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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.
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Cedders at 05:36 AM on 5 November 2025CO2 is just a trace gas
Bob Loblaw @60: "As for JJones idea that CO2 in trace amounts can't absorb enough radiation, there are commercial CO2 gas analyzers that are designed to measure CO2 by measuring the amount of IR radiation it absorbs, and they can do this on very small quantities of air."
Indeed I've bought an air quality meter for about $10 online, which uses non-dispersive infra-red (filters) to detect carbon dioxide, formaldehyde and other volatile organic compounds. It takes a minute to literally warm up, and is of course nowhere near as accurate as the infra-red equipment scientists use to measure CO₂, but it will at least detect breath, poor ventilation and includes a hygrometer.
Whether actual hands-on experience of such things will help someone accept radiative physics is one question. And whether finding that kind of evidence against the most convenient rationalisation available changes wider world-view about who is responsible for climate change is a different one.
Scaddenp @61 : "I am interested in how people build up their mental models, and how we update these mental models as new information is presented."
(digression) So am I, although I often find it hard to persuade people to share their reasoning, particularly if they are quickly on the defensive. I think humans in general do some 'hill-climbing' in their professed beliefs, aiming at local maxima of practical, satisfactory narrative. New information may change the landscape, but people only move their position slightly, rather than doing the tiring cognitive work of re-evaluating the bigger picture. Hence why goalposts are moved and people rapidly move on to the next myth.
One thing I do find is quite common among contrarians in real life (besides an understandable but exaggerated distrust of authority that is a mirror image of acceptance of consensus) is a simplistic version of Popper's falsificationism. Here's apparent evidence why climate science is wrong, and that is enough to disprove it. (Some do then accrete other supporting arguments.) This mischaracterised epistemology is something to apply to any scientific 'hypothesis' that may have been painted as inconvenient or costing money or jeopardising worldview, but from my experience they use a more common-sense Bayesianism for everyday life.
To JJones @48, one could add that 'a significant amount of heat' is radiated from Sun to Earth and Earth to space. If the latter is mostly in the form of long-wave infra-red, and carbon dioxide absorbs long-wave infra-red, where does the 'heat energy' go? And then maybe explain emission layer displacement in simple terms.
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Riduna at 09:58 AM on 4 November 2025Climate change strengthened Hurricane Melissa, making the storm’s winds stronger and the damage worse.
1.2C =1.2F ! ?
Moderator Response:[BL] Hmmmm. Some sort of gremlin in the matrix. The original at Yale Climate Connections says "1.4 degrees Celsius (2.5°F) warmer than average". We'll have to try and fix that.
[2025-11-04] It's been fixed!
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kootzie at 04:32 AM on 4 November 2025It's the sun
I am semi-active on Research Gate and elsewhere and doing my bit to [snip]
swat and bitch-slap denialists as they emit their oral-methane emissions to contaminate the discussions and spread anti-science drivel
I notice that the likes of
D*n P*rn
H. D*s L*oot
J*k Br*n
and others regularly engage in denialist mis-information
I notice that none of them appear to be significant enough to
merit (or dis-merit) inclusion in your rogues galleryTheir latest drivel stream purports that not only does increased atmospheric CO2 concentration not contribute ANY increase in global average temperatures, that CO2 does not have any effect on GAT at all.
They claim that WV aka Water Vapour, is a far more potent GHG
(which is arguably a defensible proposition) but that WV is the ONLY
GHG which has ANY effect on temperature, and ipso-facto ergo QED
anthropogenic Global Warming does not exist - its all on the natch.They regularly mis-interpret mis-comprehend mis-represent physics.
They fundamentally deny that CO2, a non-condensible GHG with a long lifespan drives global temps and insist that WV, a condensible GHG with a short lifespan is not merely a feedback / feedforward mechanism but the fundamental / ONLY driver.https://www.perplexity.ai/search/analyze-and-critique-vol-20-20-wis.z78fQn.WeNzqnj5Kkg#0
https://www.perplexity.ai/search/analyze-and-critique-the-error-7ZbX2nqyRgGc19k2y45u_Q#0
https://www.perplexity.ai/search/analyze-and-critique-paraphras-Lrr7UYOjQAitC93qUR10EA#1https://www.researchgate.net/post/How_can_environmental_protection_and_biodiversity_be_improved_by_using_current_ecological_technologies#view=6908dd880ea281189c0a137f/312/313/312
Moderator Response:[BL] Your words are:
- Inflammatory
- Off-topic
Please read the Comments Policy before commenting again.
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Philippe Chantreau at 04:10 AM on 3 November 2025Ice age predicted in the 70s
Here is another one, figuring as "confirmed cooling": Borisov (1969)
Only the abstract comes up: "Soviet climatologists are vitally concerned with the problem of ameliorating the climate of Siberia and other northern lands as a means of developing these regions for an expanding population. P. M. Borisov, a candidate in geographic sciences, Moscow, examines one means of warming the climate by the transport of Atlantic Ocean water across the Arctic Basin. This could be done by pumping water out of the Arctic Ocean at the Bering Strait, thus accelerating the flow of warmer Atlantic water into the basin. Flow direction would be controlled by means of a dam across the Bering Strait. Borisov predicts dramatic improvement in Arctic climate would result. Huge areas of permafrost would be freed for agriculture in northern Canada and Siberia. Grass would grow in the Sahara Desert. This article, appearing first in the Soviet journal, Priroda, was translated by the Canadian Defence Research Board. It is reprinted here through the courtesy of the Board and by special permission of the editors of Priroda." I don't see how this paper makes a prediction that future global climate will be cooling.
I think I am done with this little list of "papers."
Moderator Response:[BL] It has taken the SkS team a bit of time to response to angusmac's comment 146, but we have finally added a moderator's note to his comment. We agree that his comment and attached database of papers has little merit, and have noted some of the weaknesses you present in your series of comments (147-151). Of particular note is the lack of any explanation regarding criteria used to define "warming", "cooling" and "neutral".
You (Philippe) have dug further into the database angusmac has presented than I did. I only chose one paper to look at in detail: Sellers (1969), JAM 8, 392-400. I chose this for two reasons:
- It is the first paper in the provided link that angusmac changed from "warming" (in the original PCF-08 paper) to "neutral" (angusmac's classification)
- It is a paper that I am very familiar with, having first encountered it in the 1970s when it was still a rather new paper. Coincidentally, the 1970s is also the time period in questions with respect to the views of the climate science community.
angusmac is fooling himself in thinking that Sellers (1969) represents a neutral position on predictions of climate change in the decades to century that covers the period of interest - i.e., the period that represents "imminent cooling" as of the 1970s, as addressed in the myth in this rebuttal (and the PCF-08 paper).
The Sellers paper present a new, simple one-dimensional (zonally-averaged) climate model. Sellers then examines how this model reacts to several hypothetical changes in input conditions:
- Removing the arctic ice cap
- A decrease of the solar constant by 2-5%
- Human industrial activities. This includes two effects: waste heat accumulating in the earth-atmosphere system, and the effects of changing atmospheric infrared transmissivity - also known as the greenhouse effect.
Only one of those hypothetical changes is considered to be something that Sellers expected to change in the short term: atmospheric CO2. His paragraph on this matter ends with "Hence, the global mean temperature should slowly rise due to this factor." None of the other factors that Sellers examined in his model represent any sort of prediction of trends likely to happen in the decades or century following the 1970s.
Given angusmac's mischaracterization of Sellers (1969) I did not see any value in digging further.
Readers that end up here without reading the moderator's comment to angusmac's post 146 should take a look at the following two SkS posts, which discuss the problems associated with NoTrcksZone's database of "cooling" papers. Unfortunately, angusmac has used NoTricksZone's database as a primary source for his own analysis.
https://skepticalscience.com/70s-cooling-myth-tricks-part-I.html
https://skepticalscience.com/70s-cooling-myth-tricks-part-II.html
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Philippe Chantreau at 03:59 AM on 3 November 2025Ice age predicted in the 70s
As I look further, my skepticism increases, although I may have mistaken some papers as cooling when they say neutral. In fact, they are likely neither, or irrelevant. Another example: Eichenlaub (1970) This one is strictly about Lake effect snow events in the Great lakes region, makes no claim about global climate and contains these words in the conclusion section: "While this increase in lake effect snowfall cannot, as yet, be ascribed to any single cause, a tendency toward colder winters recently in
southwestern Michigan may be partially responsible for the upward trend in that area. Further evidence is needed before valid conclusions can be drawn regarding the role of air pollution in this climatic change."This paper was an attempt at finding possible causes to a recent past change in a specific region. It makes no mention at all of global climate, or any forecast of future trends, and stops short at stating anything with any level of certainty.
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Philippe Chantreau at 03:48 AM on 3 November 2025Ice age predicted in the 70s
I have to confess an error: I was trying to click on the Wahl and Lawson 1970 link (which is broken} and instead went to the Battan piece, which supposedly discusses "pros and cons of geoengineering" and is "confirmed neutral. Here is the "paper" that supposedly is "confirmed" to be neutral:
https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/bams/51/11/1520-0477_1970_051_1030_sospow_2_0_co_2.xml
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Philippe Chantreau at 03:34 AM on 3 November 2025Ice age predicted in the 70s
To elaborate on the previous post, I'll add that I was somewhat lucky in being able to access that "paper" at my first try. Multiple other attempts on different pieces led to broken links or paywalls. One paywalled let me read a first page that did not suggest it was taking a strong position on forecasting future trends.
Another one was accessible but hardly relevant: "Summary of Soviet publications on weather modification." It nonetheless contained this bit: "Budyko, Drozdov and Yudin (1966) stated that in
less than 200 years the heat released by man's activities will have a greater influence on climate change than solar radiation changes." I recommend reading through it so that nobody accuses me of cherry picking. The bulk of it is about cloud seeding for agricultural purposes. Some parts reflect the insane arrogance of the Soviet approach to inhabiting this planet, especially the getting rid of Arctic ice ideas near the end. A fun read, but it's still hard to see how it could be construed as a research paper forecasting cooling of the Earth climate.I am not sure I will have the patience to continue wading through this. So far, I am profoundly unimpressed with this "57 cooling papers" claim.
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Philippe Chantreau at 03:12 AM on 3 November 2025Ice age predicted in the 70s
So far, it is difficult to take seriously the classification proposed in that "database." I have taken random samples and I can not understand what criteria are used to declare that a particular piece can be said to point to future climate cooling rather than warming.
Example, the first I decided to look into: "Carbon Dioxide and its Role in Climate Change", George S. Benton. This was published in: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Vol. 67, No. 2, pp. 898-899, October 1970. However, it is not at all a research paper. It is a short summary of basic principles intended for a symposium, as it says in the header: "Contributed to the Symposium on Aids and Threats from Technology, April 29, 1970." The intent is to attract attention to the fact that Earth climate needed to be better understood. In the paper, it says things like:
"The effect of carbon dioxide is to increase the earth's temperature by absorbing outgoing terrestrial radiation. Recent numerical studies have indicated that a 10% increase in carbon dioxide should result, on the average, in a temperature increase of about 0.3OC at the earth's surface. The present rate of increaseof 0.7 ppm per year would therefore (if extrapolated to 2000 A.D.) result in awarming of about 0.60C-a very substantial change."
Interestingly, this prediction was very close to what actually happened. The rest of the letter goes on to review other factors affecting climate, such as aerosols, including that from volcanic activity, solar irradiance, and others. It concludes with these words: "Some years from now, man will control his climate, inadvertently or advertently. Before that day arrives, it is essential that scientists understand thoroughly the dynamics of climate. Only by such an understanding and by active intervention can man assure himself in the long run that this planet will continue to be a suitable place to live."
The only little tidbit that would fit the "it points to cooling" narrative would be this: "In the period from 1880 to 1940, the mean temperature of the earth increased about 0.60C; from 1940to 1970, it decreased by 0.3-0.4°C." This is an accurate factual statement but is not used has having any bearing on predicting future trends, and the letter does not even make the claim of having a clear explanation for it, although aerosols are cited as likely contributors.
Citing this piece as scientific work predicting future cooling of the Earth climate is downright mendacious.
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angusmac at 11:41 AM on 30 October 2025Ice age predicted in the 70s
This SkS rebuttal appears to be incorrect because the enclosed database of the climate science literature of the 1965-1979 period shows that there was an overwhelming scientific consensus for climate cooling (see Figure 1).
The consensus was 65% for the whole period but greatly outnumbered the warming papers by 3.4-to-1 during the 1968-1975 period, when there were 57 cooling papers (77%) compared with 17 warming (26%).
The supposed SkS rebuttal has placed too much reliance on Petersen et al, 2008 (PCF-08) However, it appears that the PCF-08 authors have committed the transgression of which they accuse others; namely, “selectively misreading the texts” of the climate science literature from 1965 to 1979. The PCF-08 authors appear to have done this by neglecting the large number of peer-reviewed papers that were pro-cooling.
I find it very surprising that PCF-08 only uncovered 7 cooling papers and did not uncover the 86 cooling papers in major scientific journals, such as, Journal of American Meteorological Society, Nature, Science, Quaternary Research and similar scientific papers that they reviewed. For example, PCF-08 only found 1 paper in Quaternary Research, namely the warming paper by Mitchell (1976), however, my review found 19 additional papers in that journal, comprising 15 cooling, 3 neutral and 1 warming (refer to enclosed database.
I can only suggest that the authors of PCF-08 concentrated on finding warming papers instead of conducting the impartial “rigorous literature review” that they profess.
If the current climate science debate were more neutral, the PCF-08 paper would either be withdrawn or subjected to a detailed corrigendum to correct its obvious inaccuracies.
Database of Cooling Neutral and Warming Papers 1965-1979.pdf
Moderator Response:Thank you for your comment. The SkS policy is to encourage discussion of the points raised in our material, including correction of errors. Please note, however, that we do put a lot of emphasis on analysis that is presented in the scientific literature. This is outlined in the opening paragraph of the Comments Policy.
Now, as to the details of the information you present in your comment. The PDF file that you link to provides a list of papers, along with your opinion as to whether they represent a warming, cooling, or neutral position. Your file gives no indication as to your search criteria for generating a list of papers to consider, or your methodology for assessing the position taken in the paper. You have not even given a clear indication of exactly what question you are trying to answer. What is a “cooling paper”? What distinguishes it from a “warming paper” or a “neutral paper”?
Depending on search criteria, it is quite possible that a general search produces hits that don’t even address the question that you are trying to ask. Depending on your search criteria and assessment rules, it is very easy to introduce bias in your results. Without details on your methods, it is impossible for a reader to assess your methodology or the validity of your results – or to duplicate your analysis. This is essential in order to determine whether your opinion has any scientific merit.
The Peterson et al (2008) paper (PCF-08, using your abbreviation) does all of the above. It expresses a clear question: was there a consensus among climate scientists of the 1970s that either global cooling or a full-fledged ice age was imminent (p1326). Note that there are four essential aspects of this:
- 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
PCF-08 also explains how they performed their literature search (which included a citation analysis). They also explain that they restricted their analysis to papers that projected or discussed climate change on time scales from decades to a century. Note that they stated “While some of these articles make clear predictions of global surface temperature changes by the year 2000, most of them do not.” (See their section “Survey of the peer-reviewed literature”, pp1329-1330.) This is why it is essential that any analysis express clearly both their search criteria and their method of assessing the papers. Just because a paper shows up in a search does not mean that the paper addresses the research question.
With this in mind, it is worth pointing out that papers that discuss observed cooling trends prior to 1970, or ice age predictions thousands of years in the future, or local trends are not applicable to the PCF-08 analysis.
Now, we are also aware that you already know most of this, as you have a blog post from 2018 at your web site that provides more background on your analysis. You didn’t think it worth providing a link to your blog post, so we won’t either. In that blog post, you state that you include a large amount of literature sourced from Kenneth Richard at NoTricksZone. The figure you have provided in your comment here seems to be the same as the one in your blog post, so we conclude that you have not done any further analysis since your 2018 blog post.
As a result of your literature search methodology, your analysis will suffer from any weaknesses in Kenneth Richard’s analysis – you are using his data. Skeptical Science has assessed the work at NoTricksZone in a pair of 2018 blog posts:
https://skepticalscience.com/70s-cooling-myth-tricks-part-I.html
https://skepticalscience.com/70s-cooling-myth-tricks-part-II.html
In short, the NoTricksZone (NTZ) suffers from many weaknesses and errors, and is not a reliable source of information relevant to the accuracy of PCF-08. No indication of search criteria, and it includes papers as late as 1989 – so far beyond the 1970s period in question. NTZ includes papers that look at pre-1970 cooling trends – so not predictions of future change at the decades to century scale. It appears to include papers that may look at local historical trends – so not projections of future climate change.
But you are also aware of those SkS posts, as someone pointed you to them in comments on your blog in 2022. You dismiss those SkS posts related to NTZ on your blog with nothing more than a wave of the hand.
So, we have no reason to think that your criticism of this SkS myth rebuttal has any more merit that the weak NTZ analysis.
Should you disagree with the SkS summary of the NTZ analysis, please post those criticisms on the relevant post where they will be on topic, as linked above.
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One Planet Only Forever at 04:05 AM on 26 October 2025New Book - Climate Obstruction: A global Assessment
Link to Wikipedia Doublespeak Award I failed to include in my comment @9.
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One Planet Only Forever at 04:03 AM on 26 October 2025New Book - Climate Obstruction: A global Assessment
prove we are smart @4,
Mallen Baker’s presentation definitely helps understand ‘The Problem’. Developing sustainable improvements requires a proper thorough understanding of ‘The Problem’.
However, I think the ‘Right to Lie and related claims that it is justified Free Speech’ is just a more extreme version of Doublespeak. And Doublespeak has been a Problem, of varying degrees of severity, for as long as humans have been competing for perceptions of superiority and related pursuits of leadership influence. (links to Wikipedia items for Doublespeak and Doublespeak Awards - note that the 2005 Award was given to "Philip A. Cooney, for editing scientific reports to deceive the public about the nature of global warming and climate change and of the Bush Administration's negligence in dealing with these issues.")
The efforts of misleaders to benefit from Doublespeak amp-up in absurdity as the general population gains increased awareness and improved understanding regarding matters. Those who unjustifiably obtained perceptions of superior status via harmful unsustainable misleading actions have to double-down on their Doublespeak.
An example of the doubling-down of Double-speaking is the following (related to my comment @6):
CBC News item: Danielle Smith affirms Alberta's 2050 net-zero goal at testy committee appearance.
The following is a selected quote from the article:
“Her virtual appearance included testy exchanges as Bloc Quebecois MP Patrick Bonin repeatedly demanded to know whether Smith believes in climate change. She suggested that as a Quebecer, he could not grasp the substance of one of Canada's biggest industries.
Bonin repeatedly asked the premier whether she agreed the climate is warming up, and if human activity is primarily the cause.
Smith initially dodged the questions — first by talking about forest management practices, then by diving into Alberta's 2050 emission reduction plan. She and Bonin continually talked over each other as she repeated her points and he continually insisted she was not answering his question.
The exchange got so boisterous, Liberal chair Angelo Iacono was forced to interject to bring things back under control.
Bonin finally got an answer when he asked Smith to state "yes or no" whether she believes the climate is warming.
"Yes," she said.
Smith then said she agreed humans are contributing to climate change but wouldn't say it's the main factor driving it.
"I don't know the answer to that. I'm not a scientist. But we do know we need to get to carbon neutral by 2050 and we have a plan to do that," Smith said.
Later, after Bonin asked Smith if Alberta knew whether its plan to double oil and gas production would affect its 2050 net-zero target, Smith questioned his knowledge of the sector.It is important to understand that although the need to reduce global warming emissions from Alberta, ultimately having no impact by 2050, was understandable well before the 2015 Paris Agreement, there has been no measurable action by the industry in Alberta towards that reduction (there has been limited government subsidized carbon capture).
It is also undeniable that wealthier portions of the current global population, like the portion benefiting from extraction and export of Alberta’s fossil fuels, need to minimize how harmful their actions are as they transition towards ending their harmfulness. The total amount of harm done is the important measure, not a promise to maybe-end the harmfulness at some ‘Future date’ like the claim to be ‘Net-Zero by 2050'.
Net-Zero may not actually be ‘harmless’. Double-speakers will just claim they are harmless, claim that they are not the problem, and/or claim that others are the problem.
Also reduction of impact now is more beneficial than reduction later.
As a worst case example, rapidly doubling the rate of Alberta oil and gas export but doing nothing to reduce the emissions, then shutting it all down in 2050 would theoretically meet the promise (the Promise is not a Lie).
The worst case for the future of humanity is Doublespeak continuing to be successful. Hopefully, the Welsh Senedd will act in a way that triggers the beginning of significant action to sustainably limit the success of Double-speakers trying to maximize their benefit from being harmful.
