Post: #1

The following essay by Lord Nigel Lawson, former UK Chancellor of the Exchequer, is, in my opinion, the single best thing ever written on the "climate change" craziness.

I strongly urge anyone remotely interested in the subject to take 15 minutes to read it in full.

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/05/01/ni...n-cool-it/

Below is my brief summary of Lord Lawson's main points, but again, please read the whole thing.

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Lawson notes that the existence of the "greenhouse effect" is an undeniable fact that follows from basic physics. This means that the presence of greenhouse gases, of which water vapor is by far the most important but carbon dioxide (CO2) is one, warms the Earth's atmosphere (indeed, without greenhouse gases the planet would not be habitable at all). This means that, other things being equal, increased concentration of the greenhouse gas CO2 will lead to warmer temperature. However, there are 4 questions to consider:

1. Other things being equal, how much is increased concentration of CO2 expected to warm the Earth?

The answer, as Lord Lawson explains, is probably not very much at all. The actual measured change in average temperature has been very modest; climate models that have attempted to predict far more extreme change have already failed -- their predictions are not consistent with the fact that there has been no measurable warming in the past 15 years or more.

2. Are other things "equal"? Meaning, how much natural variability in the climate is there quite independent of greenhouse gas concentrations?

The answer is, a lot. There have been periods in recorded history (the last 1000 years) both quite a bit warmer and quite a bit colder than the current period. The natural variability of the climate, which occurs for reasons that are not well understood or quantified, far exceeds in scale the likely contribution of greenhouse gases generated by humans.

3. Supposing that the temperature does warm going forward -- how much does it matter?

The answer is, not very much. The are both advantages and disadvantages resulting from warmer temperatures -- indeed, it is very plausible that the benefits would exceed the harms. The damage done by very cold weather is far greater than the damage done by very hot weather, as has been well-documented.

And despite continuous propaganda, there is absolutely no evidence that whatever warming might occur will increase the incidence or severity of "extreme weather". Claims that it's already doing so are absurd on their face since even the alarmists must acknowledge that the warming that has occurred so far is quite small; and even in "climate science" cause must precede effect and supposed significant warming in the future cannot be affecting the weather right now.

4. Supposing warming does occur, what should we do about it?

The answer is, continue to develop and adapt. The idea that we need to drastically reduce carbon emissions and deprive the world and particularly developing countries of the cheapest and most plentiful source of energy is not only irrational, it is completely immoral. The greatest problem in the world is poverty; it would be a monstrous evil to fail to alleviate it by forsaking the use of plentiful and cheap sources of energy to try to prevent modest changes in the average temperature. Not only that, but since countries like China will not go along such a path in any case, the affectations of western countries to do so in order to "set an example" are futile exercises in absurdity and collective insanity.

In addition to addressing these four basic questions, Lord Lawson makes a number of other quite important points about science, scientists, and the overall character of the alarmist movement.

While Science as such is the greatest instrument devised by mankind for understanding and mastering the world, that does not mean that individual scientists are either intellectually or morally infallible; some are good, some bad, some indifferent. The current climate science establishment is betraying Science and indeed the very legacy of the Enlightenment by attempting to stifle debate and assert for itself a Church-like authority; and it is acquiescing in and sometimes encouraging hysterical pronouncements which are entirely unsupported even by the quite flawed research that is currently available, partly for the sake of maintaining and expanding its funding sources.

Finally, the climate change alarmist movement is fundamentally an apocalyptic religious cult far more than any sort of scientific endeavor. While the authority of traditional religions as well as new-fangled quasi-religions like Communism has declined, humans are still beset by a sense of guilt and sin, and by the notion that we will be punished for our transgressions. This explains the deep appeal of the idea that we are responsible for changing the Earth's climate through the sinfully gluttonous consumption of fossil fuels, and that Nature, in turn, will exact a terrible price for our greed and hubris.

Post: #2

A funny thing happens when you become scientifically literate; you begin to notice all the people who aren't.

Post: #3

Excellent article. And while I would still say that global warming / climate change is a serious issue that needs a lot of attention, I can't help but agree with many of his points, especially the one about the ridiculous way in which many climate change supporters argue. It's disturbingly similar to how feminists deal with "rape culture", or 15th century Inquisition with "heretics".

Post: #4

I didn't get a chance t read the article, but I can say for sure that the weather is changing where I am in a way thats very different from how it used to be.

Jury's still out on the causes of it though.

Post: #5

(05-03-2014 12:06 PM)Handsome Creepy Eel Wrote:  Excellent article. And while I would still say that global warming / climate change is a serious issue that needs a lot of attention, I can't help but agree with many of his points, especially the one about the ridiculous way in which many climate change supporters argue. It's disturbingly similar to how feminists deal with "rape culture", or 15th century Inquisition with "heretics".

Many climate change supporters aren't scientifically literate, they're using it to promote a political goal. The general fallacy at work is affirming the consequent. If P then Q. Q. Therefore P. If you're scientifically literate you'll probably acknowledge climate change to whatever degree. That doesn't mean that acknowledging it makes one scientifically literate.

Post: #6

Climate Change is just a big lie to steal money just like everything else from the MSM.

Read the book Cool it from Bjorn Lomborg for some real data and scientific analysis.:

http://www.amazon.com/Cool-Bjorn-Lomborg...ds=cool+it

Post: #7

(05-03-2014 12:20 PM)Glaucon Wrote:  Climate Change is just a big lie to steal money just like everything else from the MSM.

Read the book Cool it from Bjorn Lomborg for some real data and scientific analysis.:

http://www.amazon.com/Cool-Bjorn-Lomborg...ds=cool+it

Bjorn Lomborg isn't a scientist. He did an MA and a PhD in political science. That would be like manboobz writing on how to satisfy a woman. Lomborg's position re: climate change is also as follows:

"Global warming is real – it is man-made and it is an important problem. But it is not the end of the world."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bj%C3%B8rn_Lomborg

Post: #8

(05-03-2014 12:23 PM)Wadsworth Wrote:  

(05-03-2014 12:20 PM)Glaucon Wrote:  Climate Change is just a big lie to steal money just like everything else from the MSM.

Read the book Cool it from Bjorn Lomborg for some real data and scientific analysis.:

http://www.amazon.com/Cool-Bjorn-Lomborg...ds=cool+it

Bjorn Lomborg isn't a scientist. He did an MA and a PhD in political science. That would be like manboobz writing on how to satisfy a woman. Lomborg's position re: climate change is also as follows:

"Global warming is real – it is man-made and it is an important problem. But it is not the end of the world."

In other words, he thinks it's real and an important problem.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bj%C3%B8rn_Lomborg

He says what the MSM want to hear, but the book is quite critical, and has some good analysis, especially on the money front.

Post: #9

(05-03-2014 12:27 PM)Glaucon Wrote:  

(05-03-2014 12:23 PM)Wadsworth Wrote:  

(05-03-2014 12:20 PM)Glaucon Wrote:  Climate Change is just a big lie to steal money just like everything else from the MSM.

Read the book Cool it from Bjorn Lomborg for some real data and scientific analysis.:

http://www.amazon.com/Cool-Bjorn-Lomborg...ds=cool+it

Bjorn Lomborg isn't a scientist. He did an MA and a PhD in political science. That would be like manboobz writing on how to satisfy a woman. Lomborg's position re: climate change is also as follows:

"Global warming is real – it is man-made and it is an important problem. But it is not the end of the world."

In other words, he thinks it's real and an important problem.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bj%C3%B8rn_Lomborg

He says what the MSM want to hear, but the book is quite critical, and has some good analysis, especially on the money front.

Yes, and I might even agree with his financial analysis. It's totally irrelevant to the topic of climate change. Climate change could be 100% fact and it wouldn't follow that we'd have to lift a single finger to do anything about it.

http://www.philosophy-index.com/hume/guillotine/

OP posted another article proposing an ought and then trying to re engineer the is. Saying climate change isn't a fact because you don't want to waste money isn't coherent.

Post: #10

I think the author has a major flaw in his article. CO2 DOES NOT cause warming. It is the other way around. The earth warming causes CO2 to increase. Al Gore and Michael Mann wouldn't have had to lie and flip the hockey stick graph around if that was the case.

Also lets not forget in the case of North America all of Canada and half of the US was covered in ice. What caused it to start melting ? Indians and their SUV's ? I am not sure if they have dug up any evidence from the last 100,000 years that showed Indians using coal power plants and Escalade's.

What happened after the ice melted ? Did the Arctic flood the entire world ? Did coast lines disappear ? Or did North America become fertile and able to sustain human life ? Seems to me the earth warming provides plants with life and longer growing seasons.

Not to mention the earth seems to not have warmed in the last 15 years according to a lot of scientists and of course the famous climategate emails. I wonder if El Nino is going to be blamed on climate change this year ?

Post: #11

(05-03-2014 12:10 PM)soup Wrote:  I didn't get a chance t read the article, but I can say for sure that the weather is changing where I am in a way thats very different from how it used to be.

Jury's still out on the causes of it though.

soup, the weather is always changing to some extent. You couldn't spend 30 years at any time in any given place on the planet without noticing some change in the weather patterns.

It is instructive to read old newspaper articles from 20, 30, 50 or 100 years ago -- they are available from archives and I've done some of that. They were always saying things like "well, the weather has been rather strange lately and even oldtimers can't recall anything like it". It is a funny fact about human nature that any change in the weather patterns -- warmer or cooler, drier or wetter, calmer or stormier -- is always perceived as something negative. Whatever it is, people feel that it can't be good.

The current MO of the "climate change" agitators is that any change of any kind in weather patterns anywhere on the planet is attributed to "climate change", all supposedly caused by us. In the beginning, the alarmists were foolish enough to make specific predictions, such as that there would be less snow ("a thing of the past"), more hurricanes, consistent warming etc. Every specific prediction they ever made was completely inaccurate and never came true.

However, now they've realized that there is no need to make specific predictions at all; anything that happens is by definition proof of "climate change". A warm winter with no snow is proof of "climate change" but a cold winter with lots of snow is even better proof. An intense hurricane season is scary, but a season with no hurricanes at all is even scarier. As with any good religion, God (or in this case the Goddess) moves in mysterious ways, but the only thing that is assured is that any event is proof positive of Her inexorable movement.

(05-03-2014 02:00 PM)BIGINJAPAN Wrote:  I wonder if El Nino is going to be blamed on climate change this year ?

Yes, of course it will be. It's a funny and true fact that there are progg agitators right now who check the ENSO (El Nino Seasonal Oscillation) forecasts as the first thing they do each day, praying to Gaia for a truly exceptional El Nino. If they get it, and they might, it will be all systems go -- you'll see "climate change" propaganda like you've never seen before. It will be a sight to behold.

Post: #12

(05-03-2014 03:19 PM)The Lizard of Oz Wrote:  

(05-03-2014 12:10 PM)soup Wrote:  I didn't get a chance t read the article, but I can say for sure that the weather is changing where I am in a way thats very different from how it used to be.

Jury's still out on the causes of it though.

soup, the weather is always changing to some extent. You couldn't spend 30 years at any time in any given place on the planet without noticing some change in the weather patterns.

It is instructive to read old newspaper articles from 20, 30, 50 or 100 years ago -- they are available from archives and I've done some of that. They were always saying things like "well, the weather has been rather strange lately and even oldtimers can't recall anything like it". It is a funny fact about human nature that any change in the weather patterns -- warmer or cooler, drier or wetter, calmer or stormier -- is always perceived as something negative. Whatever it is, people feel that it can't be good.

The current MO of the "climate change" agitators is that any change of any kind in weather patterns anywhere on the planet is attributed to "climate change", all supposedly caused by us. In the beginning, the alarmists were foolish enough to make specific predictions, such as that there would be less snow ("a thing of the past"), more hurricanes, consistent warming etc. Every specific prediction they ever made was completely inaccurate and never came true.

However, now they've realized that there is no need to make specific predictions at all; anything that happens is by definition proof of "climate change". A warm winter with no snow is proof of "climate change" but a cold winter with lots of snow is even better proof. An intense hurricane season is scary, but a season with no hurricanes at all is even scarier. As with any good religion, God (or in this case the Goddess) moves in mysterious ways, but the only thing that is assured is that any event is proof positive of Her inexorable movement.

(05-03-2014 02:00 PM)BIGINJAPAN Wrote:  I wonder if El Nino is going to be blamed on climate change this year ?

Yes, of course it will be. It's a funny and true fact that there are progg agitators right now who check the ENSO (El Nino Seasonal Oscillation) forecasts as the first thing they do each day, praying to Gaia for a truly exceptional El Nino. If they get it, and they might, it will be all systems go -- you'll see "climate change" propaganda like you've never seen before. It will be a sight to behold.

Well, Manhattan has been around for a while now. Not in my lifetime, or anyone's before mine in recorded history did we have anything like Sandy a few years ago that knocked out the power downtown for days.

We've never had tornados up until a 3-5 years ago as well.

This last Wednesday we had the third most rainfall for any recorded days in NYC.. ever. That's third most on a non-hurricane or super storm day.

Post: #13

(05-03-2014 12:34 PM)Wadsworth Wrote:  OP posted another article proposing an ought and then trying to re engineer the is. Saying climate change isn't a fact because you don't want to waste money isn't coherent.

Wadsworth, did you bother to read the essay?

Most of it (I'd say more than half) is about the "is", not the "ought".

To say that "climate change is a fact" is a vacuous statement. Climate change is always a fact in one way or another. Note that "climate change" itself is a weasel phrase, they used to call it "global warming" but seeing how there hasn't been any warming in about 17 years it's now "climate change" since that can mean essentially anything.

The specific questions are, how much will the Earth's temperature rise as a result of increased CO2 concentration, other things being equal; and are other things really equal, meaning, where does this expected warming fall on the scale of the climate's natural variability. And the answers, as explained especially well in Lawson's essay, are that first, the temperature sensitivity to CO2 is likely very modest; the models that predicted a high sensitivity based on strong positive feedback loops have already been falsified. And second, these projected changes are small compared to the natural variability of the climate, which will continue to be the dominant factor driving "climate change" one way or another. So to say that "climate change is a fact" is a tautology that gets you absolutely nothing.

(05-03-2014 11:56 AM)Wadsworth Wrote:  A funny thing happens when you become scientifically literate; you begin to notice all the people who aren't.

Not sure what you mean by that, but let me note that I hold a Ph.D. in the "hardest" possible science from one of the handful of best departments in the world in that subject. And while that does not automatically make me right about anything (in the way that the alarmists try to stifle all debate because "teh science" so shut up), it's also not very likely that I am wrong because of basic scientific illiteracy. Nor is it very likely that a brilliant man like Nigel Lawson is to be dismissed for that reason.

Post: #14

soup, Sandy wasn't even a hurricane when it hit NYC -- it didn't even make it to Category 1 at that time. One reason they call it a "superstorm" is to avoid acknowledging that it was not a hurricane but something much weaker. It happened to cause an unusual amount of flooding in NY and NJ but there have been far stronger storms in the past that hit the area much harder.

Read up on the very extensive history of actual hurricanes that have hit New York in the past, including the New England Hurricane of 1938 which caused more fatalities than Sandy at a time when the population was much sparser than it is now.

Also according to the Tornado History Project, there have been 411 tornadoes in New York between 1952 and 2013.

Finally, and most importantly, unusual things of one kind or another occur all the time. Every day a record of some kind is being broken somewhere -- that is the nature of records, especially since the number of observations is always growing. So if every record of any kind is proof of human-induced "climate change" -- every day when there is an unusual amount of rain, but also every drought; every massive snowstorm but also every winter with no snow; etc -- then you will indeed be able to provide new proofs of it every single day, which is exactly what the alarmists are doing. That is why it functions as a religion -- there is no need to make any specific predictions; anything that happens is a vindication of the general Prophecy of Doom.

Post: #15

The globe is going through an extreme cooling period right now that all the climate crooks models seems to miss. They all forecasted scorching earth by this time 10 years ago. They stay silent as it snowed in Egypt for the first time in 150 years. In Toronto is still hovering close to zero at night when around this time averages are at 20 in the day and 10 at night. It's all ego and arrogance with climate scientists. The earth is more dynamic then we think, and it gives zero fucks what we say, think, or do.

Climate science is worse then gender science and both are heavily compromised and pumped full of bias to fit agendas. You can't take much of what the mainstream group of scientists say when large opposition of equally qualified professionals call the bullshit out for what it is.

Post: #16

I thought the cooling period was taken into account with all of this.

Post: #17

Post: #18

(05-03-2014 04:08 PM)soup Wrote:  I thought the cooling period was taken into account with all of this.

soup, nothing is "taken into account" anywhere. The main climate models predicted continued warming; the fact that it hasn't happened flatly contradicts their predictions, and in a responsible science people would say, well we were wrong so let's throw out these models and go back to the drawing board. But in a quasi-religion the priests are never wrong no matter what they say.

The climate scientists themselves admit that there is no explanation for the pause in warming over the last 15-17 years, so they conjure up fanciful theories about the "missing heat" that is sitting deep at the bottom of the ocean. These are completely made up new ideas that only came into existence to explain the miserable failure of the models to make any predictions that are actually confirmed in reality.

The funniest thing of all is that while everyone agrees that the overall warming so far has been very small and easily within the scale of natural variability, at the same time this very small overall warming is magically causing all kinds of "extreme weather" everywhere at once. How does this work exactly? It's as if the 0.5C warming is more evil if those 0.5C came from carbon dioxide rather than natural variability, so it knows that it needs to cause all kinds of havoc; whereas if the same 0.5C warming came from other causes (as has happened all the time), it would be a nice and benign 0.5C and it wouldn't feel the need to act up in this way. I wonder how that is supposed to work? Again, this has nothing to do with science -- it's pure magical thinking at its best.

Post: #19

No I remember hearing about the cooling aspect being taken into account. That it was not just a steady rise to a hotter climate. Something to do with having more water on the planet do to the caps melting and diluting the salination in the oceans.

Post: #20

(05-03-2014 04:46 PM)soup Wrote:  No I remember hearing about the cooling aspect being taken into account. That it wa just a steady rise to a hotter climate. Something to do with having more water on the planet do to the caps melting and diluting the salinatipn in the oceans.

soup, it's pretty simple. You can just look at the model predictions -- since they made specific predictions -- and at what actually happened.

The models were predicting significant warming over the past 15 years with high confidence. A zero change in average temperature -- which is what actually happened -- falls outside the 95% confidence margin for the majority of the climate models. In plain language, it means that the model predictions have been falsified. It's really that simple -- no amount of hand-waving can sidestep this basic reality.

In a normal, responsible science, the consequence would be that the scientists would say, our models were wrong, so we're going to go back to the drawing board and reexamine our assumptions. But in contemporary climate science they will just make up new excuses as they go along. That is not how science works.

Don't confuse what you may hear from media adherents of the alarmist religion with what the reality is. These people are truly shameless in the manner of old Commie agitators, or say, Iraqi government spokesmen from Saddam's time: they have the gift of rehearsing the talking points of any given day with absolute conviction, even if they flatly contradict what they recited with equal conviction the day before.

Post: #21

(05-03-2014 04:56 PM)The Lizard of Oz Wrote:  

(05-03-2014 04:46 PM)soup Wrote:  No I remember hearing about the cooling aspect being taken into account. That it wa just a steady rise to a hotter climate. Something to do with having more water on the planet do to the caps melting and diluting the salinatipn in the oceans.

soup, it's pretty simple. You can just look at the model predictions -- since they made specific predictions -- and at what actually happened.

The models were predicting significant warming over the past 15 years with high confidence. A zero change in average temperature -- which is what actually happened -- falls outside the 95% confidence margin for the majority of the climate models. In plain language, it means that the model predictions have been falsified. It's really that simple -- no amount of hand-waving can sidestep this basic reality.

In a normal, responsible science, the consequence would be that the scientists would say, our models were wrong, so we're going to go back to the drawing board and reexamine our assumptions. But in contemporary climate science they will just make up new excuses as they go along. That is not how science works.

Don't confuse what you may hear from media adherents of the alarmist religion with what the reality is. These people are truly shameless in the manner of old Commie agitators, or say, Iraqi government spokesmen from Saddam's time: they have the gift of rehearsing the talking points of any given day with absolute conviction, even if they flatly contradict what they recited with equal conviction the day before.

No, I'm talking about people predicting the cooling period like ten years ago as part of the whole climate change layout. I remember hearing about it, and am not making it up. I don't know what the current predictions are, but that's what I heard.

What matters is what actually happens and why it's happening.

Post: #22

This all ties into Karl Popper's ideas about the falsifiability of scientific theories. Climate models are just that, models. They are by definition wrong in the sense that they are approximations (hopefully accurate) of real world phenomena. If a model can never be wrong then it is basically a religion. It's certainly not science.

Additionally, the notion that a majority of scientists believing X somehow makes X more "true" is absurd and laughable. At one point, all the world's scientists thought that the earth is flat, that the sun rotates around the earth, and a bunch of other nonsense.

Post: #23

The timing of the global warming hysteria is curious. I seem to recall we started hearing about it in the 1990s. What else happened in the 1990s? The Soviet Union fell.

The left and academia have always hated post industrial revolution capitalism. There was always communist or commie sympathizers in academia. There really was a time in history where influential intellectuals in the US thought the Soviets had a better system and would eventually win the day.

When the soviet system collapsed, these folks were bitch slapped. I think they latched into global warming and ideas for global carbon emission controls as the new way to stop industrial capitalism.

Post: #24

(05-03-2014 03:38 PM)The Lizard of Oz Wrote:  Not sure what you mean by that, but let me note that I hold a Ph.D. in the "hardest" possible science from one of the handful of best departments in the world in that subject.

I'd rather not get sucked into another climate change debate online, but as a chemist, I hope you'll indulge me. What is the hardest possible science?

Post: #25

Wadsworth, what are your political beliefs? Would you call yourself left wing generally?