.

Meanwhile, the dreaded greenhouse gas effect of CO₂ has a non-linear (logarithmic) relationship: the more CO₂ you pump into the atmosphere, the less effect it has. Princeton physicist William Happer says we are close to the point of maximum influence—saturation.⁴² It is one of the countless poorly understood (and often ignored) feedback loops that render the climate-change debate complex.

[That] “CO₂, the life of plants, was considered for a time to be a deadly poison…will be remembered as the greatest mass delusion in the history of the world.”

 

~ Richard Lindzen, MIT physicist, and former head of the National Academy of Sciences

(11) CO₂ is plant food. Let’s bullet this idea:

• The pre-industrial CO₂ of 280 PPM is now up to 400 PPM.⁴³
• Greenpeace co-founder Patrick Moore notes that at 280 ppm we were nearly carbon starved compared with prior ages. Even 400 ppm is starved by historical standards.⁴²
• Greenhouses crank CO₂ levels to >1500 ppm to promote growth.⁴⁴
• The CO₂ content in a Nebraska cornfield at high noon is 50% lower than at night as the corn gobbles it up.⁴⁵
• Nobel Prize winning physicist, Ivar Giaever, submits that the CO₂ spewed into the global atmosphere by all the cars in the world is equivalent to sitting in a 20x20x8 room lighting one match every three years.⁴⁶
• There has been a demonstrable greening of the planet during the past 30 years, an area two times the continental US.⁴⁷ Al Gore forgot to mention this.
• CO₂ suppresses excess moisture loss in plants by closing pores, aiding in drought resistance.⁴⁸
• Nobody knows the optimal level of CO₂ in the atmosphere, but plants love the stuff.

Figure 18. Tree growth at CO₂ levels: ambient, +150 ppm, +300 ppm, and +450 ppm.

“A strong negative feedback of the clouds is missing [from the models]…we have practically no anthropogenic climate change…the low clouds control mainly [sic] the global temperature.”

~ Finnish and Japanese scientists working independently

“The effects of CO₂ are very small, maybe a few percent of the effects of water vapor.”

~ Reid Bryson, former professor of geology and meteorology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, founder of University of Wisconsin’s Department of Meteorology and Center for Climatic Research, first director of the Institute for Environmental Studies

(12) Clouds are a profound contributor to the greenhouse effect and are nearly impossible to model. There is 50-fold more water vapor in the atmosphere than CO₂ and it’s estimated that water makes up 80% of the Earth’s greenhouse gas.⁴⁹ According to NASA in 2008 “the heat-amplifying effect of water vapor is potent enough to double the climate warming caused by increased levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.”⁵⁰ The article now carries a warning that some of its contents might be questionable. (That was so long ago…and so inconvenient.) Higher temperatures also increase the atmospheric moisture content and clouds, offering yet another feedback loop thwarting even crude modeling efforts. There is not a snowball’s chance in hell (or even Greenland apparently) that these guys can predict the influence of clouds years into the future.

“Climate change is all solar, and the CO₂ has never been shown to be causal.”

~ Nir Shaviv (@nshaviv), chairman of the Racah Institute of Physics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. 

(13) Don’t forget the sun! The most demented of alarmists have claimed that methane from cow farts threaten the climate and go on to argue that we should have fewer cows. Meanwhile, they ignore the mighty influence of that 10³⁰-kilogram ball of fusion that we call the sun, radiating unimaginable energy onto the globe. Why is this? Of the dozens of IPCC members, only one is a solar scientist.⁵¹

Figure 19. The collective effects of changes in the Earth’s movements on its climate over thousands of years.

Legions of solar physicists, drawing on their expertise in rhythmic solar cycles, including sunspot activity and 100,000-year Milankovitch cycles (interactions between the Earth’s movements and the climate),⁵² think the sun influences the climate rather profoundly.⁵³ Go figure. Here are words from two prominent ones:

“CO₂ emissions don’t play the major role [in climate change]. Periodic solar activity does. Based on the increase of solar activity during the twentieth century, it should account for between half to two-thirds of all climate change. That, in turn, implies that climate sensitivity to CO₂ should be about 1.0 degree when the amount of CO₂ doubles….All of it shows the same thing, the bulk of climate change is caused by the sun via its impact on atmospheric charge, which means that most of the warming comes from nature — a freshman physics student can see this…The climate of the last millennium was presented as basically fixed until the twentieth century. This is a kind of Orwellian cherry-picking to fit a pre-determined narrative.

~ Nir Shaviv (@nshaviv), chairman of the Racah Institute of Physics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. 

“Neither the rate nor the magnitude of the reported late twentieth century surface warming (1979-2000) lay outside the normal natural variability, nor was it in any way unusual compared to earlier episodes in Earth’s climatic history. Furthermore, solar forcings of temperature change are likely more important than is currently recognized.”

~ Willie Soon, PHD, solar astrophysicist, Harvard–Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics

You know what these solar physicists are now warning about? We are heading into a significant Maunder minimum, which means we are gonna freeze our asses off.

“Glaciers Are Retreating. Millions Rely on Their Water.”

~ Headline, New York Times

(14) Melting glaciers are deceptive and great doom porn. Pictures of melting glaciers call people to arms. While the ice is receding in the arctic and elsewhere in the north, it is growing in Antarctica.⁵⁴ Beware of claims about shrinking ice masses because the total mass of ice appears to be holding constant…⁵⁵

“Why is Antarctic sea ice at record levels despite global warming?”

~ Headline, The Guardian

Greenland used to be much greener and has been getting colder for decades. The Jakobshavn glacier in Greenland, known for being one of the fastest shrinking ice and snow masses on Earth, is growing again.⁵⁶ An arctic climate tour boat carrying a film crew to document global warming got stuck in the ice between Norway and North Pole twice. It is meaningless but funny.

“A senior U.N. environmental official says entire nations could be wiped off the face of the Earth by rising sea levels if the global warming trend is not reversed by the year 2000.”

~ AP News, June 29, 1989

“There is robust evidence of disasters displacing people worldwide but limited evidence that climate change or sea-level rise is the direct cause.”

~ IPCC

(15) Rising oceans will not drown us. Nobody doubts the oceans are warming and levels rising, in part, through thermal expansion. The internet is loaded with projections like this one showing an exponential rise in sea level:

Looks kinda scary but one wonders about the origins of that exponential curvature. I stare at plots for a living and can’t grasp what physical model would justify putting an exponential into that function. As we shall see below, the data does not show such exponential growth. Quite to the contrary.

The sea level has been rising for 14,000 years following the last glaciation. At the current rate, by the year 2100 sea levels will have risen 10 inches. OMFG! Can you guess how much they rose in the 20th century? Yup, 10 inches. Remember all those catastrophes? Me neither. Over the last 8,000 years, sea levels have risen on average 10 inches per century. To be fair, some models put the projected rise over the next century as high as 30 inches (assuming exponential growth, of course). Nonetheless, you get a very different perspective if you look at these changes over different timespans

25 years of sea level rising…

100 years of sea level rising…

20,000 years of sea level rising…

As Tony Heller would say,²⁸ after 400 ft of rising sea levels, those last few inches are our fault. And as the guy in “The Graduate” said to Dustin Hoffman:

“I have just two words. Are you listening? Sump pumps.”

~ The Graduate

(16) Human-driven extinction has been going on for millennia. The arrival of hominids was bad news for many species. I am not ready to seriously weigh in on the biology of global warming, but here are some fun facts and thoughts:

• Habitat loss and pollution, both consequences of human impacts, are said to be primary causes of extinctions. Climate change is on the list somewhere.⁵⁸
• It is rumored that polar bears die. If you happen to see a photo of a late-stage polar bear, that beast might look rather pathetic (Figure 20). Do you think this wretched soul is starving because he has run out of ice? Are there no fish in that water? They eat a lot of seals but can dine on a wide array of stuff (including fish) or, as they say, “anything they want.”⁵⁹ How about that brown bear known as Beadnose? It is a sad story: he eventually lost the battle to a dominant bear.⁶⁰ As an aside, the polar bear population has tripled since the 1970s. Come on folks: think.

Figure 20. Malnourished polar bear and brown bear. The latter is Beadnose Bear #409.⁶⁰

• Word from some Caribbean Islands is that some coral reefs have flourished over the last two years. The islanders attribute the reefs’ good health to recent hurricanes ruining the tourist seasons, giving the corals a break from greasy sun-screened hands and flippered feet.⁶¹ (Hurricanes also beat them up pretty seriously.) Professor James Ridd of James Cook University criticized the veracity of the research claiming reef damage was due to global warming. He got fired but was awarded $1.2 million by the courts.⁶² He’s probably snorkeling in the Caribbean as I type.
• Daniel Rothman, professor of geophysics and co-director of the Lorenz Center in MIT’s Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences, paints a dire picture of our impact on ecosystems.⁶³ Of course, his new and improved climate-biology model that he is pitching has two—count ‘em, two—differential equations. When he adds a lot of CO₂, the model goes bonkers. I betcha he engineered the equations to go nuts. My bullshit detector is flickering.
• The IPCC claimed malaria would spread north seemingly unaware that the highest death toll recorded from Malaria occurred in Siberia during the 1920s. There is an ongoing debate about which malaria we are talking about.⁶⁴
• Here is a thought: if predatory bird populations—bald eagles and osprey—were depleting right now, would our obsession with climate change cause us to overlook the role of DDT?

“These fires were not caused by climate change…the Amazon is not the ‘lungs of the world’…It’s bullshit.”

~ Dan Nepstad, Executive Director of and Senior Scientist at the Earth Innovation Institute, a lead author on the 5th IPCC Assessment Report, and world’s expert on the Amazon forest.

(17) Serious climate change is undetectable to the naked eye. Tell your pot-headed nephew majoring in sociology at Christmas dinner the yearly changes are microscopic on an annualized basis even if we are totally screwed. That hurricane last week or the snow-free January tells you nothing, zero, nada, zippo. Annual sea level rises are the thickness of a penny. The wildfires in Brazil stem from slash and burn agriculture, not global warming, and, more importantly, they are not above the norm.⁶⁵ Deep dives into the extreme climate events (hurricanes, typhoons, tornadoes) back to 1900 show no statistically significant change.⁶⁶ And if they did, your lyin’ eyes could not detect the change. I promise to not denounce global warming because it was cold last winter if y’all promise not to declare it a crisis ‘cause it was hot last summer.

“The world is going to end in 12 years if we don’t address climate change.”

~ Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez (AOC), bartender turned climate activist

“Pompous little twit. You don’t have a plan to grow food for 8 billion people without fossil fuels, or get the food into the cities. Horses? If fossil fuels were banned every tree in the world would be cut down for fuel for cooking and heating. You would bring about mass death.”

~ Patrick Moore (@EcoSenseNow), PhD and Founder of Greenpeace, to AOC

(18) The “precautionary principle” is a double-edged sword with a big price tag. It basically says that when in doubt, play it safe.⁶⁷ Many of my friends instinctively view the climate change movement as “why not?” without looking at the monetary and political ramifications. Should we spend trillions of dollars on Green New Deals or let the climate change unabated and risk global catastrophe? Both carry a price. Milton Friedman, when confronted with the notion that one human life lost is too many, noted that a billion dollars was too much to pay for a life.⁶⁸ Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s (AOC’s) and Elizabeth Warren’s Green New Deals to address climate change could top out at wildly guestimated >$100 trillion.⁶⁹ AOC is a former bartender, for Christ’s sakes. The Paris Accord is also estimated to cost a wildly guesstimated $100 trillion dollars to lower the temperature 0.25 °C.⁷⁰ Adaptation would be a lot cheaper. I am with Milton and joining the Fryers Club of Rome.

“Just because there is a problem doesn’t mean that we have to solve it, if the cure is going to be more expensive than the original ailment.”

~ Bjorn Lomborg, former director of the Danish government’s Environmental Assessment Institute

People understand the costs, albeit in the most self-serving way. A recent poll showed that the majority of Americans were willing to address climate change if the personal cost to them was $1 per month but balked at $10 per month.⁷¹ In a psychology study,⁷² a survey of 600 American adults identified them as climate “skeptics,” “cautious worriers,” and “highly concerned.” Questions pertaining to their life styles showed the “highly concerned” were most supportive of government solutions and least likely to take actions as individuals. By contrast, the “skeptics” were most opposed to policy solutions and most likely to live “green.” What this study might be showing is that worrying stems from a sense of losing control. This hypocrisy is breathtaking, causing the skeptics to view the changers with deep-seated ligma.⁷³

“According to the global-warming people, I say what I say because I’m paid by the oil industry. Of course I’m not, but that’s part of their rhetoric. If you doubt it, you’re a bad person, a tool of the oil or coal industry.”

~ Freeman Dyson, legendary physicist at Princeton’s Institute of Advanced Study.

“The few who push back against the propaganda, such as Roger Pielke Jr., find themselves on the receiving end of abuse and career-threatening attacks, even though they have all the science in their corner. Something has gotten scary and extreme, but it isn’t the weather.”

~ Professor Ross McKitrick, professor of economics at the University of Guelph specializing in environmental economics and policy analysis.

(19) Conflicts of interest are profound. There seems to be a prevalence of old men in the outspoken denial camp, possibly because they have little to lose except their dignity. They are often accused of taking money from “Big Oil” and other corporate interests, but I have had little success making such connections. Alex Epstein, a relative moderate advocating for human adaptation, complained that Big Oil has been pathetically unsupportive. After he failed to get a corporate sponsor for a debate with an activist Alex paid for it personally.⁷⁴

Those who focus on “Big Oil” funding are missing the “Big Government” funding problem. A group called the “Climate Policy Initiative” estimated that $359 billion was spent globally on climate change in 2013 and suggested that such money “falls far short” of the $5 trillion per year that would do the trick.⁷⁵ Vast international organizations, branches of government, non-profit organizations, scientific research programs, university departments, and well-paid administrators are funded to solve the problem. The US Department of Transportation allocated funds to study the effect of climate change on car accidents. Really? Car accidents? Carbon credits are allocated to corporations to be spent like medieval Catholic Church Indulgences for their sins of emission.⁷⁶ Tesla sold theirs to more legitimate automakers to stay solvent.⁷⁷ Wall street banks are salivating over trading carbon credits. HSBC, JP Morgan, and Blackrock refer to “the climate opportunity”.⁷⁸ All this will simply vanish if global warming is declared a dud. What are the odds it will be declared a dud? Zero.

“It helps to be old. I do not have to worry about finding another job.”

~ Freeman Dyson, legendary physicist at Princeton’s Institute of Advanced Study.

There are numerous stories of papers going unpublished and careers destroyed because scientists did not endorse climatism. I have decades of experience with the peer review system and would be stunned—stunned—if a grant that smacks of denialism could be funded by a Federal agency in the current climate. The term “never” comes to mind. When pressed, chemistry colleagues who are warm to the idea of global warming largely agree with this assertion. Lennart Bengtsson calls it “McCarthyism” in his letter of resignation:⁷⁹

“I had not expect(ed) such an enormous worldwide pressure put at me from a community that I have been close to all my active life. Colleagues are withdrawing their support; other colleagues are withdrawing from joint authorship.”

~ Lennart Bengtsson, former head of the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts and director of the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg

Judith Curry, atmospheric scientist and climatologist, was forced into early retirement from Georgia Tech for expressing reservations about the more extreme claims by climate scientists.⁸⁰ Polar bear expert Susan Crockford was dismissed from the University of Victoria after deviating from the narrative that the polar bears are dying off.⁸¹ Nir Shaviv puts the problem in stark terms in a Forbes article: 

“The real problem is funding from funding agencies like the National Science Foundation because these proposals have to undergo review by people in a community that ostracizes us…If you believe what everyone believes, you are a good person. If you don’t, you are a bad person. Who wants to be a sinner?”

~ Nir Shaviv, chairman of the Racah Institute of Physics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Shaviv’s Forbes article was pulled within hours “for failing to meet our editorial standards”. Open debate shouldn’t be this hard.

And here is the really funny one. Michael Moore began a documentary on alternative fuels, undoubtedly with an eye toward hammering Big Oil, only to discover a corrupt and convoluted world of Big Wind and Big Solar. His long-term collaborator and producer noted:⁸²

“It turned out the wakeup call was about our own side. It was kind of crushing to discover that the things I believed in weren’t real, first of all, and then to discover not only are the solar panels and wind turbines not going to save us … but (also) that there is this whole dark side of the corporate money … It dawned on me that these technologies were just another profit center.”

~ Jeff Gibbs, co-producer with Michael Moore of “Planet of the Humans”

Gibbs goes on to say, “This is not a film by climate change deniers; this is a film by people who really care about the environment…We all want to feel good about something like the electric car, but in the back of your head somewhere you’ve a nagging thought, ’Yeah, but where is the electricity coming from?’” Michael Moore adds, “I’m one of those people who wanted to believe all of these years that we were on the right path.” Moore’s and Gibb’s documentary, “Planet of the Humans,” aired at film festivals this summer but has yet to be released to the general public.⁸³

“I feel very strongly that China and India getting rich is the most important thing that’s going on in the world at present. That’s a real revolution, that the center of gravity of the whole population of the world would be middle class, and that’s a wonderful thing to happen. It would be a shame if we persuade them to stop that just for the sake of a problem that’s not that serious.”

~ Freeman Dyson, Princeton Physicist

“Go and explain to developing countries why they should continue living in poverty and not be like Sweden.”

~ Vladimir Putin, head of Russia’s Climate Denial Bureau, to Greta Thunberg

“We are gonna have to eat the babies.”

~ Detractor spoofing AOC

(20) Modern humans have been pulled out of grinding poverty by capitalism and fossil fuels.Those leaning hard left are determined to eliminate both “evils.” If we eliminate fossil fuels abruptly—decades—humans will starve. Returning to the lifestyle of the noble savage will require knocking decimal points off the world’s population, and it ain’t gonna be the rich who suffer. Environmentalists used to support natural gas and wind power. Now they fight fracking and pipelines while raging against bird-killing rotors. Municipal leaders like the Berkeley City Council have banned natural gas from new residential construction.⁸⁴ The shale boom seems to be waning anyway,⁸⁵ so peak oil discussions may reappear soon. Nonetheless, keep fighting that pipeline because it would be a disaster to get yet another…

Figure 21. Natural gas pipelines.

The green revolution was powered by fossil fuels. We are not in a position to force the world carbon-free. Dutch farmers have started a “no-farmer, no-food” movement to push back against Draconian measures.⁸⁶ The one potentially limitless source of power—nuclear energy—is not even on the table in the US. How many years will it take to build the next plant? In the wake of Fukushima, Japan is reverting back to coal by bringing 12 new coal-fired power plants online, 15 more are being built, and 10 in the planning stage.⁸⁷ The beloved biofuels—beloved by the corn lobby—is a complete non-starter unless you can harvest the shrubbery from oceans because the world’s topsoils are depleting.⁸⁸ What are the odds India and China will forego their fossil-fuel-driven economic renaissances? Zero.

“Isn’t the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn’t it our responsibility to bring that about?”

~ Maurice Strong, former Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations and the first executive director of the United Nations Environment Program

(21) The global warming movement is about political control. The IPCC, largely a political body, is controlled by a relatively small core group. There is a not-so-subtle undercurrent of cultural Marxism. Let’s look at a few more nuggets to convey how much of a political tool climate science has become:

“…one has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. Instead, climate change policy is about how we redistribute de facto the world’s wealth…”

~ Ottmar Edenhofer, IPCC official speaking in November 2010

“We’ve got to ride the global-warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right things in terms of economic policy and environmental policy.”

~ Tim Wirth, Senator, chair of Clinton-Gore Campaign, and UN official

“The Green New Deal wasn’t originally a climate thing at all … we really think of it as a how-do-you-change-the-entire-economy thing.”

~ Saikat Chakrabarti, Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez’s handler and founder of the Justice Democrats

“Climate change: Firms failing to tackle crisis will be delisted from stock exchange.”

~ Headline, The Independent

The wildly popular Paris Accord provides support for poor countries to develop alternative energies while requiring no emissions cuts.⁸⁹ Who couldn’t like that? For starters, the poor within the prosperous countries would be hurt by mandatory fossil fuel reductions. The Green New Deal is yet more government control and will be incompatible with the US Constitution and capitalism. Some view that as a win. Then there is this gem from a scientist-turned-activist:

“We are not just scientists but human beings as well. And like most people we’d like to see the world a better place, which in this context translates into our working to reduce the risk of potentially disastrous climatic change. To do that we need to get some broad-based support, to capture the public’s imagination. That, of course, entails getting loads of media coverage. So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have. This ‘double ethical bind’ we frequently find ourselves in cannot be solved by any formula. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest.”

~ Steve Schneider, Professor of Environmental Biology and Global Change at Stanford University, deceased

As noted in the section on the Fed, central banks around the globe have begun chattering about roles central banks will play to solve climate crises going forward. A global network of roughly 40 central banks have formed the Network for Greening the Financial System (NGFS),⁹⁰ an initiative intended to “manage risks and to mobilize capital for green and low-carbon investments.” I cannot tell if our banking overlords view this as yet another opportunity to destroy the free market and maintain power or simply establish an alibi for when it fails. I view that group as largely mid-level, intellectually incontinent bureaucrats.

“In coming decades the only policies that can effectively be used to manage the immediate effects of climate variability and change will be adaptive.”

~ Roger Pielke Jr, former Director of the Center for Science and Technology Policy Research at the University of Colorado Boulder

(22) Humans adapt. I am less afraid of global warming than of the political solutions. Hominids made it through ice ages, crossed the Bering Strait, and eventually crossed the Atlantic Ocean (to conquer those who crossed the Strait.) There is a place in Russia with a record single-year temperature range of –90 °F to +114 °F; the residents adapt. Alex Epstein, author of The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels, articulates the case for human ingenuity and adaptation.⁹¹ While the climate changed throughout the 20th century, deaths from severe climate events dropped 97%.⁹² Alex emphasizes maximizing human progress and the human existence while accepting the requisite tradeoffs; we always have.

 

“Of all the tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under the omnipotent moral busybodies.”

~ C. S. Lewis

(23) Nobody—not one person on the planet—knows what will happen. Of this, I have no doubt. We are all guessing. Here is my gripe. The climate is so complex with so many feedback loops we cannot possibly fully understand it. The best we can do is apply the “precautionary principle” by balancing mitigation and sacrifice. What makes debates with climate activists so problematic is that so many suffer from the ‘’noble cause’’ syndrome. “I’m right so I’ll fight!” I have engaged in contentious debates on many subjects, but none like this. I have never seen a more mean-spirited gaggle of pseudo-experts so quick to deploy scorched Earth tactics. Their sanctimony impedes serious discussions. They really can be serious douche bags. Go back and read those Gerry Mueller emails: what a dick.

“The arrival of Greta Thunberg in New York on Wednesday was one of many recent events that illustrate how rapidly modern environmentalism is degenerating into a millenarian cult.”

~ Niall Ferguson, senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and former senior research fellow at Oxford and Professor at Harvard and New York Universities.

(24) Pedophrasty is for the gullible. Using children as political pawns or shields—so-called pedophrasty—is commonplace. Young girls are optimal given that counter-attacking looks particularly distasteful. A young Kuwaiti girl was used to generate support for the Gulf War. Countless children are props during abortion protests. David Hogg was the face of gun control. (I still have that vomit aftertaste.) One study claims that teenage girls are best at convincing their parents climate change is a problem.⁹³ Who in their right mind would turn to teenagers for wisdom on globally important geopolitical topics? There is also a cost. A group of psychologists from the University of Bath have documented an epidemic of children who are ‘terrified’ of climate catastrophe and have “eco-anxiety.”⁹⁴ Of course, these may be the snowflakes in an otherwise warming environment.

The climate pedophrasts found what they thought was the perfect prop—a young girl “on the spectrum” named Greta Thunberg—who, by her own admission, should be picking marshmallows from her Lucky Charms and heading off to school. Her vapid speeches add absolutely nothing of substance to the debate. I suspect she even has to fake her sneers because of her high function whatever. She is a Child of the Corn—a weaponized Shirley Temple—straight out of 17th century Salem, MA. In a ridiculous media stunt Greta crossed the Atlantic in a zero-emissions sailing boat, fitted with a diesel engine and made from carbon fiber that required 14 times more energy to produce than a conventional boat.⁹⁵ Six crew members had to take trans-Atlantic flights. She gave the most cringe-worthy speech to the UN, chastising the audience for taking air flights to the same meeting while the fawning crowds of nitwits did the baby shark dance. After a snafu got her stuck on the wrong side of the pond,⁹⁶ a shadowy cabal of handlers realized they had created a big optics problem: How do they get her back across the Atlantic without emitting carbon? The virtue-signaling Tidepodler had to put out her thumb:

“Now I need to find a way to cross the Atlantic in November… If anyone could help me find transport I would be so grateful.”

~ Greta Thunberg, hitching a ride because a meeting was moved from Chile to Spain

Let us not forget the lucrative speaking fees, which I could not track down, but likely total in the millions of dollars. Speaking tours are lucrative. She was “snubbed for the Nobel Peace Prize”, instead giving it to Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed for ending the 20-year Eritrea conflict.⁹⁷ The prize money would have bought her a yacht stocked with carbon-free food and crew. She will probably never have to learn to code. She is now Time Magazine’s Person of the Year. She shares this with Donald Trump and a host of other deplorables. I actually think it is a valid decision given it is not about good or evil.

 

No doubt as a homework project for her home-schooled civics class, Greta (and her tutors) filed a legal brief accusing five countries—Germany, France, Brazil, Argentina, and Turkey—of inaction on global warming in violation of the 30-year-old UN Convention on the Rights of a Child.⁹⁸ French prime minister Macron was pissed.⁹⁹ German drivers sported “F*ck you Greta” bumper stickers.¹⁰⁰ At some point, she will head off to college, maybe Harvard where she could team up with David Hogg. Meanwhile, you have never been a parent if you are getting your jollies from a 16-year-old sneering at you.

“There’s no point bleating about the future of pandas, polar bears, and tigers when we’re not addressing the one single factor that’s putting more pressure on the ecosystem than any other – namely the ever-increasing size of the world’s population.”

~ Chris Packham, BBC host of a wildlife show

“Fully half of all the fossil fuels ever burned throughout all of history have been burned since 1990….How many more doublings do you think we’ve got?”

~ Chris Martenson (@chrismartenson), Peak Prosperity

“The raging monster upon the land is population growth. In its presence, sustainability is but a fragile theoretical construct.”

~ E. O. Wilson

“Anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist.”

~ Kenneth Boulding, economist and peace activist

(25) Overpopulation and other pressing issues. I believe we are polluting the planet and rapidly strip mining it of critical resources. For this debate, however, do not conflate the human-driven consumption and destruction of the Earth’s resources with the specific issue of climate change. We are consuming limited resources, dumping plastics into the oceans, and spewing goo into the air and waterways. We really should stop. The Great Pacific Garbage patch is comprised of recycled yogurt containers from the US sent to China. Recycling isn’t green; consuming less shit is. We may consume ourselves back to the stone age and take the planet with us, but I am doubtful that we will fry in the process. The climate change debate is sucking the oxygen out of these other environmental debates.

“Today in chapel, we confessed to plants. Together, we held our grief, joy, regret, hope, guilt and sorrow in prayer; offering them to the beings who sustain us but whose gift we too often fail to honor. What do you confess to the plants in your life?”

~ @UnionSeminary

“Those plants think you’re all morons.”

~ Mark Dice (@MarkDice)

(26) The climate change movement is a bug light for whack jobs. I can’t tell if I actually doubt global warming or if I doubt the movement, which is increasingly populated by the ill-informed. Last year I wrote through the lens of an atheist about the social glue of religion and how pushing religion to the margins has a cost. We are replacing religion with social causes, whether it be hatred of Trump, support for the second amendment, or, yes, fear or denial of climate change. The newly formed “Extinction Rebellion” movement, a subset of the sanctimony-climate complex, aims to disrupt the function of society to emphasize their angst over climate change. The common folk, living from paycheck to paycheck, would have none of it as they dragged the Rebels off the tops of subway cars and then adjusted their attitudes.¹⁰¹ Rebels superglued themselves to the streets,¹⁰² seemingly oblivious to the concept of “road kill”. Marinating in ignorance, some activists have recommended making skyscrapers out of wood.¹⁰³ I’m sure the Truthers will find that a novel idea. If the catastrophists took the time to understand why some of us don’t believe them instead of just assuring us we are crazier than them while acting like crazies, maybe we could optimize the precautionary principle. Until it is safe for the scientists—all the scientists—to engage in honest debate without fearing reprisal, this seems like a pipe dream.

Figure 22. Extinction rebels saving the planet.

“As the climate warms, human beings are more likely to get dehydrated, which increases the risk of [kidney] stone formation.”

~ Kevin R. Loughlin, Harvard Medical School literature online

And in a final comment, two gentlemen in this debate whom I have never directly interacted with and who likely detest each other with passion, have finally found a point they can agree on…

At least Steve McIntyre is still talking to me. Somebody please tell Tony I’m an admirer and that I like his T-shirt. I suspect this may be the last I write on the subject. It has not been that fun. I am unknown to the climate denial community, but I won’t be surprised if I get to know some changers soon. I should also say that, while my research in chemistry is funded by Big Government, I have never received a penny for my views from Big Oil. But as an academic scientist, if you guys want to send me a big honkin’ check I’d be up with that.

“Science is a culture of doubt. Religion is a culture of faith.”

~ Richard Feynman, winner of the 1965 Nobel Prize in Physics (and one of the greats on that scale)

“Climate change is the religion for people who think they are too smart for religion.”

~Tom Nelson (@tan123)

Given its length, we’ve had to break this report in half so as not to crash your browser.

 

 

I read it all. It aligns with my own mostly ignorant thoughts, therefore I accept it without fault. 

[Bateshorn 9991]

Man,  that’s all the best denialist and lukewarmist hits. Curry, CATO,  non specialists talking out of their asses, charts, global cooling. 

Edited January 16, 2020 by Bateshorn

[GRHorn 105]

On 12/16/2019 at 1:30 PM, Biff Tannen said:

 

https://www.cnn.com/2019/12/16/business/goldman-sachs-arctic/index.html

Well if Goldman says they’re doing something for moral reasons you better take it with a boulder of salt. 

[Bookman 4769]

4 hours ago, Pato del Muerto said:

I read it all. It aligns with my own mostly ignorant thoughts, therefore I accept it without fault. 

How did you make it all the way through? That guy's a terrible writer.

[GRHorn 105]

Lol

 

 

[Longhornmaniac8 255]

On 1/16/2020 at 2:50 PM, Bateshorn said:

Man,  that’s all the best denialist and lukewarmist hits. Curry, CATO,  non specialists talking out of their asses, charts, global cooling. 

Jesus Christ, no kidding. Curry, Soon, Lindzen, Pielke Jr, Lomborg, Michaels. 

That is just flat out embarrassing if the goal was something resembling truth.

[Parliament 14617]

22 hours ago, GRHorn said:

Lol

 

 

If they're TRULY committed, they'll stay there unit the planet starts cooling.

[Zavala 1384]

 

[Biff Tannen 46200]

Oh good, Zavala bumped this thread again. 

[Zavala 1384]

4 hours ago, Biff Tannen said:

Oh good, Zavala bumped this thread again. 

Great insight to the video

[Foosters 18287]

10 minutes ago, Zavala said:

Great insight to the video

Here's some insight for you. The guy behind those videos has a BA in economics from Dennison and a JD from some TTTT law school. He has zero science background. HIS description of the video you posted is "Video response to terroristic actions taken by the House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis."

fuck off zavala. stop educating yourself on youtube videos. 

[ChickenSandwich 9971]

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.wsj.com/amp/articles/a-heated-oxford-education-11580680180
 

When most people think of Oxford, what comes to mind are images of bright minds debating quantum physics or the existence of God. But even the brainiest sometimes need a lesson in common sense.

 

That’s exactly what the bursar at St. John’s College—the most richly endowed college at Oxford—delivered when he responded to students occupying his 15th-century quadrangle and refusing to leave until the college divested its oil-company shares. The students want the college to sell the more than $10 million of its endowment now invested in Shell and BP, and they want it now.

The Times of London reports that bursar Andrew Parker made them a counteroffer. “I am not able to arrange any divestment at short notice,” he wrote. “But I can arrange for the gas central heating in college to be switched off with immediate effect. Please let me know if you support this proposal.” 

The idea that the students themselves make a fossil-fuel sacrifice did not go over well. One protest organizer complained that Mr. Parker was being flippant, noting that “it’s January and it would be borderline dangerous to shut off the central heating.” Another suggested Mr. Parker was being provocative. 

Again the bursar responded with wisdom: “You are right that I am being provocative but I am provoking some clear thinking, I hope. It is all too easy to request others to do things that carry no personal cost to yourself. The question is whether you and others are prepared to make personal sacrifices to achieve the goals of environmental improvement (which I support as a goal).”

[Foosters 18287]

3 minutes ago, ChickenSandwich said:

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.wsj.com/amp/articles/a-heated-oxford-education-11580680180
 

When most people think of Oxford, what comes to mind are images of bright minds debating quantum physics or the existence of God. But even the brainiest sometimes need a lesson in common sense.

 

That’s exactly what the bursar at St. John’s College—the most richly endowed college at Oxford—delivered when he responded to students occupying his 15th-century quadrangle and refusing to leave until the college divested its oil-company shares. The students want the college to sell the more than $10 million of its endowment now invested in Shell and BP, and they want it now.

The Times of London reports that bursar Andrew Parker made them a counteroffer. “I am not able to arrange any divestment at short notice,” he wrote. “But I can arrange for the gas central heating in college to be switched off with immediate effect. Please let me know if you support this proposal.” 

The idea that the students themselves make a fossil-fuel sacrifice did not go over well. One protest organizer complained that Mr. Parker was being flippant, noting that “it’s January and it would be borderline dangerous to shut off the central heating.” Another suggested Mr. Parker was being provocative. 

Again the bursar responded with wisdom: “You are right that I am being provocative but I am provoking some clear thinking, I hope. It is all too easy to request others to do things that carry no personal cost to yourself. The question is whether you and others are prepared to make personal sacrifices to achieve the goals of environmental improvement (which I support as a goal).”

imagine reading this and thinking the bursar is making a good point.

[Johnny Sack 8397]

9 minutes ago, Foosters said:

imagine reading this and thinking the bursar is making a good point.

Imagine reading it and thinking he doesn’t.  

[hobbes2702 13505]

11 minutes ago, Johnny Sack said:

Imagine reading it and thinking he doesn’t.  

Honestly how do you survive everyday?

[Brisketexan 107007]

Imagine reading it and thinking he doesn’t.  

Imagine comparing something that’s immediately fungible with something that isn’t immediately replaceable and thinking it’s a sound analogy.

[ChickenSandwich 9971]

23 minutes ago, Foosters said:

imagine reading this and thinking the bursar is making a good point.

Calm down Veruca 

[Gap03 3395]

Obligatory ...

Edited February 5, 2020 by Gap03
Meant to be a response to ChickenSandwich ...

[Johnny Sack 8397]

4 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

Imagine comparing something that’s immediately fungible with something that isn’t immediately replaceable and thinking it’s a sound analogy.

They don’t have sweaters?  Or electric blankets or heaters over there?  

you probably believe that given your bleeding vagina off the deep end ramblings about Brexit. 

[Neonmoon 38130]

31 minutes ago, Foosters said:

imagine reading this and thinking the bursar is making a good point.

 

21 minutes ago, Johnny Sack said:

Imagine reading it and thinking he doesn’t.  

 

8 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

Imagine comparing something that’s immediately fungible with something that isn’t immediately replaceable and thinking it’s a sound analogy.

Now imagine he’s White 

[Brisketexan 107007]

They don’t have sweaters?  Or electric blankets or heaters over there?  

you probably believe that given your bleeding vagina off the deep end ramblings about Brexit. 

Sure thing, guy who thinks Brexit is about some deep and meaningful Braveheart cry of “FREEDOM!” instead of just garden-variety simple tribalism.

And being that the buildings are plumbed for gas heat, almost certainly with old and limited electric wiring systems, then no, electric heaters are almost certainly not a viable answer in the near term.

But continue to think this is clever. It says more about you than you know.

[High Plains Drifter 11192]

 

7 hours ago, ChickenSandwich said:

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.wsj.com/amp/articles/a-heated-oxford-education-11580680180
 

When most people think of Oxford, what comes to mind are images of bright minds debating quantum physics or the existence of God. But even the brainiest sometimes need a lesson in common sense.

 

That’s exactly what the bursar at St. John’s College—the most richly endowed college at Oxford—delivered when he responded to students occupying his 15th-century quadrangle and refusing to leave until the college divested its oil-company shares. The students want the college to sell the more than $10 million of its endowment now invested in Shell and BP, and they want it now.

The Times of London reports that bursar Andrew Parker made them a counteroffer. “I am not able to arrange any divestment at short notice,” he wrote. “But I can arrange for the gas central heating in college to be switched off with immediate effect. Please let me know if you support this proposal.” 

The idea that the students themselves make a fossil-fuel sacrifice did not go over well. One protest organizer complained that Mr. Parker was being flippant, noting that “it’s January and it would be borderline dangerous to shut off the central heating.” Another suggested Mr. Parker was being provocative. 

Again the bursar responded with wisdom: “You are right that I am being provocative but I am provoking some clear thinking, I hope. It is all too easy to request others to do things that carry no personal cost to yourself. The question is whether you and others are prepared to make personal sacrifices to achieve the goals of environmental improvement (which I support as a goal).”

 

Imagine posting this in a thread about climate change and thinking you are somehow making a point.

 

 

 

 

[ChickenSandwich 9971]

Imagine these children having the same verbatim policy on climate change as elected officials. 
 

[Biff Tannen 46200]

Imagine that all matter is merely energy condensed to a slow vibration, that we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively, there is no such thing as death, life is only a dream, and we are the imagination of ourselves.

[High Plains Drifter 11192]

 

39 minutes ago, Biff Tannen said:

Imagine that all matter is merely energy

 

Do you even E= mc^2 bro

 

[elfenix 34773]

i like this way a bit better

m=e/c2

 

[Pato del Muerto 53581]

4 hours ago, High Plains Drifter said:

 

 

Do you even E= mc^2 bro

 

 

4 minutes ago, elfenix said:

i like this way a bit better

m=e/c2

 

Hey geniuses- that shows a relationship between mass and energy. 
 

matter is not a part of it and as you should remember from middle school, matter is anything that has mass AND TAKES UP SPACE. 

[RayDog 682]

8 minutes ago, Pato del Muerto said:

 

Hey geniuses- that shows a relationship between mass and energy. 
 

matter is not a part of it and as you should remember from middle school, matter is anything that has mass AND TAKES UP SPACE. 

And everything with mass that takes up space is made of a material substance without mass that behaves like it is point-like.

[JBJ 3829]

Mass is just a perturbation of the Higgs field.

[Biff Tannen 46200]

Something something vacuum something

[Incredulity 11880]

 

[4th&Five 42026]

Welp...

 

[Incredulity 11880]

5 minutes ago, 4th&Five said:

Welp...

 

craig b hill

 

28 minutes ago

 (Edited)

 

We don't have ten years to fix this, we have literally months. We must immediately geoengineer the entirety of the Arctic Circle by white-masking the Arctic Ocean, to stop those imminently ice-free seas from releasing 150 billion gigatons of methane bursting out of the waters so saturated with greenhouse gases they cannot absorb any more bubbling out from the landsurface below that shallow sea. If that is allowed by us to happen, this spring or summer, that release of methane would immediately raise the temperature in the Arctic by over 30 degrees F and gradually over a matter of weeks would extend to the equator. A now-typical very hot summer plus 30+ degrees would end all agriculture in the Northern Hemisphere and cause millions to drop dead THIS YEAR.

We cannot exist long in 135 degrees in daytime and 100 degrees at night, if it would fall that low. Contact the Pentagon to contact their scientists to begin geoengineering the Arctic Ocean, THEY KNOW THIS IS COMING. Don't bother calling Trump, he's out golfing and anyway lacks the ken to understand or believe it.

[Biff Tannen 46200]

Good.  Maybe we'll all die before this stupid election.

[Nice Guy Eddie 13742]

One day I think half of antarctica's ice is going to slide into the ocean at once. 

[Parliament 14617]

And then it's gonna tip over!

[washparkhorn 9974]

There is a plan out there. Would you like to know more?

https://twitter.com/GenerationGND/status/1225860529308065793

 

[Pato del Muerto 53581]

Local weather doesn’t count, right?

[BNB 100]

https://www.iea.org/articles/global-co2-emissions-in-2019

[bolverk 30366]

^^^It's good news that emissions have plateaued. The bad news is that they're still way too high.

Meanwhile:

Quote

 

Antarctica logs highest temperature on record of 18.3C

A record high temperature of 18.3C (64.9F) has been logged on the continent of Antarctica.

The reading, taken on Thursday by Argentine research base Esperanza, is 0.8C hotter than the previous peak temperature of 17.5C, in March 2015.

The temperature was recorded in the Antarctic Peninsula, on the continent's north-west tip - one of the fastest-warming regions on earth.

It is being verified by the UN World Meteorological Organisation (WMO).

"[This] is not a figure you would normally associate with Antarctica, even in the summertime," WMO spokeswoman Clare Nullis told reporters in Geneva.

Temperatures on the Antarctic continent have risen by almost 3C (5.4F) over the past 50 years, the organisation said, and about 87% of the glaciers along its west coast have "retreated" in that time.

The glaciers have shown an "accelerated retreat" in the past 12 years, the WMO added, due to global warming.

Scientists warn that global warming is causing so much melting at the South Pole, it will eventually disintegrate - causing the global sea level to rise by at least three metres (10ft) over centuries.

Ms Nullis added: "The amount of ice lost annually from the Antarctic ice sheet increased at least six-fold between 1979 and 2017.

"The melting from these glaciers, you know, means we are in big trouble when it comes to sea level rise."

While 18.3C is a record for the Antarctic continent, the record in the wider Antarctic region - which includes the continent, islands and ocean that are in the Antarctic climatic zone - is 19.8C, logged in January 1982.

Last July, the Arctic region hit its own record temperature of 21C, logged by a base at the northern tip of Ellesmere Island in the Canadian Arctic.

 

 

[bolverk 30366]

Moreover:

January 2020 was Earth’s hottest January on record

The long-term trend of above-average temperatures continues

In the span of 141 years of climate records, there has never been a warmer January than last month, according to scientists at NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information.

What’s more, the temperature departure from average was the highest monthly departure ever recorded without an El Niño present in the tropical Pacific Ocean.

January 2020 marked the 44th consecutive January and the 421st consecutive month with temperatures, at least nominally, above the 20th-century average.

Here’s more from NOAA’s January global climate report:

Climate by the numbers
January 2020
The January global land and ocean surface temperature was the highest on record at 2.05 degrees F (1.14 degrees C) above the 20th-century average. This surpassed the record set in January 2016 by 0.04 of a degree F (0.02 of a degree C). 

The four warmest Januaries documented in the climate record have occurred since 2016; the 10 warmest have all occurred since 2002. 

Breaking the month down by hemispheres, the Northern Hemisphere also had its warmest January on record, at 2.70 degrees F (1.50 degrees C) above average. The Southern Hemisphere had a departure of 1.40 degrees F (0.78 of a degree C) above average — its second-warmest January on record after January 2016.

More notable climate events in the January report

• Lots of regional heat to go around. Record-warm temperatures were seen across parts of: Scandinavia, Asia, the Indian Ocean, the central and western Pacific Ocean, the Atlantic Ocean, and Central and South America. No land or ocean areas had record-cold January temperatures.
• Polar sea ice coverage remained smaller than normal. Arctic sea ice extent (coverage) was 5.3 percent below the 1981–2010 average, tying with 2014 as the eighth-smallest January extent in the 42-year record. Antarctic sea ice coverage during January was 9.8 percent below the average and tied with January 2011 as the 10th smallest. 
• Snow cover was lacking. Northern Hemisphere snow coverage was below the 1981–2010 average, having the 18th-smallest January snow cover in the 54-year record. 

[High Plains Drifter 11192]

19 hours ago, BNB said:

 

 

https://www.iea.org/articles/global-co2-

emissions-in-2019

 

 

 

US fell by 2.9%

EU dropped 5%

Germany 8%

Japan 4.3%

 

Wording of tweet is misleading, making it sound like we are doing better than anyone else.

 

And before we start sucking each other's dicks:

Total for world continued to increase, showing the need for wealthier countries to help poorer countries.

 

 

 

[Biff Tannen 46200]

Just now, High Plains Drifter said:

 

 

US fell by 2.9%

EU dropped 5%

Germany 8%

Japan 4.3%

 

Wording of tweet is misleading, making it sound like we are doing better than anyone else.

 

And before we start sucking each other's dicks:

Total for world continued to increase, showing the need for wealthier countries to help poorer countries.

 

 

 

It's also the Examiner, which tends to lean pretty right.

[Thetexashammer 1062]

1 hour ago, Biff Tannen said:

It's also the Examiner, which tends to lean pretty right.

And? Do you have reason to believe they are wrong? Did you even bother to look at their data source? The NY Times leans left and has a long history of fake news, do you discount anything they write without reading it?

Edited February 14, 2020 by Thetexashammer

[VRHorn 732]

Yeah, all media outlets are the same.

Great job as always, bagofhammers...

https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/14/media/washington-examiner-workplace-harassment/index.html

[Thetexashammer 1062]

16 minutes ago, VRHorn said:

Yeah, all media outlets are the same.

Great job as always, bagofhammers...

https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/14/media/washington-examiner-workplace-harassment/index.html

I can't respond to this. It's a complete nonsequitor.