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Bad climate science, bad climate journalism

The coming dark age: It appears that the most fundamental concept of science, that all research is subject to skepticism, questioning, and doubt, is no longer followed by the world’s leading science journal Science, in either the research or journalism it publishes.

In reporting today how the Trump administration is establishing a climate review panel that will include global warming skeptics, this so-called science journal describes this effort as follows:

The White House is recruiting researchers who reject the scientific consensus on climate change for its “adversarial” review of the issue.

The proposal to form a “Presidential Committee on Climate Security” at the National Security Council (NSC) has shifted, into an ad-hoc group that will review climate science out of the public eye. Those involved in the preliminary discussions said it is focused on recruiting academics to conduct a review of the science that shows climate change presents a national security risk.

William Happer, a senior director at the NSC and an emeritus Princeton University physics professor not trained in climate science, is leading the effort.

Among those who have been contacted are the relatively small number of researchers with legitimate academic credentials who question the notion that humans are warming the planet at a rapid pace through the burning of fossil fuels. A number of the names the White House is targeting are those frequently invited by Republicans to testify at congressional hearings on climate change where uncertainty is emphasized.

The stated goal of the committee, according to a leaked White House memo, is to conduct “adversarial scientific peer review” of climate science. [emphasis mine]

The article also stated that the panel “will also include scientists who agree with the vast majority in the field of climate science that humans are warming the planet at a pace unprecedented in the history of civilization.”

First of all, it is not clear that “a vast majority in the field of climate science” agree with that global warming hypothesis. And even if it was, it would not matter. Science isn’t determined by consensus or majority rule. It is determined by facts, and if the facts don’t support the beliefs of 97% of all climate scientists, all 97% of those scientists are wrong. That this writer and the editors at Science don’t understand this is shocking.

Second, all science work is supposed to go through “adversarial scientific peer review.” That is in fact what the journal Science is supposed to be doing for all its research articles. Scientists from within the field of each submitted article are asked to review it. Ideally, the journal is supposed to pick scientists who both agree and disagree with the premises put forth by the research, to insure that it is rigorously challenged and that any weaknesses within it are revealed.

By its very definition this is what peer review is. That this writer and the editors at Science don’t understand this is also shocking.

Third, this new panel is actually not “adversarial,” as claimed by this article. It is apparently is going to include scientists from both sides of the argument, making it actually quite sane and balanced, and hardly adversarial.

Fourth, all peer review, including the kind that Science does, is always “out of the public eye.” The reviewers are routinely not identified to protect them, and their reviews are never made public, including any changes they demand in the papers they review. That this new government panel will operate the same way is hardly a cause for concern, especially if it is going to include scientists from both sides of the debate.

What is really happening here is that for the first time in decades, a climate science panel in the government is going to be balanced and not limited only to those who advocate the theory that humans are causing the climate to warm. For the first time in decades, funding for climate research will be judged by a more objective panel of scientists.

The global warming activist scientists who have ruled all funding in government climate research for the past thirty or so years don’t like this, at all. They are losing power, and are now doing whatever they can to stop it, including getting Science to publish this kind of biased and partisan reporting. Nor did they have to do much to convince Science to lobby for them. It has also been part of that gravy train, and doesn’t like the idea that the free ride might be ending.

Or to put it in plain English, the journal Science is no longer in the business of science. Instead, it has become a mere trade lobbyist focused specifically in maintaining funding for pro-global warming climate researchers. All others need not apply.

Genesis cover

On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.

 
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.


The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
 

"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News

34 comments

  • Chris Lopes

    Climate science is an amalgamation of a whole bunch of other sciences like physics, chemistry, geology, and astrophysics. Pretty much anyone in the hard sciences should be able to understand the research and come to a reasonable conclusion about it. The laws of nature don’t change when you are dealing with the atmosphere.

  • foxbat

    As a retired electrical engineer I observe the following about climate change articles. First, they rely on highlighting findings that are “worst case” and filled with weasel words like; possibly, perhaps, could, etc. Second, little is proposed to solve the problem except carbon tax and/or regulations. Now, I understand that there is a place for pure science to study and issue and also the reality of media needing to cater to their readers paradigms. However, we need engineers, maintainers and operators with real word experience in 24/7 industry and utilities to design, build and operate any new energy sources. The lack of those parties in the climate change fellowship is both revealing and troubling. I don’t doubt that human caused solution can contribute to many environmental problems. However, most of the solutions i hear offered are nonsensical. If the technology existed for reduce the energy use or pollution from a process it is hard to keep an engineer from leaping to the challenge. And no real progress will happen until engineers are fully engaged. But we can design fancy.

  • Phil Berardelli

    Two anecdotes and a submission for your interest:

    + Over a decade ago, I worked as science editor for an international news service. As was customary for me to do, I attended the annual meeting of AAAS, in which the lead story of Science that week was the announcement that researchers in South Korea had successfully cloned a human embryo. I was in the process of covering that story when I received a call from one of my reporters — an exceptional and scrupulously honest journalist — who informed me he had learned from two prominent sources that the cloning paper could be fraudulent. I took the information to the editor of Science and asked for comment, and he immediately and angrily berated me and my employer for having the audacity to question the integrity of the magazine and the organization. One year later, Science had to retract the story and disavow the paper, because the research had indeed turned out to be fraudulent.

    + Several years later, I began working for one of the news services run by AAAS and, coincidentally, working with the editor who had berated me. By that time I had been covering climate science for well over a decade, and I began to observe more and more flaws in both the data and the models being used to promote the so-called global warming consensus. I worked on several articles that strongly suggested problems with the consensus — real problems presented by scientists with demonstrated integrity. In every case, my editors demanded that I shift the focus of the articles from the data involved to the researchers themselves — the intent being to cast doubt on their veracity and character. Likewise, in every case I withdrew my byline from the articles, and I eventually left the employ of AAAS.

    There were other, similar instances. My experience with AAAS over the years was that it was moving, inexorably, away from hard science and toward political advocacy. I completely agree with Bob Zimmerman that the job of every scientist and scientific organization is to be ruthlessly skeptical about every bit of research, whether new or well-established, because that is the only way science can truly be advanced.

    As far as my presentation for your consideration, permit me to enclose this link to part 1 of a four-part commentary I wrote in 2017. It encompasses everything I learned during my stint as a climate science writer, including an invaluable lesson I learned about the dangers of scientific consensus.

    https://capitalresearch.org/article/sacrificing-scientific-skepticism-climate-patterns/

  • Tom Billings

    “Pretty much anyone in the hard sciences should be able to understand the research and come to a reasonable conclusion about it. The laws of nature don’t change when you are dealing with the atmosphere.”

    Quite true. But the “consensus” argument is, in its conception, an “argument from authority”, in which academia provides the certification for authority, and reaps the benefit of funding from the expression of that authority. Thus, there exists no incentive for most interested academics and their students to recognize any other legitimate opinion other than that of the consensus. They will not be benefiting from any other opinion. The same goes for academically certified journalists.

  • To paraphrase an old ‘Bloom County’ cartoon: “If a large number of people do a stupid thung, it’s still a stupid thing.”

    And from Peanuts: “If you can’t be right, be wrong at the top of your lungs.” (Lucy)

  • David Lohnes

    Phil Berardelli, what a great commentary on why skepticism is so important in science. I encourage all to read this:
    https://capitalresearch.org/article/sacrificing-scientific-skepticism-climate-patterns/

  • Edward

    Robert,
    The parts of the article that you quoted describe a perfectly reasonable review methodology, and those paragraphs do not sound particularly against such a panel. However, other portions of the article clearly indicate Science‘s disapproval of performing a review of the science performed so far. For example, from the article: “That directly contradicts the world’s top science agencies, including NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. They have found the consumption of fossil fuels has pushed the planet to a dangerous tipping point that could fundamentally alter civilization if it continues unabated.

    Clearly, Science advocates that the science is settled, because (they imply) NASA and NOAA could not be wrong. Strangely, neither NASA nor NOAA have quantified any amount of the suspected danger, any amount of contribution by CO2 emissions toward such a danger, or any amount of fundamental alteration to civilization. They haven’t even defined a tipping point or why such a point is tipping (irreversible). They have not quantified man’s contribution to a changing climate in a world where the climate has been in constant flux for billions of years.

    The world’s top science agencies have been confused as to whether we are entering the next ice age or whether the world is warming or whether (or why) the warming “paused” — the non-scientific assumption being that the warming will eventually continue rather than cool in the future.

    Meanwhile, China and India continue to increase their CO2 production levels, unabated, and the world community does not even suggest slowing their output. They only propose taxes on the developed countries and propose that the undeveloped countries not become developed (e.g. Obama in Africa). The developing countries are fully allowed to continue their development by producing power with fossil fuels and by burning down their rain forests.

    On another topic, I have a slight quibble with your “Firstly” statement. You did not point out that the “97% of scientists agree” claim is bogus. As you already know, and for the benefit of the other readers here, the Cook paper — which is used by believers in order to claim this percentage — announces its own fatal flaw in its abstract:
    http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/8/2/024024/pdf;jsessionid=D5E5F92C05095ED25200D0A9F73B54C6.ip-10-40-1-105

    We find that 66.4% of abstracts expressed no position on AGW

    Thus, based upon their methodology, two thirds have no position, not the position that they agree that anthropogenic global warming is a real phenomenon. Thus, the number is not 97%, but the maximum number is 33%. The abstract mentions other conditions that reduce this 33% very slightly.

    This 33% number does not consider the possibility that the methodology is flawed. There are those who question using the published papers in order to get a sense of the scientists’s own conclusions rather than asking the scientists directly to get their real answer.

    Those scientists may not be wrong, because they may not agree to what Cook claims that they do.

    But, of course, in a science bereft of skepticism, no one is skeptical of the Cook paper. It says what they want to hear. What a classic example of confirmation bias.

  • Edward: Your quibble is quite valid. I was too lazy to look for the link to Cook’s paper, which you so helpfully have provided.

    More to the point, however, it actually doesn’t matter. There was a time that 100% of all people everywhere were convinced the Sun orbited the Earth. They were all wrong, and it only took Copernicus, Galileo, and a little help from Kepler, to provide that proof.

    Science, and human civilization, has only advanced when we allow for open-mindedness and skepticism, and not reliance of authority, to determine the truth. It appears sadly that the five hundred years of enlightenment that began with Galileo is now ending.

  • pzatchok

    I quit reading Science when they couldn’t even keep the global warming comments out of an article on garbage in Mexico.

    They blamed that garbage was both caused by and caused global warming.

    I then looked back at the three previous editions, Out of 18 articles 16 mentioned global warming in some way. Add in many ads that also mentioned global warming and not a single page was left GW free.

    They have since switched to the more amorphous “Climate Change” but it still the same.

  • Robert Pratt

    Credentialism, in part, has led to the new dogma of “science” by consensus. The Enlightenment has been turned upside down.

  • m d mill

    I have recently played with a desktop CPU global climate simulator (edGCM), which uses an older climate model( from GISS /Hansen circa 1983?), but still quite sophisticated. It becomes clear that the large sensitivity to CO2 results mostly from a simulation of +0.3% decrease in earth albedo (reflection) per 1 degree C increase in global average temperature (due to decreased cloud cover). This is a fractional reflection change of .003 per 1 degree C temperature increase! IMO it is not realistic to think this fraction is know to such accuracy. This number might just as well be 0.000 or -.003, in which case the sensitivity to doubling of CO2 is much reduced.

    Consider this from the GISS website (hidden away?) on cloud research:

    ISSCP GISS webpage
    https://isccp.giss.nasa.gov/role.html

    “…CLOUD CLIMATOLOGY: COMPUTER CLIMATE MODELS

    Because there are so many possibilities for change, climatologists must know how clouds over the entire Earth will respond. Determining that response calls for computer models of the global climate that can explore changing conditions. Climate models are sets of mathematical equations that describe the properties of Earth’s atmosphere at discrete places and times, along with the ways such properties can change. The challenge for climate models is to account for the most important physical processes, including cloud microphysics and cloud dynamics, and their complex interactions accurately enough to carry climatic predictions tens of years into the future. When contemporary models are given information about Earth’s present condition — the size, shape and topography of the continents; the composition of the atmosphere; the amount of sunlight striking the globe — they create artificial climates that mathematically resemble the real one: their temperatures and winds are accurate to within about 5%, but their clouds and rainfall are only accurate to within about 25-35%. Such models can also accurately forecast the temperatures and winds of the weather many days ahead when given information about current conditions.

    UNFORTUNATELY, SUCH A MARGIN OF ERROR IS MUCH TOO LARGE FOR MAKING RELIABLE FORECAST ABOUT CLIMATE CHANGES, such as the global warming will result from increasing abundances of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. A doubling in atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2), predicted to take place in the next 50 to 100 years, is expected to change the radiation balance at the surface by only about 2 percent. Yet according to current climate models, such a small change could raise global mean surface temperatures by between 2-5°C (4-9°F), with potentially dramatic consequences. If a 2 percent change is that important, then a climate model to be useful must be accurate to something like 0.25%. Thus today’s models must be improved by about a hundredfold in accuracy, a very challenging task. To develop a much better understanding of clouds, radiation and precipitation, as well as many other climate processes, we need much better observations….”

  • Andrew_W

    As with the Wegman Report over a decade ago this climate review panel will be politically motivated nonsense with the verdict already decided, if you don’t get that you don’t get how politicians operate. They don’t set up review panels to find truth, they set them up to confirm their own ideologically based biases.

    The only real question is whether those supporting this politically motivated nonsense are complicit or just naive.

  • MDN

    This is an excellent presentation that explains how the error propagation in climate models completely overwhelms the projected forecasts, rendering the null and useless. Dr Frank tried to get this work published in the peer reviewed literature but gave up after several years when it became obvious the reviewers were never going to pass it.

    https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=THg6vGGRpvA

    I will add that climate models are simulations, not data, which is how the press and alarmist community treat them. It is a sorry state of affairs and in the semiconductor world where I work reliance on such “evidence” alone to guide industrial policy only ends up creating billion dollar craters in the VC community. Physics just isn’t that simple.

    We have modeled aerodynamics for about 60 years now and finally have good enough code that you could design and build an airplane with no prototype and be highly confident how it will fly on the first try. But only after endless cycles of code validation against physical wind tunnel models, and only in we’ll behave flight! Throw that plane into a high angle of attack and all bets are off because that involves TURBULENT flow which CANNOT be modeled at scale over long periods because we don’t have infinite processing and memory resources. You can’t model how parachutes open worth beans for the same reason, which is why all the Mars lander chutes need to be physically prototyped and tested so rigorously.you just can’t model them.

    And to the point that it’s all about how you model the clouds, where do they live? In the atmosphere where they are subject to perpetually turbulent conditions. Conventional modeling will thus forever be an approximation with significant uncertainty and large error bars. Just as Pat illustrates.

  • MDN

    I will further observe that China graduates about 2M engineers a year, many from our elite universities, and they understand this. And, as Bob has shared, many in the communist party leadership come from their space program where they are schooled on the realities of physics and the fallacy of precision computer modeling. So I am certain they watch the West clamoring to commit economic suicide with great amusement, and likely fund many in the alarmists community in a clandestine attempt to give them greater voice. To our detriment and their benefit because we are so rich in useful idiots.

  • wayne

    Will Happer – Climate “Denier”?
    Richard Epstein via Defining Ideas, Hoover: February 25, 2019
    https://www.hoover.org/research/will-happer-climate-denier

    “My own skepticism about global warming goes back at least a decade and is captured in my 2010 article, Carbon Dioxide: Our Newest Pollutant, which I stand by to this day. I became friends with Happer in 2016 when I critiqued on scientific and legal grounds then-New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman’s ill-advised attack against Exxon-Mobil for concealing information about the incipient risks of global warming. Happer’s own views are well set out in a key publication,“A Primer on Carbon Dioxide and Climate.” It would do well for the critics to answer his arguments rather than engage in name-calling that reflects only badly on themselves. Unlike his nasty critics, Happer is a learned and judicious man.”

  • wayne

    “A Primer on Carbon Dioxide and Climate.”
    http://co2coalition.org/2016/02/22/primer-carbon-dioxide-climate/

    [http://co2coalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Primer-on-CO2-and-Climate-1.pdf]

  • Chris

    Wayne -time for the link to Michael Chritchton’s talk on Aliens creating Global Warming where he discusses the loss of scientific skepticism and methodical rigor.

  • wodun

    foxbat

    If the technology existed for reduce the energy use or pollution from a process it is hard to keep an engineer from leaping to the challenge. And no real progress will happen until engineers are fully engaged. But we can design fancy.

    They don’t want to reduce energy use, they want to eliminate it. They want to eliminate any human expansion or growth. And in general, they want to eliminate humanity because our existence is a danger to nature. It is neo-nature worship and we are all sinners that deserve damnation and the only path to redemption is flagellation, suffering, and sacrifice.

    Robert Zimmerman

    More to the point, however, it actually doesn’t matter. There was a time that 100% of all people everywhere were convinced the Sun orbited the Earth. They were all wrong, and it only took Copernicus, Galileo, and a little help from Kepler, to provide that proof.

    And they have the gall to say that they are Galileo going against authority.

  • commodude

    Wodun, one quibble:

    They don’t’ want to eliminate energy use, they want to eliminate the energy use by the serfdom while those with the “right” politics live like feudal lords.

    Ref VP Gore and the rest of those attempting to foist the hoax of climate change off on the world while they live like lords. It’s important for US to eliminate energy use, not them.

  • Phil Berardelli

    Thank you, David Lohnes, very much. The story of how retroviruses were discovered remains a cautionary tale for the ages about the dangers of consensus and conventional wisdom. I wish more people could become aware of it.

  • m d mill

    Andrew_W again illustrates that any attempt to skeptically question the alarmist scenarios is forbidden and denigrated, even before it is started.
    His science is “settled” according to ideologically based biases.
    Prove that the computer simulations are settled science and that skeptical questioning in any forum is “nonsense”.
    The Models themselves exhibit at least a factor of 2 variation in simulated sensitivity. In no way is the modelling “science” settled.
    GISS itself states “UNFORTUNATELY, SUCH A MARGIN OF ERROR IS MUCH TOO LARGE FOR MAKING RELIABLE FORECAST ABOUT CLIMATE CHANGES…” as discussed above. And Cloud Cover response is critical and highly questionable as discussed above. But reasoned skepticism is not allowed for the ideologically biased.
    Further the latest IPCC, gives a 95% range of 1.5 to 4? C/(doubling CO2), and they will not give a “most likely” value because different lines of reasonable research give quite different results….in other words they just don’t know with any reasonable certainty.
    I do not claim to know the answer, but to the ideologically biased there can be but one answer.

    The good news:
    The nearly linear increase in CO2 since the 1960’s is in fact a global climate experiment in progress.
    This increase will continue for the next 30 to 50 years at least…there is no reasonable expectation it will end soon (it would in fact be grievous if it did).
    But with the new satellite temperature data gathered in the next 30 to 50 years we (with the climate scientists, alarmists and skeptics) will almost certainly be able to discern if the “alarmist” trends and models are reasonably vindicated or reasonably disproved.

  • Edward

    m d mill,
    My takeaway from Andrew_W’s comment was that he equates science with politics.

    That he uses a report that validated criticism of one of his pet theories (although he does not realize that it failed the tests and is actually a failed hypothesis) just shows us that he is his own victim of confirmation bias. If it does not agree with his prejudiced conclusion, then it must be bad science, because it is certainly bad politics.

  • m d mill

    MDN:
    Thanks for the excellent link!
    …MDM

  • Andrew_W

    m d mill and Edward both seem to be strawmaning me, as mill says, the latest IPCC, gives a 95% range for climate sensitivity of 1.5 to 4 C, the 1990 IPCC First Assessment Report estimated that equilibrium climate sensitivity to CO2 doubling lay between 1.5 and 4.5 °C, and the other reports have also had the same or a similar range for climate sensitivity. The observed temperature rise over the last 50 years also point to climate sensitivity being near the middle of this range.

    It may well be that m d mill and Edward choose to run with other ideologically generated values for climate sensitivity, I’ve never made any claims that go outside the IPCC estimates.

    While the peer review system may not be perfect I’ll stick with it rather than buy into ideologically based science like this “review panel” will no doubt be producing, and likewise I’m not interested in what other politicians and politically created committees (of the right or left) have to say on the science, so I find Edwards claim that I equate science with politics bizarre, given that’s the charge I’d level against those advocating for politically based science like this review panel (right wingers) or the supporters of Al Gore and his take on AGW (left wingers).

    Ideologues like Edward who try to rubbish the best science available because it doesn’t suit them are common, I was watching a video of a SJW yesterday who was rubbishing todays science (obviously based on centuries of global scientific progress) as “Western or White science”, similarly there are examples of NAZI ideologues who were contemptuous of “Jewish science” and no doubt examples of communists who are contemptuous of “capitalist science” could also be found.

    So I see Edward as no different to histories other anti-science ideologues, determined to rubbish the science that doesn’t suit them and keen to see the politicians of their color get involved to put things right.

  • commodude

    Andrew, what you’re missing is that peer review is, at the moment, completely ideologically based, and the bias calls into question the entire process.

  • Andrew_W

    commodude, “completely” I disagree, vs a panel initiated to serve political ends? Don’t make me laugh.

  • commodude

    Correction, completely is hyperbole, however, the peer review system is badly tainted, as Robert has documented in detail on these pages, and there is more evidence readily available throughout the web.

    At least the political panel is open about their intent as opposed to the ivory towers of academia, which are about as pure as the plow driven slush.

  • Andrew_W

    MDN
    I notice there’s a link to a rebuttal of Dr. Frank’s claims in the comments in your YouTube link:
    https://patricktbrown.org/2017/01/25/do-propagation-of-error-calculations-invalidate-climate-model-projections-of-global-warming/

  • Edward

    Andrew_W wrote: “It may well be that m d mill and Edward choose to run with other ideologically generated values for climate sensitivity, I’ve never made any claims that go outside the IPCC estimates.

    Proving my point. The IPCC is a political panel, not a scientific one. IPCC reports are political reports, not scientific papers.

  • C Earl Jantzi

    2Jan2015 At a news conference [22Jan2015] in Brussels, Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of U.N.’s Framework be adopted Convention on Climate Change, admitted that the goal of environmental activists is not to save the world from ecological calamity, but to DESTROY CAPITALISM. “This is the first time in the history of mankind that we are setting ourselves the task of intentionally, within a defined period of time, to change the economic development model that has been reigning for at least 150 years, since the Industrial Revolution,” she said . Referring to a new international treaty environmentalists hope will at change conference later this year, she added: “This is probably the most difficult task we have ever given ourselves, which is to intentionally transform the economic development model for the first time in human history.”
    Investor’s Business Daily: http://news.investors DOTcom/ibd-editorials/021015the Paris climate
    -738779-climate-change-scare-tool-to-destroy-capitalism.htm#ixzz3RXh5Tujn

    IPCC official, Ottmar Edenhofer, speaking in November 2010: “But one must say clearly that we redistribute, de facto, the world’s wealth by climate policy. … one has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. Instead, climate change policy is about how we redistribute, de facto, the world’s wealth…” “This has almost nothing to do with environmental policy, anymore.” http://www.nzzDOTch/aktuell/startseite/klimapolitik-verteilt-das-weltvermoegen-neu-1.8373227

    The Buffett Rule
    The billionaire was even more explicit about his goal of reducing his company’s tax payments. “I will do anything that is basically covered by the law to reduce Berkshire’s tax rate,” he said. “For example, on wind energy, we get a tax credit if we build a lot of wind farms. That’s the only reason to build them. They don’t make sense without the tax credit.”
    Think about that one. Mr. Buffett says it makes no economic sense to build wind farms without a tax credit, which he gladly uses to reduce his company’s tax payments to the Treasury. So political favors for the wind industry induce a leading U.S. company to misallocate its scarce investment dollars for an uneconomic purpose. Berkshire and its billionaire shareholder get a tax break and the feds get less revenue, which must be made up by raising tax rates on millions of other Americans who are much less well-heeled than Mr. Buffett.
    This is precisely the kind of tax favoritism for the wealthy that Mr. Romney’s tax reform would have reduced, and that other tax reformers want to stop. Too bad Mr. Buffett didn’t share this rule with voters in 2012.

    Poland Bans Wind Turbines in 17 years
    Now we have the nation of Poland examining the health damages of Wind turbines. They have discovered that the low frequency noise given off by wind turbines, affects cellular development and mimics heart problems. They are going to force REMOVAL of ALL wind turbines in 17 years! Check this out, https://wattsupwiththat.com/?s=poland+%2Cwind+turbines and read to the end and check the comments of Sommer, and watch the youtube video for a real education in the subject

  • Edward

    Andrew_W,
    Considering your first comment on this issue, I have to admit to being flabbergasted by your latest comment.

    Your first comment:
    As with the Wegman Report over a decade ago this climate review panel will be politically motivated nonsense with the verdict already decided, if you don’t get that you don’t get how politicians operate. They don’t set up review panels to find truth, they set them up to confirm their own ideologically based biases.

    The only real question is whether those supporting this politically motivated nonsense are complicit or just naive.

    You, on the other hand, brag about supporting the IPCC’s politically motivated nonsense. It is what you say that you rely upon as real science, but by your own words, its reports are politically motivated nonsense with the verdict already decided and is not set up to find truth but to confirm their own ideologically based biases.

    You may suspect the independence of results that come from scientists that are paid by companies, but why not the results that come from a governmental panel whose stated purpose is to conclude that climate change is due to human activity? We are very much aware that climates have changed not only since the industrial age but since long, long before humans walked the Earth, but somehow we must now declare that coming out of the Little Ice Age for the past three or so centuries — starting a couple of centuries before the industrial revolution — is anthropogenic in nature?

    You, Andrew_W, rely upon the ideology of Al Gore and the movie that made him tens of millions in carbon credits. I’m sure you don’t see his conflict interest in that, otherwise you would be risking being branded an ideological, heretical denier, too. Gore and the IPCC share an ideology as well as a Nobel prize for future peace (when that peace is supposed to come about is unclear, however).

    Meanwhile, I will continue to rely upon the ideology of the scientific method and review actual scientific reports to inform my opinions and conclusions about the coming ice age/global warming/climate change/climate disruption/extreme weather/nom-du-jour (chosen to hide the failure of the previous nom-du-jour).

    And I will continue to keep an eye out for confirmation bias.

  • m d mill

    You will notice Andrew _W refutes none of my technical or logical arguments. I say “I do not claim to know the answer”…he says I may “choose to run with other ideologically generated values” , which is simply not true.

    He stated that the upcoming conference, which will involving both “alarmists” and “skeptics”, was “politically motivated NONSENSE with the verdict already decided” before anyone has said anything. Clearly he is the hypocrite who has already decided the verdict, again dismissing any particular technical arguments that may be made by BOTH sides. This is not a straw-man argument, this is his position.

    Andrew_W responses are here typically filled with untruths and hypocrisy and illustrate that any attempt to skeptically question the alarmist scenarios is forbidden and denigrated, even before it is started.
    I repeat, even the IPCC will not now give a most likely value of sensitivity…they just do not know with any certainty. You cannot find the truth by simply averaging wrong answers.

  • MDN

    Andrew_W

    Thanks for noting the response to Dr. Franks talk. I just watched the video but more interesting is the EXTENSIVE dialog in the comment section below the video. Dr. Frank and Dr. Brown exchanged dozens for posts over 5 weeks and from a quick scan I believe Dr. Frank remains un-deterred. Gotta save this link as it appears worth the time to wade through the details when time permits.

  • m d mill

    I would have to say that Dr. Browns main criticisms of Dr. Frank’s method, and in their extensive dialog, are probably valid. I think climatological modelling makes some simplifiing assumptions (about long term averaging) that are not unreasonable, but which Dr. Frank is unwilling to acknowledge as valid scientific method…and this is the source of their disagreement.

    Example: If you fill a barrel of known diameter with water from a hose flowing at a known rate, you can calculate the rate the barrel will fill quite precisely (and even define an average instantaneous level) even though you cannot predict the chaotic sloshing of the surface at any instant.
    The errors of your knowledge of the exact chaotic surface position do not propagate significantly, and thus do not become important, in you calculation of the rate of filling.

    Or, in other words, physical conservation laws trump chaotic variability… as long as the system is “stable”.

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