Matt Ridley on what the climate wars did for science:
For much of my life I have been a science writer. That means I eavesdrop on what’s going on in laboratories so I can tell interesting stories. It’s analogous to the way art critics write about art, but with a difference: we “science critics” rarely criticise. If we think a scientific paper is dumb, we just ignore it. There’s too much good stuff coming out of science to waste time knocking the bad stuff.
Sure, we occasionally take a swipe at pseudoscience–homeopathy, astrology, claims that genetically modified food causes cancer, and so on. But the great thing about science is that it’s self-correcting. The good drives out the bad, because experiments get replicated and hypotheses put to the test. So a really bad idea cannot survive long in science.
Or so I used to think. Now, thanks largely to climate science, I have changed my mind. It turns out bad ideas can persist in science for decades, and surrounded by myrmidons of furious defenders they can turn into intolerant dogmas.
97% of scientists whose career and pay checks depend on perpetuating the Global Warming Scam will lie through the their teeth to keep their First Class seats on Science Career Gravy Train.
To be fair, (and Ridley discusses this) a large number of scientists also want avoid being the target of a frothing Twitter attack.
— Bad News
Anyone who can do high-school math and physics can show CO2 has nothing to do with warming. This just goes to show how few can do high-school math and physics.
Idiots get what they deserve, it’s just that those that aren’t idiots get taken down with them.
“There is a third possibility: that it’s real, partly man-made and not dangerous. This is the “lukewarmer” school, and I am happy to put myself in this category. Lukewarmers do not think dangerous climate change is impossible; but they think it is unlikely.”
I think “Lukewarmers” like this fellow, are “Thin-End-of-the-Wedgers”.
Thin-End-of-the-Wedgers are people who pose as reasonable on the Global Warming debate, but are really only trying to weaken Skeptic resistance to this totalitarian power play.
It’s as if Ridley hasn’t been following the action at all:
Ridley>”In the case of climate, the alarm is always in the distant future, so can never be debunked.”
It has been debunked. CO2 has increased and there has not been even a correlative increase in temperature.
Cause and effect have been delinked. That is debunked.
Ridely>”Funds are not available to investigate alternative theories.”
Which would lead any intelligent person to understand that the whole issue is political and has nothing to do with science except to use “science” as a plausible reason for political action.
Ridley>”There is a third possibility: that it’s real, partly man-made and not dangerous. This is the “lukewarmer” school, and I am happy to put myself in this category. Lukewarmers do not think dangerous climate change is impossible; but they think it is unlikely.”
Do you know what? This guy, Ridley, is dangerous.
None of it is about the science. It’s about the politics and Ridley is arguing for a politically DANGEROUS position.
Ridley is presenting the Thin-End-of-the-Wedge here because if man is affecting the Climate AT ALL, then that is enough for the politicians to regulate our behaviour.
Who here that has been following the Global Warming/Climate Change WAR for years has not heard over and over again the Warmist argument using the “Precautionary Principle”?
Guess what? Whether humans are affecting Climate a little or a lot, it makes no difference, the Precautionary Principle argument that the Warmists use still holds.
-this guy presents the precautionary principle argument for Global Warming/Climate Change:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FlgJJgKs-iA
And that, my friends, is enough of a plausible reason for politicians to regulate our way of life out of existence if you would but agree that man has any effect on the climate.
If we think a scientific paper is dumb, we just ignore it.
Yup. THAT explains a lot. ALL scientific papers are dumb until proven true or false.
I disagree. I was very impressed with the Ridley article. It strikes a reasonable middle ground and reveals the duplicity around this issue. If you are trying to convince the dupes who are taken in by the political maneuvering (Obama, etc.)you can`t just go after them point blank. Their counter will always be oil industry shills, blah, blah. This is a very solid early crack at informing people about how pervasive and manipulative the agenda has been. Reasonable people who have nevertheless been willing to believe the officials on this will begin to pay attention and perhaps show some resistance. The climate change alarmists — particularly those with political clout or money — are very very determined and will discredit anyone who attacks them directly. But how could anyone attack this guy`s voice of reason and careful focus on the facts? The thing to do is to spread the article far and wide. Maybe some brave newspaper will even pick it up.
Climate pimps are to science as what radical islam is to religion.
One of your best posts ever Oz!
Beware of geeks bearing gifts
You can’t argue a person away from a position they weren’t argued into in the first place.
“It strikes a reasonable middle ground and reveals the duplicity around this issue.”
What’s reasonable about a position that holds that humans can affect the climate when the mechanism, CO2, which is supposed to drive temperature increase has been increasing, yet the temperature has been at stasis or dropped for over 18 years?
It’s a premise that is based on a debunked hypothesis. It’s a lie.
You seem to be unwilling or unable to understand that agreeing that humans can affect the Climate of the Earth(*which empirically is self regulating) is a go-ahead to politicians to regulate human activity visa vi CO2 emissions.
“But how could anyone attack this guy`s voice of reason and careful focus on the facts?”
Just last week Ted Cruz questioned the President of the Sierra Club about **”the Pause”.
The Sierra Club Pres didn’t know what it was, Ridley apparently doesn’t know what it is, do you?
*the 2010 eruptions of Eyjafjallajökull are proof that the earth is self regulating regarding it’s temperature and the effect of massive releases of CO2
**18+ years of global temperature stasis or even cooling
Once again I’ll state this: If you agree that humans affect the Climate, then you are playing for the side that wants to regulate human behaviour.
and again: “It strikes a reasonable middle ground and reveals the duplicity around this issue.”
This is political, it is not about science. If it was about science, then the Skeptic side would have won in November 2009 after the East Anglia ClimateGate e-mail releases and we wouldn’t even be having this discussion.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Hftsk4gWqI
Just sent the article to a niece who argues that climate change is THE most dangerous crisis facing the world and that Monsanto is evil incarnate. GMO’s will bring death and pestilence.
The problem is that the closed mind does not wish to countenance countervailing views because it causes cognitive dissonance, which in the thinking person results in psychic pain.
In the same vein, I sent an article from the NYT to one of our city councillors who is a long time NDP member. The article described why much re-cycling is counter-productive. It cited one program that resulted in $900K of usable recyclables that cost $6 million to operate and administrate. IOW, it was all about as Denis Prager says, “feeling good rather than doing good”.
She responded 16 minutes later, saying she had done her research and found that the author of the article was deemed by others to not be sufficiently ‘progressive’ amongst the stable of NYT writers.
Ignore the facts, shoot the messenger. Standard Operating Procedure for the left.
“She responded 16 minutes later, saying she had done her research and found that the author of the article was deemed by others to not be sufficiently ‘progressive’ amongst the stable of NYT writers.”
Can this issue be shown to be anything but political more clearly than that? No.
I am not arguing with your logic, but nobody is listening to that. Ridley is opening the closed minds just a tiny crack. I perhaps should have said “It APPEARS to strike a reasonable middle ground.” That mollifies people and gets them paying attention instead of automatically blocking the message. You may be speaking the truth, but it does not matter if no one is listening. Truth is not what influences people in this world. (A good lesson to take away from Monday`s election.) I think Ridley will get a few more people listening . . . that`s a first step.
Elizabeth May should read this article, however, she is so hysterical about the issue she would shut down completely which would result in “psychic pain” that’s for sure. Good article…there are so many nut bars out there, it’s scary. Looking forward to paying a carbon tax under Saint Justine. I miss Harper’s rational approach…
We should also remember that when or if this panic is finally laid to rest it will have to be replaced with another panic as nature abhors a vacuum. It looks like the next panic will be another war as all signs now point in that direction. This panic has very limited lifespan left so enjoy it while you can. The war panic won’t be stopped by contemplating whether to throw more taxes at it. It will feel good to finally worry about something real. I’m 97% certain.
Climate change is just another version of what the high priests used to do to keep the population under control.
They threw a virgin into the volcano to prevent solar eclipses. Step out of line and your daughter might be required for the next sacrifice. After all, denying that solar eclipses could happen, or were even harmful, might put your neighbours at risk.
Today the climate change mongers simply changed the message and the method.
I bought the Book….Climate Change: the Facts…from Mark Steyns website…damned good read…my bible when i know I am going to be up against the religious climate zealots.
This article is good as well…let us all hope common sense and some clear thinking wins this argument – sooner than later.
And I have to agree with the author…climate has always been changing…are we helping warm things up ..yea, most likely but to the extent that we should pay Trillions upon Trillions to the Al Gores and David Suzuki’s of the world..?? Hell no. Its all about the coin….always was… and now a Religion all on its own.
My fear is that Shiny Pony is going to go all out in Paris this December and may well sign on to a climate deal the we may not be able to find our way out of…that my friends scares the living shit outta me…!!
Imagine the UN telling us how to run our country..NOT..
Stk
LizL and OZ; great points, both of you.
That was a lengthy but very good summation of how climate science has been corrupted.
Ridley makes a great comparison with so-called climate science today and the Lysenkoism of the Soviet Union.
Ridley has his own issues. He’s the guy who said we have no free will but we should pretend to live like we do. And I thought the global warmers were delusional.
Global Warming radicals want skeptics persicuted under Rico Law frankly its these 20 Green Nazis that need to be persicuted under the RICO LAW they need to be sent to prison for 50 years or more for Fruad and wasting tax dollars on their radical ideologies
I read the book over the summer on family camping trips. The James Delingpole article particularly amusing, where described how fellow literature graduates question dissenting scientists’ credentials. Lindzen’s article, though a though read, shows why the climate sensitivity assumptions built into climate change models are bunk. That has since been further validated.
Now they just talk about 97% consensus, like they’re taking the 5th at organized crime hearings. They sound more like tobacco industry spokespeople in the 50s when they try to argue the earth “contnues to warm,” defended by their auto corrupted ground measurements, which are clearly repudiated, (as is the warmists’ so-called “consensus”), by satellite measurements that show no net warming approaching 20 years. Since that is about the period they used as the time frame yardstick for AGW, their hypothesis is now disproven by their own scientific standards.
But we all know this has nothing to do whatsoever with global warming or proper science, only the irredeemably stupid still believe that nonsense. It’s all about tax money and power brokering, just like “big oil.” It’s therefore really about, as Delingpole points out, “being on message.”
That fact that message, and its solutions, correlate precisely with statism is pure coincidence so isn’t relevant; the “experts” say so.
Trudeau will go to Paris and make all kinds of promises, and receive all kinds of accolades. Then he’ll completely ignore them, as good Liberals do, as John Chretien did, and be given a pass from the CBC and Elizabeth May.
Nothing new here folks, move along.
“Ridley has his own issues. He’s the guy who said we have no free will but we should pretend to live like we do. And I thought the global warmers were delusional.”
He’s probably not delusional. He sounds like a hard-line Skinnerian Behaviorist who has taken the existential leap Søren Kierkegaard did (I know whereof i speak). He just expressed (if that’s really what he’s written or said) it in an shallow manner.
Being a lukewarmer, I of course find Ridley’s paper to be quite reasonable. First, based on the physics a doubling of CO2 causes approx 1C of warming. This is a very mild AGW warming per doubling of CO2 conc. The rest of the models that show catastrophic warming, CAGW, are all based on positive feedbacks, mostly water vapor. It also assumes a fragile Earth that has not evolved the ability to reestablish equilibrium via negative feedbacks that counteract changes – the Tipping Point hypothesis. I think the Earth uses clouds, the oceans, etc. to buffer these changes. CAGW also have this absurd argument that all warming and weather events (hot/cold, wet/dry, drought/flood) are because of humans but any pause in warming, hurricanes, polar ice melt are natural variability. Lukewarmers would argue or at least be open to the idea that natural variability and natural cycles are the major driver, as they’ve always been. Man made CO2 is a minor variable.
Generally, lukewarmers agree that there is some degree of AGW but CAGW was created for political ends. Those ends apparently being the transfer of wealth from the poor and middle class to crony capitalists in the Green energy business, landowner selling to wind operators, wealthy homeowners with solar panels, bureaucrats via new enviro and CO2 regulating departments and, of course, to government revenues through carbon pricing.
When I read the newest CAGW hissy fits of doom and counterproductive solutions in reaction to mild temperature increases (by measurement but before radical adjustments) it reminds me of my lab days. When conditions drifted or spiked out of normal operating range, you drag out the charts. The charts were bands that went from normal operating to level 1 (mild-small adjustments by lab staff or operations); level 2 (bigger adjustments); level 3 (major- alert support and operating staff immediately) conditions.
Right now AGW is kinda drifting in and out of the boundary between normal and level 1 and it’s slope (change) is very low. But, the political types and media are talking and acting like level 3 based on models that have extremely poor accuracy and precision. It’s an immature field if science with limited reliable historical data.
Focussing on more concrete, understood environmental and economic problems instead of unproven ones seems more sensible. Let the climate science develop and discover without being mauled by politics.
There is no Global Warming, AGW of otherwise.
The Global Warming Pause
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9GWDhw1-k0
If CO2 does not drive warming, and it doesn’t, then by what mechanism do proponents of AGW propose that Humans are affecting global warming/climate at all?
Have you considered the possibility that AGW and natural cycles and natural variability are occurring at the same time?
To put it mathematically:
AGW + NC + NV = temp change (all in degrees C)
for example, (made up numbers): .2C + (-.1C) + (-.1C) = -0C
The total is 0 but that doesn’t mean AGW isn’t there, it is just that NC/NV are stronger and in the opposite direction. It also means that the rapid warming in the 80s and 90’s may have been amplified by NC and NV. .2C + .1C + .1C = .4C
If the Globe isn’t Warming, and it isn’t, then AGW isn’t there.
I should add that since the atmospheric CO2 volume has increased exponentially and warming has halted, CO2 as a driver has been debunked leaving no mechanism by which humans can be said to be causing Global Warming.
AGW is one of many drivers. It is just not the strongest one. It can be suppressed or amplified by other, stronger natural forces. The physics behind AGW is quite solid. CAGW…not so much.
“The physics behind AGW is quite solid.”
No it isn’t.
You flatter yourself by posing as a moderate and calling yourself a Lukewarmer, which is supposedly defined as one who takes a 3rd position between the Warmists and the Skeptics.
Skepticism is the default science position. It is not a radical position at all as you and the Warmists(one and the same, really) pretend.
There is only one radical position in this issue. That is the position that human action is warming the whole planet, the Globe, and you promote that position.
I agree but you are in the minority, the mob has stampeded and will trample all over you if you stand in its way.
Shut up and sell them what they want.
Unicorn fencing for the safety of their loved ones.
Personal Co2 sequestration masks, army surplus gas masks at 300% mark up.
Calamitous Cult Insurance.
The possibilities are as endless as the idiot socialists drain on our pockets.
You will need their funds to buy and operate the diesel genet in your near future.
The CAGW/C.C.C mob believe unicorn farts,pixie dust and wind/solar will keep the juice on in our winters.
In case you missed the election results, honest, ethical dealing are not acceptable behaviour in Canada East of Manitoba.
“The physics behind AGW is quite solid.”
No it isn’t.
Why? Because AGW is not a physical science term. It is a POLITICAL term.
“Shut up and sell them what they want.”
I will. As soon as it becomes more dangerous to speak the truth and there is nothing profitable remaining in merely talking.
“To jaw-jaw is better than to war-war.”*
~Winston Churchill
*it must have sounded better with Winnie’s accent
“I agree but you are in the minority, the mob has stampeded and will trample all over you if you stand in its way.”
Again, it doesn’t matter if multitudes believe the truth or only one man. The truth is still the truth.
I was actually on a road in Airdrie Alberta(road 13) when I came to the top of a hill. Looking down into the valley there were 3 cowboys who were moving a herd of cattle(about 400 or so) from one grazing area to another.(I live in cattle country)
The grazing area they were being moved to was uphill in my direction and across the road. I saw the whole thing, but I don’t know what spooked those cattle. They put their heads down as though they were one entity and they stampeded up the road in my direction Hell bent for Election.
I’ve never seen anything like it before or since. My first thought was “Gee, these beef cattle are wasting major calories here, this can’t be what the cowboys planned.” Then I noticed they were getting closer real fast. 400+ of them and the cowboys didn’t look like they had control of them at all.
So I put my van in reverse, threw my arm over the back of the passenger seat, looked through the rear window like it was the front windshield, and did the fastest backup ever I did in my life. Then I scrammed(90degree turn) toward Airdrie on Big Hill Springs and waited a little on the side of the road.(there was a private wreath memorial at that country intersection for about a decade, not good) A minute or two later the RCMP came speeding up from Airdrie and stopped at the top of the hill intersecting Road 13.
That’s a stampede, man. It ended when the herd had blown enough calories for absolutely nothing and they became docile because it was time to be led to a new pasture to feed.
(my best guess as to what spooked them was coyotes but it’s only a guess, we’ve had bears and wolverines come into my corner of town)
Are you seriously saying that scientific skepticism is only valid if you take the most radical position? That’s wrong on so many levels. Scientific skepticism uses logic and data to form reasonable opinions that may be supported or challenged by new data. Looking for proof behind conclusions and assumptions. Using critical thinking skills. It is Not immediately clinging to either established or anti-establishment science.
So, as usual, the position of the extreme right and extreme left are identical : We must peddle the most extreme (radical) ideas in order to support our worldview, regardless of any current or future data and observations. And….everyone who disagrees with us is either stupid or evil. You’re exactly the same in thought and deed.
That’s not skepticism, that’s dogma and political partisan behaviour.
To be specific regarding your AGW skepticism and the physics: Do you believe humans aren’t emitting CO2? That the CO2 conc in the atmosphere hasn’t increased ? That the CO2 molecule doesn’t absorb energy? That the absorption of energy of CO2 can’t be/ hasn’t been measured or proven to a high degree of confidence? That that measures energy absorption cannot not be calculated/measured? That those calculated values cannot be used to estimate the amount of warming the increase in that particular molecule will cause (by itself, not adding speculative effects of water vapor for instance)?
Something other aspect of the “quite solid” physics (or chemistry), perhaps?
You got it.
Please cite the empirical data demonstrating a MEASURED effect on climate by mans emissions of CO2.
If you could do this , please contact the UN IPCC, your Peace Prize awaits.
As for beliefs, well everybodies got one or two of them too.
The Royal Terrell Museum can help with some of those climate fears.
I believe there can be made a case for biomass, as in growing plants, being a negative feedback for atmospheric CO2 concentrations.
If the science statements are correct then logically there has to been some warming. Even a tiny fraction of degree would make AGW true. The questions is not is there warming? The questions are : how much warming and is it catastrophic? For many lukewarmers those answers would be mild warming (possibly beneficial for quite awhile) and no, not catastrophic. Adaptation not mitigation.
If you can prove CO2 in the atmosphere does not affect warming at all then you’ll have rewritten basic science. Do it and claim your own Nobel.