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John F. Clauser: the latest climate science-denying physicist

Eclectic at 08:24 AM on 26 October, 2023

Speaking of delusions ~ about 17-ish years ago, there was video interview with Prof. Lindzen (Emeritus) , where Lindzen asserted that the world could not / would not get warmer, because Divine action protects this planet from such an excursion.

Has Lindzen changed views since then? Or his "reasoning" ?

John F. Clauser: the latest climate science-denying physicist

Eclectic at 09:34 AM on 27 September, 2023

Wbru49 @20 :

What were the points you wish to make about the Happer/Lindzen letter addressed to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) ~ were there any important legal or scientific aspects which are worth noting?

Based on my quick scan of it : the letter seems to be a general outpouring of all sorts of old "denialist" talking points. Not sure whether it's best described as a rant or as a "Drumpfized" Gish Gallop of nonsenses & half-truths.

Either way, it is sad to see two elderly scientists showing that peculiar degeneration of intellect which too-often accompanies "Emeritus" status. Or would be sad ~ if it weren't already Old News.

Or perhaps I have misunderstood what these two guys are up to. Are they laying the ground for an actual legal challenge to the EPA . . . or are they just venting?

John F. Clauser: the latest climate science-denying physicist

wbru49 at 06:51 AM on 27 September, 2023

Are there thoughts about this July 19, 2023 letter from William Happer
Professor of Physics, Emeritus Princeton University and Richard Lindzen
Professor of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences, Emeritus
Massachusetts Institute of Technology?

https://co2coalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Happer-Lindzen-EPA-Power-Plants-2023-07-19.pdf

There is no consensus

RicardoB at 23:13 PM on 10 September, 2023

Eclectic @951:

Thank you for you comments.

You stated: "Dr Jordan Peterson shows how little he knows about climate matters ~ fair enough ~ but why is he choosing to boost Dr Curry?"

He chooses to boost Curry as he chooses to boost many other prominent "climate narrative contrarians" that he "interviews" in that same channel, like Robert Bryce, Steven Koonin, Richard Lindzen and Alex Epstein.

Dr. Peterson main point of view on the "climate debate" seems to come from his strong belief (?!) that the political measures that are being enforced by governments (to tackle global warming) will lead to mass impoverishment and starvation via the rise of the energy bill. In his words: "People can't care about environmental concerns when they are so desperate they are worried about tonight's shelter and the next meal." He frequently rages about "the consensus" and the "hysteria" that are leading to these political choices.

Hence, he deliberately chooses to debate the topic only with "specialists" from the "contrarian side" - champions for the carbon industry agenda. It suffices to say that these interviews function not as debates or means to get to the truth (by now, Dr. Peterson seems mostly uninterested in the cientific truth), but as opportunities both to let these "specialists" voice their cherry-picked concerns and attack established comprehensive scientific bases, and to not get himself confronted/debunked on his opinions. There's no debating; there's only agreeing.

There is no consensus

Eclectic at 17:56 PM on 15 August, 2023

Rkrolph @948 , as far as I have seen, Dr Curry has not changed her expressed views in recent years (she has retired academically, but AFAIK still maintains a commercial interest in weather/hurricane season predictions). # I follow her blog most days ~ the blog is slightly redeemed by one or two of the commenters there. The blog is a somewhat more genteel version of WUWT blog.

Unlike Drs Spencer & Christie, and the definitely-emeritus Prof Lindzen, the good Dr Curry maintains a certain amount of vagueness in her speech and presentations . . . implying that she is not quite opposed to the mainstream climate science. Vagueness & a degree of "uncertainty" are her game ~ enough fuzziness for some Plausible Deniability, when someone tries to pin her down now or at a future date. But it is as obvious as an elephant in your kitchen, about which side of the scientific fence she occupies. And this goes down well with the usual group of denialist U.S. senators.

** Up to as much as two-thirds of modern rapid global warming might possibly be owing to "natural variations" or ocean/atmosphere cycles . . . that's the sort of Plausible Deniability she goes for. So no need to take any climate action.

Mr John Stossel is a reporter that has gone over to the Dark Side, years ago. Basically a propagandist. I haven't followed him closely enough to allow me to make a psychiatric assessment.

How to inoculate yourself against misinformation

Teakay at 17:19 PM on 16 May, 2023

Petra Liverani I find it interesting why people such as yourself claim to be more open when in reality you are the least open as your stand point just dismisses volumes of scientific evidence that doesn't fit your own beliefs & feeling. Contrarian thinking can have a value in science to stress standing hypothesis & create alternative hypothesis. However alot of alternative hypothesis continue to be kicked around well after their sell-by date as the evidence against them grows. We see this in climate science with the likes Lindzen. His climate predictions were proved wrong. He could of conceded, but instead doubled fown and went into the 'it's a conspiracy against me'. The evidence against Terrain theory is so high their are branches of science dedicated to virology that you have dismiss over a 100years of scientific evidence. The pieces of Terrain theory that had merit where long included into health care such as the role environment & personal health that's how science works it incorporates things which can ve evidenced as having an effect. The ideas pushed by the likes of Sam Bailey have long been dismissed to the point she is reverting to scientific knowledge of the 1800's when trying to apply Koch's postulates. Again this mirrors climate science where past talking points are continually rehashed though the scientific evidence had dismissed them long ago. The poor logic deployed to dismiss any evidence against a biased position is astonishing - the vast organisation, cost, number of people invloved etc that would be required gor these conspiracy theory's to be real is laughable when membersof governments can't even keep their affairs secret.

Climate Science Denial Explained

Eclectic at 23:02 PM on 20 March, 2023

MA Rodger @21 ,

Yes, as I was addressing Foster @11 and @17 , it seemed reasonable to throw in mention of those two scientists who are "icons" of the science-denier crowd at WUWT .

As you know full well, Richard Lindzen and Roy Spencer are almost the only climate scientists having enough genuine track record in the field, as to qualify for worshipful attitude from the denialists. (In their desperation to find a respectable scientist who is "on our side" . . . the denialists are reduced to a choice of slim-to-none , compared with the many hundreds of mainstream climate scientists ~ or many thousands, depending on how defined.)

Dr Spencer's tendency is ( I gather secondhand from a Potholer54 video ) to take a religious fundamentalist viewpoint ~ to the effect that "all will be well with the Earth, thanks to divine protection". And Potholer54 relates how - over many years - Spencer has had to repeatedly backpedal from his climate assertions, as the contrary evidence keeps proving him wrong. Even so, at times Spencer gets a bit of flak from denizens at WUWT , because he is not quite politically-correct enough to deny Greenhouse Effect etc.

Both Lindzen and Spencer demonstrate how some well-informed & intelligent men can get it so very wrong, owing to a pigheaded "motivated reasoning" directed by the emotional part of their brain.

Climate Science Denial Explained

Eclectic at 19:59 PM on 20 March, 2023

MA Rodger @19 ,

there is much in what you say. And sadly, the Iris Effect was a flop. And Prof Lindzen's earlier predictions of only a very slight rise in surface temperature have been (in retrospect) a giant flop too.

I base my "religious" comment on seeing a lengthy video interview of Lindzen (dated around 2006, IIRC ). The interviewer was very simpatico ~ and Lindzen did not hold back.

Has my subsequent opinion of Lindzen been influenced by a confirmation-bias about his later public speakings ? . . . well, quite possibly so (but I do try to make allowance). A mountain of motivated reasoning on Lindzen's part still seems evident to me. As you yourself say, there is no logical basis for the denialist viewpoint.

Climate Science Denial Explained

MA Rodger at 18:20 PM on 20 March, 2023

eclectic @18,

I don't see Lindzen's opposition to the science as being motivated by religion. I see it as a scientist of some repute who lost the conclusive scientific debate over AGW in the 1980s but refused to admit defeat. While such stubbornness is not to be condemed (skepticism being a big part of the scientific process), Lindzen 'crosses the line' and sets out unscientific messages. I still remember his rather ludicrous contribution to the 1990 film 'The Greenhouse Conspiracy' (YouTube) which actually convinced me of the opposite view that AGW was real and likely a big problem being politically kicked into the long grass. (The 'crossing of the line' into non-science is not a wholly climate denier thing but they do seem to spend much more time doing it.)

Through the years, Lindzen did (indeed still does - see Lindzen & Choi 2022) continue work attempting to show that climate sensitivity is low and AGW not a problem for humanity, most famously his 'Iris Effect' which turns out to be a real effect but one having the opposite impact and one threatening significant increased warming.

Climate Science Denial Explained

Eclectic at 11:30 AM on 20 March, 2023

Foster @17 ,

I hope you found some amusement reading the Anthony Watts article. And reading maybe a few of its attached comments [best to look for ones with a high number of red-color "down votes"]. WUWT currently shows that article as having over 650 comments . . . a Platinum Medal score for a WUWT article, and demonstrating that it is doing well as a Hot Button issue for climate-denialists. Whew !

If you read the comments, you will see a lot of sniping & griping, but very little science at all.

As MA Rodger has touched on, you find prominent denialists such as Dr Lindzen and Dr Spencer who are driven by "motivated reasoning" derived from their emotional religious beliefs that the Divine Entity simply would not permit Earth's climate to depart from the comfortable Garden-of-Eden range.

However, most WUWT regular denialists fall into 3 groups :- the conspiritard/wingnut group ; the science crackpot group ; and the intelligent well-informed ones who neverthelesshave been captured by their own motivated reasoning (a sort of palace coup where emotions displace intellect). But obviously there is some overlap between groups ~ mostly the 1st and 3rd groups.

Foster , I would if I had my druthers, simply leave WUWT & similar sites to fester as they are. Yes, there is an argument that such disinformation sites ought to be "stopped". Undoubtably they deserve that fate. However, they may do more good than harm, by localizing denialists into their own echo chamber where they can blow off some steam . . . and it keeps them off the streets, so to speak.

Climate Science Denial Explained

MA Rodger at 18:20 PM on 14 March, 2023

Foster @11,

The crux of this latest nonsense from our chum Anthony Willard Watts is to plot out global average temperature using a very long Y-axis so it appears as a flat line.

Wattsupian poster

This is rather reminiscent of the 'thin red line' of aging climate-change-denying climatologist Dickie Lindzen who would plot the size of AGW-to-date onto a graph of annual max-min temperatures in Boston (where he worked) using the width of a red line.

Lindzen's thin red line

Lindzen would then make some nonsense statement about the planet's average temperature always wobbling by several tenths of a degree at virtually all timescales (which isn't correct). At a presentation in the UK Houses of Parliament back in 2012, he candidly put it thus:-

Changes in the order of several tenths of a degree are always present at virtually all time scales. And obsessing on the details of this record is more akin to a spectator sport for tea-leaf reading than a serious contributor to scientific efforts.
Say, at least so far: if some day I should see some changes of twenty-times what I've seen so far, that would be certainly remarkable but nothing so far looks that way.

So this so-called climatologist suggests a global temperature change of twenty-times 'what he's seen so far' is when climate change becomes "remarkable". Call that 20 x 1.5ºF=+30ºF=+16ºC. I think the word "uninhabitable" would have been a more appropriate adjective.

CO2 effect is saturated

MA Rodger at 19:58 PM on 1 November, 2022

The commenter currently shown @667 and naming themself 'Spooker' claims to have been awarded a PhD in Physics and asks whether it should have occurred to others that perhaps 'Spooker' "already know(s) the basic science behind the GHE."

It is not unknown for those who are very well versed in Physics to be for some reason incapable of grasping the mechanisms of the greenhouse effect and deny it exists. William Happer was such a one (I think recently he has been used as a co-author in work that does present the existence of AGW but of a much diminished form, a la the likes of Dickie Lindzen), although he does have the excuse of being very old and, as the adage goes, 'you can't teach an old dog new tricks'.

What I would ask this commenter presently calling themself Spooker, and ask in a sciency-physics sort of way, if all the IR emitted by the planet surface is absorbed by the CO2 in the atmosphere above within metres of the surface (which for the central specrtum of the CO2 emissions spectrum at ~666cm^-1 is true) and thus cannot impact the planetary energy balance at the top of the atmosphere, where does all the other IR come from? For instance, what is the source of all the downwelling IR that can be seen by instruments on the surface.

The graphic demonstrating such measurement below was sourced from here.

Science: What it is, how it works, and why it matters

Eclectic at 17:39 PM on 1 September, 2022

Rosross @4 :

You are certainly correct - to some extent. ( I agree with "OPOF" on that. )

OPOF makes good points on the unhappy level of corruption/marketization of modern science. It is something which a cynic would regard as difficult to avoid in this modern commercial world.

# Nevertheless, Rosross, the modern science system is like modern democracy ~ far from perfect, yet better than any alternative so far tried. If you have a more perfect (and practical !) system in mind, then it would be most interesting to read your description of it. (Doubtless you know the old joke about the overly-critical voyeur.)

Cowpuncher @8 ~ sorry, but your vanWijngaarden publications link shows as "highly insecure" and my computer won't proceed. If you have some excellently salient points (from Wijngaarden & colleagues) then please summarize those points.

Happer and vanW have received some earlier attention here at SkS ~ and as far as I recall, they were not making any notable advance in climate science. Basically, theirs was a re-hash of already-understood material . . . plus a large dob of bizarre motivated reasoning (but not as extreme as Lindzen's stuff). ~Motivated reasoning strongly influenced by political extremism, I mean. In other words, very poor science.

Infrared Iris will reduce global warming

MA Rodger at 22:22 PM on 9 August, 2022

I don't have a problem accessing Lindzen & Choi (2022) 'The Iris Effect: A Review'. The problems with any post-2011 up-date start when you do access Lindzen & Choi (2022). The vast majority of the 5,000-plus word account is re-fighting lost battles of the past, battles that actually pre-date the SkS OP above. In essence, all Lindzen & Choi are saying is that climatology has yet to nail down cloud feedbacks so don't forget the Iris Effect, although they give little enough reason for such remembering. And while Lindzen attempts to relive the past, the work on clouds continues along as it always did, including tropical ocean cloud with recently for instance Ito & Masunaga (2022) 'Process level assessment of the iris effect over tropical oceans' stating their "results show that a theory focusing on the air temperature structure around anvil clouds is likely at work in the tropical atmosphere, although the anvil's warming and cooling effects would offset each other during the whole day and night."

Infrared Iris will reduce global warming

Eclectic at 14:34 PM on 9 August, 2022

Whdaffer , my first attempt failed to access the Lindzen article.

Overall, it would be helpful if you gave a brief summary of any noteworthy points in that article.

Prof. Lindzen has had a rather disappointing track record since his academic retirement ~ so it would be interesting to see if he has come up with something really new & valuable. Over to you !

Infrared Iris will reduce global warming

whdaffer at 10:52 AM on 9 August, 2022

The last update to this article was 2011.

Lindzen has a review article out (link below) that discusses work that's happened since. I was wondering if there were plans to update this article in light of the work since 2011.

https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2022APJAS..58..159L/abstract

CO2 effect is saturated

Eclectic at 18:41 PM on 6 August, 2022

OldHickory @648 : thank you for expanding on the matter ~ but there is still a major shortfall in your comment. Not only miscommunication - which may partly be a verbal/semantic problem - but it appears even more certain that you have not grasped the essence of how "greenhouse" warms the lower atmosphere.

Once you have truly grasped how H2O , CO2 , etcetera operate in the atmosphere, you will see why all the climate scientists (including the famous contrarian Professor Lindzen) are in agreement on the actual mechanism of planetary "greenhouse". It seems you have confused yourself about the question of "near the surface of the earth ... is highly saturated". [your quote]

As I mentioned earlier, the "saturation" question is not really relevant. It is not the "saturation" which is important, but the concentration (as in greenhouse gas molecules per cubic millimeter . . . or cubic meter . . . or what-have-you ). Any level of concentration will produce some greenhouse, and as you increase the concentration, there comes an increase in warming effect. The effective increase is not exactly logarithmic, but for (just) CO2 in the recorded range of recent times [say 180 - 420ppm] the surface warming effect works out to be approx 1.2 degreesC for a doubling of CO2 concentration. On top of that, must be added the feedback warming from the consequent rise in atmospheric H2O vapor (a figure somewhat greater than 1.2C) .

OldHickory, you will understand that I am not wishing to write a large number of paragraphs to explain all this in greater detail personally to you. This SkS website exists for the express purpose of providing a wealth of climate science information. It is your duty to yourself, to go and really read the original article at the head of this thread, at the Basic & Intermediate & Advanced levels. And to read other related articles here at SkS and elsewhere. When you have done that, it will become obvious why all the scientists are right.

How to inoculate yourself against misinformation

MA Rodger at 19:56 PM on 7 July, 2022

Petra Liverani @68,

I do not see any connection which would require you to begin the comment "Just to add,..." You appear to be suggesting that certain argument proves nothing yet will still be savaged by those responding.

Simply stating "The climate's always changed," or "CO2 is plant food" does not of itself contradict the accepted fundings of climatology. I think you would need to set out the use of such statements (& the responses) to be able to judge whether "the kind of responses" were inappropriate.

To provide such context for your "The climate's always changed" statement, the first listed SkS myth cites Dickie Lindzen who is an actual clomatologist but who has never accepted the science of AGW and has done a lot of work attempting to overturn that science. Yet despite his best efforts, he has established nothing and in his attempts to establish something has adopted many egregious arguments like "The climate's always changed."

Indeed, the climate has always changed but that does not prevent us understanding why it changes and thus seeing that it has not changed before like today's AGW. Even the PETM which was also driven by rising CO2 levels took tens of thousands of years when we are driving the climate in mere centuries.

The "CO2 is plant food" argument is listed as the SkS's 43rd myth which describes why elevated CO2 is not entirely a good thing for plants. And do note that the plants are not very hungry for CO2 as they are only eating up a quarter of the CO2 we serve up.

How to inoculate yourself against misinformation

Eclectic at 13:54 PM on 2 July, 2022

David-acct @14 , you are making an extraordinary comment.

Firstly, your <"if scientists discover a forcing that is a greater factor than CO2 as a primary driver of warming"> argument is a complete strawman. (Presumably you are talking about the modern rapid "AGW" part of the Holocene . . . i.e. the sole topic of climate controversy during the past half-century.)

A strawman, because no mysterious unknown forcing has shown a niche for its own existence. No evidence has been demonstrated that might point to its possible existence.

Yes, in the past there were suggestions/proposals by Svensmark, Lindzen and others, but all such ideas crashed due to lack of any supporting evidence. But importantly, their "counter-CO2" ideas were not suppressed or censored. Those ideas were examined by scientists, and found to be without validity ~ and they are now in the category of disinformation (their only supporters are crackpots or worse).

The same goes for the continuing purveyors of <"it's all due to natural cycles of ocean currents/ orbits of Jupiter/ etcetera. >" Cycles which are 90% fanciful and 100% unphysical as a causation of [AGW]. These purveyors are desperadoes who a not censored by scientists, but are simply laughed at (or more generally ignored).

David-acct , I should also point out that if a significantly large "unknown" warming forcing were to be discovered, then there would also need to be the discovery of a (simultaneous) unknown cooling forcing (to neatly counteract the modern rise of CO2's forcing). David, I suspect you know in your heart that the chance of such a Double Whammy is infinitesimally small. In other words - you have created a strawman argument. Pigs = flying.

Suppression, stifling, censorship . . . all are fanciful arguments. Let's not waste any more time going down that road.

As to Covid matters : you will need to find another thread to discuss the issue. Unfortunately, you have been extremely vague in your accusations against the CDC. And I strongly suspect you are harboring a hotch-potch of distorted half-truths there ~ but I will wait to see if you can provide any evidence on that other thread. Good luck with it. My initial bet is that you have chosen to be the victim of medical misinformation and/or disiniformation.

Philippe C @7 , I owe you an apology for my slightly ungrammatical misquote "Vive la indifference" @13. It looked better that way for English readers, I thought. You will forgive me I hope, even if the Academie cannot.

Skeptical Science New Research for Week #21 2022

One Planet Only Forever at 02:45 AM on 30 May, 2022

"Homo bolidus" was indeed presented by you in your comment on the 2012 SkS post by dana1981 "Lindzen, Happer and Cohen Wall Street Journal Rerun".

Revisiting that item highlights how difficult it is for public opinion to be 'improved to reduce harm done' by attempts to get people to have increased awareness and improved understanding the evidence based fuller story related to harm done on any issue. So much of the harmful misunderstanding in 2012 is alive and kicking harder today.

The legacy dominance of utilitarian beliefs that 'harm done can be dismissed or justified by claims that some people benefit from the harmful unsustainable activity and associated developed harmful misunderstandings' is hard to correct. People motivated by competitive pursuit of higher status can be very reluctant to learn that their current status or desired ways of obtaining more benefit are harmful obtained and unsustainable. Giving up potential for more benefit and making amends for harm done can be contrary to their liking. And they will readily believe and support purveyors of harmful misleading messages. They can even be seen to become more irrationally determined to believe that 'increased awareness and improved understanding of what is harmful and the required corrections' is a political ideology that is harmfully trying to 'cancel their type of people'.

It is tragic that a harmfully misled minority can have so much influence due to 'Defending and demanding Freedom to believe what they want and do as they please'.

2022 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #7

Eclectic at 11:47 AM on 27 February, 2022

Santalives @19 , it is always a fine day for me when I come across two good jokes in a day. (A) The first is that you say you've read "nearly every one of the [over 200] Climate Myth and many of the comments." And how you felt that the comments were not arranged by date. Thank you for your personal revelations in these matters. Difficult to top.

(B) The second joke: was the David Coe et al., paper which you linked to @ WattsUpWithThat blogsite. Hilarious. Even your paper by the good professor Koutsoyiannis looks half-way sane in comparison.

Santalives, sit down and put your thinking cap on. As Philippe Chantreau [above] says, the Coe paper is wildly . . . wildly . . . inconsistent with everything that's within arm-reach of conventional climate science. IIRC, only the good Lord Monckton has ever come out with a similar figure to Coe's ultra-low 0.5K figure for total climate sensitivity to CO2. And Monckton seems to produce new & wildly high/low ECS figures annually (but with a strong bias toward Zero).

Now, I've looked through the WUWT assessment of the Coe paper. Not encouraging, at all. As usual, a number of commenters there deny that CO2 absorbs radiation and/or deny that there is any GreenHouse Effect whatsoever. At my own time of writing [>80 comments] no expert scientist has appeared to make comment at WUWT . Especially no climate scientist. Yes, that is the usual lofty standard of scientific analysis at WUWT .

# However, Santalives, if you scroll down to a couple of comments by Rud Istvan [an intelligent & well-informed guy, if you make allowance for his bad case of motivated reasoning on climate] . . . you will find he shows that some semi-respectable "contrarian" scientists such as Judith Curry and Richard Lindzen give a climate sensitivity of 1.1 - 1.2 for CO2 alone [without the large additional feedback from H2O ].

'Nuff said. The Coe paper you mentioned is simply garbage. Santalives, please remember the acronym GIGO ~ where sometimes you see the Garbage going In . . . and sometimes (e.g. with Coe et al., ) you see the Garbage coming Out.

# Oh, Santalives, I did come across a joke yesterday :

"My math teacher really hated negative numbers. Hated them. He would stop at nothing to avoid them."

CO2 effect is saturated

MA Rodger at 23:19 PM on 13 September, 2021

Eclectic @625,

Of course, there is the point as to whether you should be referring to that paper as Wijngaarden & Happer (2020). Academic work is usually only dated if it is properly published or if it is presented at a conference. Otherwise it would be demoted to being a working paper which is thus not complete and thus not properly dateable. And I would suggest that up-loading a paper onto Cornell University's "free distributon service" arXvi doesn't count as 'publication', it being no-more 'published' than this comment I post here at SkS.

But the proof of the pudding and all that....

Whatever tha nature of a piece of work's origin, it is its usefulness to the science that is the proper measure of it. A look at google scholar for Wijngaarden & Happer (unpublished) 'Dependence of Earth’s Thermal Radiation on Five Most Abundant Greenhouse Gases' shows today just four citations, which is pretty rubbish. And one of those is a reference from a further Wijngaarden & Happer paper posted @arXvi which is but an updated version of the same while accounting for two more GHGs, CF4 & SF6. Of the remaining three, one explicitly styles itself a working paper. (I note its reference list is stuffed full of denialist nonsense: Koonin & Jon-boy Christy, Lewis & Dicky Lindzen, McIntyre & McKitrick & Monckton, Svensmark & Woy Spencer.) The final two citations do initially appear to be by published work. But in tracking down both ♣Pascal Richet (2021): 'Climate and the temperature-CO2 relationship An epistemological re-examination of the ice core message', History of Geo- and Space Sciences, Vol 12, pp97-110. and ♣David Coe; Fabinski, Walter & Weigleb, Gerhard (2021): 'The Impact of CO2, H2O and Other "Greenhouse Gases" on Equilibrium Earth Temperatures' Int J. Atmos. & Oceanic Sci.,Vol 5, Issue 2, pp29-40. I see either a blank space in the pp97-110 page-numbering or the pages pp29-41 taken by another paper. So it appears that the final two citations have failed to gain publication; not so uncommon with denialist works which both these final two citing paper evidently are. (An on-line French version of the first of these two simply presents a common climate myth while a posting of the second's Abstract still visible on a denialist website shows its finding is an ECS=+0.5ºC.)

....turns out to be a large bowl of rather-sticky humble pie.

The New Climate War by Michael E. Mann - our reviews

Bob Loblaw at 05:42 AM on 13 June, 2021

Oh, Nick. You're repeating yourself, and it does not stand you in good stead.

"The short answer is that Big Oil continued to support the "B.S. factories" because they were effective at trying to protect those corporations against unwarranted attack."

I really hope that you do not consider sound science (even with uncertainties) to be "an unwarranted attack".

If you are referring to non-scientific organizations such as Greenpeace, then I hope that you are not saying that unwarranted attacks justify B.S., simply because it is "effective".

"...most seem to have been happy to accept Greenpeace et al's interpretation of events as gospel..."

A strawman position...

"I refer you again (3rd time) to my quote of Carbonbrief's article and the words of top climate scientist Andrew Dessler of Texas A&M Uni."

Repeating the quote is certainly not necessary. Using phrases such as "top climate scientist" represent an argument from authority. I was already teaching undergraduate and graduate climatology courses when Andrew Dessler was still a grad student. I had and have direct knowledge of the primary peer-reviewed scientific literature from that time.

I hope that you do not think that the 1.5C to 4.5 C sensitivity range is a complete summary of climate science.

I hope that you do not think that there was a huge amount of uncertainty regarding the lower limit back in the 1980s. There was lots of uncertainty of regional effects. Lots of uncertainty about cloud feedback effects (but unlikely to be strongly negative).

From the 1990 IPCC sumamry for policy makers:

There are many uncertainties in our predictions particularly with regard to the timing, magnitude and regional patterns of climate change, due to our incomplete understanding of:

• sources and sinks of greenhouse gases, which affect predictions of future concentrations
• clouds, which strongly influence the magnitude of climate change
• oceans, which influence the timing and patterns of climate change
• polar ice sheets which affect predictions of sea level rise

These processes are already partially understood, and we
are confident that the uncertainties can be reduced by
further research However, the complexity of the system
means that we cannot rule out surprises

THe 1990 IPCC report includes quite a bit of discussion about these uncertainties, and what needs to be done to sort them out.

One of the very few sources of a realistic argument for low sensitivity was Lindzen's "Iris effect". As Lindzhen had a good reputation as a meteorologist, this hypothesis was taken seriously. It did not pan out.

Most of the rest of the "sensitivity is low" arguments were B.S. Many were clearly B.S. in the 1980s - and are still B.S. now, even though they keep getting repeated..

Dessler may feel that the uncertainty was underestimated. Do you have any evidence of an actual number that he would put on it?

Did Exxon choose to push the known uncertainties and realistic scientifically-supportable possibitiies? No. As you admit, they chose the Baffle Them With B.S. option.

You seem to feel that was justified on their part. I do not.

"...the views of sensitivity at the time were just not solid enough to mandate massive corporation change..."

...but they were solid enough to start to invest considerable money (albeit probably peanuts for Big Oil) in the B.S. factories, in an attempt to preserve and maximize corporate profits for as long as possible.

If Big OIl's approach was so honorable, then why did they try to hide the path of the money and keep their name off it?

If you were to argue that Big Oil's corporate responsibility is to maximize shareholder value regardless of ethics, then I would concede the point.

Dr. Ben Santer: Climate Denialism Has No Place at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

Eclectic at 09:33 AM on 28 May, 2021

Nigelj , I am in much agreement with you. MA Rodger earlier pointed out the long back-story of Koonin's employment in the oil industry.

People can change . . . but sometimes they don't . . . and it is easy to see the possibility that Koonin's previous sphere of employment would give him a bias towards retrospective justification of his earlier activities.

There is no need to posit any recent financial influencing of Koonin. The past connection may well be enough, psychologically, to have him self-censor his intellect.

Nigelj, I am sure you can think of many cases where prominent individuals have been "turned" by means of big amounts of money. But psychologists' experiments show that one can often achieve large influence through surprisingly small payments. It seems the smallness of the reward causes the recipients to over-compensate by becoming even stronger in their advocacy role. Example: the very small stipend that was paid by Peabody to Lindzen.

But we needn't get too bogged down in all these sorts of analyses. The real problem is the actions of the deniers, rather than their motivations (which are difficult to change).

Dr. Ben Santer: Climate Denialism Has No Place at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

Jim Hunt at 21:04 PM on 27 May, 2021

Eclectic @17:

I selected a different quotation from Mark Boslough as my favourite in a recent review article:

https://GreatWhiteCon.info/2021/05/unsettling-koonin-critiques-continue/

Most of the technical mistakes and misrepresentations in “Unsettled” may simply be attributable to Koonin’s trust of those advisors and lack of rigorous independent verification.

"Those advisors" being John Christy, Judith Curry, and Richard Lindzen.

Plus an informative infographic from his suggested source:

Dr. Ben Santer: Climate Denialism Has No Place at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

MA Rodger at 21:49 PM on 25 May, 2021

Eclectic @3,

The promotion of Koonin to premier-league climate-change dnier does give the opportunity to demolish another of these folk. He certainly gets a bit of a kicking here and here.

So what is his message?

This New York Post OP from Koonin appears to be saying that, while the science is sound, the problem is with the interpretation of the science. Yet while the exemplars he gives are probably flat wrong, they are not central to the AGW science so quite irrelevant in the full analysis. The only other thing he presents in this OP about his grand message is:-

"Humans exert a growing, but physically small, warming influence on the climate. The results from many different climate models disagree with, or even contradict, each other and many kinds of observations. In short, the science is insufficient to make useful predictions about how the climate will change over the coming decades, much less what effect our actions will have on it."

This he says he learned at the feet of Lindzen, Curry & Christie during the APS RedTeam-BkueTeam exercise Koonin chaired in 2013, an exercise that contains nothing of merit that I can see.

And as for climate models making useful predictions, they've done a pretty good job up to now.

So whay actually is Koonin bleeting about? Waht is his message? It would be good to see the actual message because so far all I hear is a blowhard!!

2021 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #19

MA Rodger at 15:41 PM on 10 May, 2021

nigelj @5,

If you believe Koonin, in his recent NY Post OP he tells us he was fully-signed-up to the science of AGW until he took part in the 2014 APS Climate Change Review Workshop which he chaired. The APS found nothing in this workshop to change its stance on AGW which pitted the science against the grand theorising of John-boy Christy, Judy Curry & Dicky Lindzen, a falsely-balanced debate that had been exposed as nonsense for decades. So why Koonin was so strongly convinced by the denialist arguments, indeed his role in setting up the event (he has been advocatng the use of such a process ever since), does need more explanation from Koonin, explanation which is simply absent.

His work with BP back in the 2000s involved biofuels which do present a problem with high land-use but it would be a fool who took a decade to spot that truth and, then without pause jump to the view expressed in his Sept 2014 OP. While the usual take-away from this Sept 2014 OP is his denial of the science, it is actually a call to resolve the divide (the unresolvable divide) between AGW "belief" and AGW "hoax", to resolve through re-directing scientific effort, as this resolution "should be among the top priorities for climate research." But I neither see any emphasis being made by Koonin in 2014 that the cure (a zero carbon economy) would be a worse outcome that AGW. Nor do I see any emphasis by Koonin in 2021 any message calling to re-direct the scientific effort. The only sign of his continued holding of this view is his involvement in the RedTeam/BlueTeam initiatives, not the most scientific methods of tackling science.

A year later as the Paris climate talks draw near, Koonin is advocating AGW adaptation because mitigation cannot be achieved in time, a new slant on things again.

Now his 2021 OP (and presumaby his grand book) he brands talk of a climate emergency and the policies to address it as being fallacy, basing this on some very silly denialist nonsense.

So Koonin presents a wibbly-wobbly argument against AGW science. And if anybody sees in this reason not to brand Koonin a nought but a vaccuous blowhard, I'd be interested to hear that reason.

Human CO2 is a tiny % of CO2 emissions

MA Rodger at 22:29 PM on 2 May, 2021

Eclectic @349,

I think what you call "quite a laundry list" presented by commenter lindzenfanone @348 is less a laundry list and more a nonsensical rant. (The commenter doesn't start well in my book with his chosen nom-de-clavier. For me Dicky Lindzen is today a proven liar who long-ago turned away from the scientific method.)
The rant begins effectively saying that there is no available ontological truth which of course will make all argument circular. This is followed by some silliness about naturally-emitted CO2 and anthropogenic-emitted CO2 requiring to act differently with AGW science. The non-correlation comment could be presented statistically if it were not so crazy and wrong, this followed by poorly presented statements that try (but fail badly) to set out reason to support a bold (and with the failure, unsupported) assertion that "IPCC's core theory is wrong!!"

The links appended to the comment lead to a number of dubious published papers that don't bear scrutiny**, Berry (2019) 'Human CO2 Emissions Have Little Effect on Atmospheric CO2' (two links provided), Humlum et al (20130 'The phase relation between atmospheric carbon dioxide and global temperature', Koutsoyiannis & Kundzewicz (2020) 'Atmospheric Temperature and CO2: Hen-Or-Egg Causality?' and Harde (2019) 'What Humans Contribute to Atmospheric CO2: Comparison of Carbon Cycle Models with Observations' (**These 'usual suspects' have been publishing drivel like this for years. If these particular papers presented anything game-chnging for AGW, indeed anything at all new and worthy of some small consideration, then that 'something' is failing to appear either within the denialist world or in the real world.)

Human CO2 is a tiny % of CO2 emissions

Eclectic at 21:07 PM on 2 May, 2021

Lindzenfanone @348 :

You have quite a laundry list there. Much of it is wrong, but I guess you don't really care about that ~ since you obviously haven't bothered to educate yourself about climate science.

My next guess is that you are making a giant leg-pull. (Only on something like WattsUpWithThat website could your "ideas" be taken seriously.)

But I do have a question: Why your "Lindzen" connection with climate? For more than 15 years, Prof Lindzen has been moving away from scientific thinking and has been making his religious beliefs an emotional basis for his (largely rhetorical) speeches.

How much has nuclear testing contributed to global warming?

Eclectic at 19:41 PM on 27 October, 2020

Boston745 , your "observations and associations" are just personal anecdotes. Not scientific evidence. They seem to be your "feelings". Contrarians have all sorts of "feelings" ~ often mutually contradictory. That's one of the reasons why they can't get their act together.

Yes, those "qualified scientists" (who are very, very, very few) do deserve to be completely dismissed, since they completely fail to provide any valid evidence to overthrow the mainstream climate science. They talk hot air ~ empty rhetoric.

Instances : Drs Lindzen, Spencer, Curry - failed ideas or vague blather based on religious beliefs. No actual backing from scientific observations. And even they don't bother to advocate "magnetospheres and cosmic rays".

Boston745 , have you other "qualified scientists" who are contrarian enough to disagree with the mainstream science - and what is their substantive evidence that they are right and the mainstream is wrong? And why haven't they published it? Major scientific journals would be enthusiastic & delighted to publish some really cutting-edge ground-breaking stuff ! But the contrarians can't come up with anything valid.

Genuine science exists in the collective summary of peer-reviewed scientific papers in reputable journals - it does not reside in fruitcake blogs such as WattsUpWithThat. (If you wonder why I use the label fruitcake, then just go and read through WUWT. )

Clouds provide negative feedback

Brainspin at 19:58 PM on 15 September, 2020

To this layman, a new report (Saint‐Lu et al 2020) seems to support Lindzen's "Iris effect" (that high cloud cover in the tropics diminish with increased temperature), but at the same time finds that high clouds have a neutral effect on global warming:

https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2020GL089059

Polar bear numbers are increasing

Bob Loblaw at 10:40 AM on 8 June, 2020

Prager U is a notoriously unreliable source for scientific information on climate change. A long history of misinformation.

For another takedown, read Barry Bickmore's perspective (not polar-bear-specific, so starting to wander off topic here):

https://bbickmore.wordpress.com/2016/04/21/dick-lindzen-prager-u-and-the-art-of-lying-well/

Climate's changed before

MA Rodger at 19:49 PM on 25 February, 2020

theSkeptik @813,

Such is the composition of your specific responses (not least to my comment @810) that I feel you should be made aware of how far you are from grasping the reality of the climatology you criticise. This makes addressing the substance of your comment (which actually has some merit) an impossibility.

Thus (& specific to you reply to my comment @810), what you call my "first argument" is correcting your error @808 by pointing out the well-known situation that the CO2 measured from ice cores is measuring trapped air. You move on from this 'correction' and on to the so-far-unmentioned-by-you problem of the difference between the age of the ice and the age of the air entrapped within the ice which as you correctly say is not addressed in this SkS post. It is addressed on a different SkS post which is linked within the above SkS post. "Unfortunately" you are unable to cope with that situation.

Similarly, you use part of what I present within what you call my "second argument" to begin anew with a different argument that an absence of Antarctic warming is equivalent to there being no global warming. (Actually if this were the issue, more up-to-date temperature data, so for instance the warming below -70ºS measured by GISTEMP, records a great deal of Antarctic warming over recent years.)

Finally you are flat wrong to suggest that you "do not make any claims about any relationships between GHG and temperature or other related parameters." Whatever your experience in "just looking for unbiased information," do not deny that you yourself come here with "overinterpreted data and conclusions driven by preoccupation," and I would suggest your two comments @808 & @813 show you are more pre-occupied than those you criticise.

The SkS post above, addresses the nonsense myth set out by denialist Richard Lindzen that "climate is always changing" and thus "wasting resources on symbolically fighting ever present climate change is no substitute for prudence." You may be unsatisfied that this SkS post properly addresses Lindzen's denialist argument. And I may agree with you on that specific-but-narrow point. But such a deficiency does not, as you attempt to argue, make the underlying thesis wrong. And you failure to present consistent and trustworthy analysis suggests proper discussion of all this likely a little pointless.

Welcome to Skeptical Science

Eclectic at 23:50 PM on 16 February, 2020

You're welcome, JoeZ @84. I am frequently lurking and/or posting on SkS and WUWT . . . so really it was only a minor co-incidence (and not Divine retribution) that you were exposed.

Your second sentence was rather ambiguous ~ it is almost as though you're saying you are presenting mutually-opposed opinions in two different forums [or "fora", if you live in Boston ;-) ]. But (pending any denial from you) I will take it that wasn't what you meant . . . in which case :- why would you object anyone reading the available totality of your opinions?

But - cutting to the Chase - I myself (and almost all readers at SkS ) greatly welcome any climate skepticism that you can present.

So far, however, you have not expressed any valid points of climate skepticism. And before you reply, please consult your English dictionary for the precise meaning of skepticism ~ for skepticism does not mean the contrarianism and/or science-denialism which you find everywhere at WUWT ! . . . with the honorable exception of WUWT comments by the very few there who are intellectually sane e.g. by Stokes, Mosher, and a couple of others not yet banned. [WUWT is a marvellous study in Motivated Reasoning ~ where otherwise-intelligent people repeatedly maintain the craziest concepts . . . and revel in the little echo-chamber where they can angrily vent their outrage & denial of reality.]

So, JoeZ , please present your skepticism about the evidence found in mainstream climate science. But I must warn you that Professors Lindzen, Svensmark & other denialists . . . have thus far entirely failed to find any evidence to invalidate the modern science.

Good luck, JoeZ ~ I sincerely hope you can uncover the "killer" evidence which will send all the world's scientists rushing back to the collective drawing-board. It will be a great relief to everyone, to learn that "AGW" is grossly wrong and there's no "climate emergency" whatsoever.

But until I see your genuine evidence, I shall have to remain . . . skeptical.

1934 - hottest year on record

Eclectic at 00:45 AM on 3 February, 2020

Map , you are being mysterious.

<" multiple outcomes that support and contradict the basis of global warming ">

This needs some explaining from you! It doesn't fit in with the general mainstream science of climate. The world's scientists have spent a great deal of time & effort (over many decades indeed) and have produced a coherent description of the physics of it all. The science is demonstrated in many thousands of scientific papers published in respected peer-reviewed journals.

They are pretty much unanimous in their findings. Yes, there are a few "contrarian" papers ~ but all of these show major faults ( e.g. Lindzen's Iris Hypothesis; Svensmark's and Shaviv's Cosmic Rays Hypothesis; Salby's Ocean-outgassing of CO2 Hypothesis ).

In short, Map, the evidence is wholly one-sided. There is no valid alternative.

Map, I think you are playing a joke. (But why do you bother?)

Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?

Doug_C at 06:51 AM on 20 January, 2020

michael sweet @131

I fully disagree with your entire position on nuclear power and the LNT which was the result of Cold War politics not sound science.

It Is Time to Move Beyond the Linear No-Threshold Theory for Low-Dose Radiation Protection

Considering the fact that we are all exposed to ionizing radiation and all life has been from the start of life almost 4 billion years ago on an Earth that had far higher levels of ionizing radiation, how likely is that ionizing radiation is a risk down to a zero dose rate.

The LNT model of risk from ionizing radiation was a response to the threat of nuclear proliferation and the radiophobia that has resulted has been used by a sector that presents an actualy existential threat to life itself on Earth while at the same time causing the early deaths of millions of people a year from air pollution alone before we look at all the other negative impacts of fossil fuels including the wars that are often rooted in the conflicts over fossil fuels. Donald Trump just stated it is an American goal to seize Syrian oil deposits, a war crime.

When we look at the worst scenario nuclear reactor accident with a reactor type that will never be built again as was a function of the lack of competence and respect for safety by the regime that built it, the direct impacts to people is still a tiny fraction of what we accept from fossil fuels daily.

They don't even know how many people died from the Chernobyl accident becaused the increased rates of cancer even under the LNT are so small in relation to the other background causes. The highest estimates are about 500 people. That is about 1/23rd of the deaths that are caused by fossil fuels generated air pollution daily.

Anti-nuclear activists like Helen Caldicott have made totally unsupported claims that close to 1 million deaths resulted from the Chernobyl accident, contradicting even their own ealier claims.

Nuclear opponents have a moral duty to get their facts straight

Arnie Gundersen was making almost the same claims about the Fukushima accident.

Nuclear Engineer Arnie Gundersen: Fukushima Meltdown Could Result in 1 Million Cases of Cancer

What exactly are you afraid of with nuclear power, it's clear that more than a few anti-nuclear activists are not basing their hysterical claims on science or reality itself.

Based on the massively exagerated claims by people who treat all ionizing radiation as an almost inevitable death sentence you'd think that people exposed to the most extreme human generated forms would all die very early deaths.

Let's start with Chernobyl and the several hundred emergency response personnel who were working next to an exposed nuclear core on fire

Health effects in those with acute radiation sickness from the Chernobyl accident.

Of those hundreds of personnel, 134 were diagnosed with ARS, should be and immediate death sentence based on the conventional "wisdom" that holds what an extreme threa to life all ionizing radiation is.

Of those 134 people, 29 died in the following months, mostly from the same kind of skin infections third degree burn victims would. In this case it was the beta burns from the intense radiation.

By 2001 a further 14 had died, does that sound like the death sentence that mainstream radiophobia would have us all treat any IR exposure as.

In a much less savory case who' ethics I'm not going to debate as I think what was done was deplorable, people diagnosed with terminal illnesses in the US were administered without their knowledge plutonium, the "most dangerous" substance on Earth going by the kind of treatment that you claim is based on sound science.

Some of them were misdiagnised and lived for decades with plutonium in their bodies.

Human Plutonium Injection Experiments

I don't work in the nuclear sector, I don't even have a degree, a serious disability has severely limited my life. I don't have children, I do have many nieces and nephews and the world we are leaving for them causes me anguish.

If I can figure out how broken the LNT model is and how totally irrational our entire approach to nuclear power is by book from libraries and online resources, then what does that say about the entire field of science that is still struggling to do anything about this nightmare we are all caught up in.

Some scientists like Fred Seitz, Fred Singer, Richard Lindzen and Tim Ball have and still, used their credientials and standing to totally distort the existential threat we all face from fossil fuels climate change. And yet they are still treated as part of this profession.

I have been taking verbal abuse from the people who they feed their intellectual fraud to online for years in a attempt to advocate for some form of sanity including from Tim Ball at WUWT because I dared to point out that his claims that water vapour were the most important greenhouse gas in the atmosphere was falacious as could be seen by the very title of his article. It there as a vapour not a gas and therefore isn't stable without the presense of another persisent gas namely carbon dioxide. His response and the many people who chimed in were abusive to say the least. But isn't that the point, to eliminate any opposition to your position no matter the cost to others.

Unlikely as I thought it to be, I find myself facing the same kind of treatment here.

I don't care for your baseless ad hominem against me because I simply want life not death to dominate our future.

As the subtext of your comment is that I and my views are simply not welcome here I won't frequent this site again and will treat it in the end like I do WUWT. As a meaningless spinning of wheels to comfort people as nothing real is done to save ourselves from an existential threat of our own making.

I'll go with the insights of some of the most brilliant scientists to have lived like Eugene Wigner and Alvin Weinberg who both held that nuclear power would be our salvation.

I simply have no time for people who are fomenting the same kind of intellectual fraud that has given us anti-vaxxers.

The Harmful and Fraudulent Basis for the LNT Assumption

At some point we are going to realize that views like yours are what is helping to kill us all, I just hope it's before it's to late to build the tens of thousands of nuclear reactors that we actually need to replace all fossil fuels.

There is no consensus

Eclectic at 15:38 PM on 7 January, 2020

Hmmph. If Dr Curry were an actor, then you would see her in B-grade movies, at best.

Dr Lindzen would be the equivalent of Marlon Brando in his last few years ~ someone who once received some respect from those in the industry . . . but was now "washed up" and coasting along on the remnants of his past reputation. Sic transit.

Dr Happer . . . also the Emeritus Syndrome, plus something a bit uglier.

Let's move on from the Ad Hom sketches, and look at the actual arguments that Curry puts forward as a "contrarian".

Her arguments ~ well, she doesn't have any really. She has asserted that for late 20th Century warming, "up to about 60%" of it might (possibly) be caused by a concurrence of several long-cycle periodic ocean current phases (multi-decadal Atlantic overturning current plus other much longer century/multi-century cycles . . . cycles which most scientists consider to be no more than a twinkle in the eye of their "discoverers"). In other words, a load of balderdash. But a straw which the desperate denialists like to grasp at.

All the while, Curry wears heavily-shaded glasses which are pachyderm-polarised to show very little of the Elephant in the Room i.e. CO2 .

Yes, Curry does admit that CO2 has a mild effect on global warming, but maintains that after you subtract the surface warming effect of those concurrent ocean cycles, the remaining minor warming shows that CO2 is a minimal problem because it must be that the planet's ECS (climate sensitivity) is quite low.

That's about the size of it. The rest of her rhetoric is simply empty rhetoric ~ confusing & vague distractions from the underlying reality. Just what certain American senators/Congressmen wish to hear. So they call her up to speak to "committees" and thus provide themselves with a veneer of excuse to take no action on AGW.

Essentially Curry is a misinformer, through the use of vagueness and innuendo. Like an expensive barrister arguing for a guilty-as-sin client, she usually does not step over the line of absolute mendacity. Not quite.

There is no consensus

KR at 06:40 AM on 21 December, 2019

PatrickSS - WRT those three you mentioned:

Dyson is a brilliant physicist - but not a climate scientist. Lindzen, who has worked at the CATO Institute, is well known in the field for a series of papers claiming a strong negative feedback; he has never actually addressed actual (and numerous) criticisms of the first 'Iris effect' paper, simply repeating his claims over and over. In the last version I'm aware of he directly invoked 'cloud forcing', when clouds are, rather, a short lived (hours) feedback to temperature and humidity. And as for Happer (also not a climate scientist), he has been documented as writing climate science for pay, with fossil fuel money routed through nonprofit organizations for anonymity. Happer is more properly a lobbyist, not a researcher.

You might want to look for better references.

It's the sun

One Planet Only Forever at 02:13 AM on 21 December, 2019

scaddenp,

I share your skepticism regarding the motivations of PatrickSS.

They do not appear to be interested in expanded awareness and improved understanding.

Instead of starting with a detailed understanding of the subject, they appear to be seeking excuses to not expand their awareness or improve their understanding (though they sound interested by 'asking questions').

As an example, in previous comments they present their summary understanding of presentations of understanding by "“consensus” climate scientists" (their term of reference) as "...sunlight comes in, heats the Earth, and the heat escapes from the Earth via IR. Increased CO2 absorbs and blocks more IR, so the Earth gets warmer." They then compare that with what they consider to be more believable presentations by Lindzen, Allen and Curry (they are more impressed by these people than they are by the "consensus" climate scientists that they present an extremely poor level of understanding of).

In addition they appear to have summarized my previous comments to them regarding pursuit of expanded awareness and understanding of climate science matters as "... assertions that there is "masses of evidence" out there that shows that the Connollys are completely wrong and that I should go and look for it":

"There is a massive diversity of evidence supporting the climate science consensus understanding that human activities, particularly fossil fuel use, are significantly impacting the global climate in ways that are detrimental to the future generations."

"Seek out detailed explanations of the incorrect aspects of the claims made by Lindzen, Alley and Curry. There are many sources for the corrected expanded understanding (and a vast amount is available right here on the SkS site)."

I believe you are correct to suspect that PatrickSS has not read, and is unlikely to read, any IPCC document. I would add that I suspect that PatrickSS filters information for its 'ability to impress them, suit their preferred beliefs'. My comments were an attempt to make them aware of that.

There is no consensus

MA Rodger at 20:14 PM on 20 December, 2019

PatrickSS @868,

My appologies for not spotting @856 your referencing of Question 12 in the Climate Science Survey which sets out the data used within Verheggen et al (2014). Your complain was that this Q12 was not featured within Verheggen et al (2014). Were the responses to Q12 as you set out up-thread @856 it may perhaps be considered an omission. You wrote:-

Now we discover that only 33% of climate scientists are more than "somewhat concerned", and 8.5% are "not very concerned" or "not concerned at all".

This is completely incorrect. The more than "somewhat concerned" figure (so "very concerned") is not 33% but 67%. More exactly, if the data for the "respondents with more than 10 climate-related peer-reviewed publications" reported by Verheggen et al is gleaned from Figure 12.2, it is 71% who are 'very concerned', 22% 'somewhat concerned' and just 7% who are less concerned than this. To me, here is a 93% concensus.

Those who may be inclined to peel off the 22% 'somewhat concerned' from this concensus should consider how the question would be answered in 2012. "How concerned are you about climate change as a long-term global problem?" For a climatologist in 2012, a 'somewhat concerned' response could result from a belief that mitigation measures will arrive to to prevent AGW becoming a serious crisis for humanity, or that in the "long term" AGW is not a serious crisis because, whatever the damage through the next century, in the "long term" humanity will survive, the natural world will survive. We are not taking about a humanless or lifeless planet by the end of the millennium.

The additional comment @868 that various swivel-eyed denialists would have been included in the headline 91% result of Verheggen et al (2014) is firstly incorrect as three of them are not qualified as authors and secondly, while Dickie Lindzen & Judy Curry sometimes try to argue that they would be part of such a consensus gathered from such surveys, their position is not entirely sincere and they surely could not honestly feature in the Q12 result.

There is no consensus

PatrickSS at 06:51 AM on 20 December, 2019

Estoma I will check out the Iris Effect

Rodger, did you read the summary of the raw data that I pointed you to? Here's the link again:

https://www.pbl.nl/en/publications/climate-science-survey-questions-and-responses

What do you think of the responses to Q12?

Isn't it very odd that Bart V and colleagues didn't mention Q12 in their paper?

And do you realize that the "91%" quoted on this page includes Lindzen, Happer, Dyson, Curry and Ridley?

Thx for all your responses. I'm going to the "It's the sun" page.

There is no consensus

Estoma at 22:22 PM on 19 December, 2019

I don't make many posts but as far as my knowledge of Lindzen, he's always been a luke warmer who believes the doubling of CO2 will only produce a temperature rise of 1 degree celcius, ignoring any type of feedbacks. We've already risen 1 degree and we've increased CO2 less than 50% of a doubling.

In addition, his Iris effect theory, that as temperature increases they'll be less moisture and fewer clouds that will cause more infrared radition to escape has been shown by several studies since then, to not be the case.

There is no consensus

MA Rodger at 21:16 PM on 19 December, 2019

PatrickSS @862,

You present three names in response to my request @858 for the scientists you tell us "think that doubling CO2 will raise the world temp by about 1C," a position you appear to set as equal in importance to "those who think that doubling CO2 will raise the world temp by about 3C." It's not much of a list. Do note that two of these are not climatologists and further, I do not see that any of them present substantive reasons to support their bold claims. This is evidently not two sets of scientists arguing. It is sadly science under attack from a handful of swivel-eyed lunatics.

In support of my own rather bold statement, I would share with you my view of the one climatologist you name - the veteran climate denier Richard Lindzen. He has been at this game so long that he has lost entirely his grasp on the science he is supposed to be practising and now resorts to bare-faced-lies/deluded-foolishness [delete as applicable]. He has certainly ventured far beyond the science of climatology with his nonsense. See his 2017 version here and tick off the numerous examples of untruth he presents. (And to keep us on-topic, note his first attempt to refute AGW is "The 97 Percent Meme".)

I note you cite Dickie Lindzen when you say "Increasing CO2 causes the IR to be emitted at slightly greater altitude. This warms the surface because the temperature at which the emission takes place is the same, so when the lower atmosphere is chaotically mixed the air reaching the surface is hotter (because it gets compressed as it comes down)." I am not sure where Lindzen explaining this mechanism but the way you phrase it is subject to vast misinterpretation.

You add that Judy Curry has had difficulty getting published yet if she has anything worth publishing she only has to post it on her website to get it into the scientific/public domain. Yet there is complete absence of any substantive comtribution from Curry, an absence that speaks volumes.

@862 you say you do not feel your "main argument" has not be "really engaged." You appear to be arguing that the scientific view of AGW is not truly reflected in the 97% consensus and specifically that Verheggen et al (2014) is 'obviously not' fairly summarised by the 91% value. I find this difficult to accept. Perhaps we are reading a different paper.

There is no consensus

One Planet Only Forever at 09:51 AM on 19 December, 2019

PartickSS @864,

Expanded awareness and improved understanding are based on all available evidence, not bits of it.

A person who makes a solid sounding science statement but then also makes an unscientific claim that is contrary to aspects of 'all of the available evidence (makes an illogical leap that is happily followed by someone who was impressed by the earlier Sciency Show and likes where the leap takes them thought-wise), is not helping to expand awareness and understanding. They are potentially corrupting efforts to expand awareness and improve understanding by the use of misleading marketing.

Seek out detailed explanations of the incorrect aspects of the claims made by Lindzen, Alley and Curry. There are many sources for the corrected expanded understanding (and a vast amount is available right here on the SkS site).

You should find many explanations that are 'even more compelling than the claim made that you liked', unless you choose not to become more aware (don't seek out the expanded awareness and improved understanding), or not want to develop improved understanding (do not wish to accept that fossil fuel burning has to be rapidly ended).

That understanding should clarify my comment regarding Curry.

There is no consensus

PatrickSS at 07:49 AM on 19 December, 2019

DB, can't I say that it's incredibly unfortunate that climate science has become political?

One Planet, when I listen to “consensus” climate scientists, they say that sunlight comes in, heats the Earth, and the heat escapes from the Earth via IR. Increased CO2 absorbs and blocks more IR, so the Earth gets warmer.

When I listen to Richard Lindzen he says that CO2 and H2O already absorb all the IR emitted at the Earth's surface, and that the IR that escapes is actually emitted high in the atmosphere. Increasing CO2 causes the IR to be emitted at slightly greater altitude. This warms the surface because the temperature at which the emission takes place is the same, so when the lower atmosphere is chaotically mixed the air reaching the surface is hotter (because it gets compressed as it comes down).

That seems to me to be "expanding awareness and improving understanding". He seems to be a good communicator and a good scientist. It seems unlikely that he invented the whole thing.

Then I watched Richard Alley on youtube. He is a very good communicator, and at first I found his argument very convincing. He said that the ice ages were driven by cycles of the sun at 100,000, 41,000, 23,000 and (I think it was) 19,000 years. Then he said that the sun cycles (periodically) released CO2, and the CO2 drove temperature. So we have sun -> CO2 -> temp. But the sun can only act through temperature. So we have sun -> temp -> CO2 -> temp. Suddenly it seems much less plausible. What's wrong with sun drives temperature?

One Planet, I don't get your point about Curry's reviewer. Surely we can agree that his or her comment was extraordinary, and showed dishonest thinking? Curry's other reviewers may have been good and rational, but one at least was not. Of course she could have made that comment up – but I have no reason to believe that. It seems more likely that she is sincere because she has put her career on the line.

None of this means that the “consensus view” is wrong. But it makes it very difficult to know who we should listen to.

There is no consensus

PatrickSS at 05:58 AM on 18 December, 2019

Thx so much for your replies.

It’s incredibly unfortunate that climate science has become political – on both sides IMO.

Actually I don’t feel that any of you have really engaged with my main argument: does this page give a fair summary of scientists’ views? E.g. does sticking up the percentage “91%” give a fair summary of Vergehhen’s data? (Obviously not.)

Science is IMO very subject to fashions. When authors, reviewers and the people who award grants all have the same point of view it can all go wrong. E.g. a few years ago almost everyone believed that fat in the diet was a kind of poison – which we now know is nonsense.

What I notice is that most scientists who are contrarians are either old and retired, or else somehow supporting themselves on private means or as consultants. That doesn’t seem like a good situation. It could mean that only crazy old men and women believe this nonsense, or it could mean that young climate scientists would damage their careers if they expressed contrarian views. MA Roger @857, I've listened to Freeman Dyson, Richard Lindzen and William Happer on youtube and none of them seem crazy, they seem to be good scientists. Judith Curry said that she couldn’t get her work published. I’ve just checked what she said – in fact she did publish one reviewer’s comment:

“Overall, there is the danger that the paper is used by unscrupulous people to create confusion or to discredit climate or sea-level science. Hence, I suggest that the author reconsiders the essence of its contribution to the scientific debate on climate and sea-level science.”

Hmm. That’s definitely a very dangerous argument. In fact it's very worrying indeed.

Scaddemp, most lukewarmers that I've listened to (including Judith C and Matt Ridley) definitely want to protect the environment, and they propose the expansion of research into new energy systems, but they worry about taking it to an extreme.

But . . . . although the process looks bad, there could be a real problem here. I find it incredibly hard to know. Unfoortunately we all have this thing called confirmation bias, and that makes everything tricky.

Here Are 3 Climategate Myths That Have Not Aged Well

Eclectic at 17:52 PM on 2 December, 2019

Nyood,

to add to Philippe's and Nigelj's comments, I shall yet again be rather tiresome to readers, in once again pointing out your major errors.

Lindzen and Curry are intellectual failures. And it must be very sad (for any true skeptic) that you are forced into the corner of admitting they are "the best" of the opposition to mainstream science.

Dr Curry is a minimizer who goes outside of scientific truthfulness, in order to give her uncritical followers the impression that hardly any global warming is the result of the Greenhouse effect. She creates a cloud of confused ideas ~ rather like the way a squid creates a cloud of ink to conceal things.

Prof Lindzen was a scientific force in the 1980's , but in the past decades his (initially reasonable) Iris Hypothesis has proven to be wrong, and his future projections of global surface temperature have proven to be very wrong. Worse still , he seems to have fallen into a religious belief that Jehovah would not permit the Earth to warm by more than a fraction of 1 degree. Quite unscientific.

Please note that I am not saying Lindzen and Curry are unintelligent or legally insane. The question of their intellectual sanity is arguable.

Nyood , it must be disappointing for you, that you cannot suggest anyone 'better' than Lindzen or Curry. Nor am I aware of any 'better' contrarians, capable of providing even a small amount of evidence to challenge the mainstream science.

And I will not bother to detail all the falseness of your ideas about the Hockeystick. It is one more area where you seem very reluctant to educate yourself ~ likewise with Climategate !

Here Are 3 Climategate Myths That Have Not Aged Well

nigelj at 16:40 PM on 2 December, 2019

nyood @56

"you accept the political behaviour by the "11" as legit and only consequent. "

Virtually all organisations have their office politics. I accept this isn't always a great thing, but the problem for me is you are not providing convincing evidence that the scientists in question have done anything significantly wrong. You are not being objective.

"In the end the IPCC is not researching itself but only analyzing and interpreting and they have a clear mandate, so even the egomaniac behaviour of M.Mann can be excused, he is only doing his job."

The only mandate is the IPCC have to review the science and see where it leads. You have provided no evidence otherwise. Careful you dont slander people. Real sceptics are clear about what they mean by 'mandate'

"It is just not fair, the IPCC is mising an organ that tries to falsify itself, here you will claim that they do that carefully, I will say: This is up to the skeptics that are cornered, shamed and excluded and people like Lindzen or Curry are no lunatics, just to name the best.

Its a interesting point you make and I agree we need sceptical points of view, but that does not mean I have to agree with what the sceptics say, and it does not mean its ok for a scientific journal to have a board completely dominated by sceptics and Mann was justified in being annoyed by this, and scientists were justified by being annoyed by the Soon / Balinaus paper as pointed out by PC above. You have to see things in context. This was one paper and scientists haven't taken the same stance over all sceptics papers. If they had, their might be cause for genuine concern.

"Sceptics cornered shamed and excluded?"

This is a wild exaggeration. Please note the IPCC goes out of its way to include sceptics in its review teams, eg Dr Vincent Grey. Please note the official investigations of climategate went out of their way to include sceptics. Please note that the scepetics have dozens of journals they can publish in, and they keep telling us how much research they publish.

Some sceptics deserve to be shamed: I have quoted a few examples such as Moncton and Soon, but you refuse to engage and discuss.

"9 separate investigations have completely exonerated all scientists of all charges"

"This might be true, at the same time they were scolding the "11" for a lack of ingenuousness and transparency"

There is no might be true about it. It is true.

"The "Hockestick" that you use in the OP is an audacity and always will be."

This is a composite of multiple detailed studies of the MPW. Not sure what more you would expect. How many studies would be enough for you?

Calling it an audacity doesn't make it an audacity. Perhaps it doesn't tell you want you want to see, so you throw mud at it.

"This is the political thinYou know this. You know that warming periods are missing. "

All I know is all the studies of the MPW I have seen show it was weak and I've seen dozens of studies. I have no particular reason to doubt their veracity. Manns analysis was criticised for some bad statstics or something but the shape of his graph has been replicated over and over by other scientists using different methods. Thats good enough for me. Why would that not satisfy you?

You sound like you are just angry that the science doesn't match how you want it to be, for whatever reason.

Here Are 3 Climategate Myths That Have Not Aged Well

Philippe Chantreau at 15:57 PM on 2 December, 2019

I can only infer from your response that you condone the pitiful Soon/Baliunas piece and associated perversion of peer-review as "acceptable" scientific behavior. So be it then.

The IPCC compiles scientific research, published in scientific journals. Its goal is to identify where the weight of the evidence points. If Curry or Lindzen have insights to share, they need to hack it out in the literature, like everyone else.

Here Are 3 Climategate Myths That Have Not Aged Well

nyood at 14:35 PM on 2 December, 2019

@nigelj, Philippe Chantreau. Comments 53, 55.

Thanks for all the detailed replies, i can see where you are coming from and that you accept the political behaviour by the "11" as legit and only consequent. I can not change this view, only express that it does not go along with my understanding of scientific behaviour.

In the end the IPCC is not researching itself but only analyzing and interpreting and they have a clear mandate, so even the egomaniac behaviour of M.Mann can be excused, he is only doing his job.

It is just not fair, the IPCC is mising an organ that tries to falsify itself, here you will claim that they do that carefully, I will say: This is up to the skeptics that are cornered, shamed and excluded and people like Lindzen or Curry are no lunatics, just to name the best.

To the moderators reponse which i want to shorten with:

"9 separate investigations have completely exonerated all scientists of all charges"

This might be true, at the same time they were scolding the "11" for a lack of ingenuousness and transparency.

Since i am called upon to read the OP again i want to conclude with a final note and then i will stop bothering you:

The "Hockestick" that you use in the OP is an audacity and always will be.

You know this. You know that warming periods are missing. You are aware of that it is targeting the public and media that do not know better.

It is the very manipulative method that you accuse the skeptics of.

This is the political thinking and acting i am talking of.

Harnessing gamification to defeat climate misinformation

Doug_C at 17:02 PM on 28 November, 2019

nigelj I think so, there is very little in the way of emotional intelligence being applied to climate denial. Ironically it depends on a hostile emotional reaction on the part of the target audience of the denial campaign. They have to be motivated to oppose any policies that may impact the financial interests of the people and companies central to this.

There's no question that this decades long campaign of denial of basic reality itself has been highly effective and understands the weaknesses in the scientific method. Which would follow because it was designed by some fairly well versed scientists like Fred Seitz and Fred Singer with others like Richard Lindzen picking up the ball later.

With virtually no concern at all for the catastrophic impacts that with business as usual will likely include mass extinction on Earth that could include us humans. Sociopathic behavior of a fundamental nature I'd say.

CO2 was higher in the past

Eclectic at 12:10 PM on 5 November, 2019

Nyood ,

continuing with my itemized points of post #90 and your itemized replies in post #92 (subsection) :-

(A) Your quote: <" ... can not apply CO2 with a clear value (uncertainty)">

Here, too much is lost in translation. You will need to make a re-translation of your idea into English, to achieve a meaningful statement. Secondly: "Saturation" is invalid, and "Lindzen" is (often) invalid.

(B) <"(B) same as (A)"> does not make sense as a reply.

(C) <"observational evidence support my theory today"> Yes, but only in part. The full picture of observational evidence (on CO2 greenhouse) renders your theory invalid [ungueltig].

(D) Geological evidence supports your theory only in part. The full picture of geological evidence renders your theory invalid.

Nyood ,

in my post #90 , the final and most important question (for you) was: "why do you choose to ignore evidence?" Note the word choose [waehlen].

You have not answered that question. Please do so, carefully and thoughtfully. It requires using insight [Einblick; Selbstverstaendnis].

CO2 was higher in the past

nyood at 05:28 AM on 5 November, 2019

"(1) The total climate forcing from 6000ppm CO2 is very roughly 40Wm^-2. There is no evidence
to suggest that climate was impacted by such forcings (from any source) during the Ordovician."

(1) The first sentence is axiomaticly using an estimated forcing of CO2 and therefore is a statement, though the consequences you state are true (none).
I state that CO2 forcing is max 1°C, reaching saturation with roughly PAL levels, pretty much always or already.

The Second sentence is true, the forcings that Do determine climate Temperature (T) are the two equilibrium forces
hothouse effect (HHE) and high landmass ratio within polar circles (LPC).
The faint sun paradox (FSP) underlines the strength and dominance of the terrestial forcings by allowing
the orrdovician-silurian events, HHE - LPC - HHE, to happen within the same T amplitude of all compareable HHE and LPC events untill today.
Neglecting CO2 and reducing the FPS or -4% TPI, in its forcings.

On top of that you devaluate some of your own arguments brought up in the coming sections. According to (1) you do not allow yourself any comparison from there on.

"(2) According to your cited reference (slides 11 & 14), the period with elevated CO2 significantly above 4000ppm
coincides with the Katian, a period of warming."

(2)This sentence has no expressiveness. HHE is happening anyways before and after the LPC.
The Katian documents the late transition state towards an LPC, in fact it doubts CO2 as a driver.
The discrepancy between assumed CO2 forcing and T is underlined by the general high CO2 level in the atmosphere, the planet will reach a glaciation from here on, to develop extreme ice shields despite CO2 levels this high. The FPS is solved as mentioned.
Furthermore forces mentioned in the Schwarck study explain the Katian warming already:
" Bodaevent:
Continental Flood Basalt Province.Alternatively to a bolide impact, LIPs have been postulated as warming triggers."

The forcing here that matters is Ice albedo reduction due to dust and ashes.
We can see this again when younger impacts and events causie warming rather then cooling.
An accumulation of dust and ashes at the poles are the result of a rather quickly cleanse of the atmosphere.

"(3) The period following the Katian sees falling CO2 and falling temperature.
The period of high glaciation during the Himantian sees CO2 estimates
dropping to perhaps 1500ppm. Relative to our recent ice ages with 180ppm CO2,
the Himantian CO2 forcing would thus be perhaps +11Wm^-2 while the relative solar forcing would be -8Wm^-2."

(3) "dropping to perhaps 1500ppm". The Schwarck study claims PAL up to x6 till x20. Please specify "perhaps"
and clarify why it is not PAL but minimum PAL x3 according to you. Where are Schwank et.al wrong ?

Reminding here that the level of CO2 does not matter in the first place unless it is below PAL (max -1°C), using my axioms.

Again you apply axiomatical values, which are not needed to explain temperatures, you are still using the FSP as a theory support, or to bring it in an equilibrium with
CO2 forcing, by trying to "ramp up" CO2 to a minimum of 1500ppm. Ironically this opposites many attempts
that try to lower CO2 to explain why a glaciation happens, despite ~6000ppm before and after the glaciation, in the first place. These views higlight the needs to explain CO2 forcings as assumed (too high).

"(4) Your assertion @89 is that the major forcing of climate is the tectonic positioning of land over polar regions.
Yet there was such land over polar regions throughout the Ordovician when these great swings of climate appear suggesting
the climate was being forced by entirely different mechnisms.

I would therefore suggest you have failed to provide any support for your assertion "CO2 is no driver at all." "

(4)This is partly true, as strong as it is the Ice has to build up, which happens very quickly in the hirnation, after the Bodaevent.
The middle to late ordovician is in transition, the continental drift towards the pole is remarkable.
Which is documented with the Silurian:

Ordovizium

Silur

Furthermore one has to take in account the varying lengths of time periods. The ordovician has been added historicaly,
it was included in the silurian before, therefore this interesting periods are "staunched".

Antarctica shows a trend towards having a "drop back" to the south pole, mentioned in the devonian and possible in the jurassic.
Maybe this happened here too and we need more accurate paleogeorgraphic data.

Answering two other comments here made by other users:

89.Moderator response:

"[PS] This is heading way into sloganeering territory. You are selecting only observations that support your ideas and ignoring completely all others. Science does not operate that like.
You cannot ignore measured increase in downwelling radiation, conservation of energy, nor explain past climate change with hand-wavy statements that violate physics.
If you have a theory that can match all observations, simpler and with better precision than current theory and concordant with laws of physics then by all means publish. Meanwhile,
current climate theory is the one that matches Occams razor. No more half-baked sophistry please."

My theory already has a better explanation with its radical attempt, that is the whole point. This is not "sloganeering" it is just a very radical attempt so it asks for situations where we have evidence that show CO2 as a significant driver, relating to topic.
I understand that my radical attempt makes it easy for me but i have to insist on the fairness that i am allowed to show that radical assumptions that i made, make more sense then your axiomatical assumptions.
There is the inherit problem that we eventualy go off topic but i have to ask you at this point which laws and forcings (radiation, energy conservation) are ignored by me in which way ?
I ignore factors as far as they allow me, hence ockham.
I insinuate that your axioms make less sence then mine. Your critisicsm lacks precission at this stage, when it comes to why my radical assumptions are not allowed and where they are not concordant with laws of physics.

90. Eclectic:

"Nyood, the importance of CO2 as a driver of climate, is supported by (A) theoretical calculations [Arrhenius and later scientists]; is supported by (B) experimental evidence; is supported by
(C) observational evidence; and is supported by (D) geological evidence. In other words, the mainstream science developed during the past 200 years.

The principle of Occam's Razor is a often a helpful guide to thinking : it is not in itself evidence and it is not in itself a method of proof.

Ockham (or Occam) did not support the cutting off or ignoring of evidence. Newton and Einstein did not ignore evidence. Nyood, why do you choose to ignore evidence?"

(A) Arrhenius,Planck Feldmann et.al give a frame, it is known that we can not apply CO2 with a clear value (uncertainty). This leads to a Saturation and or Lindzen et.al and therefore inevitable offtopic, as much as i am willing to discuss it.

(B) same as (A)

(C) I clame that observational evidence support my theory today: Dramatic CO2 increase with a moderate warming trend. My initial post was rightfully snipped of modern time references as offtopic.

(D) Geological evidence is the core of the LPC theory.

There is no consensus

Eclectic at 20:18 PM on 9 October, 2019

CThompson ,

insight is not your strong suit, apparently. Your claim of familiarity with carbon isotopes etcetera, is not congruous with your dismissal of mainstream physics & biology.

Just as (by analogy) someone who claims familiarity with mathematics . . . yet who alleges that 2+2=3 . . . is someone who is a tad less expert than he supposes.

But perhaps, CThompson, you can achieve some credibility by staying on topic. [Short musical interlude here, while orchestra plays Pride of Erin B . . . and readers wait for you to also mention Galileo, as well.] You have been repeatedly asked to say something substantive about the scientific consensus, to back your "beliefs". But you have produced nothing, so far.

A good start would be, if you can name a list of some credible scientists who have produced some evidence that the mainstream science is seriously incorrect. (And you must show what that evidence is ~ not just handwave at something unspecified.) If at all possible, please list a sufficiency of names to demonstrate that these alleged contrarians exist in numbers way beyond 1% of climate scientists. Would 20% "climate-skeptical" genuine climate scientists be achievable for you? Otherwise, surely your consensus claim falls flat on its face.

Hint: don't bother to use the delusional citizen-scientist crackpots, such as Lord Monckton, Dr Tim Ball, or (the late) John Coleman . . . 'cos they ain't no scientists !

And bear in mind, that the evidence is even more important than the exact percentage of contrarians. And that is where the contrarian scientists make a double Fail ~ their numbers are shrinking and their hypotheses [cosmic rays; 100-year oceanic cycles; Lindzen's "Iris" ; etcetera] have failed the reality test.

CThompson, the consensus exists because the evidence is clear.

I can see that you believe what you want to believe ~ and I was never under the illusion that you would be convinced by anything factual.

BTW, CThompson, you can educate me on one point ~ what is the meaning of the word "symmantic" which you use so often e.g. the "symmantic gymnastics" you mention in your last paragraph of #841 . The OED failed to list the word. Is it a new term for the latest display trick by that amazing young gymnast Ms Simone Biles ?

There is no consensus

Eclectic at 15:09 PM on 30 September, 2019

Errata @830 ,

no, those "500 scientists" are not fully 100% wrong. But if they were an aeroplane . . . then they'd be so far from flightworthy, that no engineer would let them out of the hangar ~ for fear that they'd crash just moving along the taxiing strip.

In less humorous terms: the "500" letter is so error riddled, that it would take a large number of paragraphs to detail it all. Not just errors, but deceptive rhetoric.

Politics :- as of those extremists who think that all the world's scientists are in a century-long plot/conspiracy to impose a communist world government, and are faking all the data to that end.

Religion :- as of those extremists who think that the Christian Deity is/will step in to correct any significant global warming. And Prof Lindzen who takes an [Old Testament] view that Jehovah won't allow more than slight warming (at least, that was his view during a 2006? interview with a sympathetic interviewer ~ and I haven't detected any change since.)

All these guys are intelligent (though the vast majority do not research or publish in the climate field) and all are so strongly influenced by Motivated Reasoning (political/religious) that they end up producing nonsense.

Errata, if you are not inclined to some hours of heavy reading at websites like NASA, AAAS, U.K. Royal Society, etc . . . . then you might enjoy some youtube videos by Potholer54 (science journalist) on climate matters. He debunks a lot of the common myths which have been circulating.

Potholer54 is polite & amusing [ how refreshing ! ].

You will be especially amused by his 5 short videos exposing the "Monckton Bunkum" mendacities of Lord Monckton (who is a sort of pop star among denialists . . . denialists who fawn on him, especially at WattsUpWithThat website.)

The partisan "Green New Deal" is just local American politics, and is not a consequence (or reflection) of genuine climate science. Best to first understand real climate science: and only then give thought to remediation of the AGW situation.

Climate denier scientists think these 5 arguments will persuade EU and UN leaders

LFC at 07:41 AM on 26 September, 2019

Impressive letter coming from 500 "scientists"! There are 14 "ambassadors" signing the letter so let's have a look. Richard Lindzen? OK, he's a scientist though of course one that has been wrong repeatedly. Now HERE's a name that stands out; "The Viscount Monckton of Brenchley, United Kingdom". Yes indeed, the bug-eyed man who is literally nuts is one of their "ambassadors." That's more than enough for me to dismiss the entire thing without even attempting an analysis.

Climate denier scientists think these 5 arguments will persuade EU and UN leaders

MA Rodger at 22:02 PM on 12 September, 2019

The OP suggests this silly denialist letter to the EU "represents the best case that climate deniers can make against the existence of a climate crisis." I feel that needs some qualification as it is a small set of denialists who came up with the silly five point 'oh-no-it's-not' rebuttal.

At the end of January we hear of a large number of academics writing to the Belgian "federal and regional governments." I cannot see the actual letter sent but it did result in swivel-eyed denialists from the Netherlands responding with a point-by-point counter-argument which was quickly translated for the English-speaking deniosphere.

(The authorship of the denial is given as the Climate Intelligence Foundation which is described as "a new Foundation that is funded by worried wealthy citizens. The Foundation focuses on independent public information. She does that by telling the entire climate story." somewhat similar to the nonsense spouted by the UK's GWPF who make out they are an educational charity (& thus trouser taxpayers money to fund their lies). The odd thing with this authorship for an OP posted 1st Feb 2019 is the Climate Intelligence Foundation (soon gaining the name CLINTEL) was not started until the end of March 2019, according to one of its co-founders. who says in this video that it will be set up "tomorrow" with the launch seemingly a couple of days later.)

The point-by-point counter-argument of early Feb runs to seven points. The first five of these present identical argument to the silly denialist letter, although the letter has hardened the message a bit. The first five Feb points were - (1) Climate has always changed with warming from 1850, (2) Calling recent warming 100% anthropogenic is unscientific, (3) There is no discernable trends in floods & droughts & plagues of frogs, (4) Models are hypersensitive to CO2 so any warming CO2 causes will be mild and nature can cool as well as warm. (5) The cost to Belgium & Holland of AGW mitigation is massive for "negligible and immeasurable" gain.

(These five from February are pretty-much the same as the five in the silly denialist letter of August. The February version adds (6) AGW mitigation is not more cost-effective than doing nothing, (7) They mix up a clean environment, which all agree with, with AGW mitigation.)

So the grand denialist message is no more than a knee-jerk response to a letter from Belgian academics supporting stronger action on AGW. That it has folk like Richard Lindzen signing-up to it when he disagrees with parts of it is presumably more a mark of solidarity than a mark of wholehearted agreement.

Millions of times later, 97 percent climate consensus still faces denial

MA Rodger at 20:37 PM on 20 August, 2019

Doug_C @21/22 & @25.
I think we are mainly talking past each other here. Perhaps to complete the trade of AGW 'credentials', I have been bashing on about the need to reduce our GHG emissions for only 38% of my life-to-date. I very quickly learnt that such a message is not something that easily yields meaningful results.

We agree that the scientific uncertainty within the subject is not the uncertainty wielded by denialists, although they will happily add it to their own accumulated pile of uncertainties. We agree there is no doubt that the scientific consensus dictates the need to quickly reduce GHG emissions to zero. And we seem to agree that the 3% non-consensus is today entirely non-scientific.

You do react to my assertion that there is scientifically a "looney fringe" that happily exaggerates AGW and which matches that denialist 3%. It is not as prominent as the 3% and it isn't so detatched from the science as the 3%. (And there are those non-scientific voices that exaggerate AGW even further.) Such exaggeration is often wielded by denialists as reason to ignore the science.
[Strangely there has been warning from denier Richard Lindzen that the most basic non-scientific denialist argument is damaging to his denialism (He says you couldn't hire folk to do a better job - see from 12:00 in this 2012 talk in the Palace of Westminster.) but such mud doesn't seem to stick to denialists as it does to AGW.]

One point I would take serious issue with.
You consider "even a 5% chance we are facing a global crisis of this magnitude it should result in immediate action.[my bold]" Yet I fully understand why, within the political sphere, that would not happen. The big problem is not the '5%' (which of course is actually a lot higher, not significantly different to 100%). The big problems are threefold - (1) the timing of the "global crisis" in the future way beyond any political planning horizons (with the exception of SLR on building requirements). (2) the far-reaching actions required by that "immediate action." (3) and what can be called 'institutional denialism' - your Trans Mountain pipeline provides a good example of the lunacy that can ensue. Unless the message sweeps the institution, the counter message of 'continue-on-as-before' will have great strength and will tend to regain its prior position. So bye-bye message.

I will continue to object to use of the word "existential" without qualification. And the extinction of species and habitats is surely not such a qualification. (Note that denialists will counter by saying that the present sixth great extinction event isn't all down to AGW. And there are more powerful arguments that they fail to harness.)

Finally, I'm reluctant to drag Quantum Mechanics into this interchange as it is certainly not of primary consideration. Yes QM does provide the "understanding" of the physics but the impact of the physics is measureable without it, perhaps this epitomised by black body radiation being the evidence that led to identifying QM and its probabalistic physics.

@25 - "How do you reason with people who have strayed so far from rational thought?" Reason may have flown out of their window but do we give them a free pass to spread their nonsense? If you can make their arguments look ridiculous it will perhaps chip away at their denialism and it will surely dissuade onlookers from believing it.

Millions of times later, 97 percent climate consensus still faces denial

MA Rodger at 00:40 AM on 20 August, 2019

Doug_C @19,

I rather disagree with your comment or at least feel it sould be better explained.

There are certainly differing qualities of work that comprise denialism. There is a large protion of that denialist work that is incompatable with very basic science. (I'm not sure that your mention of Quantum Mechanics is entirely correct or helpful to your assessment.) There is also a large protion of that denialist work that is incompatable with scientific data and thus contrdicts the resulting inferences that can be established by that data. None of this is a great distance from your comment.

What I don't see is any remaining denialist work that is properly supported by evidence. The entirety of the 3% sitting beyond the 'consensus' is surely incompatable with the scientific data and it is actually not a proper constituent part of the science.

What I particularly feel is a step too far is suggesting that:-

"The few percents of research that show doubt are simply there as part of the uncertainty that is inherent in science, it may as well be stated in terms of a 100% consensus when it comes to evidence driving policy on global warming."

This statement is saying that there exists "uncertainty ... inherent in (the) science" which is exactly the denialist message. The likes of, say, Richard Lindzen or Judith Curry who constitute the 3% outside the 'consensus' will argue that there is enough uncertainty to infer that Climate Sensitivity is low and thus AGW will not be a problem.

Now, we can see that Lindzen with his cloud iris theorising or Curry with her large natural climate wobbles are part of the scientific process. But the doubt they may have sown scientifically is long dispelled. What we are left with is the likes of Lindzen & Curry continuing to spread their now-unscientific message to policymakers as though it was legitimate science. It is unscientific to represent these messages as scientific and their messages ar become part of the "finely tuned stream of disinformation" (although the "tuning" may not be a conscious process on their part).

And masquerading as legitimate science, their message can then be presented as though it had the same scientific standing as the IPCC Assessment Reports rather than a loony fringe opinion, indeed one balanced by those who grossly exaggerate AGW.

I note you use the word "existential" without making plain to what it applies - ie what it is that has its existence threatened by AGW. I would suggest that it is but that loony fringe (that is balanced by the denialist looney fringe) that describes AGW as an existential threat to the human race when AGW is surely only an existential threat to the world economy whose collapse would not be a pretty sight and likely reduce human populations to a fraction of today's total.

Climate's changed before

MA Rodger at 22:56 PM on 30 July, 2019

TVC15 @770,
Well, let that be a lesson for you!!
Denialism isn't logical. It turns folk into swivel-eyed loons.

To correct his nonsense-
♣ It was 3 million years ago (not 2) that North & South America collided and joined up, a process that did kick off the Arctic glaciation which then resulted in c3 million years of ice ages. And over tha last 1 million years the ice ages were significantly bigger. Presumably the present warming that is bringing this 3-million-year-period to an end can be blamed on the collision of the USSR and the Republic of China with the United States of America, these all constituting significantly large land masses.
♣ You probaly could argue the Arctic was ice-free 100,000 years ago but only through the peak of the summer melt season (as in the Arctic Ocean having the levels of summer ice we would declare today to be ice-free).
♣ 15,000 years ago we were still coming out of the last ice age. We were out nearer 10,000 years ago (as the graphed ice core data clearly shows).
Ice Core Temperatures
♣ The extreme global temperature changes since the Last Glacial Maximum were nothing like "10-15 degrees C" except at a regional level (ie Greenland). And the period over which these increases occurred (the data graphed shows two large sudden Greenland increases in the last 20,000 years - +12ºC at 14.5kybp & +9ºC at 11.5kypb - which were not 10-year periods of increase but 200-year periods. I don't think the ice cap volumes exist in the northern hemisphere to achieve a repeat performance today.
♣ The relative temperature of different interglacials has been discussed in this thread before and so we know the swivel-eyed loon is having difficulty hearing this particular message. So, yes, we do think he is "just being crazy" and that craziness is why he has such difficulty accepting the science and its implications.
♣ With regard to emisions controls, we can, of course, treat all people on Earth equally as the denialist wishes. The science says that anthropogenic CO2 emissions of more than 700Gt(C) will be bad and with 7.7 billion folk living on the planet, that would be an allowance of 91t(C) per head(historical) ('historical' as your allowance-use is handed down from previous generations).
So let's calculate that allowance using Global Carbon Project figures and present-day population. Note these GCP territorial emission data only go back to 1959. Getting full historical figures would be possible (& correcting for increasing population could be factored in) but the general result will not change. That would mean that China still had an outstanding carbon allowance of 54t(C) per head, India 82t(C)/head while the good old USA has exceded its allowance and so has to pay back 238t(C)/head into the collective kitty. If full historical emissions were included, the US pay-back would be greater still, not qute as great as the UK pay-back if taken to the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. (From 1959 the UK pay-back is a trifling 47t(C)/head). Luxembourg from 1959 has a pay-bacl 0f 199t(C)/head but would be the country facing the biggest carbon-emissions pay-back with full historic figures.

Denial is a sad thing to behold. Denialist folk become happy to dismiss the evidence witout any assessment of what they are ignoring. It is simply done. "The IPCC assessment reports? A complete pack of lies!!"
More telling is the misuse of the remiaining information that you do accept. As you are ignoring whole swathes of actual data, your sources tend to be limited and adjusting the findings beyond that limited evidence becomes a necessity. So some, no all previous ice ages were warmer, golly, 10 degrees warmer, 20, 100 degrees warmer. We should be grateful we live now and not then!!!!
And how does the following rate on the scale of untruthfulness given it comes from a real climatologist, abet a retired one. It's from Lindzen's seminar at the UK House of Commons in 2012. (@ 32.20mins in the first videoed part of his talk linked here. (You-tube link here)

"Does it [20th century temperature increase] matter?"
"Okay so some points to take away from the global mean temperature anomaly record. Changes are small. They are in the order of several tenths of a degree. Changes are not causal but rather the residue of regional changes. Changes in the order of several tenths of a degree are always present at virtually all time-scales. And obsessing on the details of this record is more akin to a spectator sport or tea-leaf reading than a serious contributor to scientific efforts."
"Say, at least so far. I mean if some day I shoud see the changes are twenty times what I've seen so far, that would be certainly remarkable but nothing so far looks that way."

The implication is that we have here a retired climatologist who considers a gobal average temperature increase of less than (0.7 x 20=) 14ºC to be unremarkable. Are we then supposed to take such a retired climatologist as a serious authority on climate?

What perhaps we cannot judge is how much a denier knows he is misrepresenting the data he presents, that he is effectively lying. I suppose gross exageration can be justified because the denialist message is to them the correct message and, and denialists don't have the resources to counter all the lies that you climate alarmists generate with all your fake IPCC science.

Skeptical Science New Climate Research for Week #26, 2019

KR at 11:08 AM on 5 July, 2019

campcarl - According to the abstract of that paper, they:

...investigate how introducing a potential iris feedback, the cloud-climate feedback introduced by parameterizing Cp to increase with surface temperature, affects future climate simulations within a slab-ocean configuration of the Community Earth System Model...

So they are running simulations with a postulated but unsupported iris feedback, a mechanism postulated by Lindzen many years ago in a series of debunked papers, and seeing how that affects a simplistic climate model.

I really don't see how that's particularly newsworthy.

Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?

DPiepgrass at 17:07 PM on 14 June, 2019

Michael sweet, Abbott 2011 is an opinion piece, not a study, and while Abbott is clearly intelligent, so is climate science denier Richard Lindzen, who has "published more than 200 scientific papers and books".

Nuclear issues are clearly not Abbott's main academic focus. He has made claims that are obviously unreasonable, and when such claims are not backed by citations, I see no reason to give them as much weight as the information I've seen in technical presentations by, say, Jesse Jenkins, expert in energy systems, or Dr. Brian Sheron, former Director of the Office of Nuclear Regulatory Research, or MSR engineers such as Kirk Sorensen or Ian Scott, or even this discussion of how radioactivity decreases over time in HLW. While fair and reliable sources are hard to find, I've been around the block enough times to know roughly what's what.

Anyway, I'll certainly share what I've been able to find from the scientific literature on nuclear issues. Chiefly:

On Radiation Risk

The main disease caused by radiation is non-CLL leukemia (in some cases there are other risks, e.g. radioactive iodine can cause thyroid cancer.) Here is a "meta-analysis of leukemia risk from protracted exposure to low-dose gamma radiation". It concluded, based on 23 other studies, that the excess relative risk (ERR) of non-CLL leukemia from 100 mGy of radiation is roughly 19% (it is unclear to me if 100 mGy is different from 100 mSv). Based on a typical non-CLL leukemia rate of 10 cases per 100,000 people per year, ERR=0.19 would increase this by roughly 1.9 cases per year (1 in 53,000 people). The risk varies as a function of time since exposure, but this particular study seemed to completely ignore the issue. If one assumes ERR=0.19 every year for 25 years after exposure, the chance of cancer from exposure to 100 mGy would be about 0.05%. "25 years" is a guess on my part, so if you can find any study that quantifies the risk more clearly as a "1-in-X chance" or as a loss of DALYs, I'd love to see it! For reference, the natural environment gives an average radiation dose around 2.4 mSv per year (Hendry et al 2009 citing UNSCEAR), though I've heard urban environments tend to block some of this. The Canadian NSC limit for radiation workers is 100 mSv over 5 years.

Waddington et al 2017 concluded that "relocation was unjustified for the 160,000 people relocated after Fukushima," since the radiation dose most residents would have received (after returning from a brief evacuation period) was quite small and the loss of life expectancy was 3 months. The paper notes that

No radiation deaths occurred during or following the accident, however there were a number of deaths directly attributed to the relocation and subsequent relocation of the Fukushima population. Hasegawa et al. (2015) summarise that “After the accident, mortality among relocated elderly people needing nursing care increased by about three times in the first 3 months after relocation and remained about 1·5 times higher than before the accident.”

It also says "Relocation was unjustified for 75% of the 335,000 people relocated after Chernobyl."

It is considered unlikely that cases of thyroid cancer in children have increased around Fukushima due to radiation (Suzuki 2016) as most I-131 disappears within weeks of an accident.

See also the EPA's Q&A for Radiological and Nuclear Emergencies.

Various sources mention that uncertainties remain regarding the risk of low doses of radiation. UNSCLEAR recommends, for example, that

Increases in the incidence of health effects cannot be attributed reliably to chronic exposure to radiation at levels that are typical of the global average background levels of radiation.
The Scientific Committee does not recommend multiplying very low doses by large numbers of individuals to estimate numbers of radiation-induced health effects within a population exposed to incremental doses at levels equivalent to or lower than natural background levels.
Increases in the incidence of hereditary effects among the human population cannot be attributed to radiation exposure.

I would submit that the reason for this uncertainty, despite much study, is that the effects are just too small to measure precisely.

There is no consensus

Eclectic at 11:52 AM on 27 May, 2019

JoeZ @801 ,

Yes, there are "scientists who aren't part of the consensus" ~ but there are hardly any climate scientists who would fit in that category. That is why the Consensus is only 99+% , not absolutely 100% . Far worse for your unstated position, JoeZ, those very few scientists had all produced hypotheses which have been thoroughly disproven (see Svensmark, Lindzen) . . . and worse again, they contain a high percentage of religious crackpots who are not strictly scientific in their mode of thinking.

Are they "stupid"? Well, stupid is a rather elastic term. I myself know a fellow who has a PhD and spent decades in scientific research [but not in climate-related matters] and yet he is a member of the local Flat Earth Society. Unsurprisingly, he is also in denial about global warming.

Is he stupid? He is pleasant, sociable, and intelligent ~ but that doesn't stop him from being quite wrong about important issues. Just like Lindzen & his comrades who are over-influenced by irrational religious beliefs or extremist political beliefs. They put their ego ahead of scientific thinking.

Also rather like your Mr Alex Epstein (who is an author, not a philosopher) who chooses to write a book, not submitting his ideas to the point-by-point criticism which would occur in the process of peer-review in a scientific paper. JoeZ, it is easy to write a book and have your unbalanced rhetoric sweep your ill-informed readers into a state of intellectual submission & adulation . . . just as it is easy to make a "documentary" film about a subject [ here, "The Great Global Warming Swindle" comes to mind ] where severely-doctored graphs and fallacious logic are employed. The general reading/viewing public are not to know how fake it all is, unless they take the trouble to apply critical thinking and to educate themselves on the basics of the issue.

In the end, JoeZ , it all comes down to evidence. And evidence is the thing lacking in the positions taken by those "non-consensus" scientists. The climate consensus exists because of the climate evidence.

There is no consensus

Eclectic at 01:10 AM on 26 April, 2019

Pl @785 ,

1. The original "attractor" theory (held up until the 1930's) was that the Earth's climate was self-correcting i.e. homeostatic within narrow limits. But that was disproven, as experimental & observational & paleo-climatic evidence mounted up. Satellite-based evidence has re-inforced that, too.

2. "Peer influence" is not a problem ~ because genuine scientists have a natural tendency to be contrarian & genuinely skeptical.

The consensus is pretty much unanimous for climatologists, because nowadays (unlike 50 or 100 years ago) the evidence for "CO2/AGW" is conclusive. There are no longer any "alternative theories" that hold any validity ~ the plausible alternative have been disproven (e.g. GW from variation in cosmic ray intensity; homeostatic cloud formation as an "Iris Effect"; long-cycle ocean current effects).

If you take time to learn more about the mechanisms influencing global climate, you will recognize that the (mere handful of) "dissenting" climatologists are offering only empty dissent . . . because they have nothing valid to back up their dissent. They are just running on automatic . . . such as the well-known retired Professor Lindzen, who has an Old Testament religious belief that the Earth has been designed to remain close to the Garden of Eden climate status. A few others suffer from extremist political beliefs, motivating them to cherry-pick / ignore the plain evidence.

Please note that the respected scientific journals welcome dissenting views provided that there is reasonable supportive evidence. (Journals and scientists gain prestige & fame by demonstrating valid contrarian evidence.)

But alas, every contrarian idea has failed the validity test, and there are extremely strong reasons why no "undiscovered" factor exists.

The temperature evolution after 2016 suggests hotter future

Eclectic at 12:05 PM on 23 March, 2019

ThinkingMan , it's always worthwhile to step back occasionally and look at the bigger context.

Global surface temperature had been at a fairly flat plateau for (roughly) 5,000 years of the Holocene Maximum ~ which has been followed by (roughly) 5 or 6,000 years of gradual decline (related to the Milankovitch cycle of insolation). Owing to the present relatively-low ellipticity of the Earth's orbit, the next glacial phase is due in 20-30,000 years ~ and may be skipped altogether since the oceans are being unusually warmed by AGW.

The Little Ice Age, the Medieval Warm Period, the Roman Warm Period etcetera are only tiny wiggles in comparison to the multi-millennial decline in temperature.

Against this long-term decline, you can see the last (roughly) 100 years demonstrates a temperature rise which is shooting upwards like a rocket. And is now surpassing the Holocene Maximum. IMO it is beyond ridiculous for denialists to assert that our modern-day global warming is the result of a 60-year oscillation in oceanic currents.

Yet that is what some of the (more intelligent) denialists assert. No need to waste your time reading Professor Curry's blog ~ she is still suggesting that "up to" 60% of modern warming could be caused by confluence of oceanic current cycles. Quite marvellous it is, how a giant dose of "Motivated Reasoning" can so completely distort the rational thinking of an educated intelligent person.

You see rather similar bizarre thinking coming from Lindzen & Spencer & others. (And much of the remainder of denialists are still loudly proclaiming that CO2 has zero or negligible Greenhouse effect.)

97 hours of consensus: caricatures and quotes from 97 scientists

Marathon at 06:30 AM on 21 February, 2019

Magma, The three deniers are John Christy, Richard Lindzen, and Roy Spencer.

Climate's changed before

Eclectic at 16:46 PM on 16 December, 2018

Ed @ 621/622 ,

you don't really advance your case (whatever it is) by waving a rhetorical hand in the direction of Copernicus, Galileo, Einstein, and LeMaitre.

Copernicus and Galileo were (strictly speaking!) representing the scientific consensus of their age (an age of very few scientists, indeed). Their opponents (shall we label them denialists?) were a group of rich & powerful men (in the upper echelons of the Papal state) who supported an evidence-deficient position. Easy to see a parallel with the rich & powerful magnates of the upper echelons of the fossil fuel industry . . . plus c'est la meme chose. Even more irony, in that the modern-day Pope denounces those same science-deniers.

Einstein and LeMaitre advanced the physics/astrophysics science ~ but they did not trash the pre-existing body of science.

# Attacking the consensus scientific orthodoxy [especially in climate matters] ought to be done with humility [and genuine skepticism], lest you join the ranks of the Dunning-Krugerites.

"Uncertainty" about ECS (currently the most probable ECS figure being around 3 or 3.5 degrees) is an interesting scientific question ~ but in no way justifies delaying on decently fast transition to a nett-zero-emission economy. After all, we citizens/voters/politicians/parents ought to be intensely practical in prudent risk-managing.

My apologies, but my little laptop is struggling to access "figure 8.14 and 8.15 of AR4 WG1". Perhaps, Ed, you would be kind enough to upload those charts and explain how you think they undermine the mainstream position.

Strangely, the same goes for Dr Humlum's "climate4you" illustrations. (I have no difficulty accessing the WUWT and Climateetc websites.) On the little I know of Dr Humlum: he has (scientifically speaking) a poor track record indeed. * That is not to say he must therefore be wrong, on the cloudiness issue. But it seems the somewhat-related "Iris Hypothesis" of Prof Lindzen has fallen flat on its face. And on a second point: a "cloudiness drop" providing a warming forcing of "roughly 4 W/m^2" has much the same problem I mentioned above in post #619.D . . . that if true, then there must also be some Unknown Mysterious Cooling Factor that nicely follows/matches the rising arc of CO2's warming forcing effect. Which seems absurdly unlikely, if not quite impossible.

(And which would leave only another 5 impossible things to believe before breakfast.)

The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change

One Planet Only Forever at 01:35 AM on 24 November, 2018

There appears to be confusion due to incorrect conflating of:

Scientific consensus of understanding (development of an emergent truth that is open to correction if substantive new evidence is contrary to the developing understanding).
An individual's helpfulness in efforts to improve awareness and understanding: in the field of understanding, among leaders in society, among the general population.

Individuals are not 'part of the 97% or 3%'. The consensus measure is regarding how much of the 'literature that is a legitimate part of the effort to improve the understanding of an area/field of understanding' is aligned with a developing understanding. As the degree of alignment increases it can be understood that an emergent truth is being established (an understanding that is unlikely to be significantly altered by new investigation in that field of learning).

An evaluation of all of an individual's actions is the basis for determining how helpful they are to the improvement of the understanding and to the increased 'correct' awareness and understanding among leaders and the general population.

While the likes of Judith Curry, Roy Spencer and Richard Lindzen may have their names on a specific piece of literature that is included in the 97% side of the climate science consensus evaluation regarding the understanding that human activity is significantly impacting the global climate, that does not make them 'a part of the 97% side'.

Individual merit would be determined by their collective actions regarding the understanding. That evaluation would undeniably indicate that the likes of Judith Curry, Roy Spencer and Richard Lindzen are very unhelpful (harmful) to the improvement of awareness and understanding the understanding that human activity is significantly (and negatively) impacting the global climate that future generations will suffer the consequences of and the challenge of trying to maintain perceptions of prosperity that are the result of a portion of humanity getting away with benefiting from the damaging unsustainable burning of fossil fuels (benefiting in ways that do not develop sustainable improvements for the future of humanity - like perceptions of reduction of poverty that cannot be sustained if the damaging impact creation of fossil fuels is significantly and rapidly curtailed like it has to be in order to minimize the damage done to the future generations of humanity).

The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change

michael sweet at 00:28 AM on 24 November, 2018

Art Vandelay,

Richaed Lindzen cannot be considered part of the 97%. He has widely criticized the IPCC. The IPCC report is the basis of the 97% claim. He probably also claims to be part of the consensus to muddy the waters when he speaks.

Many deniers now claim to be part of the 97% to muddy the waters. The mainstream press allows themn to get away with it.

The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change

Art Vandelay at 13:12 PM on 23 November, 2018

Eclectic @10, "it would be interesting to hear your reasons for wishing to see a more detailed analysis of climate scientist opinion."

Just curiosity really, because (in my view) the 97% consensus isn't necessarily meaningful if it includes persons with all levels of concern, including almost no concern at all - as is the case with Lindzen & Spencer.

What would be nice to see is a breakdown on level of concern, so that it's immediately apparent what percentage of scientists are: very concerned, reasonably concerned, slightly concerned, etc..

Understanding of course that such a breakdown would probably require some sort of formal survey to be undertaken.

Also of interest would be similar analysis of the opinion of scientists from related disciplines, which could include some earth sciences, physics and mathematics.

Lastly, there does appear to be a correlation with age, with older persons tending to be less concerned about the impacts of climate change, and this appears to hold within the science community too. The implication of this should be an increasing level of consensus over time, even without considering other factors. This of course assumes that a person's level of concern is unlikely to fall with increasing age if it's been established during formative years.

The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change

Eclectic at 11:45 AM on 23 November, 2018

Art Vandelay @10 , it would be interesting to hear your reasons for wishing to see a more detailed analysis of climate scientist opinion.

Yes, that is a rather separate matter from the perceptions (of the AGW issue) held by politicians and the man in the street.

But we already know the high-90's consensus opinion of mainsteam scientists. The Cook-et-al 97% figure is already more than a decade behind the times [the study published 2013 but based on cumulative figures from early 1990's onwards]. And we know from human nature, that however thoroughly conclusive the scientific evidence is, there will always be a small percentage of scientists & scientifically-literate people who will continue to "deny" the physical realities (for their own reasons of psychological perversity and/or political extremism). So why analyse the last few percent of these? They won't change. Personally, I think Spencer, Curry, Lindzen & similar, do not qualify to be counted in the so-called 97% majority, because their position(s) are not scientifically logical.

What matters is A/ the science itself, which is revealed in the scientific papers published (and you will have noted how "contrarian" papers are becoming rarer and rarer ~ getting close to zero% ~ and far more importantly, the contrarian papers are entirely lacking in valid counterpoints against the mainstream scientific assessment)

. . . and B/ the education of and opinions held by politicians & the general voters.

The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change

One Planet Only Forever at 01:59 AM on 23 November, 2018

Art Vandelay@8,

A more important measure than 'grudging acceptance of climate science to a limited degree' is how helpful a person is to improving the more correct awareness and understanding of climate science in the general population and among leadership.

By that measure Judith Curry, Roy Spencer, Richard Lindzen are dismal damaging failures.

As a case in point, I frequently visit Roy Spencer's site (just for the amusement, but in case he actually presents a meaningfully insightful point).

Roy Spencer spends almost all of his time making up stories to refute the need for the burning of fossil fuels to be curtailed. The lack of validity of his story-telling is consistent. He also spends a significant amount of time creating creative ways to intrerpret satellite data in an attempt to refute that unacceptable warming and climate change is happening (he has been forced to partially correct his misinterpretations of the satellite data many times).

The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change

Art Vandelay at 17:27 PM on 22 November, 2018

It should be noted too that Judith Curry, Roy Spencer, Richard Lindzen et al, are all painted as skeptics or "deniers", but are in fact members of the 97% consensus.

Perhaps a more valuable statistic would be one that indicated a percentage of (climate) scientists who hold the view that it's a serious threat requiring urgent, universal remedial action.

How (not) to talk about Climate Change

nigelj at 05:06 AM on 7 November, 2018

citizenschallenge, nothing will change lindzens mind, he is a full time professional scientific crank. 10% of people still think tobacco is harmless. All we can do is try to convince normal people who might have some normal healthy scepticism.

How (not) to talk about Climate Change

citizenschallenge at 01:50 AM on 7 November, 2018

I'm curious how would one apply this method to counter the malicious science by slander and retortic that Dr. Richard Lindzen has been peddling with such success for decades now (though his general thesis hasn't changed one iota)?

Climate's changed before

Eclectic at 19:24 PM on 3 November, 2018

Waterguy13 @ #614 ,

What source do you base your comment on? The earlier mainstream climate models have done a fairly good job with their projections during the past 30 years or so. They can be criticized for minor inaccuracy, in that they A) somewhat overestimated the tropical mid-trospheric "hot spot" , and B) underestimated arctic warming, and C) underestimated sealevel rise.

But on the whole, they have done quite well. In comparison, Dr Lindzen's model has done appallingly badly [he predicted cooling!] . . . and Lindzen still has difficulty acknowledging the reality of the actual ongoing global warming.

Waterguy13 , you very much need to explain your strange comment.

There are genuine climate alarmists, but they're not in the same league as deniers

michael sweet at 00:03 AM on 16 July, 2018

Nigelj,

My point is that when Hansen originally made his projection that 5 meters sea level rise was a better estimate than the IPCC estimate many called him an alarmist. As time has passed the IPCC estimate has increased substantially while Hansen has maintained his top estimate. Current high sea level estimates by mainstream scientists approach Hansen's estimate and he no longer can be considered "alarmist". The original IPCC estimate (from around 1990) is clearly overly optimistic.

"Alarmist" scientific estimates are very rare. Meanwhile deniers like Lindzen, who in 1989 testified next to Hansen that he thought temperatures would stay unchanged, write Op-Ed pieces in the Wall Street Journal. Curry publishes bullshit about Hansens 1989 projections. The deniers claim that accurate projections are "alarmist".

We have to support scientists like Hansen and Waldhams when they speak their minds. Otherwise we contribute to the censorship of the majority scientific opinion that currently occurs.

In posts above I copied dates from other posts. On review I find that Waldhams projection originally comes from 2007 when he suggested that sea ice could be completely gone by 2016 +/- 3 years. Note his projection was made before the 2007 sea ice collapse. At the time mainstream projections for ice free were 50+ years in the future. He has maintained his projection to today wile mainstream projectins now are decadesw earlier than they were.

The mainstream has come closer to Waldham than they are to previous mainstream projections. Even if it is 2030 before the first ice free year, Waldham will have been much closer when he made the projection. Every January many of the posters on the Arctic Sea Ice Forum have long discussions about whether this year is finally the one where the ice will collapse. Waldham's projection is still in play, to call him an alarmist is to contribute to scientific censorship.

Climate Science Denial Explained: The Denial Personality

Nick Palmer at 09:33 AM on 26 April, 2018

"So your key audience is not the guy you’re responding to, but fence-sitters who may be listening in. There are more silent doubters than vocal deniers; always remember that"

I've always though this in my online denialism rebuttals. I tend not to bother much with the dumbest remarks, which tend to be just a couple of short sentences but I've come to find that the most dangerous, and trickiest to counter, tend to be those who are in the least denial of climate science - the lukewarmers, who believe that climate sensitivity is much less than the vast majority of climate scientists say. To them, the global temperatures won't reach the heights expected by the IPCC position and we may still stay in the Goldilocks zone, where we may still get more benefits from a low rise than disbenefits.

It is my opinion, although I can't prove it, that many of the 'dumb' arguments one sees endlessly used by apparently intelligent educated people in public positions, such as Senators addressing Congress, are, to them, justified political deception. I suspect that their core beliefs are in the 'lukewarmer' views of Lindzen, Spencer etc yet they realise that if they tried to used those arguments to sway the minds of the public, it would backfire. Admitting that greenhouse gases warm the climate, that the planet is warming, that we are having an effect but that a small minority of scientists say it won't come to much, while the majority say it's very risky, is a very weak argument - the ordinary person is well able to make a personal risk assessment. That is why those movers and shakers, who are personally convinced by the lukewarmers, use the couple of hundred simplistic memes as listed and debunked on Skepticalscience.com, to influence the voting public. Ever wonder why Senators and the institutes keep using these memes, that they know for sure have been debunked a thousand times? Remember, these people are really not stupid! it's because the memes work very well at shaking the confidence of the public in mainstream climate science. These short pieces of disinformation are very convincing to the general public, not that they definitvely 'prove' anything but they certainly succeed at creating doubt and uncertainty and those who want to avoid those political moves that mainstream climate science mandates benefit by using the memes to try to prevent those moves happening.

Climate Science Denial Explained: The Denial Personality

Eclectic at 00:32 AM on 26 April, 2018

Leslie @4 , your report of the communication from the "blatant denialist" is interesting yet not so very uncommon.

Quite apart from his being [to quote his own phrasing] "arrogant and foolish" in his unscientific nonsense . . . he is also being arrogant and foolish enough to believe he himself knows the mind of God. He seems unaware of the irony of his stated position.

We see this overweening self-confidence likewise, in Dr Spencer and Dr Lindzen — though Lindzen's self-confidence derives from his ideas of Yahweh rather than Spencer's more modern Christian God. The fundamentalist concept of a rapidly approaching End of Days, does make it a little strange that someone [such as Leslie's correspondent] would bother to spend time communicating with the [probably] inevitably-damned Leslie. (And it doesn't sound like he is seriously attempting to "convert" Leslie.) Also, why bother disputing with Leslie, when (allegedly) nothing much is going on (other than a few relatively minor hurricanes etc) and nothing much could go on, until the obvious-to-all and utterly calamitous events of the Final Days ?

Maybe the guy is suffering from an anxiety that he might not be right after all? Maybe he is worried that he will be left with egg on his face, when the world continues to go gradually pear-shaped (exactly as the real scientists are indicating) and he will finally have to say: "Why hast Thou forsaken me?"

Yes, an interesting case there, Leslie. Wash your hands of him.

Ivar Giaever - Nobel Winning Physicist and Climate Pseudoscientist

Eclectic at 13:05 PM on 15 March, 2018

ATC @94 , you might benefit from watching the video recording of Dr Giaever addressing a meeting composed of Nobel Laureates & bright young scientists, where he states that (from a cold start) he researched online to gather views & evidence on AGW . . . and he spent only half a day or so gathering information. On the strength of that, he started lecturing the expert climate scientists on how they were all doing it wrong. The video is quite painful to watch, as Giaever (in full lecturing pontification mode) tells the audience how to do science — while himself demonstrating the exact opposite of good scientific thinking.

It must have been an absolutely cringeworthy experience, for the poor audience. But possibly the audience was able to tolerate the debacle — by remembering how sometimes even the most distinguished savants can deteriorate into "going Emeritus". [ NB — the cartoon in post #66, by poster KR ].

Somewhat younger scientists (such as Spencer and Lindzen) appear to have their rational abilities severely compromised by old-fashioned religious concepts (concepts which are condemned by modern religious figures such as the Pope).

Some scientists, such as Dr Koonin, exhibit similar irrationality about AGW science — but their psychological motivation is less clear (to me).

Nevertheless, Atc, with or without obvious causation of their intellectual dysfunction, there is an interesting tiny minority of practising "scientists" who are in full denial of the facts of climate change. Whether influenced by monetary inducement (or the ego-boosting inducements of fame/celebrity in newsprint or the invitations to address Congressional/Senatorial committees) or for reasons of extremist religious attitudes, or from having a perverted contrariness of personality . . . or for a mixture of these reasons . . . we find such people existing !!

Atc, I am slightly surprised that you have not observed such human frailties around you, in your life up till now. The existence of such people, does in no way indicate that there must be some merit in what they say. You can even find intelligent Flat-Earthers !!

Atc, please educate yourself to at least a moderate level of climate science knowledge. You will very soon see why the mainstream consensus position is held by (very close to) 100% of climate scientists. And as you progress through life, I hope you will come to recognize that there will always be a minority of crazies who can never be convinced by truth and logic.

Anti-vaccers, climate change deniers, and anti-GMO activists are all the same

Eclectic at 12:49 PM on 21 January, 2018

Alan @51 — Again, you are failing to achieve clarity [including validity] in the expression of your lines of argument.

Your Paragraph 2 -- <"... even if there are thousands of well-established scientists agreeing on one theory, they could be proved wrong by only one person..."> (unquote) is a nonsense argument in the case of climate science. Modern climate science is based in the "hard" sciences of physics & inorganic chemistry i.e. in well-integrated science involving cross-linking of large numbers of strands (strands of basic scientific theory meshed with experimental & empirical evidence). Furthermore, regarding climate science, there is only about a score of "genuine" climate scientists who are [in modern parlance] Climate Deniers . . . and these 20 or so are unable to present any valid evidence or counter-hypothesis ! Worse, their ideas/statements seem mutually contradictory (as well as failing to possess plausibility !! ).

Of the <"... at least a few hundred to thousands of high-level scientists who are accusing the CCT** ..."> (unquote), they are likewise possessing no valid case . Instead, they lose their minds in a quagmire [ =swamp? ;-) ] of empty rhetoric and/or extremist political posturing . . . but they possess no actual scientific reasoning to support their positions [positions plural] . Sadly, some appear to be in their dotage, and some are possessed [ excuse pun ;-) ] by extremist/fundamentalist religious beliefs which prevent them from acknowledging reality [ e.g. Spencer, Lindzen ] , and some seem not to know one end of a Lapse Rate from t'other.

Evidence and logical reasoning, Alan — that is what the Deniers lack.

Your Paragraph 3 -- Alan, you make an illogical argument when you try to equate the "hard sciences" to the "soft sciences" [e.g. sociology] or the distinctly-less-than-hard sciences such as medical science (and your case of the New England Journal of Medicine). Apples and oranges, Alan. Without taking away from the vast achievements of medical science during the past 200 years [anesthetics, surgery, vaccinations, drugs, etc] nevertheless the experiment-based advances of modern medicine are usually impeded by a vast complexity of confounding factors (as well as by the effect of human psychology). These confounding complexities hamper the medical scientists in a way that does not exist in the vastly simpler area of physics/climate/meteorology. Alan, your comparison/analogy is not valid, and so your argument is not valid.

Your Paragraph 4 — Alan, nobody is mocking the most brilliant minds of the early centuries of science . . . but they lived in a very different scientific environment (from the cross-checking and weight of consistent evidence, found in the "hard sciences" of today).

Your Paragraphs 5 & 6 , — Alan, it is all about the evidence. The evidence supports the mainstream scientific consensus position (regarding climate). There is no actual supporting evidence to be found for the (many and incoherent) positions of the deniers /science-deniers /denialists /call-them-what-you-will. I myself would like to be able to dignify some of them with the term "contrarians" . . . but that cannot be, since to be a contrarian one must have something valid to base one's "counter-position" on. And that is exactly what the deniers lack (as well as lacking logical commonsense risk management, and lacking decent compassion for billions of other human beings) .

BTW, Alan, you also fail in your "local weather" argument . . . for instance while in the past two weeks or so, a small part [scientifically insignificant] of north-east North America has had a bitter cold snap — yet other parts of the world have been experiencing heat waves. Even worse for your line of argument : the New England cold snap may well, to a considerable extent, be a result of Arctic warming (Arctic warming being a consequence of AGW).

** Alan, the "Climate Change Theory" term you use is an odd one — not generally used by scientists (likewise, even more odd, is your contraction "CCT" which would be meaningless to educated people). Best to stick with standard English and standard/widely-used abbreviations, in climate discussions, Alan. There is already more-than-enough appallingly-poor communication in the discussion of important topics, in today's world !

Polar bear numbers are increasing

Eclectic at 19:21 PM on 20 December, 2017

Bruce @72 ..... with all due respect, Dr Crockford's expertise in evolution/speciation & hybridization of polar bears has near zero relevance to the modern situation where there is an extinction threat to the species.

Polar bears are evolved for a specialized diet, and they do not have the fall-back position of an omnivorous diet (such as possessed by their ursine relatives). The polar bears' hunting habitat is heading rapidly toward 100% loss over the next one-to-two centuries, thanks to Arctic warming (per AGW).

Polar bear numbers (and importantly their condition) can be very difficult to determine accurately. It is a bold, very bold, scientist who undertakes to publicly express a complacent attitude about the survival of a specialized mega-fauna carnivore which is undergoing almost complete loss of habitat. Especially bold, for a scientist who is not a specialist "at the coal face".

It appears Dr Crockford holds an outlier opinion, and is also making a mountain out of a molehill when it comes to relevant expertise.

As to whether she is receiving financial benefits (from propaganda organizations such as Heartland, GWPF or other slush funds) in the form of a retainer or fee-for-service or stipend [see for instance the case of Emeritus Professor Lindzen or maybe Dr Judith Curry] or receiving non-cash benefits for speaking engagements etcetera ..... a cynic like you Bruce would of course wish see an absolutely categorical denial from her, that "none of the above" benefits apply to the present financial year nor any years of the past decade. Alas, it is all too easy for propaganda organizations to arrange for covert benefits of various types.

All too often in this world, Bruce, situations are more "gray" than you would wish.

2017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming Digest #49

nigelj at 11:29 AM on 14 December, 2017

So from the EE news media article, the Heartland Institute has proposed a list of anyone and everyone including, lawyers and self-funded hobbyists, nuclear physicists, engineers, and maybe a couple of actual climate scientists. This is pretty sad, and must be deeply embarassing for Pruitt, as the longer it goes on the more obvious it is that precious few genuinely sceptical climate research scientists actually exist.

It will also become apparent that their scepticism is more narrowly focussed than people realise and is mainly on detailed aspects of the issue. As I have said many times, sceptical scientists make denialist noise on blogs on the internet, but when they are put on the spot in full public view interviewed by media, they are suddenly not so sceptical. We have seen examples with Lindzen and Spencer. A lot of this sceptical thing is attention seeking and stirring.

There once was a polar bear – science vs the blogosphere

Eclectic at 13:31 PM on 2 December, 2017

FMeditor @25 , you cherry-pick a couple of "failed" comments [2007 Prof X said: Arctic summers ice-free by 2013 . . . Also 2002 Prof Y said: Regular summer trade ships within a decade] to imply that all of mainstream climate science is worthless. And then you cherry-pick summer polar sea-ice extents in 2008 and 2017 . . . while turning a blind eye [= not informing your readers] to the multi-year trend while at the same time ignoring the spectacularly-large decline in summer polar sea-ice volume ; and all the associated causations of these effects [i.e. ongoing AGW]. And then another non-sequitur : you imply that Dr Crockford's PhD in zoology would/could qualify her as a new C.R.Darwin or S.J.Gould or someone of similar weighty opinion.

FMeditor, your article was worthy of the British Daily Mail. What next : Al Gore said New York would be 20 feet under water by now?!?

You have a strange way of being "a strong — even dogmatic — supporter of the IPCC and major climate agencies". Hmm, with friends like you, why would science need enemies? ;-)

On the FabiusMaximus politics, I am eclectic. Some I agree with, and some I think are "unsupported". And I also perceive that the Shakespearean Lady protests too much, about the FM lack of bias. # But all this is irrelevant to the outlier position of Dr Crockford and her lack of objectivity.

"Full information" given on the FM website? Far from it, on Crockford/AGW. Half-truths may be presented as disinformation, or OTOH may be presented in a way that is truthful & useful to the reader. It's largely the editor's choice, don't you think?

As Popper would say if alive today : the mainstream scientists have done a fine job in gathering the climate science evidence of rapid Anthropogenic Global Warming, and their predictions so far have been good . . . while the predictions (and science) by Lindzen & other "contrarians" have been appallingly bad.

Climate and energy are becoming focal points in state political races

MA Rodger at 21:32 PM on 22 October, 2017

NorrisM @152,

Perhaps I should explain why I brand you a troll. In rough terms, it is evident that you come to SkS with a contrary view but fail at every turn when asked to justify that view. You appear more interested in piling on the startling contrary views than in attempting to reconcile the views you express with the views others expressed here, those which are in the main science-based.
Strangely, I don't appear to have branded you a troll before, strange as I don't usually hold back for so long. But let us consider the detail of your use of Miersch down this thread.
@122 you introduced Michael Miersch into this thread as an aside, suggesting his message comprises news from Germany of "a major backlash" against renewable energy. By the sounds of it, he is an enemy of on-shore wind power and is being invited to speak in the seat of UK government (the Palace of Westminster) by a UK educational charity, the GWPF. Of course, the GWPF is no normal charity but a cynical bunch of climate change deniers. (The last time I heard of a GWPF talk at Westminster it was veteran climate denier Richard Lindzen.) I can't believe you would not have known about the GWPF given you tell us @112 that your understanding of Miersch is based on GWPF information. If you did not, its dodgy nature was set out @114. ( Interestingly, your acknowledgement of this situation @127 is riven with the sort of gramatical nonsense you would expect from an non-English speaker, suggesting you found writing it very difficult. Perhaps the message you wrote there was foreign to you!)
It is true that you were goaded into continuing further with this, but you did so by citing in the most general terms an 80 minute pod-cast to support the case of Miersch having the right of freedom of speech to say what he does (even though we still don't know what it is he does say). I listened to what I assume is the passage of that pod-cast which you were citing. (It's at about 1hr to 1hr 6 here) What Cass Sunstein is saying is that you cannot slander or libel a person (which the German government were accused of by Miersch, but which the courts said otherwise. The courts say there is no libel as Miersch is a Klimawandelskeptiker). Cass Sunstein also says that a person has the right to describe the Sandy Hook massacre as being a real or imaginary event that was orchestrated by the US government to enable tighter gun laws. As long as you are sincere and not lying, you are allowed to say such outrageous things. This can be said as this is not slander/libel - no individual is being defamed. And apparently some seriously sick people do brand Sandy Hook a hoax/conspiracy. As it is difficult to establish legally that they are sincere in their belief (an so not lying) they are imune to legal challenges. Sunstein was also asked about malicious 'doxing' replying that newspapers do have the right to publish the names and addresses of rape victims even if the intention was to unleash violence against them. Sunstein says this is poor law, saying on this of Madison (a US founding father, apparently) "(it is) not clear if Madison would roll over in his grave if we said you can't disclose where someone lives if the purpose and effect of that is to increase the risk of voilence."
So that is pretty startling stuff you cite to defend Miersch's right to say... well... frankly, I get the distinct impression you do not know what Miersch says on "wind and solar versus nuclear" and so who can say if he is "someone who shared my views." So this continues to be a troll-like discourse here, or have you a source of Miersch-ism you have, golly, forgotten to share with us.

The F13 files, part 1 - the copy/paste job

Eclectic at 08:32 AM on 19 October, 2017

Derek, your question may be a little premature. Let's see more on the details of that paper. Valid "denier literature" is rarer than rocking-horse poo. But anything which shows even a degree of verisimilitude, is like a sticking-up nail that ought to be hammered down. (Unless the "literature" appears in Shonksville extremist publications like Journal of American Physicians & Surgeons ~ where Richard Lindzen has published [more a rant than a paper]).

I keenly look forward to Ari Jokimaki's next instalment.

(My apologies, Ari — for I haven't discovered how to correctly make the umlaut in your surname. )

Ivar Giaever - Nobel Winning Physicist and Climate Pseudoscientist

Eclectic at 12:59 PM on 2 October, 2017

Magellan @90 , it is a strawman argument to say that: "Ivar Giaever is not fit to address the issue because its [sic] not his field of expertise". And I'd love to know who are the "very smart people on both sides of the isle [sic] here". And which island are you referring to?

Magellan, you entirely miss the point about criticism of Giaever. It is irrelevant which "field of expertise" he previously came from.

Giaever's incompetent assessment of climate science is being criticized because

(A) He got it wrong. And got it wrong bigly !

(B) He had the hubris to think that a few hours of googling the topic of climate science would gain him enough knowledge to make a worthwhile contribution to the public discussion.

(C) He had the arrogance to think that a few hours' reading on non-specialist websites would qualify him to declare that all the experts were wrong.

(D) At the age of 83 , he had the chutzpah to lecture a formal gathering of Nobel Laureates (and also of many bright young scientists) about how science is done properly — while at the same time demonstrating his own failure to think logically about science! What an embarrassing performance in front of the young scientists (not to mention in front of the Laureates). Truly cringeworthy stuff !

(E) And he had the lack of insight to recognize the above.

~ Magellan, possibly you do not recognize/comprehend Scaddenp's euphemism of "Gone Emeritus" about Giaever. "Gone Emeritus" is a term used about some retired professors or retired eminent scientists — it represents a pathological fusion of hubris & mild senile dementia. It shows itself as wacky beliefs and/or a maverick's disregard of the evidence base of mainstream science.

If Giaever were 50 or 60 years younger, then scientists would simply call him a silly young fool. Yet still have some hope that he would come to his senses as he got a bit older.

Magellan, possibly you are not aware of the insidiously corrupting effects of small amounts of money or other inducement. Money etc that Giaever receives from propaganda organizations (e.g. his payments from the Heartland Institute in his role as an apologist for Big Tobacco) might not appear to you as very much or very likely to influence a famous/wealthy person to any great degree. But psychologists' experiments show that a small amount (such as $25,000*) can be more effective than a large amount (say $500,000) in maintaining & entrenching a person's adherence to a particular line of thinking. So for rather small amounts, the propaganda paymasters get very good value for money!!

[ * I mention this figure because it is an example: of a sum paid to the science-denier Richard Lindzen by Peabody Energy. I have not seen the size of the payments / stipends / gratuities / subsidies received by Judith Curry or her like, from paymasters such as Heartland, the GWPF, or under-the-counter industry slush funds. ]

The Mail's censure shows which media outlets are biased on climate change

Eclectic at 15:46 PM on 1 October, 2017

NorrisM @45 , (A) you do not need to await a moderation opinion, before choosing to discuss things on a fitter thread.

(B) You are making the Denialist error of looking at various models and failing to look at the physical reality. Ice is melting, sea levels are rising ever faster, etcetera . . . the global warming is occurring very obviously — so it doesn't need to be "falsified" !

MA Rodger @40 , @38 , @36 : thank you for that further background on Judith Curry. It is in complete accordance with what I have seen in studying her blog. ( I haven't bothered with any detailed study of Lindzen Christy & Spencer — since a large slice of their illogical thinking derives from their fundamentalist religious fixed ideas. But Curry is interesting because she is something stranger & more peculiar ! )

Currie makes a nauseating display of persistent intellectual dishonesty — because she flies in the face of clear logical thinking & well-proven scientific fact. Made doubly nauseating by her attempts at a tone of self-righteous martyrdom.

Her blog's support for Salby's nonsense is far from the only denialist craziness that she chooses to espouse slightly indirectly. She has a tendency to put other denialists' scientifically-wacky stuff in her blog (in effect, they are "guest authors") and she keeps a few inches back from 100% endorsing this stuff, in that she delicately says she is including it for the readers' "interest" ). ~ Again, an example of her intellectual dishonesty.

She is indulging in plain denialism of the most unscientific sort — and the extremist politicians (senatorial and congressional) & the extremist press enjoy lapping it up.

The Mail's censure shows which media outlets are biased on climate change

Eclectic at 13:32 PM on 28 September, 2017

Nigelj @33 and prior ,

The Mail is a fine example of "corporate insanity" ( I almost said "institutional insanity" — but that might be misconstrued! ). Insane in the Latinic sense of being unsound of mind or body.

Of course, corporate insanity derives from individual insanity (at the leadership level). The English language lacks the terminology to label the type of insanity demonstrable in climate-denialists / anti-vaxxers / Flat-Earthers etc. "Legal insanity" is defined over a narrow range, which only partly overlaps with the "medical insanity" (which is primarily a psychosis-based diagnosis/definition). Yet every day around us, we notice examples of degrees of insanity : exhibiting as poor decision-making and a partial denial of reality — and all at a much higher intensity than in the average mature sane person. But the insanity of climate-science-denialism is the prime type being of interest here at SkS.

Which leads us back to J. Curry and her motivations. I am sure, Nigelj, that she is moved by many considerations (but lacking what Mr OPOF calls the rational consideration of distant motives).

In my post #24 above, I sieved out 5 examples of Curry's "position". I started with wikipedia and desmogblog, and jumped back and forth between Curry's own blog and those sources (plus a few others). Desmogblog had a number of its links broken (or not easily available) so I didn't verify everything on them — nor did I think it warranted the waste of time to pursue them. ( Though I am half-puzzled by Tom13's violent contention that the quote: "And that's not human" has any real difference from the quote: "And that is not caused by humans". I will have to give a shrug about that one ! )

Fortunately I had a considerable amount of prior experience of Curry's blog, so I was able to quickly judge/assess the concordance of the selected quotes with Curry's historical position (or rather more accurately : her range of self-contradictory positions plural ).

For my sins, I had (from some years ago) chosen to examine parts of Curry's blog extending up to now [but skipping sections randomly, of course]. Two motives for that examination ~ (A) I knew that Curry was one of the trio [Curry, Christy, Spencer] of "contrarians" who were academically active & knowledgeably up-to-date climatologists, and well above the likes of those denialist minds in their twilight years [Lindzen, Singer and suchlike]. And despite reading the mainstream's damning indictment of the trio, I hoped I might find some scientifically logically valid points that Curry had put forward. But I found none whatsoever.

~ (B) I was interested to learn something of her psychology (or perhaps psycho-pathology is the better term). Why would a nominally-rational person take up a denialist stance? Putting aside all questions of corruption & financial inducement, there remains the "strange peculiarity of the human mind". As I had mentioned to Rbrooks502 (on another thread) , there is the actually remarkably widespread condition of Encapsulated Paranoia, where the individual is sane in most areas but psychotic [psychotic = out of touch with reality] in one particular area — the textbook case being the man with paranoid jealousy re his wife/girlfriend.

However, other types of encapsulated insanity exist, and the scientific-minded readers here will be well aware of the Conspiracy Theorism and other insanities underlying AGW denialism. Including the pathological resistance to accepting the plain logical evidence produced by the totality of climate scientists. (A resistance which is multi-factorial, of course.)

But I am drifting off-topic — yet excusing myself by pointing to the whole basic purpose of SkS being the combination of general information/education plus the countering of (some of) the climate "madness". Nigelj , please forgive my overly-long post here, but I thought that you, as a wide reader, would find some points of interest in it. Finishing in a humorous vein — doubtless you are aware of Douglas Adams' classic Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, where some [alien] inspector has given a one-line descriptor/assessment of Planet Earth . . . comprising just two words: "Mostly harmless". I imagine that if the Inspector were to return to this solar system to assess the human race . . . he would use a 3-word descriptor: "Brilliant but mad".

The Mail's censure shows which media outlets are biased on climate change

Eclectic at 20:59 PM on 27 September, 2017

Randman @22 , about your quote: "she was" (unquote)

She was . . . what? What are you talking about? Please be precise! Readers here don't wish to bother second-guessing what you intend to mean.

Regarding Judith Curry :- the sources are her own comments :

(A) in April 2015 : "Recent data and research supports the importance of natural climate variability and calls into question the conclusion that humans are the dominant cause of recent climate change" (unquote)

(B) also in 2015 at a Congressional hearing, she stated about the global warming [of the past 200 years] : "And that's not human" (unquote)

(C) in 2014 speaking at the National Press Club : "We just don't know [what's going to happen]. I think we are fooling ourselves to think that CO2 control knob really influences climate on these decadal or even century time scales." (unquote)

(D) in November 2015 [please specially note this very recent date, Randman] she supported the existence of the so-called hiatus or pause : "global average surface temperature ... has shown little or no warming during the 21st century" (unquote)

(E) in 2011, she supported Murry Salby's crazy/nonsensical "hypothesis" that oceanic-origin CO2 is the real cause of our modern rapid Global Warming.

Now, Randman, consider each of the above 5 statements. If you yourself had issued them, then it would be evidence that you were grossly ignorant about climate science. If they had been made by a scientist (a scientist not specializing in climate related matters), then that would count as intellectual dishonesty. Issued by a climatologist, that would rise to the level of gross intellectual dishonesty.

Individually, each of the above statements cannot be justified, for they are individually & severally false and/or misleading. Randman, I could add others to the list . . . but (to paraphrase an Einstein quote) :- "It only takes one" !

$$$$$$$

Randman, I do not in any way suggest that Curry receives money illegally from the Oil industry & other anti-science propagandists. Arguably, what money or other benefits she receives from such groups is immoral but not illegal.

~ In 2006, Judith Curry [climatologist] and Peter Webster [meteorologist] set up a private company "Climate Forecast Applications Network". Judith Curry is President (not an unpaid job, I gather!). Curry herself said (in an interview with Scientific American) : "I do receive some funding from the fossil fuel industry ... [per my company] since 2007." (unquote). Please note, Randman, that that sort of thing is not illegal — it is simply one of the many ways that the Oil industry slush funds operate.

Perhaps you are innocently unaware, Randman, that the fossil fuel industry slush fund money percolates all around the place. [Though I had to laugh when I saw that Peabody Energy's filing for bankruptcy in 2016 had "stiffed" the prominent science-denier Richard Lindzen, for a USD$25,000 "consultancy fee" that they owed him — though I don't know whether that $25,000 was a one-off or an annual stipend.] Stipends, expenses, etc are paid in various ways — sometimes by "sinecure" payments, sometimes by propaganda "fronts" like Heartland or GWPF, sometimes by other under-the-counter indirect methods e.g. payments to a company (not to the individual).

As to other benefits [in non-monetary form, not in cash] there are the examples of Curry appearing at least three times in front of Congressional-level hearings. I am sure that even you, Randman, are not so naive as to believe that Curry paid for travel accommodation & incidental expenses, out of her own purse — if you act as a prominent stooge for Big Corporations, then they look after you in the premium style. That's just the way the business world is, Randman. (But it's not in any way illegal for her to be on the Big Oil teat.) And then there's the purely psychological benefits she receives — definitely an ego boost for a mediocre climate scientist, to appear (and often) in the national Congressional limelight (etc).

Then there are other benefits in cash e.g. in January and February this year [her academic retirement onto a teacher's pension, being at the end of December 2016] Judith Curry authored two reports, one for Koch Brothers and one for the British propaganda machine GWPF. I don't know whether she was paid directly into her personal account or indirectly via her CFAN company, or by other means — but it would have been a generous*-sized benefit. Again, not illegal — but of doubtful morality. ( *Randman, it is extremely difficult for denialism-pushing Big Corporations to find any scientist with more than a shred of repectability/reputation who can be relied on as a stooge who will play the "Doubt & Uncertainty" game, in the face of all the overwhelming evidence that proves "D&U" is unjustified/dishonest.)

In Summary :

So, all in all, Randman, your own phrasing: "her scientific reasoning is dishonest, biased and she is funded by the oil companies" . . . is a fairly good summation of the situation.

Temp record is unreliable

Eclectic at 18:14 PM on 23 September, 2017

Randman @451, I have replied to you on this thread, because your concern seems to be more with the reliability/accuracy of surface temperature records, rather than with the ancient "predictions" made by Hansen last century.

And probably best if you stick with "standard degrees" instead of "Fahrenheit degrees" (Fahrenheit being rather 18th Century!) .

World temperature has risen approx 1.0 degrees since the pre-industrial age [the time of Fahrenheit himself!!!] . This rise is the average of local regional rises worldwide (this being far more useful and precise way of looking at the facts, rather than the vague/diffuse and somewhat unhelpful "world's average temperature").

Yes, the Arctic rise [i.e. local anomaly rise] is much higher than the "averaged" anomaly rise of 1.0 degrees — but it does not contribute much to the total anomaly, because the Arctic area is only a small fraction of total global surface area. Nevertheless, the Arctic rise is disproportionately highly important, because of its effect on ice-melting / ocean currents / Northern Hemisphere weather events / and feedback on global warming.

Randman, you will notice that the different organizations (such as NASA, and NOAA, and the Japanese Meteorological Organisation, etc) have a preference for comparing the very latest temperatures against a variety of baselines e.g. 1950-1980 or 1970-2000 or the full 20th Century etcetera. And this makes life unnecessarily complex for non-specialists [i.e. you and me].

But I am sure you appreciate, Randman, that whatever the baselines of of reference, the world is getting much warmer and doing it very quickly (whether things are expressed in degrees Celsius / Fahrenheit / Reaumur / or whatever). Whichever labels are used and whatever human yakking goes on . . . yet the real physical world shows strong evidence of rapid warming — wherever you look! Vasts amounts of polar ice are melting; sea levels are rising ever faster; glaciers are disappearing; and plants & animals are changing their activities accordingly.

To that extent, Hansen's various projections [scenarios] of future temperature are little more than of interest to historians. Yes, they're broadly far more accurate than those of science-deniers such as Lindzen . . . but nowadays we've had nearly 30 more years of experience in seeing the reality of the "Hockey Stick" rise in global temperatures. By whichever 30 / 50 / 100 year baseline you use, the recent years of 2014 / 2015 / 2016 / and so far in 2017, have been the hottest on record i.e since around 1880 (or by proxy measurement, the hottest in the past 2000+ years).

So, global warming is pressing ahead at high speed (in geological terms). And no sign of slowing down anytime in our near future.

btw, Randman, in your post you mentioned Hansen (who is famous enough in scientific circles to be referred to as just a single name — rather like Cher and Beyonce in pop music circles!). But who is the "Jones" you mention? Presumably not the Tom Jones of yesteryear!!

The Trump administration wants to bail out failed contrarian climate scientists

NorrisM at 07:19 AM on 1 September, 2017

Following up on my thoughts on another blog on this site (re Trump country to be hit hard by climate change), I truly think that the scientific community should not lose this opportunity to have an effect on Trump's policies going forward.

The reality is that the Trump administration (or at least a Republican administration) will be in power both in the White House and in Congress for at least the next 3+ years.

Although Trump has called "climate change" a hoax perpetrated on us by China we have come to learn to live with his hyperbole. He is a salesman, that is what salesmen do. Please understand I am not an apologist for Donald Trump (I just hope we can make it through the next 3 years without any major disaster).

But he will be moved by the public mood. From what I can understand, the American public are very ambivalent about Climate Change and how much trust can be put into climate scientists (notwithstanding the IPCC, Neil DeGrassie Tyson and Stephen Hawking). In many, but not all, respects these differences do seem to be drawn on political lines. I went to the Pew Research website to get my information.

Here is the url for the Pew October 4, 2016 "The Politics of Climate" article on Americans' view on Climate Change: http://www.pewinternet.org/2016/10/04/the-politics-of-climate/

Given this diversity, it would seem to me that this "red team blue team" approach proposed by Scott Priutt could, depending on the results of the information exchange (the "debate"), move many moderate Republicans and conservative Democrats (see Pew Research) into the camp of the majority scientific view which would clearly turn the political heat up on Trump. I personally would like to see a follow up examination on how best to deal with the impacts of climate change.

I do not think anyone seriously argues as to whether the climate is changing (when has it not?) or whether man has had a signficant hand in it. What this first debate should be focussed on is: (1) how much of a temperature rise should we expect until 2100 (and after) taking into account existing model predictions of future temperature increases and whether this temperature rise will exacerbate extreme weather events; and (2) what would those specific impacts be (ie estimated sea level rise by 2100, etc) on the world assuming no action were taken to limit carbon emissions to mitigate the changing climate. The second debate would have to focus on the best ways to deal with those impacts (ie mitigation and adaptation). It would be too confusing to put this all in one debate.

Given the political reality in the US today, I would hope that the scientific community would jump at this opportunity. I think failure to do so would cause serious harm to its cause. I can just hear Trump if that were to happen!

As I have said in other venues, anyone asking how this could work should search "Climate Change Policy Statement" on the aps.org website, the official website of the American Physical Society, the second largest association of physicists in the world. This panel discussion chaired by Steve Koonin, an eminent physicist (and former Energy undersecretary in the Obama administration), along with other APS physicists, had some of the best climatologists on "both sides" giving their views on certain questions posed in something called the Workshop Framing Document. This Framing Document largely keyed on the IPCC 2013 Group 1 Assessment. The three climatologists for the "majority opinion side" were all important contributors to the IPCC assessment. On the other side were "lukewarmers" like Judith Curry, John Christy and Richard Lindzen.

Based upon the final policy statement ultimately issued by the APS, the "majority side" won, so why should there be any reluctance to engage in this kind of exchange?

If someone like Steve Koonin were to be appointed as the chair of this red team blue team investigation I think you would have a reasonably independent person at its head. I fully understand that after this APS panel hearing Koonin made public statements even calling for such a red team blue team approach. But I do not think anyone could question his integrity.

As I have noted elsewhere, I just wonder whether Trump really has the intestinal fortitude to take a chance on this. My guess is that he will not.

JWRebel @ 2. Actually, my understanding is that in a red team blue team exchange there is no final "decision". I actually find this to be a weakness of the red team blue team approach but I fully understand why. But I would prefer to have a "majority opinion" and "minority opinion" published giving their reasons for their decision in words that are understandable to the public. But this would then become political because who gets to appoint the full hearing panel? I trust Steve Koonin to be a moderator but after that it would be like appointing justices to the US Supreme Court!

Surrendering to fear brought us climate change denial and President Trump

nigelj at 06:43 AM on 20 July, 2017

Thoughts @38, with respect, you are entirely missing the point. Certainly some scientists deny climate science, including a very small number of climate scientists, and some other scientists.

But there's evidence that at least some of these people have various ulterior motives, rather than just purely scientific objections and this could extend to various fears, beliefs and vested interests that colour their conclusions on the science. I would suggest you will find the vast majority have these motives.

For example some sceptical climate scientists have been funded by fossil fuel lobbies like Willie Soon. Now are you seriously going to claim this doesn't alter their mindset? Of course it could, because these lobbies will expect a certain result.

www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/feb/21/climate-change-denier-willie-soon-funded-energy-industry

Roy Spencer is a sceptical scientist, and has strong religious convitions that "man couldn't fundamnentally destabilise" the planet. He also has strong libertarian political leanings so would definitely be suspicious of carbon taxes etc. Its perfectly reasonable to conclude these things colour his conclusions about the science to some extent.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Spencer_(scientist)#Climate_change

Richard Lindzen is a sceptic, and has expressed something very similar that the planet is self correcting. He also has or had interests in the coal industry.

Other sceptical scientists I have come across have strong fiscally conservative views, or libertarian leanings,and may be worried about government involvement or taxes. Its reasonable to think this could be a cause of their scepticism of the science.

I think you will find many sceptical scientists, probably most are influenced by a range of ideological issues, personal interests, and fears.

Why the Republican Party's climate policy obstruction is indefensible

michael sweet at 02:15 AM on 13 July, 2017

Climate scientists need to be careful about refusing to participate. If the Red team is Lindzen and Monkford the Blue team is Spencer and Curry it might lead to a refutation of the IPCC report.

Why the Republican Party's climate policy obstruction is indefensible

NorrisM at 04:48 AM on 12 July, 2017

nigelj @ 52 and scaddenp @ 50.

I certainly get the message that models cannot predict 10 year cycles. I guess what I should have asked Bob Loblaw are the model predictions and their variance based upon: 1. Period 1900 to present; and 2. 1975 to present.

Thanks nigelj for your explanations of the periods of temperature increase and decrease (or levelling off) during the 20th century. I know that one of the pet peeves of Lindzen (from one essay by him) has been the use of aerosols to "adjust" models. All very confusing for the layman. See my comments to Eclectic and MA Rodger below.

But if the models are within one SD over 20 years then this is certainly material information. Reading Christy's chart you would not think so.

Why the Republican Party's climate policy obstruction is indefensible

Eclectic at 13:38 PM on 11 July, 2017

Thank you for that explanation, Bob Loblaw @51, though I am not sure that is at the heart of NorrisM's line of inquiry. I suspect he wants black-and-white certainty — without regard to questions of probabilties & the consequent need for prudent risk-management of planet Earth.

Nigelj @52, some of those graphs have not been updated with the latest real-world temperatures (which show a better match to the old "predictions").

NorrisM @49 , you are making a mountain out of the molehill that was the Koonin-chaired panel of scientists back in early 2014.

Metaphorically speaking : in a scientific ocean rivalling the Pacific in size, the Koonin/APS review was a momentary ripple in a lagoon. And a ripple that was stillborn. [ er, sorry about the mangled metaphor ;-) ]

NorrisM, you have made the mistake of equating the Koonin/APS review with something like a major case before the Supreme Court. But the situation was quite different. Doubtless the scientist-participants would have done a bit of "brushing up" before the panel met — but there would have been nothing like the lawyers' preliminaries where weeks of careful polishing of comprehensive presentations (prepared by teams of high-powered lawyers/barristers) before battle commenced.

Furthermore, the matters discussed were only a tiny section of climate science. And from my reading of the transcript, nothing much came forward that was substantive or in any way conclusive. Really, the result was stillborn. So I don't see how you can justify cherry-picking such a "non-event" and drawing any lessons from it.

(B) You do well, to put a "tick mark" of suspicion against some of the denialists (such as Lindzen). Not only does their case not hold water, but you can see how their underlying thinking is severely tainted/motivated by non-logical emotional bias. Lindzen, for instance, holds that our planet was created by Jehovah [i.e. the pre-Christian deity] as a self-correcting mechanism, and so it cannot deviate from the ideal narrow condition suited to humanity. Or so Lindzen seems to believe. Such is the power of emotion-driven illogical thinking, that it results in Lindzen being quite unfazed that (repeatedly!!) the physical evidence keeps showing him to be severely wrong.

Self-deception and delusion are the essence of climate denialism.

Why the Republican Party's climate policy obstruction is indefensible

Eclectic at 22:24 PM on 10 July, 2017

NorrisM @43 , if I may add several points to the posts from TC, MAR and DB :-

(A) The claim (by Koonin?) of climate model projections having been much "hotter" than the observed rise in global surface temperature — is nowadays a claim which is severely out of date, since the development of record high temperatures in years 2014 / 2015 / 2016 / and YTD 2017.

In other words, the claim (of model "failure") is wrong. And consequently it is invalid to say mainstream climate science must be wrong because of "model deficiencies".

(B) Certainly Koonin "is no dummy". Yet there are many smarter people than Koonin : but AFAIK hardly any of them are climate change deniers (in the way that Koonin is a denier i.e. a denier in the sense of someone who minimizes AGW and claims it is of negligible size & importance). Of course, here I refer to intelligent people who understand the science.

In no way do I wish to suggest that there cannot be brilliant 200+ IQ artistic minds / mathematical minds / business minds / or legal minds [ especially ;-) ] who are nevertheless deniers of climate change ..... but it is simply that those types of brilliant minds fail to understand the issue and therefore their opinions (and intelligence) are inadmissible in the case.

(C) # As a matter of interesting comparison : work by Professor Lindzen (in the late 1980's) projected only a very slight temperature rise for the past 3 decades. Currently, his modelling has run approximately 1.05 degreesC below reality. That full degreeC is hugely, hugely, hugely off target. Several other denialist-type scientists have made projections that also turned out to fall embarrassingly short of reality (though not as severely poorly as Lindzen's).

Overall, it is quite laughable how badly wrong the denialists get things!!!

(D) Unlike with Lindzen and Curry, there is AFAIK no apparent evidence that Koonin is in the pocket of Fossil Fuel Industry. Nor does he seem to be a political extremist, nor AFAIK a religious extremist. And he is too young to be likely suffering from subtle forms of mental senility.

So, what is the explanation for Koonin as an intelligent guy with a (non-climate) science background, holding opinions which are roughly equivalent to "Flat Earth" ??

To comprehend this puzzle, we must work upwards from our knowledge of human nature. "Motivated Reasoning" (particularly so, in the intelligent) is an extremely powerful force, owing to the way that our human emotions usually overrule the human intellect (unless we take stern measures to remain coolly objective i.e. scientific, through developing insight into our own motivations).

Somehow, somewhere in his mind, Koonin has allowed himself to bend & twist & contort himself into overlooking/ignoring the obvious (the obviously "Round Earth", so to speak!! ). His "motivated reasoning" is pushing him into a failure to understand the general scientific picture involved in the Greenhouse process & its consequences — he chooses to lose himself in a maze of minutiae, and chooses to fail to comprehend the basic process : a process which is so basic that it is easily comprehensible by even a moderately intelligent high school science student.

But such is the perversity of the human mind — and all too often!

Why the Republican Party's climate policy obstruction is indefensible

Eclectic at 22:58 PM on 6 July, 2017

NorrisM @6 ,

regarding the APS (American Physical Society) workshop/review of global warming [carried out in January 2014] and its 500+ page transcript (fortunately each page is brief!!!) :-

I have read through the transcript, with particular attention to the sections which you highlighted (in another thread) as showing dubious science and/or dubious answers/fudging ..... and I must say I found nothing substantive there which could be taken as overthrowing the mainstream science. Nothing at all. So I must beg you to be specific in nominating and clarifying any points which you feel strongly could support the denialist position (other than points of sheer empty rhetoric — of which there were many!!!!).

And in support of my statement above : it comes as no surprise that the senior officials/scientists/physicists of the APS found nothing substantive enough to justify them altering the APS Statement on AGW and climate science.

Furthermore, you will have noted that the review panel workshop date was January 2014 : just before the 3 record hot years 2014 / 2015 / 2016 (plus year-to-date in 2017) gave added demonstration of how empty and unreal were the claims that Global Warming had stopped. On top of that, the accompanying tropospheric warming now shows Christy's own claims to be wrong. And also reinforcing that Lindzen is very, very wrong.

Tom Curtis and Nigelj have indicated the false reasoning i.e. "motivated reasoning" used by many science-deniers such as Koonin Lindzen Christy and Curry. It must be highly likely that Curry's claim that "Climategate" suddenly converted her away from mainstream science ..... is a factitious claim made in retrospect : a demonstration of "motivated reasoning" on her part. After all, numerous independent reviews have shown that the "Climategate" allegations were a beat-up over nothing substantive. And what real scientist would alter her views, citing evidence known to be false?!

That is why the Republican politicians' professed desire for "Red Team" reassessment, is pure poppycock. All they wish to do is achieve further years of delaying tactics, and at the same time give the public the impression that the genuine climate scientists are sufficiently moved by doubt of their own position (as to agree that review is necessary).

Why the Republican Party's climate policy obstruction is indefensible

nigelj at 18:44 PM on 6 July, 2017

Norris M @6

Interesting comments, but I largely disagree.

"Rightly or wrongly, I think that ClimateGate had a very damaging effect on the climate change views of conservatives everywhere. "

Well it probably didn't help their views. I can appreciate that much.

People do get tainted by one so called mistake (alleged in the cause of climategate), but that is very shallow to dismiss people on that basis.

It's also very much "wrongly" that climate gate tainted anyones views. I'm a political moderate, with a reasonably decent arts, technical and some science education. It only took me five minutes reading the actual evidence of climate gate and both sides of debate and commentary, to see there was literally nothing there, nothing wrong. Numerous investigations have also concluded the same.

People concluding otherwise, must want to conclude otherwise, and are being irrational. I do however agree it was an unfortuante thing and rather bad luck, but to claim it means the damage is irreversible is absurd, innacurate and lazy thinking.

"Judith Curry has herself admitted that this made her seriously question her position which was until then "mainstream"

Her views are in a small minority of climate scientists, and she does not have a spectacular research record or any great clarity on anything, in fact she is rather vague about things. So please explain why you give her views prominence.

"The hiatus"

So much rubbish is talked about this. Firstly the latest information shows the pause was more of a short blip, and entirely within expectations. Last years temperatures changed everything.

It's at least partly inaccurate to claim models didn't predict the pause. All models without exception expect flat periods, but its impossible to predict them exacly because short term natural variation is slightly random. Models have been reasonably reliable predicting temperatures, as evidenced by articles on this website.

Things are still slightly under predictions, but only slightly and this is not enough to be concerned about. Republicans dont appear to want to hear that, instead they seem to hear, things are not 100% as predicted to within millimetres, so everything must be wrong. With respect this is childish, self interested, and intellectually empty thinking, and they are smarter than that.

"For now let us not get into arguments about this because you will NOT convince the Republicans by one "new study" that shows that the IPCC was mistaken. "

So you are saying don't even try because people are so stubborn with minds closed? Humanity might as well give up. Just imagine your outrage if Hilary Clinton said something like that. Nobody needs to be that closed minded.

Remember the only evidence that really counts is the science, and weight of scientific evidence, and it all points one way. Not politics, or character of climate scientists, or scandals, or occasional mistakes, or the like. One mistake on a minor point does not make an entire theory wrong, or key conclusions wrong. Climate change theory is built on wide evidence, not one piece of evidence.

"So "97% of climate scientists" does not cut it with Republicans. They simply do not trust the climate scientists believing, rightly or wrongly, that their bread and butter is really based upon making sure that climate change is primarily man-made."

Well that is just foolish thinking. Scientists are not exaggerating to manufacture work. Scientists get work in all sorts of fields because its needed, without glamourising everything.

We could turn around and say we dont trust politicians because their bread and butter depends on xyz, or business people or anyone. The world cannot and doesn't work like that or it would come to a complete stop . You have to have fundamental trust in professionals, unless they personally start to consistently act otherwise. Now look at the many, many false claims by Donald Trump, and there you have someone of dubious integrity.

Basically people just do their jobs, and scientists are no different. They very critical of each other if they can find fault, because its in their interests.

"Can anyone really be a scientist and say that 100% of climate change is man-made? "

Obviously yes, if thats what the science finds, and it does or very close to it. It's like certain diseases have very precise causes.

"Climate change has been on-going for the life of the planet and the man-made CO2 emissions simply cannot be 100% unless you have strong evidence that we are in a natural "cooling period". "

There is overwhelming evidence that we are in a natural cooling period. The solar energy output of the sun has been in a decades long cooling phase. Review "Is it the sun" on this website. This is a key reason for scientists beings concerned, quite apart from the evidence and calculations that point at CO2.

"It is not possible that the climate naturally is not going either up or down. "

No because the science doesn't find this. There are over 12,000 research papers on climate change, and many look at this aspect. How many would be enough for you?

"When you say "100%" you sound like an extremist. Most people, and especially conservatives, do not like extremists. Not a smart thing to say."

Maybe so, but when they said 90% that was too extreme as well. Seriously do we have science here, or "pc" correctness on an acceptable level? What is an "acceptable level" and why?

"But back to the Republican position. When they see there are real-life climate scientists like Judith Curry (who I have to admit sounds much more balanced than Michael Mann in testimony before the various Congress committees and who is not subject to any "ad hominem" attacks that seem to be levelled at Christy and Lindzen),"

With respect, you are being one eyed. There's fault on both sides. Michael Mann gets abuse each week for example. Forget the short tempers, and look at the scientific research.

"then the "red team blue team" approach with other scientists (primarily physicists I hope) may be the best answer to the Republicans"

It's a staged, dubious sort of enquiry that can achieve nothing new. It's too small. The IPCC is much, larger and they include sceptics as well as so called warmists, and rotate new scientists on each review panel. You have a very good process, but most people haven't read what really happens overall, only biased little snippets of information taken out of context.

The rest of the world has moved on while the Republicans alone seem stuck. You are just engaging in delaying tactics yet again, and we are sick of it for over a decade now. The rest of the world has seen through the ruse, and moved on to accept the obvious reality of human caused warming.

"Once we get past what Dessler calls "positive statements" (in his very good book on climate change)"

It's a very dubious book, and it's not about books and opinions, it's about the weight of published evidence in proper journals.

"I just think the climate science community has to do a reality check. Trump won and he in all likelihood is here for at least for the remainder of his first term and possibly 8 years (would Pence be any better?). "Anyone who does not accept this is really like the ostrich in the sand pictured on the home page of this website."

That's a real laugh given Trumps approval ratings are so low. I doubt he will even survive this term, and chances of re-election look slim. I'm sorry he is probably a good family man, but imho he is a confidence trickster, and does not have solidly founded policies and beliefs.

"I personally am very unhappy with this situation but the American people have spoken!'

Yeah sure. All your previous comments suggest otherwise.

"Churchill has noted, democracy is close to unworkable but compared to the alternatives, it is the best. "

Well I would agree on that, but not with much else.

Why the Republican Party's climate policy obstruction is indefensible

NorrisM at 16:31 PM on 6 July, 2017

Rightly or wrongly, I think that ClimateGate had a very damaging effect on the climate change views of conservatives everywhere. It is very similar to evidence given by a witness testifying in some legal case who is completely honest in his testimony until the last question, where, in his desire to "win the case" for whatever side, he "fudges" his last answer. The cross-examining lawyer then leads another witness who proves on that very point that the witness was not telling the truth. For any jury, ALL of the evidence of that witness is tainted. I truly think this happened with this issue. Judith Curry has herself admitted that this made her seriously question her position which was until then "mainstream". It is just about irrelevant now as to what was or was not the intention of those emails. The damage has been done. End of story.

When you add this to the issue of the "hiatus" of X number of years whether or not it was really there (the IPCC at least in 2013 coined that term) has added to the legitimate questions of conservatives that are we being led down a garden path. The models did not predict this and therefore are unreliable. That is not an unreasonable position to take IF the hiatus really occurred. For now let us not get into arguments about this because you will NOT convince the Republicans by one "new study" that shows that the IPCC was mistaken.

Then you add on John Christy's famous graph which so impressed Steve Koonin between the predictions of the models and the actual observations (see APS panel hearing below). Do you not think that those pressing the Republicans not to do anything on the climate change file have not read the transcript of the APS panel hearing where three (3) of the top IPCC contributing climate scientists, Collins, Hand and Santer, admitted that the model predictions do not track the observations? Their answer was that they do not trust the observations. Can you not see how this would make conservatives suspicious?

So "97% of climate scientists" does not cut it with Republicans. They simply do not trust the climate scientists believing, rightly or wrongly, that their bread and butter is really based upon making sure that climate change is primarily man-made. Can anyone really be a scientist and say that 100% of climate change is man-made? On that point I fully agree with Perry. Climate change has been on-going for the life of the planet and the man-made CO2 emissions simply cannot be 100% unless you have strong evidence that we are in a natural "cooling period". It is not possible that the climate naturally is not going either up or down. When you say "100%" you sound like an extremist. Most people, and especially conservatives, do not like extremists. Not a smart thing to say.

But back to the Republican position. When they see there are real-life climate scientists like Judith Curry (who I have to admit sounds much more balanced than Michael Mann in testimony before the various Congress committees and who is not subject to any "ad hominem" attacks that seem to be levelled at Christy and Lindzen), then the "red team blue team" approach with other scientists (primarily physicists I hope) may be the best answer to the Republicans. Give it a go and see what happens. If the Koch Bros result happens again, then you will have a very legitimate and strong position to force the Republicans to act. If their own "red team blue team" comes to the conclusion that CO2 emissions are really the cause then we are at least then only into the question of how much warming and decisions as to how best to approach this. So I say, fully support the "red team blue team" even if it has been done before.

Once we get past what Dessler calls "positive statements" (in his very good book on climate change) which are the facts, then we can get into "normative statements" on what we think the results are in economic terms and what we should do about it, both as to mitigation and adaptation.

I do suspect that such a "red team blue team" debate will get bogged down on the facts and largely because we do not have the proper instruments to measure what is happening year to year. If the result is that the Republicans do at least decide to dedicate much more money to funding both weather/climate satellites and water buoys and on-land temperature measurements then it will be a "win" for the majority of climate scientists who believe that we are the cause.

What I found most unsatisfying about the APS panel struck in 2014 to re-evaluate their statement on Climate Change is that after having somewhat of an "appellate hearing" there were no "reasons for judgment", just a decision by the Board of Directors of the APS one year later to effectively stick with their previous statement. I have no problem with them sticking with their same statement but by providing their reasons they could have provided massive "independent evidence" outside the climate science community that man made warming is a major threat to our world. On another post, I have made reference to the APS panel. You can read the APS Workshop Framework Questions and transcript of the proceeding with 6 of the top climatologists on both sides of this debate on the APS.org website just searching "Climate Change Policy Review".

I just think the climate science community has to do a reality check. Trump won and he in all likelihood is here for at least for the remainder of his first term and possibly 8 years (would Pence be any better?). Anyone who does not accept this is really like the ostrich in the sand pictured on the home page of this website.

I personally am very unhappy with this situation but the American people have spoken! Get used to it! As Winston Churchill has noted, democracy is close to unworkable but compared to the alternatives, it is the best. Comey must stay awake at nights realizing how he might have turned the course of history.

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