Arguments
Ivar Giaever - Nobel Winning Physicist and Climate Pseudoscientist
Posted on 12 July 2012 by dana1981
We often see scientists from non-climate fields who believe they have sufficient expertise to understand climate science despite having done minimal research on the subject; William Happer, Fritz Vahrenholt, and Bob Carter, for example. As he admits in his own words, Nobel Prize winning physicist Ivar Giaever fits this mould perfectly:
"I am not really terribly interested in global warming. Like most physicists I don't think much about it. But in 2008 I was in a panel here about global warming and I had to learn something about it. And I spent a day or so - half a day maybe on Google, and I was horrified by what I learned. And I'm going to try to explain to you why that was the case."
That quote comes from a presentation Giaever gave to the 62nd Meeting of Nobel Laureates in 2012, for some unknown reason on the subject of climate change. As Giaever notes at the beginning of his talk, he has become more famous for his contrarian views on global warming than for his Nobel Prize, which have made him something of a darling to the climate contrarian movement and climate denial enablers.
In this post we will examine the claims made by Giaever in his talk, and show that his contrarian climate opinions come from a position of extreme ignorance on the subject, as Giaever admits. Giaever personifies the classic stereotype of the physicist who thinks he understands all scientific fields of study:
Cartoon from xkcd which describes the behavior of Ivar Giaever to a 'T'
Accuracy of the Surface Temperature Record
In his talk, Giaever spent a lot of time criticizing Al Gore and Rajendra Pachauri (IPCC chairman) for winning the Nobel Peace Prize for - according to Giaever - 'making the global surface temperature record famous' (Figure 1).
Figure 1: Various global surface and lower troposphere temperature data sets.
Giaever proceeded to question the accuracy of the surface temperature record, ultimately asking:
"How can you measure the average temperature of the Earth? I don't think that's possible."
Unfortunately this simply displays an ignorance regarding the surface temperature record, whose accuracy has been confirmed time and time again, and which is also consistent with lower troposphere temperature measurements, as illustrated in Figure 1.
Glenn Tramblyn has answered Giaever's question in great detail in his four part series Of Averages & Anomalies, and Kevin C also had an excellent and detailed post on recent temperature measurements in The GLOBAL global warming signal. The answers to these questions are out there for those who are willing to spend more than a few hours on Google searches, and it is not constructive to give presentations on subjects without first doing such basic research. We are again left wondering why Giaever was asked to give a presentation to Nobel Laureates on a subject on which he has no expertise and has not done even the most basic research.
The Significance of the Observed Global Warming
Giaever also disputed the significance of the measured 0.8°C average global surface warming over the past 130 years, comparing it to a human fever and the temperature at which he had to maintain tissue for cell growth during his own biophysical experiments, also showing the following slide:
Giaever does not seem to know how to put the observed 0.8°C global surface temperature change in proper context. It may sound small in comparison to the absolute global temperature in Kelvin, or in comparison to changes in human body temperatures, but it is a very large change in global surface temperature, especially over a period as brief as 130 years (Figure 2).
Figure 2: Eight records of local temperature variability on multi-centennial scales throughout the course of the Holocene, and an average of these (thick dark line) over the past 12,000 years, plotted with respect to the mid 20th century average temperature. The global average temperature in 2004 is also indicated. (Source)
In addition to this rapid surface warming, the global oceans have also been accumulating heat at an incredible rate - the equivalent of more than two Hiroshima "Little Boy" atomic bomb detonations per second, every second over a the past half century. Presumably a physicist of Giaever's stature would appreciate the magnitude of this global energy accumulation.
As a physicist, Giaever should also understand that seemingly small objects and quantities can have large effects, but instead he seems to rely on incorrect "common sense" perceptions which are based on ignorance of the subject at hand.
CO2 vs. Water Vapor
As another example of this behavior, Giaever proceeds to demonstrate that he also does not understand the role of the greenhouse effect in climate change.
"Water vapor is a much much stronger green[house] gas than the CO2. If you look out of the window you see the sky, you see the clouds, and you don't see the CO2."
Needless to say, the second sentence above represents a very bizarre argument. Giaever is either arguing that CO2 is a visible gas (it is not) and the fact that you can't see it means there is too little in the atmosphere to have a significant warming effect, or that only visible gases can warm the planet, or some other similarly misinformed assertion.
That clouds are visible to the human eye and CO2 isn't simply is not relevant to the greenhouse effect and global warming. It's also worth noting that like CO2, water vapor is not visible - clouds are condensed water droplets, not water vapor.
Additionally, water vapor does not drive climate change. There is a lot of it in the atmosphere, so it is the largest single contributor to the greenhouse effect. However, water vapor cannot initiate a warming event. Unlike external forcings such as CO2, which can be added to the atmosphere through various processes (like fossil fuel combustion), the level of water vapor in the atmosphere is a function of temperature. Water vapor is brought into the atmosphere via evaporation - the rate depends on the temperature of the ocean and air. If extra water is added to the atmosphere, it condenses and falls as rain or snow within a week or two. As Lacis et al. (2010) showed, as summarized by NASA (emphasis added):
"Because carbon dioxide accounts for 80% of the non-condensing GHG forcing in the current climate atmosphere, atmospheric carbon dioxide therefore qualifies as the principal control knob that governs the temperature of Earth."
Climate Myth Whack-a-Mole
Giaever continues ticking off the most common climate myths, going from arguing that it may not even be warming, to claiming the warming is insignificant, to asserting the warming is caused by water vapor, and ultimately that the warming is indeed caused by human influences:
"Is it possible that all the paved roads and cut down forests are the cause of "global warming", not CO2? But nobody talks about that."
Climate scientists do of course investigate and discuss the effects of deforestation and urban influences. The 2007 IPCC report discusses the influences of deforestation on climate in great detail, for example here and here, and devotes a section to policies aimed at reducing deforestation here. The United Nations has also implemented the Collaborative initiative on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD) to address the effects of deforestation on climate change. In short, by claiming that nobody has considered the effects of deforestation on climate, Giaever once again demonstrates that he simply has not done his homework.
The IPCC report also discusses the influences of urban heat islands and land use effects here and here, for example. Giaever then claims that one person has talked about these effects - US Secretary of Energy and fellow Nobel Laureate Steven Chu, who suggested paining roofs white to offset some warming, though he does not discuss Chu in a very flattering light.
"[Chu has] been bought by the global warming people, and he's now helping Obama trying to make green energy in the United States."
In the presentation in question, Chu described the potential effects of the white roof proposal as follows:
"Making roads and roofs a paler color could have the equivalent effect of taking every car in the world off the road for 11 years"
Chu discusses white roofs as a geoengineering possibility in response to greenhouse gas-caused climate change, as a way to offset a small portion of the global warming our fossil fuel combustion and associated carbon emissions are causing.
Failure to do Homework Earns a Failing Grade
At this point we're 9 minutes into Giaever's 32-minute presentation, and he begins comparing climate science to religion. Yet based on his arguments in those first 9 minutes, it's clear that Giaever has not done even the most basic climate research, so how can he possibly make such a radical determination?
While Giaever is certainly a highly accomplished physicist, that does not automatically make him a climate expert as well. As Giaever himself has admitted, he has spent very little time researching the subject, and it shows. He simply bounces from one climate myth to the next, demonstrating a lack of understanding of Climate Science 101, and then insults the entire scientific field by comparing it to a religion, bringing life to the xkcd cartoon at the top of this post.
Memo to climate contrarians - expertise comes from actually researching a subject. There is a reason why scientists who have researched climate change in the most depth are also the most likely to be convinced that global warming is human-caused (Figure 3).
Figure 3: Distribution of the number of researchers convinced by the evidence of anthropogenic climate change (green) and unconvinced by the evidence (red) with a given number of total climate publications (Anderegg 2010).
In his talk, Giaever complained that he had become famous for his climate contrarianism, which he claimed indicated that dissenting opinions on the subject are not welcome. On the contrary, Giaever has been criticized for repeating long-debunked climate myths which he could have easily learned about through a little bit of research - by perusing the Skeptical Science database, for example, where we have debunked all of his Googled climate misconceptions.
Instead, Giaever has used his position of scientific authority as a Nobel Laureate to misinform people about a subject on which he has not even done the most basic research. That is not how a good scientist should behave, and that is why Giaever has rightfully and deservedly been criticized. Giaever finishes his talk by proclaiming
"Is climate change pseudoscience? If I’m going to answer the question, the answer is: absolutely."
The problem is that Giaever has not done his homework, which is why he gets the wrong answer, and his presentation deserves a failing grade. Ironically, Giaever defines "pseudoscience" as only seeking evidence to confirm one's desired hypothesis, which is precisely how Giaever himself has behaved with respect to climate science.
Listening to Giaever's opinions on climate science is equivalent to giving your dentist a pamphlet on heart surgery and asking him to crack your chest open. While climate science has a basis in phyiscs (and many other scientific fields of study), it is an entirely different subject, whose basics Giaever could undoubtedly grasp if he were willing to put the time in to do his homework.
But individual scientists (even Nobel Laureates) suffer from cognitive biases like anyone else. That's why we don't rely on indvidual scientists or individual papers to draw conclusions about climate change. The only way to get an accurate picture is through the work of many scientists, peer reviewed and scrutinized over decades and tested against multiple lines of evidence. Giaever demonstrates how far cognitive bias - reinforced by a few hours of Googling - can lead anyone to the wrong conclusions, and also proves that no individual's opinion, regardless of his credentials, can replace the full body of climate science evidence.
Note: for climate-related talks at the same conference made by Nobel Laureates who have actually researched the topics in their presentations, see these videos of Paul Crutzen and Mario Molina.
Contradiction indeed. I have read a fair bit by Feynman. He would have scoffed at the idea that someone would trust any opinion by default just because it came from anyone in particular. He would even have advocated his own opinion not to be trusted and to be duly verified for its true validity. I don't really care where information comes from, I verify. People who study cimate and actively publish tend to be more reliable sources, although what they say should also correlate with all the rest of the big picture. People who are not equally conversant can have interesting input, but should be scrutinized even more attentively.
The flaws in Giaever's talk are addressed in the OP. In the absence of some coherent argument explaining exactly why his ignorance on the subject does not matter, all I see is you saying "this guy thinks this and he has to know better than me so I'll go with it." Sorry, not convinced.
Eclectic @100 ,
on the question of money...
For me to respond to this part, I will really have to go off topic. It now goes into the realm of politics.
Money and politics corrupt everything. Certainly it holds true for governments and universities. I’ll just leave it here.
If you were new to the field of Earth's geography, why would you not .... position of Flat Earth...
I wouldn’t go that far. I would have to read the Old Testament in Hebrew. And understand it in the context of the people at the time it was written. Dead Sea scrolls for instance. And then I would investigate the older Sumerian culture. Figure out whether or not if there is any truth to the idea that the story of Genesis already existed there. By the time I am done with that I probably wouldn’t be around to answer the question of whether it is mentioned anywhere in the Old Testament a “flat earth” theory.
Simply state that it is not round. Then just go down the list of ancient cultures until you find Eratosthenes. Once I am convinced by his arguments, I can now move forwards; that the earth is round. I am not going to rely solely on the consensus. Unless of course they show me that their arguments were also based on Eratosthenes’. In other words, I need a paper trail.
Don’t just tell me that we have multiple lines of evidence. I need to look at how each evidence stands on its own. If the individual evidence cannot stand on its own, throw it out. See what you are left with. If it is not testable and not verifiable, it is not evidence for me. Unfortunately in climate science, a lot of what they say is not testable nor verifiable. Correlation is not causation. It is a necessary condition but not sufficient. This is the part I am still having a problem. If I can get pass this part, everything else will fall in place. I am referring to CO2.
This part is hard to explain. It’s going to be in a very roundabout way. Let me try.
When Newton explained gravity he first started by fitting his observations to a curve, in this case a quadratic. The motions of the planets fits this curve very well for the time. Now he has to explain what is it that makes the planets follow that curve. He called it a force. So that’s the theory.
It was good. But still he doesn’t know what was this force that can act through space. That’s just left like that for 200 years. At some point they started seeing problems with the Perihelion Motion of Mercury. Basically what’s happening is that they got better with their observations. Newton’s first curve fit is not that good anymore at explaining the observations. It is not off by much. Now Einstein steps in. https://arxiv.org/pdf/1411.7370.pdf His model is more refined and is a better fit. “Gravity, Einstein asserted, is caused by a warping of space and time—or, in a language we physicists prefer, by a warping of spacetime. The Earth’s matter produces the warpage, and that warpage in turn is manifest by gravity’s inward tug, toward the Earth’s center.
The inward tug is not the only manifestation of spacetime warpage; the warpage is much richer than that. As we shall see, it curves space, it slows the flow of time, and it drags space into tornado-like motions — at least that is what Einstein’s general relativity predicts.”
We are no more closer to understanding gravity. It went from a force to a warping in space-time. There is, however, a better correlation between observation and the models. But the question went from what’s this force that acts at a distance to what’s this warping of space-time. The story does not end here. Then came Vera Rubin. “She uncovered the discrepancy between the predicted angular motion of galaxies and the observed motion, by studying galactic rotation curves. A significant discrepancy exists between the experimental curves observed, and a curve derived from theory. The theory of dark matter was postulated to account for the variance.”
There is something else now not explicable about some kind of matter. It interacts with this world through gravity but nothing else that we know of at this point. This is still a work in progress. It is faster now. Newton to Einstein 200 years, Einstein to Rubin 50 years. the mystery continues
So if I haven’t lost you yet, what we see happening is that we have at the planetary scale Newtonian mechanics, atomic and subatomic scale Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity and now dark matter theory at the galactic scale. At each scale, a different set of curves has to be fit.
And fit they do. The curve fitting is what I would call the correlation. The various explanations, theories, are the causation ( a force, a warping of space-time, dark matter). What we see here is that these theories change, the causation changes.
Don’t start nit picking. The purpose of this history is to show that at least in physics on this subject we can easily follow how the theories change. How they are verified by better observations and what difficulties they run into that requires modification of the theory.
What I would like to see is a similar attempt in climate science. Like I said earlier I am stuck on CO2 right now. What I would like to see is how they went from CO2 and temperature correlation to catastrophic man-made global warming.
This is what I have found so far. It does not of course answer the questions. But it’s a start to see if I can get to the CO2 explanation.
Is that CO2 vs temperature correlation the first order fit? How was it determined that CO2 that is 400 ppm is primarily due to human activity? How are the catastrophic predictions done?
Detection and Attribution of Recent Climate Change: A Status Report
T. P. Barnett*, K. Hasselmann+, M. Chelliah#, T. Delworth@, G. Hegerl&, P. Jones**, E. Rasmusson++, E. Roeckner+, C. Ropelewski##, B. Santer@@ and S. Tett&&
*Scripps Institution of Oceanography, La Jolla, California.
+Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, Hamburg, Germany.
#National Centers for Environmental Prediction, Washington, D.C.
@Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, Princeton, New Jersey.
&JISAO, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington.
**University of East Anglia, Norwich, United Kingdom.
++University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland.
##International Research Institute, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Palisades, New York.
@@Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, California.
&&Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research, U.K. Meteorological Office, Bracknell, United Kingdom.
Corresponding author address: Dr. Tim P. Barnett, Climate Research Division, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, Dept. 0224, 9500 Gilman Drive, La Jolla, CA 92093-0224. E-mail: tbarnett@ucsd.edu
Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society
Vol. 80: , Issue. 12, : Pages. 2631-2660
(Issue publication date: December 1999)
Received Date: July 13, 1999
https://doi.org/10.1175/1520-0477(1999)0802.0.CO;2
Excerpted
“This paper addresses the question of where we now stand with respect to detection and attribution of an anthropogenic climate signal. Our ability to estimate natural climate variability, against which claims of anthropogenic signal detection must be made, is reviewed. The current situation suggests control runs of global climate models may give the best estimates of natural variability on a global basis, estimates that appear to be accurate to within a factor of 2 or 3 at multidecadal timescales used in detection work.”
If you guys can find the follow up paper to this, it would be much appreciated. This is dated 1999. It’s now 2018. It should be very informative.
And why would you wish to pay more for electricity in future years ...
I think you should ask the Germans how they are doing without nuclear power. Then ask how they are doing with green power. From the clean energy website https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/germanys-energy-consumption-and-power-mix-charts, we see that currently clean energy is 33%. Fossil fuel is 50%. Nuclear is 10%.
So by 2022 nuclear will be gone. Then after that progressively wean himself off of fossil fuel.
The other piece of information we need is the cost. https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/germany-ponders-how-finance-renewables-expansion-future
Weaning a major economy off fossil fuels, while phasing out nuclear power at the same time, comes at a cost. Major investments are needed, not only to transform the power sector, but also to find sustainable solutions for transport and heating. Shifting these sectors to clean electricity as their primary source of energy – a process referred to as sector coupling – will further increase demand for renewable power. Many oberservs believe Germany's current system is not up to the task of financing this new phase of the Energiewende.
With general elections looming later this year, the debate over a general overhaul of Germany’s much-imitated system for renewables support – shouldered by electricity consumers – has gathered pace.
I think you should read the rest on your own.
This is the most optimistic scenario one can get for a country with a strong economy. They are able to make their consumers shoulder the cost. What the heck are the other countries going to do?
Eclectic @100,
Money and Politics corrupt everything including your apples and oranges. I’ll leave it at that.
@92,
Yes. Physicists are used to being able to test and verify their theories.
Yes. They do look down on any other discipline that cannot do that.
Yes.. They know that their equations do not scale up yet. That’s why you cannot explain all the other disciplines in terms of the physicists ‘ physical models. That’s why you have Chemistry, Biology, etc.
Yes. That’s why computer simulations are not really doable in any other discipline including climate science.
Yes. They know it’s not doable. That’s why they use these fudge factors to tweak it to get a feel of what direction the answer will be in.
Yes. Climate science also copy that tweaking. Except they were actually trying to get the prediction.
Atc @#102 thru #106 :-
before replying, I gave a quick look in my cheval mirror, to check that I was not a five-eyed, five-tentacled citizen of the Betelgeuse sector of Orion. Perhaps you have been misinformed about me, but I do not require you to post the same lengthy post 5 times in a row.
In replying only to your first post #102 , i have perhaps rashly assumed that your lengthy posts #103 thru #106 are all identical to #102 (and that they do not contain subtle minor differences buried among the foliage). Possibly a kindly Moderator will undo the work of your Fat Thumb (or Tentacle?).
And my apology to you, if it was all the result of an unfortunate brain condition causing tremor of your extremities. ~ PC enough, I hope !
Atc , much as we all enjoy hearing the euphonious name of the Greek Eratosthenes, or hearing of the earlier (but less well known) Egyptian priest-scientist Amenorrhea [of the 8th Century BC] . . . nevertheless it is getting just a tad off-topic for this thread about Ivar Giaever.
Likewise, the old tale of Einstein and the precession of Mercury's orbit — an interesting example perhaps of how The Hour Bringeth The Man . . . but there appears [IMO] to be little connection with the dysfunction in the brain of Giaever.
Atc , please educate yourself much, much further on the climate science . . . and you will see that there is no room for an as-yet-undiscovered Black Matter type of factor for causing the current rapid global warming. Sorry, that's all been well looked into by scientists (and even by decades of desperate contrarians). I could explain that to you in much more detail — but again, we would be getting yet more off-topic.
And that is an important point , Atc — here at SkS you should seek out particular threads if you wish to discuss various particular topics. Not jumble everything into a post (a post as long as the proposed Mexican Wall). See the house rules on posting. Also look up the term "Gish Gallop" (a form of debate used by clueless posters, such as those from Categories B and C , above).
That would also apply to your absurdly illogical line of argument referencing the special (and transient) case of German electric power.
Now also including your post [current label #107] , you seem very confused about observations, models, physical mechanisms of heat transfer etc. Please educate yourself, Atc.
In the meantime, Atc , you could go back onto topic, and reply to Philippe Chantreau @ #101. If you are able to dispute his well-stated comments.
[JH] Argumentative text snipped. Please keep it civil.
Atc's five dupplicative posts have been reduced to one and his/her two "test" posts have been deleted.
Atc, you asked "How was it determined that CO2 that is 400 ppm is primarily due to human activity?" The answer is in the post "How do human CO2 emissions compare to natural CO2 emissions?" Read the Basic tabbed pane of that post, then watch the Denial101 video at the bottom, then read the Intermediate tabbed pane. If you want more details, or have questions, comment on that post, not this one, and I or someone else will answer.
Atc, you asked "What I would like to see is how they went from CO2 and temperature correlation to catastrophic man-made global warming." Your assumption is incorrect--there was no "going" from CO2 and temperature correlation. Instead, the projection (not prediction) of increased global temperature as a consequence of anthropogenic increase in global atmospheric level of CO2 was made in the 1800s, many decades before it was even technically possible to measure global atmospheric level of CO2 in that moment in time, let alone historically, and even more decades before the correlation between CO2 level and temperature was observed with high enough certainty. Observation of the correlation eventually added evidence confirming that projection, when the reality of human-caused increase in CO2 came to pass, thereby fulfilling the condition of the projection's scenario.
Please read the post "The History of Climate Science," and post any comments and questions about the history there, not here. I strongly suggest that after you read that post, before posting any questions or comments, that you read the free online version of the book by physicist and climate science historian Spencer Weart, "The Discovery of Global Warming."
Atc, you asked "How are the catastrophic predictions done?" Your question is ill-phrased. First, they are projections, not predictions. In climate change parlance, a prediction is an estimate of what will happen, but a projection is an estimate of the consequence if and only if a particular scenario happens. In particular for global warming due to increases in CO2 emissions by humans, there are multiple scenarios, each assuming a particular trajectory of change in CO2 emissions. In the most recent IPCC reports, each scenario is called a Representative Concentration Pathway. Read the SkS post "The Beginner's Guide to Representative Concentration Pathways" to learn about those.
Your second ill-phrasing is using the word "catastrophic" because that word is too all-encompassing. The reality is that the IPCC's most recent report (Fifth Assessment Report--AR5) has reports by its Working Group II (WGII), describing "Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability" that make projections about multiple, specific, concrete consequences, with probabilities, of both positive and negative consequences. I suggest that before you tackle that, you first read the SkS post "Positives and negatives of global warming"; read the Basic tabbed pane, then watch the Denial101 video at the bottom, then read the Intermediate tabbed pane, then the Advanced tabbed pane. Then tackle the IPCC Working Group II report.
Atc, you asked "If you guys can find the follow up paper to this, it would be much appreciated. This is dated 1999. It’s now 2018." There are two topics you asked about: detection of global warming, and attribution of warming to humans.
Regarding detection, see the post "Global cooling - Is global warming still happening?" Read the Basic tabbed pane, then watch the video, then read the Intermediate tabbed pane. That post has not been updated recently, so if you want more recent information, or more details, ask on that post, not this one.
Regarding attribution, read the post "The human fingerprint in global warming." Read the Basic tabbed pane, then watch the video, then read the Intermediate tabbed pane, then read the Advanced tabbed pane. If you want more details after that, read the IPCC's AR5 Working Group I's Chapter 10, "Detection and Attribution of Climate Change: from Global to Regional." If you want to discuss those topics, post comments on that SkS thread, not this one.
Tom Dayton @105-108,
Thanks for the tip.
In 1968, the spring where we had gathered drinking water and cress was tested and found to be unpotable. I knew then, at age 8 that the earth was ill. As I floated rivers, hiked valleys and mountains and looked down from airplanes, I have witnessed the destruction of the earth. I wonder if Giaever ever set foot outside his lab.
Maybe don't fixate on "Warming" afterall it is just one symptom of what we are doing. Anyone does not have to be a scientist to be conscious and aware and mindful of physical manifestation of pollution and of factual data accurately presented.
I'm guessing he is a sad lonely man.
Ivar Giaever also said that climate scientists come up with a hypothesis to suit their biases then set about proving it.
However, he knows full well that all science starts with a hypothesis but scientists then must try to disprove their own hypothesis. That's how science works!
Ahh that's right...nevermind that the Club of Rome specifically mentions global warming as just one element in a larger agenda to exert global control over humanity...
It might not be scientific evidence, but does it matter at all when the perpetrators have already confessed, in advance, AND THEN PUBLISHED THEIR ENTIRE PLAN?? Arguing about the science seems absurd when no one even discusses this point. It's sad that so many "scientists" are willing to play the useful idiot in our own enslavement. Here's a quote from Bertrand Russel:
“The society of experts will control propaganda and education. It will teach loyalty to the world government, and make nationalism high treason. The government, being an oligarchy, will instill submissiveness into the great bulk of the population…It is possible that it may invent ingenious ways of concealing its own power, leaving the forms of democracy intact, and allowing the plutocrats or politicians to imagine that they are cleverly controlling these forms…whatever the outward forms may be, all real power will come to be concentrated in the hands of those who understand the art of scientific manipulation.”
Sounds familiar...
[PS] Sloganeering and politics. "Agenda" is the stuff of conspiracy theorists which are welcome at say WUWT but not here.
Eclectic @ 104, wow, the tone you used with Atc was extremely condescending. Just wow. I'm sorry that your life sucks that hard. And even more repulsive is how you go ad hominem for more than half your reply while barely responding to his points, then proceed to lecture him about staying on topic. Ridiculous behavior, which, I suspect, was motivated by your inability to respond to his points. If this is at all representative of the scientists of this generation, I can see why people would choose to listen to a random youtube video over "experts".
[DB] Please note that posting comments here at SkS is a privilege, not a right. This privilege can be rescinded if the posting individual treats adherence to the Comments Policy as optional, rather than the mandatory condition of participating in this online forum.
Please take the time to review the policy and ensure future comments are in full compliance with it. Thanks for your understanding and compliance in this matter.
Inflammatory snipped.
purpcran,
The Club of Rome and Bertrand Russel references sound like attempts to avoid pursuing improved awareness and understanding of climate sceince (and many other matters that matter to the future of humanity).
The current best awareness and understanding of what is required for the future of humanity is presented in the Sustainable Development Goals which includes the Climate Action Goal.
The Climate Action Goals are key. More rapidly achieving and improving on them makes it easier to achieve many of the other goals.
Achieving the Sustainable Development Goals will require Global Cooperation and Collaboration. That may look like Global Government, but what works best to achieve the SDGs, including Globally agreed and enforced corrections of what has developed, is a Good Thing.
Anyone preferring to prolong already developed, but clearly unhelpful or incorrect beliefs and actions, can be expected seek out and prefer reasons to devisively polarize themselves away from improving their awareness and uderstanding.
I hope that helps.
One of the end games of climate change is crazy increased severe weather. Has anyone looked at hurricane history in U.S.?
https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/pastdec.shtml
The numbers don't support the assertion. Just as many back to 1851 -some decades there are more hurricanes before 1950. Definitely no increase in intensity or number recently, since 1950. Look at the numbers.
So will climate change produce more disasterous weather? If so when?
Beware, this climate change religion, strangley coincides w the inception of the "Green New Deal". I suspect the GND came first. They need climate change to scare people towards the green deal, that simple.
It is a huge planet (we really can't comprehend). Some cyles could be thousands or tens of thousands of years. We would be remiss to assume humans have that much power over this gigantic planet.
NOTHING significant has changed, since Gores doom and gloom ~13 years ago.
Come on folks, irrefutable, undeniable, incontrovertable (used to be the bible), now it is the religion of global warming.
[DB] This is a science and evidence-based venue. Please check your political ideologies at the door. If you are unable to do that, then other venues exist for you.
The remainder of your comment is off-topic on this post. Any responses of continuations to this line of discussion should be done on this thread.
Ideological rantings snipped.
It is impossible to predict a "theory" about the effects of people on climate >=50 years out. The variables are too high to make any concrete corolation. If you can't predict with any certainty 50 yrs out, how then can you ask the right question. In other words if it is impossible to predict with ANY certainty, about something as volitile as weather, how can you figure out the answer; how do we stop it? How do we change an outcome when we really don't know the cause, of that outcome (50 years from now). Especially when Gores predictions almost 15 years ago, have not come close to being true. No change in weather intensity, no underwater cities. Hell, even New Orleans (below sea level) is completely intact.
If we can't even predict 10 - 20 years out, (Gore failed miserably), how does anyone hold stock in a guaranteed prediction 50 years out?
For the moderator. In my opinion you can not separate politics and global warming, the green new deal (political) they exist for each other. The green deal , i think, came first. It is not realistic to think the two are not inextricably linked.
I digress, will not mix the two here.
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Moderation complaints and off-topic snipped.
Ereman @115,
The hurricane strikes on the good old USA may or may not be rising in number or intensity. That may or may not be because of the variability in such a small sub-set of tropical cyclones. But the North Atlantic basin is experiencing a greater number of hurricanes of greater intensity. See the graphic here (usually two clicks to 'download your attchment')
So your "If so when?" question should perhaps be not When? but Where?
Ereman @116,
So we all have to sit on our hands for 50 years because you are incapable of seeing that you can "you can't predict with any certainty 50 yrs out."
Hang on a bit, we only have to wait 20 years coz here's one somebody did earlier.