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Eclectic at 13:15 PM on 12 November 2025Five ways Joe Rogan misleads listeners about climate change
Bob Loblaw @8 :
Rogan for clickbait, to be sure. His ilk make a lot of dollars pandering to minorities. I dunno what their real thoughts are.
Lindzen & Happer ~ doubtless you are right. The pique of being passed over, and the desire to become a Big Fish again, no matter how small the pool. A confluence of many unworthy motives.
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nigelj at 12:23 PM on 12 November 2025Climate Adam - Climate Scientist responds to Bill Gates
Agree with Eclectic. Gates, Musk, and Zuckerberg have all more or less downplayed climate concerns and need for strong mitigation or have been suddenly silent on advocating for such issues since Trumps election.
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Bob Loblaw at 11:38 AM on 12 November 2025Five ways Joe Rogan misleads listeners about climate change
Well, if you look at the ages of Lindzen and Happer (85 and 86, respectively), it's clear that they grew up during the strong anti-communist era in the US, post-WWII. In the 1950s and 60s, a huge part of the population was seeing a commie under every bed. Better dead than red.
I can easily imagine that this would have influenced their views on life. I certainly preserve some of the attitudes and principles of my parents and my times growing up. (Lindzen and Happer's birth dates fall about half way between those of my parents and my own. Close to a 20 year gap either way.) As I grew into adulthood, I did not expect to have to fight the environmental fights of the 60s and 70s again fifty years later. I'm sure that some people think they are still fighting the commies like McCarthy did in the 1950s.
Some people just like to go against the flow. Take the contrarian position, because they'd rather be a big fish in a small pond - rather than a small fish in a big pond.
And today, it's often all about click bait. The desire to be popular, to be adored, as if we were all still in grade school.
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Eclectic at 11:03 AM on 12 November 2025Five ways Joe Rogan misleads listeners about climate change
Nigelj @6 :
"Gubmint control and overreaching with regulations" is certainly the default outcry by American extreme rightwingers. To give them credit, that was a very reasonable position to take . . . 200 or 300 years ago. Though quite inappropriate in today's high-population hi-tech society.
[But I wander off-topic.]
And such outcries are too often a cover for mercenary self-interest. Possibly not much the case, with Lindzen and Happer ~ they are [IMO] more likely to have a mishmash of semi-subconscious motivations, like personal professional pique and a conservative's desire for clinging to the Good Old Days that they were familiar with. And suchlike.
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nigelj at 10:24 AM on 12 November 2025Five ways Joe Rogan misleads listeners about climate change
So we are left with Lindzens and Happers persistent errors or crazy opinions despite their qualifications. According to google gemini both are very suspicious of government regulations and over reach. I just think this is probably making them downplay the science. Impossible to prove of course. But I dont think its a coincidence that they have similar ideological leanings.
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Eclectic at 08:39 AM on 12 November 2025Five ways Joe Rogan misleads listeners about climate change
You are right, gentlemen.
FLICC is a great concept, particularly when discussing clear-cut matters. Monckton is an excellent example of a clear-cut Fake Expert. The cases of Lindzen & Happer . . . get us deeper into murky semantics. Both are highly intelligent, but doing a crap job of thinking.
All this, motives aside ~ for we can speculate about their obvious & less obvious psychological "high crimes and misdemeanors" but most people are (properly) not much interested in that topic. After all, it is the outcome that matters, in practical politics.
In my mind, Lindzen started as an expert, and then progressively degraded his claim to that title, by his persistent and pig-headed errors (which he doubles-down on). And as you say, there is no point in publicly saying that he has no [current] claim to be regarded as a true expert ~ because the Denialists would aim to counter by getting out a tape measure and saying [re old academic qualifications] "His is bigger than yours" .
Best to simply show that Lindzen is wrong here and wrong there and wrong almost everywhere. And to bypass the "expertise", in his case.
Please, just the facts, madam.
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Eclectic at 08:19 AM on 12 November 2025Climate Adam - Climate Scientist responds to Bill Gates
Bbrowett @1 :
Perhaps Gates paying less attention to climate, and more attention to which way the wind is blowing. The wind in the White House.
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bbrowett at 07:36 AM on 12 November 2025Climate Adam - Climate Scientist responds to Bill Gates
Who would have guessed that Bill Gates has a vested interest in blocking public policy, and policies against cooperative actions to deal with the climate emergency?
Maybe the problem starts with the billionaires who manipulate public opinion, especially in Western countries? -
Bob Loblaw at 05:35 AM on 12 November 2025Five ways Joe Rogan misleads listeners about climate change
I think the question "relevant qualifications" is critical.
For Lindzen, his educational background is physics (undergrad) and mathematics (grad). Both give an excellent background to lead into what I consider to be the primary focus of his academic career - meteorology. His early work, from what I know, seemed to focus on various aspects of atmospheric dynamics. Weather is strongly dependent on the discipline of geophysical fluid dynamics, due to the need to track short-term variations in atmospheric circulation.
You would think that this is also a good place to take "transferable skills" into climate science, but Lindzen seems to have botched this. In my experience, meteorologists that reject the science of climate change often do so on the basis of a couple of ingrained viewpoints.
- The first is that knowledge of the highly variable short-term atmospheric motions related to weather seem to make them think that long-term prediction of "weather" is impossible, and they just see "climate" as "long-term weather".
- The second is that short-term weather prediction does not require a particularly detailed understanding of radiation transfer. Other energy flows, yes, but not necessarily radiation transfer. Unfortunately, radiation transfer is an essential aspect of climate change (especially for greenhouse gas and aerosol effects). It's hard to get your head around how small changes in radiation transfer can have a big effect on climate, when so much is going on in atmospheric motions.
I don't know if Lindzen followed either of those paths, but he certainly has brought failed thinking into his climate-related work.
Happer is a somewhat different case. Again, he's a physicist. He worked on atomic physics, optics, and spectroscopy, and did work in atmospheric radiation transfer. Again, you'd expect this to be an excellent set of transferable skills to deal with climate, but no such luck. His Wikipedia page indicates that he was dismissed from his position with the US department of energy in 1993, due to his views on the ozone layer. This suggests a strong predilection to reject environmental issues - one that existed long before taking on the climate change fight.
So I would see both of these fellows as people that had good backgrounds and transferable skills that should have enabled them to move into climate science. But neither of them did it well. Lindzen has at least published in the climate literature, even if much of his work has not survived detailed examination. Happer just seems out of his depth.
Unreliable, poor quality "experts" for sure. How poor and unreliable you need to be to meet the "fake experts" category is probably subjective. Easy to call "fake" when someone has no evidence of transferable skills that would help them understand climate science. ("I'm a Nobel laureate!" is a pretty weak argument when your Nobel is for literature.) A lot harder to call "fake" when someone has a background that would suggest they have suitable transferable skills - but simply did a crap job transferring them.
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nigelj at 04:20 AM on 12 November 2025Five ways Joe Rogan misleads listeners about climate change
Eclectic, youre right Lindzen makes a lot of mistakes, but I dont see how that makes him a fake expert. Because the only logical definition of a fake expert is someone without relevant qualifications.The incessant false claims do however make him a very unreliable, poor quality expert. I dont see how we can stretch that to mean fake.
I'm probably being a bit pedantic and I get your point about semantics, but if we say Lindzen is a fake expert its so easy for the denialists to just list his impressive qualifications and the public will see that.
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Eclectic at 07:05 AM on 11 November 2025Five ways Joe Rogan misleads listeners about climate change
Nigelj : Yes, but I will nitpick your nitpick.
Having made a number of posts recently on the other Rogan/ Lindzen/ Happer thread, I feel duty bound to comment on Lindzen particularly.
You make good points ~ but ~ a lot of it comes down to plain old semantics. While in some ways it's fair to label Lindzen as an expert rather than a fake expert . . . nevertheless there is the matter of Lindzen's appalling track record. He's not just been wrong on some things (yes, occasionally allowable for experts) but he's been consistently wrong for decades, and has refused to make correction ~ and he has persisted in misleading the public (for decades! ).
Does that in fact disqualify him as "expert"? Oh, fickle Semantics.
Does an academic, despite having advanced Doctorates in Mathematics, really qualify as a true expert if he persistently assures the public that 2+2=5 ??
Also sad, when Rogan obviously prefers "5" .
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nigelj at 05:06 AM on 11 November 2025Five ways Joe Rogan misleads listeners about climate change
Very informative and accurate commentary, except I have one nit pick:
Commentary says: "Rogan’s fake experts. Rogan’s podcast tends to invite fringe, unqualified climate contrarians who dispute the expert consensus. Happer is a retired physicist with a scant publication record in the field of climate science. Lindzen has an extensive list of climate publications, but his contrarian claims have been consistently proven wrong. In other words, they have not withstood scientific scrutiny or the test of time."
This is wrong about Lindzen and conflates a whole lot of things. Lindzen cannot be classified as a fake expert. Lindzen is certainly a well qualified in climate science. His CV and publishing record shows this. The fact he has been proven wrong on various issues doesn't make him non qualified. Experts are sometimes proven wrong. The fact hes a contrarian doesn't make him a non expert or non qualified. Hes not a fringe scientist. IMHO Lindzen is a very bad choice to use as an example of a fake expert. However several of his reasonings fit the examples of cherry picking and logical fallacies etc,etc.
Happer is arguably a fake expert but not an ideal expample because at least he has a physics degree. Someone like Christopher Moncton would be much better example of a fake expert, because he is interviewed as if he's an expert, but he has no climate science related qualifications at all. He has a BArts degree in classical studies and a journalism diploma.
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Eclectic at 23:49 PM on 9 November 2025Debunking Joe Rogan, Dick Lindzen, and Will Happer
Nick Palmer @22 :
Congratulations on surviving that 48-minute video, with all its waffle & minimization of the Global Warming trend. It was presented on a Denialist youtube channel . . . so it's possible that the video was edited down in places. And I hope you will agree that Lindzen is clearly batting for Team Denialist. (Whether his semi-subconscious motives had a partly religious component, or not.)
You may recall that (decades ago) Lindzen's model projection was for global temperatures to plateau early in this century. His prediction was an embarrassing failure, compared with the actual rising temperatures (as projected by Hansen and the mainstream climate scientists of the time). And judging from the Lindzen video we have watched, he has fought a rear-guard battle to minimize his total failure. He has simply doubled-down, to a very large extent.
Lindzen, more than once, gives a nod to a narrowly-controlled climate-resilient design of Earth ~ when, as an academic, he really should know the the ancient paleo climate variations of our planet. #Looking at the overall context, he is IMO engaging in Doublethink about Global Warming. Motivated Reasoning is very evident.
"Cornwall" or not, it is (to me) rather surprising that Lindzen would take such a 'religious-adjacent' view, for he is not a Christian Fundamentalist nor Christian at all. Sadly, I know little of the pre-Christian Old-Testament tenets of the Creation (dated 6029 years ago, per Bishop Ussher).
Whether Lindzen's [half-baked?] climate denialism has underlying motives which are 50% religion-based or only 10% religion-based . . .is something which Lindzen perhaps does not know (or acknowledge?) ~ nor does it matter much in the greater sheme of things. We need not get exercised about it. It is enough to see that explicitly and implicitly, he is showing he has abandoned the scientific mainstream.
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Nick Palmer at 20:23 PM on 9 November 2025Debunking Joe Rogan, Dick Lindzen, and Will Happer
Well, I subjected myself to the video Eclectic refers to - a 48 minute conversation with Lindzen. IMHO, at no point does Lindzen imply that he believes that God/Yahweh is looking after us. Lindzen does refer to "design" a couple of times, largely, I think to manipulate the audience of this YouTube channel. I think he is using the same idea as sceptic engineers do, who are convinced that feedbacks must be in Earth's systems to maintain stability. This is similar to the 'Uniformitarianism' principle that sceptic geologists invoke.
Near the end Lindzen actually pours scorn on the other wing of 'Evangelicals', who think our activities are an assault on God's creation.
It's clear to me that spreading stories that Lindzen is motivated by a deep religious conviction are as wrong as the denialist assertion that climate scientists are all making it up to keep the jobs and grants gravy train rolling along. -
Eclectic at 04:39 AM on 9 November 2025Debunking Joe Rogan, Dick Lindzen, and Will Happer
Nigelj @19 :
Hallucinations aside, the AI tools are certainly impressive in their speed & wide-ranging searches.
AFAIK, they have not yet gained much ability to infer. And when we are needing to scout the public utterances & texts (especially of particularly public figures e.g. politicians and propagandists) then we run up against the problem of "dog-whistling" and nuanced/coded language and subtle cloaking of meaning & intent. And outright camouflage.
Rogan, Lindzen and Happer are easy to see through, at least at the level of their public actions.
At this stage, I still think we must make use of the experience and wisdom of the well-informed human mind. A dash of cynicism also helps [recent comments of Philippe Chantreau come to mind! ].
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nigelj at 04:12 AM on 9 November 2025Debunking Joe Rogan, Dick Lindzen, and Will Happer
Clarification: If you asked an AI tool to investigate all possible motives for Richard Lindzens denialism including psychological motives, and listed them the AI would probably trawl the internet looking for commentary that mentions such things, or evidence that might suggest such things, and have a go at making sense of it.
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nigelj at 04:01 AM on 9 November 2025Debunking Joe Rogan, Dick Lindzen, and Will Happer
Eclectic @ 17, said: "I suspect that the AI tools are only capable of going looking for evidence of partisan political affiliation, rather than for the "subconscious" evidence that a person is guided by the deeper (and often unworthy) motives that rule so much of the non-partisan aspect of politics. Power / money / psychological resentments."
I'm not so sure. If you asked an AI tool to investigate all possible motives for denialism including psychological motives, and listed them the AI would probably trawl the internet looking for commentary that mentions such things, or evidence that might suggest such things, and have a go at making sense of it.
What I've found is the performance of AI depends on asking very clear and precise questions and providing some explanatory background and even listing your own suspicions. And defining your terms carefully. This leads to more useful answers than just putting in a 5 word search, "Lindzen, motives for climate denialism." You have to help the AI.
The problem is the AI then tends to tell you what it thinks you want to hear. Accuracy can suffer. But at the very least you get a good list of relevant articles with links.
The AI has limits of course. I've found accuracy is variable but its good enough to be useful for simple issues, and the AI is so fast and that makes it useful. But I digress and I may have misinterpreted what you are getting at.
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Eclectic at 03:32 AM on 9 November 2025Ice age predicted in the 70s
Philippe @162 :
I am shocked. Shocked, I tell you.
To learn that you have such a cynical streak in your character.
Doubtless, Angusmac will promptly explain all.
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Philippe Chantreau at 00:10 AM on 9 November 2025Ice age predicted in the 70s
The motivation is simple and as crude as it gets in the denialist bag of tricks: Scientists predicted an ice age in the 70s and it didn't happen, so there is no reason to believe what they are predicting now. The funniest thing is that it no longer is a prediction, it is happening right in front of us.
Now, Angusmac is only increasing word count, throwing smoke and mirrors to try to hide the abysmal shortcomings of that little list. A first step would be to make sure that every link actually leads somewhere. I'm not holding my breath. The whole thing is a pitiful attempt at twisting reality.
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BaerbelW at 19:42 PM on 8 November 2025Ice age predicted in the 70s
angusmac @159
Our rebuttals are based on papers published in the peer-reviewed literature and not on some randomly compiled lists or databases published on a blog or website. Write up your arguments with explaining your methods and reasoning, submit your manuscript to a respected journal with proper peer review and have it published. Then we can revisit this rebuttal.
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Eclectic at 19:32 PM on 8 November 2025Ice age predicted in the 70s
Angusmac @159 :
No ~ my query was with regard to your motivation for pursuing this long-out-of-date topic.
This thread was started in 2007. That is 18 years ago. Even then it was rather outmoded, and, as I point out ~ the science has moved on, well and truly. And as you look through the thread's posts, you will find several oddball commenters ~ but overall, the topic has not received much attention. Rightly so. The whole topic subject is of only minor (dare I say, trivial?) historical interest, and is of almost zero relevance to today's climate problems.
So that is why I ask for you to explain your motivation. Are you a fervent amateur historian? Have you discovered a Nobel-Prize-eligible factor of critical value to the world? Have you looked inside yourself, and reflected [as we all should] on your internal processes of thought, to understand yourself? I am sure that other readers also would benefit from understanding your motivation here.
If you have a Quixotic mindset, then SkepticalScience has at your choice many threads on the modern relevance of wind turbines (or windmills, as our respected leader calls them).
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angusmac at 17:27 PM on 8 November 2025Ice age predicted in the 70s
Eclectic@158
Regarding your comment that, “Looking at the Bigger Picture, why is it that you are bothering to argue about the exact percentage of scientific papers that were classed in cooling/neutral/ warming?”, since science (and technology) have moved on.My answer is simple: both SkS and PCF-08 have stated that there was an overwhelming consensus for warming in the 1970s. To the contrary, I have shown that this is untrue. PCF-08 (and SkS) have ignored the 86 cooling papers that my literature survey found in major scientific journals.
Therefore, I recommend that the SkS 1970s ice age web page should be amended to represent the actual scientific facts (i.e. 86 cooling papers) and, as I have stated @146, PCF-08 should be either withdrawn or subjected to a detailed corrigendum to correct its obvious inaccuracies.
I hope that this answers your query.Moderator Response:[BL]. No, you have not shown that there are "86 cooling papers" that should have been included in PCF-08. All you have shown is:
- You can generate a list of papers through some unknown search process.
- You can assign "cooling", "neutral", or "warming" labels to those papers through some unknown assessment process.
- ...and when some of those papers are evaluated by people capable of understanding them, it turns out that your labels do not apply when assessed using the criteria clearly set out in PCF-08.
As Baerbel points out in comment 161, your assertions here carry no weight. Your arguments, as presented here, are extremely weak. I am sure that you can find blogs where uninformed people find your arguments convincing. If you can find a proper scientific journal with proper peer review that accepts your analysis as reasonable, then go for it. Based on what we have seen, you have a lot of work to do to reach that point, though.
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Eclectic at 11:37 AM on 8 November 2025Ice age predicted in the 70s
Angusmac @157 (and earlier) :
~ Looking at the Bigger Picture, why is it that you are bothering to argue about the exact percentage of scientific papers that were classed in cooling / neutral / warming ?
For us now viewing with the advantage of hindsight, the climate situation is very clear. But back in the sixties, there was a modicum of uncertainty ~ the scientists could see that the world had been warming for nearly a century (despite the long-term cooling from Milankovitch Cycle causes) . . . and yet there seemed to be more than a hint of unexpected relative cooling. [Later satisfactorily explained by the effect of industrial air pollution.]
But nowadays the uncertainty is gone. It is all over and done with, and the Fat Lady has finished singing.
So, what now? Plenty of room for political arguing about what are the best moves for tackling our Global Warming problem. Should we temporarily put up our feet and continue Business As Usual, or all go and live in a cave . . . or something inbetween, like pursuing Carbon Taxes combined with massive research on cheaper solar panels / cheaper sodium batteries / and a much bigger look at fusion power?
These are the questions for today. Not what Dr Sellers and others were meaning 50+ years ago. Why would one wish to argue on it?
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angusmac at 10:38 AM on 8 November 2025Ice age predicted in the 70s
BL@155 & Eclectic@156
I disagree that I am twisting the wording in Sellers (1969) to suit preconceptions and I also disagree with your interpretation of Sellers (1969). However, I will prepare an amended database that will include SkS’s interpretation of the scientific papers.
Consequently, if I were to amend Sellers (1969) from neutral to warming then the number of papers would be as follows:
- Cooling (86 papers).
- Neutral (57 papers).
- Warming (47 papers).
In summary, there would be 39 more cooling papers than warming papers.
I reiterate that I find it astonishing that PCF-08 only uncovered 7 cooling papers and that they did not uncover the 86 cooling papers that my literature survey found in major scientific journals.
Please let me know of the next paper on which you disagree with my assessment.
Moderator Response:[BL] I will accept your decision to not continue to debate the details of Sellers (1969) as an admission that you can't find anything more in the paper to quote that supports your assessment. The fact that you won't change your mind, despite several attempts to explain the paper to you does not bode well for any further discussion of your list.
No, you do not have 86 cooling papers, 57 neutral papers, and 47 warming papers. You have a list of papers that you have decided to assign those labels to. What you have not done is:
- Provide an explanation of your search terms that generated the list of papers you examined.
- Given an indication of exactly what question you wanted to answer by doing your analysis.
- Given clear definitions of what criteria you used to assign "cooling", "neutral", or "warming" labels to each paper.
- Given any indication as to when you would decide that a paper was not relevant to your question.
In the discussion of Sellers (1969), what you have shown is:
- You can't understand the paper well enough to be able to distinguish between analyses that apply to the period of decades to a century starting in the 1970s, and analyses that apply to much longer time periods.
- You won't change your mind when these important details of the paper are explained to you.
The reason that PCF-08 only found seven cooling papers is because the authors of that paper understood how to properly read a scientific paper and determine what parts of the paper applied to the specific question that PCF-08 was looking at. To repeat what was said to you before, PCF-08 restricted their analysis to the following:
- The views during the time period of the 1970s
- The views on global cooling or a full-fledged ice age.
- That such a change in climate is imminent.
- That the question is intended to address the future trend of climate, not historical observations
When restricting their analysis to papers that actually met these criteria, PCF-08 noted "While some of these articles make clear predictions of global surface temperature changes by the year 2000, most of them do not.". What we have seen clearly in your discussion of Sellers (1969) is that you can't tell the difference between portions of the paper that do apply to the question posed by PCF-08 and those that do not.
In addition to Sellers (1969), Philippe Chantreau has looked at several papers on your list, as stated in his comments here. In each case, he found reasons to reject your assessment of those papers.
The second SkS blog post on the NTZ analysis also lists a variety of papers that NTZ messed up on. You are making the same sort of errors, covered more general in the first SkS blog post on the NTZ list.
All the evidence in this discussion here points in one direction: your selection of papers and assessment of "cooling", etc. in these papers is highly unreliable. It seems highly unlikely that looking at any more papers in detail will result in a different conclusion. And to be clear, I use the term "highly unlikely" as an indication that it is possible that you have properly classified some of those papers, but the chance of that happening in sufficient numbers to be important is too small to be worthy of further consideration.
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Eclectic at 08:01 AM on 8 November 2025Debunking Joe Rogan, Dick Lindzen, and Will Happer
Bother. Another typo @17. Should read: "Sad like has never been seen before." ~ He deeply resents being misquoted . . . and now I shall have to worry about the next tumbril/indictment.
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Eclectic at 07:52 AM on 8 November 2025Debunking Joe Rogan, Dick Lindzen, and Will Happer
Quite correct, Nigelj @16. I suspect that the AI tools are only capable of going looking for evidence of partisan political affiliation, rather than for the "subconscious" evidence that a person is guided by the deeper (and often unworthy) motives that rule so much of the non-partisan aspect of politics. Power / money / psychological resentments.
Sad that Lindzen & the handful of eminent "denialist" scientists have abandoned logical scientific thought. To quote my favorite politician : "Sad. Sad like has never seen before."
[Except that we have seen it before.]
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nigelj at 05:04 AM on 8 November 2025Debunking Joe Rogan, Dick Lindzen, and Will Happer
I asked some of the usual AI tools what are Richard Lindzens political beliefs. The responses were lengthy and listed references but here are some key quotes fyi:
Google Gemini: Richard Lindzen was a lifelong Democrat who switched to the Republican Party due to his views on climate change and government policy responses. He describes his political beliefs as generally conservative or libertarian, especially regarding what he sees as government overreach in the name of climate action.
Microsoft Copilot: While Lindzen doesn’t publicly identify with a specific political party, his affiliations and rhetoric suggest a strong ideological alignment with libertarian and conservative critiques of environmental regulation.
So he may be minimising the climate problem as a way to avoid government involvement in solutions. He may not even realise hes doing this.
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Paul Pukite at 02:13 AM on 8 November 2025Debunking Joe Rogan, Dick Lindzen, and Will Happer
Becoming clear that Richar Lindzen is vastly overrated as a scientist. Even his earliest research from back in the 1960's needs to be revisited. Some foundational mechanisms were dismissed or overlooked by Lindzen, and for the longest time his arguments were never revisited. I started reviewing his early models on the QBO several years ago and found surprising connections that he missed. Alas, Lindzen is no longer in the picture as he is no longer active as a researcher, but his disciples can take the helm if they wish to defend him They seem mum about the new findings as PubPeer reappraisals are being ignored
https://pubpeer.com/publications/E27F0929E64D90C32E9358889CC80F
PubPeer is the place for futther discussion, not the comment section here, IMO. This won't make a dent when it comes to arguing for a change
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Eclectic at 21:58 PM on 7 November 2025Debunking Joe Rogan, Dick Lindzen, and Will Happer
Nick Palmer :
A lengthy PART TWO of the religious component of Lindzen's climate science denialism.
While we see where the typical Denialist (e.g. to be found in the street or @WUWT website) harbors anger / selfishness / deficiency in empathy . . . . there is IMO an additional fundamentalist religious component in the Motivated Reasonings of some prominent Denialists. You yourself could name a few of those luminaries, I am sure.
IIRC, there was an interview with a very relaxed, laid-back Lindzen sitting in a chair in his garden, while being interviewed by a "sympathetic" interviewer. My perhaps-faulty memory was that the occasion was 2006 ~ but perhaps that date is wrong. My googling this week turned up youtube: "Interview with Professor Richard Lindzen" on the "Rathnakumar S" channel. I am unclear on its date ~ maybe 2014 or 2015. Hard to be sure, since youtubers tend to recycle and re-post stuff from years earlier from other sources. But the exact date is a trivial matter. And please do not bother to view the video, unless you are in a masochistic mood.
# The "Rathnakumar S" channel is new to me, and I have not viewed any of the rest of the playlist. But the playlist does include interviews (originals or re-posts?) of people such as :- W.Soon; W.Happer; H.Svensmark; M.Salby; P.Michaels; S.Baliunas; Bob Carter; et alia. And including that paragon of ethical public education, Marc Morano. Plus there appears to be a flirtation with anti-vax. Of course.
Video with approximate time-stamps :
Lindzen seems to favor a degree of Intelligent Design ~ the World is well-designed. 3:05 "Oh I think the case is pretty strong that it is in fact better designed, and there are strong negative feedbacks that will instead of amplifying, diminish the effect of man's emissions."
Lindzen keeps minimizing the Global Warming: "Only half a degree in a century ... [and] the temperature is always flopping around."
Lindzen opines that CO2 can have a warming effect, but most of it is not due to humans . . . though yes, water vapor and clouds "worsen what we do with CO2." [Note that Lindzen's "Iris Hypothesis" has been a dud.]
22:20 "We still don't know why we had these ice age cycles. We don't know why 50 million years ago we could have alligators in Spitzbergen."
27:00 "Ever since we invented the umbrella, we've known how to deal with climate, up to a point."
37:20 "Nothing in this [climate] field is terribly compelling. The data is weak. ..."CO2 will contribute some warming : not much. ..."It is then claimed that recent changes are due to man : I don't think that's true."
46:13 He returns to Intelligent Design : "A well-engineered device tries to compensate for anything that perturbs it."
So ~ not much particularly explicit denialisty statements . . . but a great deal of implicit statements. Including, throughout the video, a great deal of "Cornwall" wording.
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Eclectic at 18:43 PM on 7 November 2025Debunking Joe Rogan, Dick Lindzen, and Will Happer
Nick Palmer @11 :
Aha ~ I am disappointed that the AI [Artificial Intelligence] detected my comment of 8 January 2025. Here I was, thinking that I was flying under the radar, by my [unspecified cloaking] of my public comments.
More seriously, you could perhaps try Lindzen+God / Lindzen+Jehovah / Lindzen+Elohim / etcetera. Bur why waste yhour time on such a project? AI's are improving by the month : but while they are great on specific words, they are not yet ( I gather) much chop at inference, induction, and the "reading-between-the-lines" of meaning & context.
Just as I find it tiresome to read the vague fuzziness & "plausible deniability" style of Judith Curry's climate commentary/opinions ~ so too I avoid following Richard Lindzen closely during his lengthy almost-but-not-quite denial of the mainstream science over the years. Lindzen does not wear his heart on his sleeve . . . so we must look for his implicit position.
Nor had I looked into the "Cornwall Alliance" and its "evangelical statements" [~ thanks BL]. Since Lindzen is non-Christian (of evangelical or any other type) then I am a tad surprised that he would sign onto anything from the Cornwall Alliance. However, Wikipedia says the Cornwall Declaration goes: "We believe Earth and its ecosystems ~ created by God's intelligent design and infinite power and sustained by His faithful providence ~ are robust, resilient, self-regulating, and self-correcting, admirably suited for human flourishing, and displaying His glory."
Well, you get the picture. And thinking back on the youtube interview (that I touched on earlier) I can see that he was using many of the words/phrases expressed by the Cornwallites.
So if it walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a real denialist ~ with an added teaspoon of That Old Time Religion.
Nick, already my post is too long : so I shall coffee up and get back to your inquiry, soon.
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Nick Palmer at 15:02 PM on 7 November 2025Debunking Joe Rogan, Dick Lindzen, and Will Happer
"climate science is wrong.ost of it is about how environmental" should have been 'climate science is wrong, most of it is about how environmental... '
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Nick Palmer at 14:58 PM on 7 November 2025Debunking Joe Rogan, Dick Lindzen, and Will Happer
Ok, I grant that Lindzen signed the documents, but that's a far cry from meaning he supports every word in them. The actual 'God loves us and wouldn't let us' bit is the CA's 'reasoning' for why they believe mainstream climate science is wrong.ost of it is about how environmental stewardship should be for the benefit of human flourishing etc. The only direct quotes AI could find relating to Lindzen and Yahweh was from me questioning it and Eclectic themselves saying it here several months back "Eclectic at 07:43 AM on 8 January, 2025".
Most AI points out that Lindzen does not use religious arguments to make his case about low climate sensitivity
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Eclectic at 14:04 PM on 7 November 2025Ice age predicted in the 70s
Angusmac @155 :
Over the past 500 million years, the solar output has been increasing by 1% every 120 million years (approx). Such is the nature of the beast, according to astro-physicists, in having a gradual increase in the hydrogen fusion rate.
A reduction in solar output of 2-5% (or even the 7% you mentioned earlier) would represent a truly colossal alteration in our Sun.
I think you have confused the term "physically realistic" (in practical terms) with the abstract mathematical exercise which Sellers has performed for the reader's interest & comparison.
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angusmac at 13:19 PM on 7 November 2025Ice age predicted in the 70s
@152 & @153
BL, you state that, “To claim that PCF-08 is wrong, angusmac needs to evaluate using the same criteria: a time scale of decades to centuries. If he is to gain any credibility, he needs to outline where in Sellers (1969) he finds support to argue that Sellers thought that the solar constant would decrease by this amount (or any amount) over the next century.”
In response, I now enclose an image of a paragraph from p.399 of Sellers (1969).
Note that Sellers (1969) states that "...in as little as 100 years…it is not inconceivable that the solar constant will change”. Consequently, it is obvious that my classification of Sellers (1969) is based on "time scales from decades to a century".
Notwithstanding the above, he does state that such a change in the solar constant for an extended period is, “on the fringe of being highly unlikely”. Furthermore, I would suggest that “on the fringe” means that the possibility cannot be discounted. Additionally, nowhere in Sellers (1969) is a change to the solar constant ruled out. Indeed, he includes such a possibility of solar change as one of his "major conclusions" (as highlighted below).
I contend that all of the Sellers (1969) conclusions are valid because all of them “were specified to be physically realistic” (although some outcomes may be more likely than others).
Consequently, I still maintain that my change to the PCF-08 classification of Sellers (1969) from warming to neutral is valid because he did state that there was a possibility of another ice age and that it was specified to be "physically realistic” .
Moderator Response:[BL] Congratulations on continuing your habit of taking any wording that matches your preconceptions and twisting it into what you think is a convincing argument.
The first section you quote clearly states that it is the warming due to "man's activity" that could take "as little as 100 years or as long as 1000 years".
Sellers does not give any indication how much he thinks the solar constant will change over that time period. He just says that it is "not inconceivable that the solar constant will change." He also does not indicate whether he is thinking about the short end (100 years) or the long end (1000 years). He does explicitly say that it would take a 7% drop in the solar constant to counteract the warming due to CO2. And he says "such a large drop [7%] in the solar constant over any extended period is on the fringe of being highly unlikely".
So, in your argument, saying that something is highly unlikely is the same as making a prediction that it is likely. Contrast this with the wording that Sellers uses on p398, with respect to the CO2 rise (variations in infrared transmissivity": "the global mean temperature should slowly rise due to this factor."
- To put it simply, you are creating a false equivalence between "highly unlikely" and "should happen". You just see a balance between two things that are "possible", and you are ignoring the fact that Sellers (1969) is quite confident that one will happen (warming due to CO2) and the other most likely will not (cooling due to a hypothetical drop in the solar constant).
And once again, you misinterpret the conclusions. The "physically realistic" statement is simply a recognition that the solar constant can change over extended time periods (indeed it has, over millions of years). It says nothing at all about what is likely over the next few decades to a century. The paper as a whole does not limit itself to the next century - it looks at possible climate effects (as modelled) over very long periods. It is only in your imagination that you can take Sellers' results over millions of years (ice age) and claim that they represent a prediction over the next century.
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Eclectic at 13:10 PM on 7 November 2025Debunking Joe Rogan, Dick Lindzen, and Will Happer
Three matters :-
(a) One Planet and Nigelj ~ you make many excellent points.
(b) Thank you Moderator [Bob]. I hope that a careful reading of my words @5 does show that I am not accusing these elderly scientists of deceit ~ but simply that they are persistently wrong and should know better. I am sure that they have high intelligence (well above mine) and that a few (e.g. Lindzen) have a high level of climate science knowledge . . . even though their own comments all too often suggest otherwise.
At a functional level, the human brain is rather like a stack of pancakes. The top pancake, exposed to the world (and generally being the "self-aware" pancake) can be strongly influenced and/or controlled by some of the deeper pancakes. [Freud used an over-simplistic concept of superego/ ego/ id. ]
However, just as a highly-skilled driver can sometimes crash his car, or as a poker-player can sometimes botch the good hand he has been dealt . . . . so too can eminent scientists sometimes present garbage to the world. And keep presenting it for decades ~ and the longer they do it, the less likely they are to admit they are wrong. Human nature. They are not intending deceit, at least not at their surface pancake level. (Versus those paid propagandists at Heartland Institute, etc. )
(c) Nick Palmer @7 :
Regarding Lindzen's expressed belief that God/Jehovah/Yahweh would of course design an Earth which narrowly controlled its climate for the benefit of the human race ~ it might take me a while to find the exact reference. A quick search shows me a youtuber interviewing a relaxed Richard Lindzen sitting on a chair in his garden (which rings a bell in my memory) but the date was stated as 2014 (or 2015) . . . but I am not clear whether that's the release date or the interview date.
My initial impression is that the video is 48 minutes of Judith-Curry-like vagueness & minimisation. But I will make a separate post once I have digested it.
Moderator Response:[BL] The moderator's comment on #5 was intended for all. Your comment was simply the last in the chain at the time. Some people were getting closer to the line than others - and maybe were crossing over it. I simply wanted to send up a warning flag to all participants to be careful. Basically, a moderator's equivalent to a parent saying "don't make me come down there!".
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Bob Loblaw at 08:52 AM on 7 November 2025Climate sensitivity is low
SCaGW2 @ 390:
Well, the "journal" is the publishing house of the organization "Science of Climate Change", which lists Hermann Harde as its editor. Harde is a well-known Norwegian "skeptic" with a reputation for misinformation. The organization's web page outlines their publishing purpose:
The objective of this journal was and is, to publish – different to many other journals – also peer re-viewed scientific contributions, which contradict the often very unilateral climate hypotheses of the IPCC and thus, to open the view to alternative interpretations of climate change.
You can't express a predetermined agenda much more clearly than that.
As a result, there seems little reason to think that the paper represents an unbiased analysis. A very short glance at the paper suggests that his "climate model" is extremely simplistic. Huijser's name seems pretty new in the climate skeptic camp, and Google Scholar doesn't seem to pick up any publications in credible climate science journals.
Is there anything in the paper that you find remotely interesting? It looks like yet another self-published analysis from a highly unreliable source. My personal view is that it is probably not worth reading in depth, but if there is an aspect of it that you think is interesting, please tell us.
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SCaGW2 at 07:40 AM on 7 November 2025Climate sensitivity is low
Not sure if this has been addressed already. Couls someone analyse this report? https://scienceofclimatechange.org/wp-content/uploads/SCC-Vol5.3-Huijser-Balancing-Act.pdf
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One Planet Only Forever at 07:20 AM on 7 November 2025Debunking Joe Rogan, Dick Lindzen, and Will Happer
Nick Palmer @7,
Regarding Lindzen's 'alternative understanding of the impact of cloud changes as warming occurs due to increased CO2 levels'.
I may be mistaken. But nearly 1.5 C warming has happened with CO2 increasing from 280 ppm to 420 ppm (only a 50% increase of CO2). I appreciate that correlation does not prove causation. But that information would appear to fairly solidly establish that Lindzen's past belief, that he appears to powerfully resist changing his mind about in spite of updated information, has 'very little merit'.
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One Planet Only Forever at 07:03 AM on 7 November 2025Debunking Joe Rogan, Dick Lindzen, and Will Happer
Because of Lindzen's past history of contributions to climate science, I find it very difficult to grant him any benefit-of-doubt regarding his statement in the first point raised (repeated below):
Lindzen @ 6:02: “global mean temperature doesn't change much, but you know you focus on one degree, a half degree, so it looks like something”
Lindzen @ 22:06: “Gutierrez (sic) at the UN says the next half degree and we're done for. I mean, doesn't anyone ask, a half degree? I mean, I deal with that between, you know, 9:00 a.m. and 10:00 a.m [laughs]. Rogan: "it does seem crazy. It's just that kind of fear of minute change that they try to put into people.”
To start, Lindzen seriously misrepresents what Gutierres has said. A quick internet search finds the following UN News item: There is an exit off ‘the highway to climate hell’, Guterres insists. It includes the following selected quotes:
“It’s climate crunch time” when it comes to tackling rising carbon emissions, the UN Secretary-General said on Wednesday, stressing that while the need for global action is unprecedented, so too are the opportunities for prosperity and sustainable development.
...
Question of degrees
He said a half degree difference in global warming could mean some island States or coastal communities disappearing forever.
Scientists point out that the Greenland ice sheet and West Antarctic ice sheet could collapse and cause catastrophic sea level rise. Whole coral reef systems could disappear along with 300 million livelihoods if the 1.5℃ goal is not met.
Extreme weather from East Asia to the western seaboard of the US has been turbocharged by climate chaos, “destroying lives, pummelling economies and hammering health”, said the Secretary-General.
It is very challenging to excuse someone like Lindzen saying those types of things (and all the other cases of misleading manipulative messaging by him and Happer that have been pointed out).
Rogan can be excused for being a gullible desperate pursuer of popularity who is easily impressed and therefore potentially is unwittingly massively harmfully misleading. No such excuse comes to mind for Lindzen (or Happer).
I look forward to the follow-up mentioned by Dana that will "...look at the underlying psychology in a separate article in the near future."
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Nick Palmer at 06:49 AM on 7 November 2025Debunking Joe Rogan, Dick Lindzen, and Will Happer
Does anyone have a reference for the claim that Lindzen has used the 'God wouldn't let us wreck our climate' argument. I knew both John Christie and Roy Spencer have very strong religious beliefs which makes them kind of believe that God wouldn't let us do it, which colours their views, but I've never heard anything similar about Lindzen.
In any event, I think it's unfair to characterise Lindzen as a denialist because his basic position is that he "accepts the elementary tenets of climate science. He agrees that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, calling people who dispute that point 'nutty.' He agrees that the level of it is rising because of human activity and that this should warm the climate. He also believes that decreasing tropical cirrus clouds in a warmer world will allow more longwave radiation to escape the atmosphere, counteracting the warming."
This is his hypothesised 'Iris effect'. This is why he believes that climate sensitivity is about 1/3 that of the figures 'IPPC science' works with. If he's right, then global warming genuinely will not be a problem. He often phrases his rhetoric to assert that 'science shows' that the sensitivity is a lot less than the IPCC's, but he's usually referring to his own papers and sort of implies that science generally supports him - but it's just his own views about clouds in the tropics.
Moderator Response:[BL] According to Wikipedia, Richard Lindzen has signed onto the Cornwall Alliance's evangelical statements. Web searches provide a variety of hits indicating a strong connection with the Cornwall Alliance.
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nigelj at 04:23 AM on 7 November 2025Debunking Joe Rogan, Dick Lindzen, and Will Happer
KR said: " I wonder, at this point, whether the reward for such denial is financial (I don't think either has published much recently), ideological (against government control/pro libertarian), or just consistency with past assertions?"
The denialism may be a mixture of all three motinations. Humans often have multiple motivations for a particular action or view. This is a basic finding of psychology.
We humans are reductionist we prefer a simple singular explanation. Occams Razor being the formalisation of this broadly saying that the simplest explanation for an event that can explain all the facts is usually correct. But with human behaviour the simplest explanation that works is sometimes a not so simple.
And I think you can add more motivations for climate science denialism. Religious beliefs and extreme attention seeking. And unusual stubborness. Some people have a big narcissistic ego so it becomes difficult and downright painful to admit they are wrong or made a mistake so people hold onto absurd beliefs their whole lives. Of course we are all egotistical but most of us are capable of admitting we made a mistake. People at the extreme end of the ego spectrum have a huge problem walking back from their views. They are unusually stubborn.
And some people are super smart and over confident so they believe they just cannot be wrong. But everyone is fallible
Of course its hard to know precisely what motivates Lindzen but the evidence suggests it may be some sort of combination of money and religion and I reckon over confidence and attention seeking.
When reading denialists comments and getting in discussions with them a large number do seem to have very strong libertarian leaning anti government regulation ideologies, so denying the science is an obvious strategy to prevent governments control. Nick Palmer is right.
I dont like accusing people of lying. Its hard to know if they are lying because lying means deliberately spreading falsehoods that they know are falsehoods. Sometimes they are just mistaken. Genuine lying does happen of course and can sometimes be proven, but in scientific issues its tricky to prove because scientifc findings have error bars and theories are not the same as facts. So someone like Lindzen may really believe his numbers are the truth. I think hes more in the delusional category. Hes certainly spreading "miss"information.
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Eclectic at 22:29 PM on 6 November 2025Debunking Joe Rogan, Dick Lindzen, and Will Happer
Plincoln @4 :
Lindzen may be the exception, indeed. IIRC, roughly 19 years ago [aged 65?] he gave an interview where seemingly his fundamental denialism was on the religious basis that Yahweh would prevent the Earth's climate deviating from the Eden-like state. Doubtless Lindzen's viewpoint would also be reinforced by the usual political and/or motivated reasonings of the true Denialist.
Yes, Lindzen had received some small payments/stipends from the usual industry suspects. Interestingly, the psychologists say that small payments of cash or other benefits, can have a remarkably strong effect on the mindset of recipients.
Happer and the other elderly Denialists ~ in which I include the youthful [mid-70's] Koonin ~ seem to have the more typical mishmash of ego/Emeritus-Syndrome/wingnut/etcetera distortions of logic as well as a deficiency in Charity.
But I guess we should update the traditional virtue of Charity, to be re-named as Empathy.
Moderator Response:[BL] A note to all participating in this thread: please try to avoid inflammatory accusations such as deceit, etc.
Lindzen was a well-respected meteorologist and did some good work early in his career. Happer was a well-respected physicist. Both have wandered away from good science in their positions on climate change, but they do not deserve having us ignore the SkS Comments Policy statements against accusations of deception, etc.
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plincoln24 at 21:33 PM on 6 November 2025Debunking Joe Rogan, Dick Lindzen, and Will Happer
I was not aware of these interviews where Happer and Lindzen are straight up lying to the public. They are lying about the most elementary facts that any climate scientist should have under control. This is extremely frustrating. To my knowledge Mr. Lindzen is supposed to be a climate scientist, but I am not sure about Happer. I have to wonder if they are being paid for their dishonesty.
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Nick Palmer at 21:26 PM on 6 November 2025Debunking Joe Rogan, Dick Lindzen, and Will Happer
KR#2
"ideological (against government control/pro libertarian), or just consistency with past assertions"
I don't think such pathological scepticism is motivated by money, at least, not directly. I find most nowadays is strongly ideologically based and caused by what Katharine Hayhoe calls being "solutions averse". This is that they don't like the solutions offered up, such as distributed wind and solar and 'Big Goverment'/Internationalist type restrictions, so intensely that they choose denialism as a strategy to head off restrictions on 'freedom' etc.
I've had some success arguing with the most extreme by pointing out how virtually unanimous the science is about the effects of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions and then asking them why, instead of embracing denialist propaganda as a political strategy, they didn't come up with alternative 'free market' type solutions. Most actually shut up...
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Debunking Joe Rogan, Dick Lindzen, and Will Happer
Same old nonsense from the same few denialists. I wonder, at this point, whether the reward for such denial is financial (I don't think either has published much recently), ideological (against government control/pro libertarian), or just consistency with past assertions?
It's certainly not based on facts. At all.
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prove we are smart at 08:22 AM on 6 November 2025Debunking Joe Rogan, Dick Lindzen, and Will Happer
It was easy for me to comprehend that if you really wanted to understand the truth about anything, why not listen to a variety of sources. Use critical thinking to look for biases, including your own and choose experts/scientists to get the information.
Believe your opinion can be changed if new facts/information thoughtfully assessed becomes available. I used to think this miracle of the internet/social media would finally enlighten and connect us all- man, I'm not such a naive fellow now.
Education can set you free, I guess the opposite is true too. With the quality of the elected rulers in many cosplay democracies hitting rock bottom, this might help explain why such corrupted mainly right wing influences are believed and increasingly so. www.youtube.com/watch?v=uBRVvkKre1E
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Eclectic at 21:11 PM on 5 November 2025Ice age predicted in the 70s
Belated apologies.
Major typo (or brain flatulence?).
@153 should read : "... paper must fit in the 'warming' category."
And nowhere near "neutral" category.
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Eclectic at 19:30 PM on 5 November 2025Ice age predicted in the 70s
Angusmac @152 :
I have been following your commentary, and that of your respondents.
From what you have quoted @152, that paper points to two scenarios ~ (A) a major/colossal decrease in the solar constant, versus (B) ongoing industrial activities, as was already evident at the time of the paper.
Since (B) was the scenario actually taking place, and (A) was not in evidence (nor expected) . . . then surely one must deduce that the paper must fit in the "cooling" category.
Have I misunderstood your position?
Moderator Response:[BL] I agree with your take on this (subject to your correction of "cooling" to "warming", as indicated in your next comment). Angusmac's table linked in his first post explicitly indicates that he disagrees with the PCF-08 evaluation of Sellers (1969). PCF-08 said "warming", while angusmac says "neutral".
To claim that PCF-08 is wrong, angusmac needs to evaluate using the same criteria: a time scale of decades to centuries. If he is to gain any credibility, he needs to outline where in Sellers (1969) he finds support to argue that Sellers thought that the solar constant would decrease by this amount (or any amount) over the next century. To paraphrase Law and Order" "Objection your honour. Assumes facts not in evidence."
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angusmac at 15:46 PM on 5 November 2025Ice age predicted in the 70s
I will attempt to work through your comments but, firstly, I reply that the Sellers (1969) paper should be considered to be neutral because it states that the "major conclusions" are:
- “…that a decrease of the solar constant by 2-5% would be sufficient, to initiate another ice age”.
- “and that man's increasing industrial activities may eventually lead to the elimination of the ice caps and to a climate about 14C warmer than today”.
I fail to se why any rational person could not view the Sellers paper as being anything except neutral since it concluded that its model could be either “another ice age” or “14C warmer than today”. Both of these outcomes were “specified so as to be physically realistic”.
Consequently, I contend that I have not mischaracterized Sellers (1969).
Moderator Response:[BL] Wow. Talk about selective reading. Let's put in more text from Sellers (1969), not your cherry-picked partial quote. At the start of his section "Variations in the solar constant" (p397), we see (emphasis added):
"One of the favorite theories of climatic change during the last million years attributes the ice ages to variations in the intensity of solar radiation..."
At the end of the section (p398), Sellers says:
"...the model seems to indicate quite conclusively that a decrease in the solar constant of less than 5% would be sufficient to start another ice age."
The whole purpose of his examination of changes in solar constant was to look at possible explanations of known past variations in climate, over long time periods. Absolutely nowhere in the paper does Sellers suggest that such a decrease in the solar constant was likely to happen in the decades or century following the 1970s.
I fail to see how any rational person could confuse "millions of years" with "decades to a century".
Consequently, I contend that you either are incapable of understanding what Sellers (1969) has done and written, or you are intentionally ignoring the aspect of the PCF-08 paper that specified that the evaluation of the Sellers (1969) paper (and all papers they evaluated) was based on "time scales from decades to a century".
You are changing the criteria for evaluation to one that is different from PCF-08. We have yet to see exactly what your criteria are. The NoTricksZone analysis did exactly the same shifting of goal posts that you are doing here.
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Cedders at 09:53 AM on 5 November 2025CO2 is just a trace gas
I'm surprised that this argument is so low on the popularity list, 77 out of 200. Possibly it’s more common offline: meeting some contrarians at real-life events (stalls etc), it’s practically what opens the conversation when you are pegged as one of the climate-concerned. ‘I bet you can’t tell me the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.’
If you express an answer in parts per million, or perhaps as two million million tonnes, then they will want it converted to a percentage (even though most of the atmosphere is transparent to infra-red, and it’s the amount rather than proportion of greenhouse gases that determines the greenhouse effect). 0.043% sounds negligible somehow, perhaps because of common uses of percentages in polling or economics or pay rises. Without empirical knowledge of effects of a substance in a small proportion, people can fall back on what seems like a reasonable guess.
An underlying assumption by people stressing concentrations seems to be that if people knew CO₂ was ‘a trace gas’, they wouldn’t be concerned about climate change, and so the way most people can’t answer in percentage terms means that they are ignorant about the subject matter, or have been manipulated. (The conversation may then proceed to ‘life flourished in the Jurassic because of higher CO₂’ myth, about as accurate as One Million Years BC with Raquel Welch, or combine several misunderstandings into one sentence or question.)
So, supporting the large effects of trace substances argument, and as some people reject the ‘poison’ or ‘alcohol’ analogy as too indirect, I’d like to post this table. If comparisons across the electromagnetic spectrum are somehow valid, then 0.043% turns out to be a lot.
