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New research confirms CO2 increase is greening Earth

The uncertainty of science: New data from satellites have confirmed that the increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere in the past century is contributing to an expansion of plant life globally.

Researchers studying NASA satellite data on the Earth’s vegetation coverage have discovered that plants have significantly increased their leaf cover over the last 35 years to the point that new growth across the planet is equivalent to an area twice as large as the continental United States. According to the study, the largest contributor to this greening is the growing level of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere.

Using data collected from instruments such as NASA’s Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectrometer mounted on the AquaProbe satellite and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (such as that deployed on NOAA’s DSCOVR satellite), an international team of researchers has determined that CO2 fertilization explains fully 70 percent of the greening effect observed.

I love how the article repeatedly inserts several out-of-context comments about the dangers of global warming, even though everything in the story suggests that global warming might actually be beneficial.

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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.

 
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120 comments

  • Ted

    Bob: I often wondered about this. If the CO2 is expanding shouldn’t plant life be expanding? And plants generate Oxygen just what we need. I am sure that Oxygen will be declared a greenhouse gas as well. And if we deep six CO2 what will pu the fizz in my Diet Coke ;-)

  • Garry

    “another greenhouse gas produced as a by-product of human activities, nitrogen, is responsible for almost a further 10 percent of the observed greening”

    This is the first time I’ve seen nitrogen mentioned as a greenhouse gas produced from human activities (implying that human activities are throwing nature all out of balance). Seeing that the atmosphere is 78% nitrogen, I hope that nobody will fall for the story that the increasing nitrogen content is causing climate disasters.

    If that scare tactic doesn’t work, I can hear the next one: “if we keep on adding so much nitrogen and carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, then maybe the air pressure will increase so much that we’ll all be crushed under the weight of the atmosphere.”

  • Phill O

    There is a big problem here: The greening (if indeed is real) could be the result of global warming caused by the increased sun output. We will not really know until the sun’s decreased output continues for several more cycles.

    In effect, these people have prematurely jumped to a conclusion based upon their own bias!

  • Rocco

    Ok so let me get a better understanding here…more CO2 = more growing plant life = less carbon in the air = cooler planet…am I missing something?

  • BSJ

    Rocco,

    You forgot the part where increasing taxes is the only thing that cools the planet.

  • Wayne

    BSJ:
    Good point.

  • Kevin R.

    The buses where I live have signs on them saying “Trees Love This Bus.” (Because they reduce CO2 by taking cars off the road.) Talk about false advertising.

  • Phill O

    Another subject that is often forgotten is the value of glacier loss for scientific research. Namely, exploring or documenting the time for the biosphere to interact with freshly uncovered earth/rock. Documenting the rate for plant to replace glaciers would help our understanding (and previous assumptions) of when the last ice age occurred. There is evidence that the some glaciers feed by the Columbia Icefield were not present 5000 years ago. A rapid reclamation of mother earth by the biosphere might cause scientists rethink past theories (heaven forbid that rethinking should occur).

  • D. Messier

    You’ve seized upon some piece of supposedly good news about the climate (greener Earth) while ignoring all the negative consequences that will ultimately result.

    This is basically the position of the conspiracy minded Republicans, or as you like to call it, the Stupid Party. Their motto on this issue should be: Don’t Worry, Stay Stupid.

  • Edward

    Garry,
    Crushed under the weight of the atmosphere? Oh, my, Chicken Little was right, after all. The atmosphere is falling, the atmosphere is falling!

    BSJ,
    I think you got it right. For many people, taxes = climate control.

    D. Messier wrote: “while ignoring all the negative consequences that will ultimately result.”

    There are negative consequences, D? Nobody thinks that they exist, or at least they don’t think they are so negative. Otherwise they would be doing something real about reducing CO2 emissions, instead of hopping into their powered transportation, using their washers and dryers, cooking their meals in their fully-powered kitchens (who really needs an electric can opener, anyway?), or heating and cooling their homes, workplaces, shopping centers, and recreational facilities.

    Other than losing a couple of glaciers that could have been used for historical scientific research, what *are* the negative consequences that people are supposed to believe in? For a quarter of a century, we have been told time and again that we would see plenty of supposed negative consequences and that it would, by now, be too late to stop them. If these doomsday sayers and Chicken Littles were right, then not only is it long past too late and we should enjoy our now-shortened lives as best we can (might as well burn all the remaining fossil fuels, as we will have no more progeny to save it for), but we should also see these consequences everywhere, causing tremendous fright during our remaining few days left on dry Earth (or is it our few days on the now permanent desert Earth — I can never remember if Gore’s movie warned us of drought or flood).

  • D. Messier

    Edward:

    NOBODY thinks they exist? They don’t think they are so negative?

    Seriously?

    Your response is Exhibit 1 for why the GOP is The Stupid Party and their climate change motto is Don’t Worry, Stay Stupid.

  • Edward was asking you a very civil question. Your answer is not only not very civil, it avoids answering the question. Please tell us, backed by actual data, what the negative consequences of global warming might be.

    I have been looking into this information for the past decade, and have never come upon a credible paper outlining actual data (and not computer models that routinely fail to predict anything successfully) that illustrates a threat from warming. What I get routinely are doomsday predictions and comments like yours, accusing anyone who asks the question of being “stupid.”

    Note also I have found some solid scientific evidence that cooling poses a threat. During the Little Ice Age in the 1600s there were famines because of the cold temperatures. Warming data, however, routinely suggests otherwise, that plant life will prosper and that agriculture will increase, providing humanity more food.

    Regardless, I am willing to listen. If you can provide some solid links to reliable research, I would be grateful.

  • D. Messier

    Bob:

    There are mountains and mountains of credible studies and reports and actual scientific measurements by credible scientists and organizations that study these things for a living regarding the negative consequences of global warming. I would barely know where to begin here in describing it. Surely you can look those up for yourself.

    Since you don’t find all this evidence credible, it’s really hard to have a discussion on this topic with you. Why you and others on the right reject all this evidence is a question only you can answer. My best guess is that you guys can’t get past your ideological biases to evaluate the evidence clearly. Perhaps this is not a case of stupidity, merely ideological blindness.

    I’m sure I don’t need to remind you that I was merely agreeing with you that the GOP is the Stupid Party. I think you’d be pleased that we agree on something. It’s a bit ironic to be called out for being uncivil given your indiscriminate use of “fascist” to describe almost anyone and anything you find objectionable, Bob. You drain the phrase of all meaning when you do that and disconnect it from its actual historical meaning.

  • We will have to agree to disagree. Note however that you misinterpret badly how I use the word fascist, which kind of discredits you somewhat. I do not apply the word “indiscriminately”, and if you think I do you very clearly do not read what I write very carefully.

    I apply it to anyone, from the left or the right, who uses force and the government to impose their will on those who simply disagree with them, sometimes with the use of threats or violence. That you can’t see that suggests that you find the use of violence and force to silence opposition perfectly okay, if you happen to agree with those doing the silencing. I never do..

    And yes, if the Republican Party is going to pick the weakest candidate and a RINO for their candidate, when they have someone available who is neither, I consider them quite stupid. They could make this mistake once, even twice, but they’ve now made it five times in a row (Dole, Bush, McCain, Romney, and now Trump). Each one of these was a RINO, and four out of five lost badly, with the fifth (Bush) failing to get a majority of the vote in his first election and proving to be a failure as President.

    However, we do not agree on why we consider them stupid. You consider them stupid because some of them might happen to be conservative, and it appears to me that to you, just being conservative is being stupid. I consider them stupid for making the same failed political choices — picking RINOS as their leaders — over and over again even though those choices never win.

  • By the way, on the subject of climate science, you might want to use your considerable research talents and reporting skills, which I respect highly, to read the story below and explain why so many climate scientists are disturbed by the adjustments that NOAA and NASA are making to the raw climate data:

    300 Scientists Want NOAA To Stop Hiding Its Global Warming Data

    Or you might want to look into this story, which looks at the differences between the raw data and the adjustments, and wonders why every adjustment routinely cools the past and warms the present:

    The History Of NASA/NOAA Temperature Corruption

    Here is another one, written yours truly, noting the large gaps in the surface climate data, which make drawing any conclusions about the climate somewhat premature:

    The uncertainty of climate science

    And then there is this article by a climate scientist, noting the long pause since 1998 and asking some reasonable scientific questions about it:

    Cause of Pause in Global Warming

    I could give you a lot more. Do a search on BtB for “global warming” or “climate change” and you’ll find a host of examples. In every case I am not quoting opinions, but examples of hard data that raise questions about the research. As a good reporter, it behooves you to look at these with an open mind. You might find that your own certainties need reassessing.

  • pzatchok

    If you do the right thing and discount all the data from discredited sources you also have to discount all the research and science done using those sources.

    All the papers and articles written using any of those sources are suspect and untrue until they are rewritten using none of the corrupted data.

    By the way. Terrestrial plants are not the only plants on this planet. Algae in the oceans are an even larger sources of plant bio mass.

    More sunlight equals more heat.
    More plants.
    More carbon sequestration by those plants.
    Less sunlight, less heat, less sequestration.

    Algae works even faster and better by sending carbon to the ocean bottoms faster.
    Plus its food for sardines and other small fish.

    I wonder if the Sardine harvest coincides with the warming and cooling of the Earth?
    ww.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Sardine-population-collapses-prompts-ban-on-6197380.php

    Global warming is over.

  • D. Messier

    Tony Heller is an alias for an electrical engineer whose climate ramblings have been discredited. Fred Singer had been funded by the oil industry. You’re not a climate expert.

    The only thing that causes any concern is the letter. I shall look into it further.

  • “Tony Heller is an alias for an electrical engineer whose climate ramblings have been discredited. Fred Singer had been funded by the oil industry. You’re not a climate expert.”

    These points are not an argument, they are an excuse by you to avoid looking at the data. For example, Singer is still a credible scientist, asking credible and reasonable questions, regardless of whether he got research grants from oil companies. To dismiss him point blank based on his funding is absurd, considering that a lot more money is funneled to global warming supporters through the government.

    Moreover, dismissing my post, apparently without even bothering to read it, does not do you credit. I might not be a climate scientist but you’re not a rocket engineer. Yet, I take your reports on Virgin Galactic’s engine problems quite seriously. I am as careful as you when I research and report on science. And the proof of that is that I have been published repeatedly by numerous science magazines, including Science itself. You might want to take a look and ask yourself if there might be something to what I’ve written.

    As for the letter from the concerned climate scientists, which is something you are willing to consider, note that it was written expressly in response to the very data adjustments that Heller (and others) exposed. These scientists don’t dismiss these facts, as you apparently do. They don’t care that Heller is an electrical engineer. What they care about is that his work in comparing the raw data to the adjusted data is credible to them. They also recognize that there has been no explanation for the adjustments, and that the adjustments are very suspicious because they always cool the past and heat the present.

    Here’s a few more links on the data adjustment issue, not from Heller’s site:

    Top scientists start to examine fiddled global warming figures

    German Professor: NASA Has Fiddled Climate Data On ‘Unbelievable’ Scale

    And here’s a post by an actual climate scientist (Spencer has been the project scientist for several climate satellites), noting that every single climate model has failed to predict the pause in warming since 1998:

    95% of Climate Models Agree: The Observations Must be Wrong

    I’m not saying that these stories have to be right. I’m saying that an honest appraisal of the subject of climate science cannot ignore them and the uncertainties they raise.

  • Cotour

    D. Messier:

    I think it is now plain to see that a majority of this “global warming”, “climate chaos”, “Anthrapomorfic Global Warming”, “Anthropogenic global warming”, Hot house earth” etc, etc and now finally the apparently U.N. settled upon universal term that in actuality means nothing “Climate change” is an indication that this is more a solution searching for a problem.

    Q: When has the climate not changed? A term used to define itself to me is a dodge and a tool, in this case a tool to extract maximum fear to acquire maximum political control.

    In other words the issue seems more about politics than concern for the actual issue which is mitigating pollution in general. Continue to reasonably control pollution through better practices and improved technology and you are on the correct road to a better world.

    I will go a bit further here and give everyone something more to think about and point out that these problems like dealing with pollution, “global warming” , over population, unacceptable illegal immigration etc. are in fact extensions of the open ended liberal welfare state model that has been crafted in the world.

    Any system that intellectually / politically refuses to accept the negative real world concrete feed back from the systems that it creates and further refuses to include real world counter balances in those systems is doomed over time.

    Its a destructive theme that needs real leadership to put right.

  • D. Messier

    The “300 scientists” who signed the letter are a rather mixed lot. For one, not all of them are scientists. Only a fraction of the number have expertise is climate science. Some are not scientists at all. You’ve got a former VP of Mead (a company that makes paper products); an executive from a clean coal company, a marketing professor who is misleadingly listed as one of the world’s top “forecasters”, a couple of former astronauts without any climate expertise, engineers of various types, a space architect from Houston who has been funded by Exxon, and one man who rather vaguely lists his profession rather as “scientist.”

    Here’s what happened. There was an attack on NOAA led by the Republican controlled House Science Committee that only listens to the scientists who say global warming isn’t a problem. A letter appears that supports the attack signed by almost anyone they could find who would sign it The letter then gets hyped in conservative media as being a collection of 300 knowledgeable scientists who are supporting claims that NOAA has been lying about global warming. For anyone who doesn’t look into this any further, it sows doubt among the public. And that’s the real goal. Mission accomplished.

    I’m glad you pointed this letter out because when you look into it, there’s not much of anything there. You look at all the results of all the studies that have been done indicating global warming is a problem, then you look at this letter and you see how weak the case is on the other side.

  • Wayne

    Cotour:
    Good post.

  • Edward

    D. Messier wrote: “There are mountains and mountains of credible studies and reports”

    D,
    The question to answer was for you to “provide some solid links to reliable research,” not the entire mountain of studies. If they really *are* credible, the credibility will be obvious.

    You are not writing to idiots. We are intelligent scientists, engineers, and technical people who are finding the evidence of negative consequences to be as reliable as the false predictions. I truly wish to see some actual scientific evidence, not BS spouted by politicians whose lips are moving or by celebrities who don’t know the difference between data and fudge.

    Please point me in the direction of one or two of the papers that you believe to be credible, and we can discuss them from there. That you have been unable or unwilling to do so is evidence that you lack confidence in your convictions. Merely claiming that disagreeing with us makes it hard to have a discussion is also evidence of your lack of confidence in your convictions. If you were confident, you would debate, as we do, despite the obstinate rejection of reason and science on the part of AGW true believers. Prove your point. Present us with links to credible evidence.

    As a gesture of good faith, let me point to a paper that claims that 97% of climate scientists agree that there is anthropogenic global warming (AGW), despite the abstract pointing out that 66.4% (plus an additional 0.3%) do not. It is this misleading paper that is continually used as a means to shut up skeptics and obtain AGW converts, even though the paper demonstrates the need for skepticism.
    http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/8/2/024024;jsessionid=18283FD9DDB1D726380369B7B82BF43A.c1

    It is evidence like this that harms the rest of the AGW advocates’ claims. If this often-used evidence is so blatantly (and self-admittedly) faulty, then how much of the rest is, too?

    Since you discredit anyone getting funding from a supposedly biased oil industry, do you also discredit anyone getting funding from the admittedly biased government? The government has made it abundantly clear that it only supports the AGW conclusion.

    I am a test engineer, doing experimentation for a living, and I understand very well the need to demonstrate that the data and conclusions must be supported.

    To dismiss engineers and non-climate scientists as “discredited” merely because they are not climate scientists is to discredit yourself, politicians, and celebrities who make claims, because you and they are even further removed from climate science than we engineers. It also makes poor assumptions about the ability to read and understand scientific papers, to design and build the experiments used (yes, I built one that flew on the UARS satellite to examine a portion of the energy streaming into the atmosphere), or to perform such tests and experiments.

    When the test will demonstrate the desired conclusion no matter the data, then the test is NFG (no good). Mann’s Hockey Stick graph proved to be one such fallacy, and global warming turned itself into a joke by claiming that no matter what happened (e.g. more snow or less snow, drought or flood) was proof of global warming. Climate Change is the same fallacy, as it is proved true when the climate behaves naturally. All the failed predictions, including temperature predictions, further demonstrate a lack of understanding the climate conditions and reactions well enough to make such predictions.

    Frankly, we just can’t predict the consequences, so we don’t *know* the negative ones; they are just guesses. They are guesses that you can’t or won’t present to us. You haven’t even told us, without providing any links, whether we will get more or less snow, whether we will get drought or floods, whether we will get more hurricanes, or whatever you think are the negative consequences.

    You have argued that a letter is unreliable because you disagree with the funding of a couple of the knowledgeable people who signed it, but that is not arguing the facts, that is dismissing facts due to emotional bias rather than scientific or even logical reasoning. The logic fails because you have failed to demonstrate that funding sources are a credible reason to dismiss the science. Under your logic, all climate science or scientists funded in any part or at any time by any government must be discredited, and that would sink most or all evidence suggesting AGW has negative consequences; probably including the evidence that you are still unwilling or unable to present to us.

    The base problem is that It is assumed that increased CO2 actually causes increased temperature, despite the evidence of the “pause” of the last two decades while CO2 levels rise, AND the assumption that humans are the primary source of increased CO2 despite the historical evidence that CO2 levels rise after an increase in global temperatures (perhaps due to loss of CO2 sequestration in tundra and permafrost), ADDED to the fact that global temperatures had increased for two centuries before humans started putting a lot of CO2 into the atmosphere, around 1930 or 1940.

    BTW: “fascist” is used to describe people who take power and suppress debate and opposition:
    http://www.dictionary.com/browse/fascism

    Further BTW: do you, D, use powered transportation, use a washer or dryer, cook your meals, or heat or cool your home and workplace? If so, you display a complete lack of concern for the negative consequences that you tell us (but don’t or won’t show us) exist.

  • pzatchok

    How does a letter and an investigation change the actual data NOAA publishes?

    It doesn’t. NOAA and the others lied and they got caught.
    Until they come out and actually defend their data and techniques they are suspect and thus guilty.
    What are they doing to defend their point? Nothing. They are staying quiet and hoping others will shout down their detractors and this whole thing will go away.

    The same thing happened in the70’s with global cooling. If you want to understand why so many people do not believe in global warming blame the idiots who started the global cooling scare.

  • D. Messier

    OK, Eddie. You asked for it. Here it is:

    http://grist.org/series/skeptics/

    Here are responses to absolutely everything and anything you could possibly bring up to cast doubt on climate change.

    Hey, you know what. I’ll get the ball rolling right now. Here’s one argument:

    Claim: ‘Global warming stopped in 1998’
    Answer: Only if you flagrantly cherry pick
    Supporting evidence: http://grist.org/climate-energy/global-warming-stopped-in-1998/

    You really want to have a debate on this? Go ahead. Raise your objections. I’ve got arguments and supporting material. I could do this all day. For months.

  • Good. I am glad you’re willing to post some contrasting data. However, there is no need to take such a rude and insulting tone. We can have a civil conversation about this, and discuss this intelligently. Both Edward (not “Eddie”) and I have tried to be polite. I think it reasonable that you do the same.

    Similarly, up until now you have spent all your effort simply trying to discredit the reputations of the authors of every link we send you rather than look at what they say to see if it might teach you something. This approach, to attack the character and honesty of people you disagree with, is kind of similar to the same techniques Donald Trump uses. This is beneath you, and it does you a disservice. Remember, there are other people reading these posts whom you are trying to persuade. I promise you that you will not succeed using such techniques.

    Moreover, we can’t have much of a debate if you absolutely and completely refuse to even glance at any of data that challenges your positions. You expect us to look at the data and links you present, and discuss it. I will be glad to do so (though for the moment the above links will have to wait for a day or so). However, if this is going to be a real conversation and an intelligent debate, you have to do the same.

    Therefore, I insist that you read the links both I and Edward offered and actually comment on the points being made. I am especially disappointed that you completely dismiss the link to the Roy Spencer post, an actual project scientist for an actual climate satellite, who strongly believes that our present climate dataset is insufficient to come to any firm conclusions about the climate, based on his own knowledge of the climate field. Moreover, the reason he does not dismiss out-of-hand the lack of global warming since 1998 is because this is exactly what the satellite data, which is his specialty, shows him. (His team’s detailed explanation of their data can be found here.) He thus questions the validity of 95% of every global warming climate model, since 95% of those models have failed completely to predict the climate in the past 20 years.

    I have interviewed Spencer. I have also interviewed a number of other climate scientists who specialize in satellite data. They agree with Spencer. If we are going to debate this you need to address this fact. The satellite data continues to show very little warming, a trend that is increasingly in contradiction with the surface temperature data. To me, that indicates a great deal of uncertainty, not settled science.

    Note also that Spencer’s team spend a lot of time explaining why and how they adjust their data, and the methods they use. The reason that letter to NOAA exists is because NOAA has consistently refused to provide any explanation for its data adjustments. They have also refused to explain their adjustments to data from fifty years ago, adjustments that work in only one direction, to cool those earlier numbers. If NOAA’s case was solid, they would have no problem providing an explanation these adjustments, which is what that Republican Congress was requesting. Instead, NOAA has been stonewalling Congress. Such stonewalling by scientists makes me very suspicious of their data and theories.

    So, if we are going to have a debate, and pass information back and forth, this debate needs to be a two way street. You need to read the data we send you, and comment on it, civilly and intelligently. For example, the entire point of the link that I wrote was to simply note the significant gaps in the surface climate data. The data I cite was created by NOAA itself, and even admits to the gaps. My point then was not to claim that the theory of global warming is bogus, but that there is a great deal of uncertainty in the field of climate science itself, and thus this remains only a theory, not a fact.

    Anyway, in any debate both sides have to recognize the facts presented by both sides, and consider them. We might both learn something. If you are willing to do this, great, we can continue. If not, then this will be a wasted effort, and we might as well stop here.

  • Scientists and engineers care about data not titles. The data will tell us if the earth is warming or cooling. Nothing else. If we do not have enough data then we can’t know – until we get more and correct and complete data. If we handpick pick the data, have incomplete or corrupt data or change the data then the results that follow will be incomplete or corrupt as well aka wrong. (Scientists and engineers that do not do follow this rule do not respect nature nor their field.)

    The earth’s climate is a complex and chaotic system (note that we have only recently started to study chaotic system systems as a branch of mathematics in the last 50 years) we are only able to see the outputs of this system – mostly observed temperatures. (Ice cores, tree rings and the like are the result of a modeled effect of that temperature at some time in the past.) To come close to understanding the climate we lot more work to do…
    So first we need to observe and understand if the earth is warming cooling or staying the same. Given that just recently we have been able to observe some percentage of the earth’s surface with ground and more recently launched satellites our data set is small. Remember having weather satellites up for decades observing a climate that has existed for millennia is recent. Also, if we want to use historical temperature data from various locations we need to place fairly large uncertainty on those measurements- unless there was some worldwide metrology program I am unaware of in place. So we have only recently begun to take data.

    Next we need to understand if our observations of this chaotic and possibly multi-cyclical system are a natural rise or decline or is influenced by a forcing function of some sort- CO2 rise, solar output or other variable. How long are the cycles that we are taking a sample of? How many samples will we need to know to have a correct model? Etc. This is unknown given the amount of time we have observed. (Ice cores, tree ring samples and historical measurements are points at particular places on the planet, they do not provide enough data to allow a model formulation of any completeness for a system as complex as the chaotic earths climate.) These data sets are a small sample over a small time of a large planet with long history.

    Further after understanding the characteristics of the output of the system is – temperature and energy and its storage and motion in and around the planet over time, we need to determine what the inputs are that drive and have driven this system. Sun output, biomass, CO2, … Etc. How do these drive this chaotic system? how do they interact? We do not know yet.

    Given that do not know the full temperature picture and how it has behaved over any appreciable time,
    Given that we do not have a strong understanding of the full system (if the models are so good why do we keep developing them?)
    And given that we don’t understand what is driving this chaotic system I see any statement that ” the science it’s settled” to be either arrogant, ignorant or driven by some alterior motive.

    Is the change we are seeing natural and inevitable? Are we causing this?
    What is the climate’s true nature? Unknown.

    We have more work to do. To truly get to the answer we need to have open and honest, unbiased observation and truly rigorous scientific analysis. This will take time and require those who study the climate to take a true scientific approach – not a biased search for their end result. They will welcome review of their data and results. They will never hide behind a title.
    The data tells us the truth not the person.

  • pzatchok

    D. Messier

    You need quotes that don’t rely on questionable data.
    Stuff from NOAA, NASA, Hanson. They all admitted to altering their data but gave no reasons for it, did not even back up the reasoning.

    NOAA and NASA can no longer afford to support and supply the satellites for their research. Instead they are going to be farming out that work to private companies. Companies who want a profit and will thus sell ALL of their raw data to anyone with the cash.
    http://www.climatecentral.org/news/the-space-race-is-on-for-climate-weather-privatization-16243

  • Chris,

    Very nicely written. You summarize thoughtfully much of the same things I have been writing on BtB for the past five years.

  • D. Messier

    Some contrasting data?

    Seriously? I’ve given you access with every objection ever raised about global warming with detailed information and links about why they’re wrong.

    Roy Spencer is wrong on a whole host of issues:

    https://www.skepticalscience.com/skeptic_Roy_Spencer.htm

    The page contains a point by point analysis of everything he has gotten wrong over the years.

    There’s a huge amount of data, studies, analyses and more showing this is real and will cause massive problems. But, you automatically seize upon one scientist (Spencer) or uncertainty in the data (incomplete surface temperature data) as being correct and everyone and everything else being wrong.

    That was the whole cause of this discussion in the first place. Hey, look, the Earth is greening. Don’t worry, be happy. Just ignore all the negative consequences. You cherry pick things.

  • “You cherry pick things.”

    No, what this illustrates is that you really haven’t the slightest idea of what I think about climate change and global warming, essentially because you haven’t actually read anything I have written about it, of which there are numerous essays on BtB which you could explore, if you had the slightest willingness to hear a different perspective.

    I do not disbelieve in the theory of human caused global warming. I heartily admit that it might be true. I also do not deny the existence of gigantic amounts of data supporting the data. For example, prior to you sending me the links yesterday, I was very aware of this website and read much of the information on it previously. I hadn’t had a chance to even look at the links until today, which is why I didn’t say so yesterday.

    My point, however, is that it doesn’t matter if 90% of the data appears to support a theory. If the models based on the theory and the available facts fail to predict what actually happens, than one must remain skeptical. And that is exactly where the field of human-caused global warming stands today. Their models have failed to predict what has actually happened.

    Good science is based on skepticism, not certainty. There are facts on the ground that raise questions about the theory of human-caused global warming (prompted by increase CO2 in the atmosphere) that must not be ignored if we are to make any progress in the field of climate science. Those facts almost always center in the incomplete nature of our data, as well as real questions about its reliability. I will not ignore these facts. That’s what good science demands. Until our dataset becomes more complete, and the questions that have been raised about it are answered, I will remain skeptical.

    Nor am I alone in my skepticism. In fact, the field of climate science has been badly harmed in the past decade because it has refused to deal with the questions that others have raised about it, and the public has noticed this, with polls during this same time period showing a solid rise in skepticism. If human caused global warming is true, the scientists who support it have done their theory (and us all) a great disservice by doing such a bad job of arguing their case.

    Let’s look at this another way. Imagine you live in a world where everyone, scientists, clerics, philosophers, politicians, even the general public, believes that the Sun revolves around the Earth. They base this conclusion on the self-evident fact that every day they see the Sun circle above them. Moreover, respected scientists for many generations had built up theories that strengthen this conclusion.

    One person however suggests a different theory, that the Sun is in the center and that the Earth does the circling. He does so because he has found some contradictory data that raises questions about the first theory. Then, another scientist takes a telescope and looks at some planets and discovers that they have objects circling them, suggesting strongly that the second theory might be right, that the Earth could be a planet orbiting a Sun.

    What do I do? I would scratch my head and decide to take a closer look at the new data and the new theory. It raises questions that must be answered by the prevailing consensus. If they cannot answer these questions, than I must doubt the consensus.

    What would you do? Based on your pattern during our modern debate, you would probably laugh at these scientists, accuse them of cherry-picking data while denying all the facts that support the Earth-centered theory. You are certain it is correct, and that would end the argument. In fact, you might even support the idea of prosecuting these skeptical scientists, calling them “deniers” of basic facts.

    I do not like certainty. I think it blinds people to learning. And this, more than anything else, is my main point in all my discussions about global warming and climate change on BtB. That you are so unwilling to find that out means that this conversation truly is a waste of time.

    You might want to watch this episode of Jacob Bronowski’s 1970s PBS series, The Ascent of Man. Bronowski’s conclusions (embedded below), stated as he stood in a former concentration camp in Germany, are as valid today as ever. As I said when I first posted this in 2010, shortly after I started BtB:

    Rather than simply describe science and knowledge, Bronowski instead pondered the nature of humanity. The best episode of the series was “Knowledge or Certainty,” in which Bronowski compared the humane uncertainty of science with the terrible consequences of dogma. As Oliver Cromwell said, “I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken.”

    Cromwell’s quote, which I first heard from Bronowski on this particular show, epitomizes my philosophy of life and science. Too bad you don’t understand this.

  • Wayne

    LevinTV: The Climate Change Scheme
    (10 minutes)
    https://youtu.be/3YP9ZdSsUg8

  • Edward

    D,
    The question for you to to answer was to “provide some solid links to reliable research.” Instead, you presented me with ways to talk to people. Talking points are not research. An article is not research (the author may have *done* research, but that is not the type that produces data). I gave you an actual scientifically written and peer reviewed paper, although it concludes something that its abstract belies, but you failed to find any scientific research in response. Apparently, there is no research supporting your belief that there are negative consequences to global warming, just ways to say that there actually *is* global warming. BTW: the AGW argument is not whether there is global warming but how much is caused by human activity.

    BTW: our argument is supposed to be about the negative consequences of global warming, not the CO2 issue, the inadequate modelling issue, or whether or not skeptics should agree with the UN’s East Anglia climate scientists.

    Even skeptics acknowledge the obvious, we are merely skeptical that humans cause much of it, and the “pause” proves us right, something(s) other than CO2 is a greater driver than CO2 is — otherwise the continuing rising CO2 levels would have resulted in continuing rising temperatures, not the “pause” that is acknowledged by the climate community ( http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-global-warming-hiatus-20150226-story.html ); they are desperately trying to find excuses for why the models are inadequate, even as they continue to use their admittedly inadequate models for their predictions. Even *they* acknowledge that there is something that overwhelms the minuscule effect that CO2 has on global warming.

    D. Messier wrote: “Answer: Only if you flagrantly cherry pick.” Actually, it is not cherry picking. The object of that exercise is to find the length of the “pause”, which requires finding the date at which the pause begins. That is not cherry picking, that is science. Too bad you don’t understand the difference.

    Trying to say that the “pause” does not exist when the climate scientists admit that it does fails to support any point.

    D. Messier wrote: “You really want to have a debate on this? Go ahead. Raise your objections. I’ve got arguments and supporting material. I could do this all day. For months.”

    I raised an objection, and you failed to provide the requested negative consequences of global warming and supporting research. You just gave me talking points. Oh, and you might think you can go on for months, but I have been arguing global warming for three decades, because in grade school I was warned that the next Ice Age had already started, so global warming sounded wrong from the first moment that I heard about it.

    Please present actual negative consequences and the actual research to back it up.

    D. Messier wrote: “There’s a huge amount of data, studies, analyses and more showing this is real and will cause massive problems.”

    You keep saying this, but you keep failing to point to a single study. Instead you give us opinion pieces as though they are data. You have changed the topic from the negative consequences of to whether or not global warming. If you have confidence in your convictions about the topic that you started, please stay on topic. Distraction is not evidence of your position.

    If you believe that your links provide sufficient studies, instead of having us individually dig through them to find what you are talking about (and since you skip around, we can’t be sure what that is), go ahead yourself and find one, two, or five scientific papers that demonstrate the negative consequences you aren’t even concerned enough about to stop using CO2-generating power sources or buying products that used similar CO2-generating power sources to produce.

    You are trying to tell us to be concerned about negative consequences of global warming, but you have not found any of those consequences and you don’t worry about them yourself.

  • Wayne

    Mr. Z:
    Very compelling & powerful Jacob Bronowski video clip. Vaguely recall this series, but intend to revisit it.

    I’m deficient on the finer points of “climate-change” & can’t speak directly to the back-n-forth in this thread. (have a minor in Environmental Studies but I’m a Psych-guy.)
    What has struck me the past 30-40 years, as an ordinary civilian, is the pervasive politicization of Science and especially anything related to climate.
    It’s more akin to a Religion than anything I would recognize as science. Proponent’s appear more interested in forcing me to comply with their Mastermind Plans to control my life, rather than persuade me with facts.
    (first is was cooling then warming, now it’s just “changing.”)
    -Proposed “solutions” are inevitably coercive & always involve Statism and my money going to someone else for some “thing” that’s supposed to be “good for me.”
    >>”Policies so great & wonderful, they have to be mandatory.”

    When did that type of thinking become the test of science?

  • Wayne

    Edward:
    Very complete & well presented thoughts!

  • D. Messier

    “My point, however, is that it doesn’t matter if 90% of the data appears to support a theory. If the models based on the theory and the available facts fail to predict what actually happens, than one must remain skeptical. And that is exactly where the field of human-caused global warming stands today. Their models have failed to predict what has actually happened.”

    Argument: ‘Climate models are unproven’
    Response: Actually, GCM’s have many confirmed successes under their belts
    Link: http://grist.org/climate-energy/climate-models-are-unproven/

    Like I said, I can do this all day.

    Keep ’em coming, Bob.

  • Since you didn’t read the Spencer post, which showed the predictions of about 90 climate models, all of which were endorsed by IPCC, and also showed that 95% of them have not successfully predicted the global temperature since 1998, you are unaware of the problems that the models are having.

    Meanwhile the link you provide does not provide this detail. It doesn’t even recognize that it exists. It merely gives us, as Edward so clearly noted, a talking point.

    As I said, this really is a waste of time. You won’t review the data I present to you, so what is the point of me debating with you? You are already certain of the answer, and anything I send you will be wrong or must be discredited. Not for an instant will you consider the possibility that there might be uncertainty in this science, which is all I have been arguing from the beginning.

    I will try one more time: First, here is a peer-reviewed paper that finds a simple calculator can provide better predictions than the IPCC climate models: A calculator beats IPCC supercomputer models in predicting climate

    The paper once again notes how the climate models are doing a very poor job at predicting the climate. And it wasn’t written by Roy Spencer.

    Then there is this article, Computer Models vs. Climate Reality, describing the number of news organizations and research groups (NPR, the UK’s Met Office, New York Times) that favor human-caused global warming who have also admitted that there has been no warming in the past two decades. It then outlines the failures of the models, as well as once again detailing the puzzling data adjustments at NOAA and NASA that eliminated the evidence of the 1930s high temperatures, data that has existed in their data bases for decades, that has previously been cited by the IPCC itself.

    Here’s another peer-reviewed paper: Another Study Finds That Climate Models Are ‘Over-Sensitive’ To CO2 Increases

    How about this: The IPCC itself was forced to lower its own predictions on how much the climate will warm in the coming decades, because the previous predictions were found to be far overstated. Once again, you might want to read the report itself and look at the graphs. This is not a talking point, but a conclusion backed up with real data.

    Here’s another peer-reviewed paper that concludes that statistically the climate models being used by climate scientists are close to useless.

    Here’s another peer-reviewed study that finds the climate models do a poor job at predicting how much heat remains trapped in the atmosphere vs how much escapes. I know the work is co-written by Dr. Spencer, but it is peer reviewed. I guess all those reviewers must be corrupt also.

    Here’s a poster from an AGU conference that once again details the failures of the climate models.

    Here’s another peer reviewed paper discussing the pause in warming since the turn of the century.

    Here are results presented at a Geoscience conference that found the climate models do a poor job at predicting U.S. droughts.

    Here’s more research not by Roy Spencer showing that the climate has not warmed since 2000.

    Here’s another paper noting the successes and failures of the climate models to predict the climate. I know that the link to the peer-reviewed paper is provided by Anthony Watts, that evil global warming denier, but he says little, mostly quoting the paper itself, and then provides a direct link to it. Here they are more kind to the models, but still find them to be inadequate in many cases.

    And finally, here’s a news report about the UK’s Met Office, a major supporter of global warming theory, admitting the climate ceased warming around the turn of the century.

    I should point out that I have provided you peer-reviewed papers and news articles from a wide range of sources. You keep going back to one source, which doesn’t provide sources but merely outlines the position of the scientists who support the theory of human-caused global warming. Too bad you won’t read any of these reports, as you might find your certainties less certain.

    Finally, one more thing: If the science was so settled and certain, why is it that this debate continues? Why is it that there are numerous peer-reviewed papers by scientists that question the consensus? Could it be that the consensus has some problems, that all good scientists, from both sides, need to consider rather than dismissing out-of-hand?

  • Cotour

    I think what is crystal clear here, as evidenced by the contentiousness of this discussion, comprehensive and objective science is not being done in regards to the subject of “global warming” or the understanding of how and to what degree human activity may or may not effect earths climate.

    That being said we can ALL agree that improving and promoting world wide best practices and developing better and newer technology in industry and power generation and the level and kinds of POLLUTION that they generate is something that no one needs any 10 year satellite data and analysis to understand.

  • D. Messier

    ” You won’t review the data I present to you, so what is the point of me debating with you? You are already certain of the answer, and anything I send you will be wrong or must be discredited. Not for an instant will you consider the possibility that there might be uncertainty in this science, which is all I have been arguing from the beginning.”

    Welcome to my world. Now you know how it feels trying to convince skeptics that global warming is real and a serious threat. No matter how much data piles up, or how much evidence we can point to in nature, or how many studies are released, you will always find a flaw or something that doesn’t fit and declare the evidence insufficient.

    I already provided a response to the so-called “pause” in global temperatures in a post above. I don’t know what else I can add to it.

    If you’re expecting perfect data and infallible models and complete utter agreement on climate change, it’s not going to happen. For one, global climate is too complex. Second, there will always be doubters and vested interests who want forestall change. That was true on tobacco (years and years of studies saying it didn’t cause cancer), acid rain (Reagan said trees contributed to it), asbestos (doesn’t cause lung disease) and a host of other health and safety issues.

  • Garry

    D. Messier wrote: “Now you know how it feels trying to convince skeptics that global warming is real and a serious threat.”

    Feelings always seem to play a big role in evidence of global warming / climate change. We’re asking you to disregard feelings and read the scientific evidence several people have offered here.

  • Excuse me, but I’m not the one who is refusing to look at data, you are. As I said, I heartily agree that there are tons of data suggesting the climate has warmed in the past four centuries, and that carbon dioxide has been increasing in the atmosphere during that same time because of fossil fuel use. I could in fact provide many more links than you have of real scientific papers that support the human caused global warming theory. In fact, I’ve read every single IPCC report since 1990. Have you?

    I don’t deny that evidence, I only note its uncertainty.

    The heart of the debate in climate science today is the question of whether that warming in the past four centuries has been caused by carbon dioxide. I suspect you don’t know that. The facts are very uncertain, and there are numerous creditable scientists who say so. I’ve given you a whole bunch of examples. You’ve ignored them all, or dismissed them with a wave of the hand, as if that answers the question. Your only source of information is a single webpage, designed to outline in great detail the position of the advocates of human-caused global warming. That seems to me to be a somewhat limited review of the data.

    And no, I don’t expect “perfect data and infallible models and complete utter agreement.” However, I at least am willing to look at the fallibility of the models and the disagreement and the imperfect data to find out what is wrong. You however simply dismiss these issues as the mad ravings of stupid or corrupt people who have evil ulterior motives.

    As I said, this debate is a waste of time. It has been like talking to a wall. What saddens me most is that I find your work as a space journalist to be stellar, skeptical always of the pr crap that comes from both NASA and many commercial companies. In the aerospace field, you have always been able to look at the uncertainties and imperfect data and report it. That you are utterly unable to do the same in the field of climate science I find very disappointing.

  • Wayne

    D. Messier:
    Tobacco–where did those billions of dollars go after the tobacco companies were shaken down?? POOF. Through their magical “scheduling” powers, the Feds could outlaw tobacco tomorrow, but they won’t ever do that, nor should they have the power to do so.
    Acid Rain– couldn’t resist the attack on Reagan eh? Where did “acid-rain” go, anyway? The Chinese build 1 coal-fired electric Plant per week. (They closed 6 in Michigan past 2 years.) Chicken-Little-ism. When the World Doesn’t End Tomorrow– you folks dream up new stuff & blame me for it. (And you want me to pay for the phony-baloney research, and what’s more—I MUST agree with you and love it with all my heart & soul, or I’m some sort of “denier.” Seen this movie before– it always ends with barbed-wire & death-camps.
    Asbestos– why not throw out Radon & all that other “stuff?” You’re grasping for an analogy/metaphor.
    Not a “working scientist” myself, just a Civilian. But I damn-sure know enough to have decided the “environmental movement” is all about Statism. “Green is the new Red.”
    What arrogance…total conceit of dubious knowledge & an absolute religious-esque faith in their absolute certainty that I must be oppressed for their dystopian delusions.

  • Steve Earle

    “…I at least am willing to look at the fallibility of the models and the disagreement and the imperfect data to find out what is wrong. You however simply dismiss these issues as the mad ravings of stupid or corrupt people who have evil ulterior motives….”
    “…As I said, this debate is a waste of time. It has been like talking to a wall…”

    ****************************************************************************************
    Thanks for saying that Bob, I was about to type a similar sentiment.

    I just came across this thread and I have seen this same closed loop play out at Blog after blog. It always boils down to the same dynamic: Logic trying to talk to Emotion. It never ends well.

    Logic always believes that Emotion is simply mistaken and can be reasoned with and possibly even enlightened, but Emotion believes that Logic is Evil and Hateful and must be demeaned then dismissed, and if that doesn’t work, shouted down.

  • Wayne

    Steve:
    Excellent illustration of Mr. Z’s concise thought!

    Last thought from me: Just wait until “they” want to legislate water-vapor. (“they” will do it with a straight face & loads of “data.”)

    I do have two legitimate questions I rarely see addressed, maybe someone could enlighten me:
    -1)How much does Volcanic activity contribute to particulate & “greenhouse gas” emission’s on the Planet ? (I am under the impression contributions by human-activity are dwarfed by natural-events.)
    -2)What is the natural (non human-activity related) background seepage rate of crude-oil, into the Worlds oceans, across the Planet?

  • Edward

    D.,

    Your arguments are persuasive, and I have changed my opinion. Well done, you. You have a victory!

    I used to think that there really were negative consequences and some evidence to back it up, but now I realize that the only negative consequences are environmentalists exploding people who won’t change their ways (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1HBOvXZO-g 4 minutes: *** GRAPHIC VIOLENCE ALERT ***, a film by Richard Curtis) and parents being so frightened of global warming that they kill their children and then themselves in a suicide pact (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/southamerica/argentina/7344329/Baby-survives-parents-global-warming-suicide-pact.html )

    I have learned that the evidence of the negative consequences of global warming have been too discredited for you to believe enough to present to us.

    I cannot change your mind, D, because you are too emotionally committed to your view, but you can change my mind, because I am emotionally committed to accepting the science, which so far shows that CO2 is not as large of an influence as you believe it to be. My open mind is why I ask you for links to scientific papers, and the lack of credible science is why you cannot provide it.

    Emotional decisions can lead to tragic consequences (such as murder-suicide pacts that destroy an entire family). This is why science and engineering have worked so hard to remove as much emotion from themselves as possible. You may *want* the dam to hold when built differently, but if you do build it differently, the unfortunate but trusting people downstream are the ones who suffer. The same holds true for being wrong about global warming. If humans are not the cause (and there is no evidence that they are), then we could badly damage our futures and our posterity by making bad decisions. You wouldn’t want that, would you, D?

    The problem of convincing skeptics is simple. Provide the requested scientific papers. It is the skeptics who have the open minds, but yours is convinced that a lack of evidence (as evidenced by your inability of point to the science) is not evidence that the AGW hypothesis could be wrong. For you, rather than requiring proof of the hypothesis (the scientific way), you require that we disprove the hypothesis (the French legal system way).

    Keep up your emotional, non-scientific, beg-the-question arguments, but I still request that you provide your case that there are negative consequences to global warming. As I said, I can do this all decade.

  • Heh.You ask two very good questions. The first, about the importance of volcanic activity, is actually one of the big uncertainties that no one has as yet been able to pin down. We have ample evidence that volcanic activity can significantly cool the global climate for several years at a time, such as what followed the Mount Pinatubo eruption. The problem is that we don’t yet have a good measure of the average annual activity on Earth, and how much it varies over long time periods.

    As for the second, I have actually never come across any mention of this issue anywhere in the literature. It is a great question, and I am positive someone has delved into it, but I don’t know who or where. Why don’t you do some searches on Google Scholar search (https://scholar.google.com/schhp?hl=en&num=20&as_sdt=0,3) to see what you can find? I’d be very interested.

  • Wayne

    Ref- natural oil-seepage & oceans; Apparently it’s a well studied topic & I will investigate deeper.
    –just a quick factoid I encountered, — off the Santa Barbara coast on the sea-floor, there is a natural oil seepage zone [“Coal Oil Point.”] under active study, it seeps “20 tons of crude oil, per day,” & has done so for “thousands of years.”

    I’m under the impression that natural seepage, dwarfs man-caused spills, but have no clue where I acquired that thought.

  • Edward

    “I’m under the impression that natural seepage, dwarfs man-caused spills, but have no clue where I acquired that thought.”

    At 20 tons per day, that is over 2 million gallons (about 45,000 barrels) per year. That is just *one* seepage zone. How much do we spill each decade? Exxon Valdez, almost three decades ago, spilled 11 million gallons, which Santa Barbara alone seeps in only 5 years.

  • Wayne

    Edward: Thanks for putting that into perspective. I have no clue what a “ton” of crude oil is. (I do know 42 gallons is a barrel & world consumption is something like 40 million barrels/day.(?))
    Recall the Deep-Water Horizon spill as well? Everyone was freaking out.
    Have not dug into this at depth, but….
    –Apparently natural-seepage accounts for “40-50% of hydrocarbons in the oceans.” But I do not know what the base is, or the other contributors. But humans are low on the list. (2 strains of Bacteria, evidently produce “100 million tons” per year of “hydrocarbon’s,” & there is a “hydrocarbon-cycle” between the atmosphere & the oceans.

    Part of my inquiry is not that we should disregard oil spills & the like because natural is “worse,” but rather we need to keep this stuff in perspective. (and nature IS “worse” at “pollution.”)
    –We just cannot control Volcanos by Legislation, and who advocates intentional disregard for keeping a tight-grip on crude-oil, from well-head to consumer?

    What’s the hatred of Carbon all about? Or is it just a reverse “MacGuffin” to further the scheme?
    ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacGuffin)

  • Very interesting. Please keep digging. Getting that wider perspective is always the first step to really understanding the issue.

  • Garry

    Shortly after the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, I read a long article on the situation in Nigeria. At one time lots of oil was drilled there, with lots of wellheads and pipelines, and then they were capped. Over the decades the equipment rusted, and on a regular basis people come along to extract the oil, open up the pipelines, and leave them open.

    As a result, according to the article, oil of the volume spilled in the Gulf has spilled in Nigeria every year, for 50 years. When I have time I’ll see if I can find the article; I’d like to read it again.

    As one of Cotour’s post in this thread reminded me, here in the US we’ve come a long ways in cleaning up pollution, and we very rarely hear of the horrible pollution in China, Russia, and the third world. That’s where the environmental movement should be concentrating its resources.

    Instead, when they bring up pollution it’s often in the context of calling CO2 pollution.

  • Garry

    I don’t think this is the article on Nigeria’s oil spills that I read years ago, but it’s got a lot of similar information http://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/may/30/oil-spills-nigeria-niger-delta-shell

    This is the kind of issue I wish the environmental movement would focus their attention on.

  • Wayne

    Have not explored this at depth (at all), but this looks interesting & intend to read it through:
    “Oil in the Sea III” Inputs, Fates, Effects.
    2003
    http://www.nap.edu/read/10388/chapter/1

    -Can’t vouch for the data, quality, completeness, political-bent, etc., at this point, but looks good. (Edition “I” was issued in 1985.)

    >>jump to page 65 for a quick summary of “Oil in the .”

    Garry: Exactly! Good points.

  • Very interesting, but unfortunately very superficial. The article did not really give a clear explanation of the problem. Several factors that it did not delve into:

    1. Nigeria’s government has a very bad reputation as one of the most corrupt in the world. I have heard this from diplomats who have worked there. I suspect this is a factor.

    2. In addition, the article suggests that the corruption has spread to the rest of society, which encourages theft and vandalism.

    3. I wonder about the legal situation. Corruption usually arrives when people don’t have clear and understandable legal rights. This might contribute both to the government corruption, the vandalism and thievery, and to the oil company’s inability or unwillingness to fix the problem.

    Regardless, the information provides a different perspective on the whining of environmentalists in the U.S.

  • The table on page 69 is very eye-opening, and provides the most important information in a nutshell. I glean two important facts from this graph:

    1. They don’t know much. As they note on page 67, “the current global rate of natural seepage of crude oil at 600,000 tonnes per year, with a range of 200,000 to 2,000,000 tonnes per year.” That range is gigantic, and suggests a great deal of uncertainty.

    2. Even so, the low number above still makes natural seeps the biggest cause of oil pollution, producing more than half of the global number.

  • Steve Earle

    All of which tells me 2 things:

    1. The Earth is amazingly resilient, far more than we give it credit for.

    2. Obviously we need to bring many more Nigerians here as “refugees” so they can bring their culture of theft and vandalism…..

  • Garry

    Yes, Nigeria is very corrupt; in polls of diplomats it consistently comes in as the most corrupt country in the world. I had a first-hand experience dealing with a Nigerian embassy official who bought some things from me when I was getting ready to move from Japan; he was one of the sketchiest characters I’ve ever encountered.

    I saw in the comments of one of the articles I read that the Nigerian government holds a majority stake in all the major oil companies operating there. I have no doubt that the big oil companies are not doing all that they could to prevent pollution, right there with the government.

    Here in the US we suffer from over-regulation, but I have to admit that, although the regulations often go too far, force small businesses to close, etc., by and large we’ve improved pollution dramatically. In Nigeria, Russia, China, etc., the government works with the big companies, and the result is pollution we can’t even imagine. This is just another bad aspect of crony capitalism (or crony socialism, etc.).

    As the US, Japan, and other countries have shown, pollution problems can be turned around, and nature is much more resilient than environmentalists give it credit for.

    Instead of bashing the US and all we stand for, the environmental movement should hold us up as an example of what can be done to clean up pollution; we aren’t perfect, but we’ve come an awfully long ways from our big pollution problems of the past.

    Is it just a coincidence that they ignore the glaring problems that come from command-model economies, while constantly bashing the effects of capitalism?

  • Wayne

    Garry/Steve/Mr. Z.:
    Good comments.

    Nigeria– just as much a Nation-of-Gangsters as the Russians but with crummy 3rd-World infra-structure. (Didn’t they nationalize their oil-industry at one point?)
    — Center of the Universe for Bank-Scam junk-email, as well.–

    My whole point with Volcanos & natural oil-seepage comes down to:
    “Tell me how much particulate/chemicals/gasses comes from natural volcano-activity & oil-seepage, BEFORE attempting to control my lawnmower-engine, wood-stove or take the entire World off of oil.”

    “The road to Hell, is paved with Good Intentions.”

    Not advocating we “do nothing” as far as “pollution.” Garry is completely correct— compared to 1970, our environment is amazingly more clean. (The first 90% is relatively easy, its the last 9.5% that escalates to infinity as far as costs.) Before we embark upon a journey we can’t end—let’s get the science right, first.

    (If that makes me a “denier,” I’m guilty as charged & have zero problem sleeping at night over it all.)

    Yarrr! Been trying to snag episodes of the “Descent of Man” off YouTube— apparently the BBC has been very effective in taking down video (copyrighted material). First episode is available, however.
    As well, excellent lengthy video done by Bronowski’s daughter, explores his work on strategic-bombing in Europe in WW2 & damage assessment at Hiroshima & Nagasaki.

  • Wayne

    FYI—

    Bronowski’s daughter—
    “My Father the Bomb and Me” (BBC 2010)
    https://youtu.be/BCfJstzPyZQ

    Michael Parkinson (BBC) interviews Dr Jacob Bronowski 1974.
    https://youtu.be/DFgnGUL78MU

  • D. Messier

    Wayne:

    Industry has a long history of fighting dirty when it comes to scientific research that proves their products are causing harm. There was tobacco research for decades that attempted to disprove the harm of that product. Tobacco company executives went before Congress and testified under oath about it. The asbestos industry fought claims about the dangers to human health of using that insulator. The power industry lobbied Reagan and Congress to avoid controls that would reduce acid rain.

    The petroleum industry has poured millions into research to discredit global warming. ExxonMobil in particular. This is not surprising because there are billions in revenues at stake.

    http://www.desmogblog.com/2015/11/23/research-confirms-exxonmobil-koch-funded-climate-denial-echo-chamber-polluted-mainstream-media

    http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/index.php

    The second link has a long list of donations to organizations that deny climate change and its impact. And these are just Exxon’s contributions.

    Robert, I’m sorry if I’m disappointing you here. But, I find the evidence compelling. It makes a convincing case that global warming is real, it’s getting worse, and poses a serous threat to the planet. I don’t think we can wait to address it; in fact, it might already be too late to stop some of the serious impacts.

  • Cotour

    This “seepage” issue is just a non relevant side conversation which serves to confuse the human influence question. Seepage is not “pollution” related to the core conversation: What are the human effects on the climate?

    Seepage may be a mitigating factor in understanding what effects the earths climate but its like asking: What influence does granite have on the climate? Its just an interesting factoid about volume that keeps people busy imagining immense numbers and just how small they are.

    I am amazed at what directions some conversations are manipulated to go in sometimes.

  • Did you forgot to include a “sarcasm” warning here? I want to know before I or anyone else responses.

  • Cotour

    No sarcasm intended, let loose.

  • Garry

    Manipulated? By whom? Who (besides the obvious answer) here do you think is a warmist, trying to manipulate the conversation to distract the rest of us?

    If we had a means of starting our own threads I would have started a new one on pollution, and perhaps Wayne would have started one on seepage. Since we don’t have such means, I (and I presume Wayne) went with the flow of the conversation; I had run out of new input on the core topic, and was tired of addressing the blank wall.

    I don’t plan to respond further to this line of thought; I like these threads for their relatively high signal to noise ratio, and this isn’t noise already, it’s about to become it.

  • Wayne

    Yo Cotour:
    “I am amazed at what directions some conversations are manipulated to go in sometimes.”
    Oh…come on dude! :)
    I fully admit I’m tangential! (If I could work a Star Trek angle into this, I would! HAR)
    As for granite— it’s radioactive. (Maybe we should “pass granite-control legislation?”)

    It’s important to know what the “natural background-rate” is, for anything, and I consider crude-oil & volcanos to be important in our understanding of “carbon.”.

    Apparently we have huge amounts of “deadly, toxic, Earth-destroying, crude oil” spewing into the oceans 24/7/365, and lo and behold– it’s not the fault of the USA, Capitalism, or my lifestyle.

    D. Messier:
    I was waiting for the guilt-by-association ‘thang. (Yes, I noticed who funded, in part, the report I referenced. I just tossed it out as a resource I stumbled across while doing an initial look up. Sorry if it undermines your narrative…)
    What, is your point…only expropriated tax-dollars, produce virtuous research?
    I’m not on the ExxonMobil payroll, but why is their money tainted?

    What I really want to know:
    How much carbon & particulate-matter, did Mount St. Helens spew into the air when it erupted? And how does that amount compare to man-produced stuff?

  • Wayne

    Garry:
    Excellent points!

  • Gary,

    Your point about the inability to create a new thread intrigues me. I think it is valid. This particular thread for example is getting quite long, and maybe should begin anew.

    I think I might put up a post expressly focused on the issue of oil seepage and pollution, and let you guys post some research yourself for others to read.

  • Cotour

    Gary:

    The cacophony and contention about “science” and “research” has become on this subject the noise that you speak of here on this site and in the world in general. The facts, what ever they really are have mostly been obscured, science was thrown out the window long ago for rhetoric and political beliefs and positions.

    That being established means that it all has to be redone (if possible) or readdressed which means that reasonable people are left with choices about what is reasonable in how this subject is addressed now and in their immediate futures. What is reasonable?

    1. The issue since we are now unable to reliably establish the validity of previous research is pollution in general.

    2. What Reasonable things over the short term will be done to mitigate that?

    3. What new technology and best practices are being developed to mitigate pollution (what ever form it comes in) ?

    Whether the noise has been created as function of disinformation or not right now is besides the point, Messnier’s point about the money has validity as does Zimmerman’s point about how the evidence has been fudged. That is now the noise.

  • Sigh. You have once again gone to the “attack the reputation” approach, rather than give us any evidence. Moreover, neither of these links proves anything about the quality of the data and research that I and others have presented to you. Rather than use smears, why don’t you look at the data and tell us why you think it is wrong. Or find someone who has actually done this for you. If you can show me that the actual data in these papers are wrong, than I will listen.

    Five years ago you started telling people that Richard Branson was full of crap and that SpaceShipTwo had serious problems. Most didn’t believe you. I distinctly remember Branson himself attacking you, smearing you as uninformed and untrustworthy. I, who had been a Branson fan for years, did not do that. Instead, I started to look at what you had to say and post it here on BtB. In the end, you were right, and I was glad I had listened to what you had to say..

    In this debate, I thus had thought that if I presented you with some good data about the uncertainties in the science of climate, you would apply the same skepticism you used on Branson and look into it. I had assumed you would be interested in learning something new about the climate that you hadn’t heard from any of the sources you normally visit. What I have discovered instead is that you are not interested. You have a closed-mind, and it is this that disappoints me.

  • Then I think the comment has all the makings of the kind of comment trolls make. It is not consistent with your other opinions, and it’s only purpose seems to be to generate anger in others.

  • Cotour

    I am not trolling anyone here (and you know I can do that very well if I choose to). I think my point is concrete and I ask you to step back a bit and appreciate it aside from your well formed arguments on the subject.

    Maybe its a high IQ nerd thing, being totally immersed in the numbers, science and argument position but not being able to compartmentalize it (because we all understand that its all tainted information now) put it all aside and move on in order to accomplish something of value in the immediate and long term future on the subject while actual verifiable science is established.

    Trolling? Not today (out of established Behind The Black protocol I would have included my standard “High IQ nerd sarcasm alert”). Go with your own established evidence that what I have written is not consistent with my other opinions.

    The conversation has indeed become the noise.

  • Cotour

    Strike this sentence, I think it means the opposite of what I meant. (?)

    “Go with your own established evidence that what I have written is not consistent with my other opinions.”

  • Wayne

    Cotour:
    Not thinking that Mr. Z. was talking about you in particular.

    (–tangent–If I’m in the “hi-IQ nerd,” cohort, I appreciate that tag & take no offense whatsoever! That’s one Test I managed to avoid taking in my lifetime. But, have taken ALL the other Tests! [Har– we all have Billing & DX codes, trust me on this one factoid! Makes it more of an Adventure, don’t ya think?]
    Personally, I’m not a number-guy myself but the actual data is always important & I can evaluate numbers & stats to a good degree but more so in my own Realm of expertise.

    Garry has an intriguing suggestion about user-initiated threads. It’s not my website so I’ll go with flow.
    I have noticed– just wait 1-2 weeks & eventually a Topic will come up wherein practically everyone can weigh-in without too much tangential-energy required!)

    My one suggestion to Mr. Z, as to website mechanics:
    Can you (might you) expand the “recent comments” listing, to maybe 10 posts?
    I think that would make it easier for folks to follow more threads, even if one thread is getting heavy-commentary. Lots-o-real-estate in that right hand column.

    –I am very intrigued by the work of Jacob Bronowski. Learn something new every week!

    These long threads can be cumbersome & go astray, but I must say—in-general, very high degree of quality & specialized intelligence/opinions, from a diverse bunch of people!

  • Wayne

    Cotour:
    Correction, sorry:
    I missed 2 posts & that radically changed the meaning of the back-n-forth.

    I’ll step back, and out of this, completely. (I am reading up on “seepage” just for my own enlightenment.)

    Primary elections today….

  • My focus is always knowledge. The more you know, the more you can understand, and the more you have a chance to have wisdom.

    Asking about the seeping numbers is not noise. If is a fact that effects the how we respond to the pollution we do create. I make no apologizes for myself or Wayne for looking into this.

  • I have created a new post where I’d like the discussion about oil seepage, volcanoes, and pollution to continue.

    See http://behindtheblack.com/behind-the-black/points-of-information/the-oil-seepage-thread/

  • “Can you (might you) expand the “recent comments” listing, to maybe 10 posts?”

    Done.

  • Cotour

    You miss my point, my assertion is that the entire conversation about “global warming” is now noise because of the unverifiable, corrupted and disputable data.

    The seepage thing is just an interesting side bar about the earth’s nature and what it is made up of. I was surprised that you encouraged its investigation in relation to your on going intellectual battle with Messier.

    Until you collect “seepage” and burn it and introduce into the atmosphere, its just seepage.

  • 1. I want this conversation moved to the new thread.

    2. “You miss my point, my assertion is that the entire conversation about “global warming” is now noise because of the unverifiable, corrupted and disputable data.”

    Hasn’t that been the main point of everything I’ve written on the subject for the past decade? Even so, there is nothing wrong with continuing the effort to learn more about the environment itself, despite the noise of the corrupt data.

  • Cotour

    I want to know and understand as much as I possibly can about the environment and many, many other subjects, in spite of the noise, no sane person would argue otherwise. I want to know and understand and if I am unable to comprehend either comprehensively because of bad information, I want to understand that too.

    It may be more constructive to approach the specific issue where both sides lay down their arms and surrender to the fact of the corruption and the conclusions about the “science” of “global warming” and find some reasonable way to move into the future applying what we do know about how to live on our planet.

    One side seems to be promoting fatalistic logic that ultimately supposes that we should all basically commit suicide to “save” the planet. Total insanity. The other side seems to be heavily influenced by BIG money and how it drives our entire world wide economy. Inescapable.

    There has to be a middle ground where we can live and prosper (and discuss) while cleaning up the messes that we have made while we reset coming to understand what the actual science is.

    Achieving this will be a function of real leadership, lets be optimistic that we will be getting it at some level of competence.

  • “It may be more constructive to approach the specific issue where both sides lay down their arms and surrender to the fact of the corruption and the conclusions about the ‘science’ of ‘global warming’.”

    I love it if this would happen, but were you reading the previous post? All I have been trying to do for five years on this website when I talk about climate research is to get people to recognize that there are uncertainties in the science, and that many of those uncertainties could very well be because of data tampering. As you might have noticed, I couldn’t even get Doug Messier to even glance at this information, no less discuss it. How can anyone lay down their arms if once side refuses to listen?

    “The other side seems to be heavily influenced by BIG money and how it drives our entire world wide economy.”

    I don’t give a f*** about big money. I look at the data. I look at the data. I look at the DATA. That’s all I want people to do. That’s all every scientist should do. I don’t care who paid for it, whether the government or industry. If I look at the data carefully and if it seems correct and reasonable, I am persuaded. If it looks fishy or has large uncertainties, than I won’t take it that seriously.

    Why is this so goddamn difficult for people? Research paid by big money, from the government or industry, will not fly if it isn’t credible. All it takes is for people to ignore side issues and cast a cold eye on it.

  • Cotour

    “Why is this so goddamn difficult for people? ”

    Because………….and this has been part of much of what I comment on………..human beings are not logical. People are emotional animals, but on the other hand scientists are only concerned with the data and unfortunately that BIG money that you do not give a F*** about IS a part of the data. What do you think causes the fudging? What is the nature of man?

    (take as a logic V emotion example Edwards admitted inability to detect sarcasm as a result of his High IQ. Its a real thing, pure logical interpretation, the vast majority of other people that inhabit the earth are more based in emotion)

    I think if Mr. Messier were to agree to attempt to see the influence of the fudging and you would agree to attempt to see the influence of the money (really the same thing seen from different ends) that you would be able to make something other than the noise that the conversation has descended into.

  • “You would agree to attempt to see the influence of the money”

    You make a false assumption here about what I think. I am very aware of the influence of money in the field of climate change. And while I know that industry tries to apply its influence, the amount of money they contribute to research is a pittance compared to what governments are spending. That is where the big corruption and influence is, since those governments all want more control, and are using that money to bend the science to their will.

    To Doug Messier, the only big money influence appears to come from private companies. Government money is always clean, and pure.

  • Edward

    D. Messier,

    How fascinating that you consider research, testifying before Congress, fighting claims of harm, or lobbying to be “fighting dirty.” It was my understanding that climate scientists also do these things, too. Indeed, that has been your argument all along, so are you now telling us that climate scientists are fighting dirty?

    BTW: of the three kinds of asbestos, only one is carcinogenic, and unfortunately the US Navy was adamant about continuing to use that kind. The rest of the asbestos industry didn’t want to use it, but now all kinds of asbestos have a bad reputation because of a supposedly benevolent US government.

    BTW #2: Acid rain turned out to be a myth caused by a scientist who did not realize that the northeastern US had more deciduous trees than in previous decades, and the change in acidity content in the soil was due to the greater number decaying leaves, not acid in the rain. This lack of comprehensiveness is why the science is never settled and why there is uncertainty in science. It is always possible and entirely probable that something was missed.

    D. Messier wrote: “The petroleum industry has poured millions into research to discredit global warming.”

    Once again, you assume that global warming is bad, then conclude that it is fighting dirty when it does research on the topic. How unscientific of you. How illogical, too, as it begs the question. It is an emotional, not scientific, response.

    Once again, you assume that government funding is benevolent, despite repeated and continuous statements from almost all government officials that they are firmly on the AGW side of the debate rather than impartial arbiters. For you, D, the conclusion is foregone; you assume that the evidence must exist despite your inability to find any of it, and all other points of view are evil.

    D. Messier wrote: “But, I find the evidence compelling.”

    The evidence? The evidence that you point to assumes the problem is true. This is the very definition of the phrase “beg the question.” It is a fallacy, and the AGW advocates are full of them. They corrupt your arguments, though you do not know it, or is it that you don’t care and use your self-corrupted arguments as an excuse to complain that intelligent people don’t take your corrupted arguments seriously. You may want to study fallacies so that you can avoid them in the future. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fallacies

    What you call evidence is just the emperor running around with no clothes, and people such as you exclaiming how nice his clothes look, just to avoid being called a denier or having your friends shun you for disagreeing with them.

    The original article that spawned this thread points out that nature’s response to the increased CO2 in the air is to sequester it inside plant life, a positive consequence. This fact, or even its possibility, has been completely ignored by climate scientists and those who claim that there are negative consequences to global warming. Since we have one positive consequence and zero negative ones (every day, you fail to even list any, much less provide evidence that they may happen), it is a reasonable position to take that global warming is not such a bad thing and it is becoming unreasonable to insist that it is.

    Once again, I ask that you, D, present us with a list (short is OK) of negative consequences.

    I believe that such a list no longer exists, as time has shown us that the predicted negative consequences have failed to materialize. I believe that this is why you are unable to rise to the (seemingly simple) challenge to provide one. We no longer should worry about global warming. The mitigation of these false negative consequences that we are undertaking is costing us and our progeny far too much in terms of economics and liberty.

    I challenge you to prove my belief wrong and provide scientific papers documenting the negative consequences of global warming.

    For yet another day, you have failed to present any information at all to support your “negative consequences” hypothesis, and instead distract from your initial statement. Should we expect more snow or less? Should we expect more droughts or more floods? I mean, this is a basic request that you have been unable to satisfy for four days, now, despite your thinking that you “can do this all day.”

    You have yet to do it at all.

    Or is “obfuscation” the definition of your word “this”?

    You declare that anyone who disagrees with your viewpoint has no right to fund research to support his own viewpoint and that his research should be summarily dismissed. How unfair of you.

    No wonder you believe that there is research supporting your own viewpoint, despite your inability to find it. Since no counter-research is allowed, only supportive research could possibly exist, and no matter how sketchy or fudged, you think that you must believe it.

    You complain and declare as discredited any research that shows that AGW isn’t a problem, but you fail to make the case that it was a problem in the first place. There is an onus on the person making the extraordinary claim to have the evidence to support it. Your claim is the extraordinary one, as climate change, global warming, and global cooling are normal in nature. They have gone on for hundreds of years before man started putting CO2 in the atmosphere in amounts that could possibly change the climate. Al Gore conveniently showed us this in his Oscar winning, Nobel Peace Prize winning movie.

    Others have shown that such natural changes go back millions and hundreds of millions of years.

    You believe that there are negative consequences, because you keep hearing that there are, but you can’t find data to support your position. These claims are lies, and these lies have been large enough and been shouted loud and long enough that you have fallen for them. Not only have you fallen for the lies, but you are unable to find or accept the truth, because it conflicts with your belief — the lie. You deny reality, such as the acknowledged “pause.”

    We know that they are lies, because they have not come to pass; many of the claimed deadlines and timelines have passed and the negative consequences have failed to materialize. In order to confuse the issue, you feed us mountains of emotional counter-arguments rather than factual scientific papers. When we point out that these emotional arguments are poor arguments, unscientific and lacking data, you crab about “Since you don’t find all this evidence credible, it’s really hard to have a discussion on this topic with you,” then declare that any evidence not supporting your viewpoint –- including the reality of the “pause” — is not credible. Apparently, it is not credible only because it is contrary to your beliefs, not because the data and facts are lacking.

    Don’t you think that the real problem is that it’s actually really hard to have a discussion on this topic with you? After all, unlike us, you won’t even back up your claim of negative consequences with a single example, much less a single scientific paper to back it up but give us illogical and emotional responses. Indeed, you have not responded to any of my comments for three days, now. What are you afraid of?

    Why do you think that we should consider any of this emotional — rather than logical — argument to be credible? Why shouldn’t we expose the lies that have been said?

    New data (and old data, for that matter) is fudged in order to better fit the models – which means that even more lies are told — then these faulty models are used to rationalize more supposition and poorly researched predictions. Nostradamus had a better track record.

    A danger of believing the lie is that it takes decades to recover from it (e.g. eugenics, phrenology, and Piltdown Man) and vast resources, lives, livelihoods, and careers are squandered due to them. AGW advocates don’t have the facts to back up their claims. Instead advocates, such as you, D, merely claim that the facts exist — and you believe that they do, because you heard the lie shouted loud enough and long enough to believe it. Thus it begs the question. You see it as true only because someone kept saying it is true, not because someone showed you the data.

    If you want me to modify my conclusions that you have fallen for a big lie, show me the data that shows that it is not a lie. Show me why it is credible, don’t just declare it credible; that is a BS argument, and none of my bosses would have ever fallen for it (I tried once or twice).

    Credible evidence is why our airplanes are safe. We should demand no less, so that we can ensure that our children are safe from corrupt politicians, phony carbon-credit hucksters, and environmental scam artists.

    Wayne wrote: “If I could work a Star Trek angle into this, I would! HAR”

    Ha! Good one. That Star Trek thing is going to haunt me forever, isn’t it? Well, maybe I deserve it. I kind of milked it too much.

    Cotour,
    Big money does not influence the skeptics. Science does. The big money canard is one of the many, many tactics used to shut down debate and gain converts (modern people are jealous of those who have money, because our increasingly-socialist society makes it harder and harder for us to be our own successes), because the scientists demonstrated that the science is far from settled and the debate continued. Don’t fall for the canard. The government spends far more money on this than big money does, because the government is the bigger money.

    Robert,
    The new 10 recent comments list is nice, thank you. I used to worry that if I took up too many of the five slots then I would look self important (of course, I *am*, but I don’t want to look that way).

  • Cotour

    To be clear I include Government money and influence and their agenda in the term “Big Money”.

    Cruz is making one hell of a good speech right now as I write this.

  • Wayne

    Edward:

    That is a fantastic, well-written, well-presented, post! That required some brain power & you totally rose to the occasion & nailed it!
    Har– not to worry, my friend! Love any good Star Trek analogies! (We can take turns inserting the appropriate Episode references to the relevant topics!)

    Cotour: Personally, (HAR) I do not have all the Star Trek episodes memorized (just “very well-watched”) & I’ve never been to a Star Trek Convention. Have attended a dozen comic-cons but that was strictly old-school, pre-Glitz, late 70’s.

    Mr. Z. -yes, thanks for the 10 recent-comments expansion.

    OMG— Cruz just suspended his Campaign!

  • Edward

    D. Messier,

    We haven’t heard from you yet, today. I hope everything is OK.

  • Steve Earle

    Edward, as Wayne already said, great post! So far the only response has been crickets.

    Just as well, the conversation has been one-sided so far and it would probably be more of the same.

    I was going to say it would just be more Logic v Emotion, but it has been more Logic v Rank Ideologue…

  • D. Messier

    I certainly appreciate your support in the whole Branson/Virgin Galactic thing.

    However, I don’t believe climate change/global warming is quite on the same level. The preponderance of evidence shows that it is a man-made problem, it’s getting worse, and we needed to address it yesterday. I don’t believe skeptics have put forth convincing evidence that the consensus is wrong.

    I don’t believe government-funded data are free of problems, but I do trust the scientists who tell us this is a serous problem. I trust the decades of data they have produced.

    I don’t have the same confidence in Exxon and its efforts over the years to cast doubt on it.

    http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/exxon-knew-about-climate-change-almost-40-years-ago/

    Exxon and the petroleum industry did follow the practices used by the tobacco industry in trying to disprove the science, cast doubt, and keep the billions of dollars coming in. This is documented.

  • “I don’t believe skeptics have put forth convincing evidence that the consensus is wrong.”

    Of course you don’t. You haven’t read any of their evidence or arguments, as this thread has so clearly illustrated.

    You also say you trust the scientists who are telling us there is a serious problem, but I am willing to bet that you never read any of the climategate emails, and are ready to dismiss them as well as irrelevant. Had you, you would have found that these scientists are not as trustworthy as you think.

    But then, that would require an open mind. No chance of that.

  • Edward

    Glad you are OK. You have been posting in the mornings, lately, so I thought that this was your pattern.

    D. Messier wrote: “The preponderance of evidence shows that it is a man-made problem, it’s getting worse, and we needed to address it yesterday. I don’t believe skeptics have put forth convincing evidence that the consensus is wrong.”

    Unfortunately, there is absolutely no evidence showing that increased CO2 is driving global temperatures, which is why you have yet to present any of this supposed preponderance of evidence. The “pause” belies this portion of your claim that CO2 is a problem.

    Second, There are a tremendous number of major sources of CO2, and human activity is a mere 2% of the contribution, which seems to be sequestered by the increased plant growth that started this whole thread.

    For AGW to be a problem, both factors must be true. Man must be adding to the CO2 levels, AND CO2 must be driving global temperatures. Added to that, there has to be a problem with higher global temperatures.

    For you to convince me, you need to start showing me actual evidence — not just say that there is evidence — of each of these factors. I have been asking you to start with the third. Let’s get this to stop being one sided and get your evidence on the record.

    You may think that this is a herculean task, but just as with eating an elephant, you work it one bite at a time. A journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step. We both have months available to go through this, so let’s take that first step.

    We can start with a short list of problems, or even a single problem. Later you can find the data that supports that global warming or increased CO2 levels create or contribute to the problem.

    D. Messier wrote: “but I do trust the scientists who tell us this is a serous problem.”

    As I said, your emotional bias allows you to only see one side of the argument and disregard and discredit any contradictory information, such as the “pause” and its significance.

    Choose a scientist you trust, tell us the serious problem he studied, and present us with links to one of his papers.

    Your article about knowing about climate change four decades ago is no evidence at all. Everyone knew about climate change, back then. We all knew that climates change naturally, that there were once lakes where deserts are now (e.g. Edward’s AFB). By 1977, even *I* knew about climate change.

    Just as you reject any information that suggests that AGW is not a problem, the linked article also is based upon the same premise. Any evidence that Exxon or ExxonMobile could present is declared tainted and is summarily rejected. It is an unfair position, but I have to live with you taking it. You are too emotionally invested in it to change your mind.

    Indeed, since science is my emotional investment, all you need to do to change my mind is to show the science that supports your claims of AGW and the negative consequences it leads to. Let’s stick to this issue, because the issue of who can and cannot be trusted will not be resolved. Since there are mountains of evidence and a preponderance of evidence, this cannot be as hard as you are making it look.

    I do not argue that petroleum industry followed the practices used by climate scientists and the tobacco industry. I argued that by discrediting them, you also discredit the practices used by the very climate scientists that you are willing to pay attention to.

    You still have yet to produce even a partial a list of negative consequences, which means that your concern that the possible effects humans may have on global temperatures is moot. No negative consequences, no need for concern. Positive consequences, such as greater crop yields, mean that higher temperatures are desirable.

    As I see it, climate science has its own major problem. Because climate scientists have only concentrated on one thing, CO2, they have neglected the other factors that affect global warming, so they were unprepared to predict or even to explain the “pause.”

    Further, they hypothesized that CO2 has a positive feedback, and made assumptions that the increased evaporated water in the atmosphere also contributes to global warming at a rate higher than the reality shows to be true. Rather than argue that Exxon should not be allowed to do its own research on the issue, you may want to argue that the climate scientists update their models to a more realistic feedback factor.

    So far, everyone is concentrating so much on the CO2-H2O hypothesis that they are missing other important factors — factors that caused the “pause.” But this is a discussion for another thread.

  • Wayne

    Edward:
    Very well presented thoughts.

  • Edward

    D. Messier wrote: “… it’s getting worse, and we needed to address it yesterday. I don’t believe skeptics have put forth convincing evidence that the consensus is wrong.”

    The need “to address it yesterday” stuff is not supported by the failed predictions, and this is the type of thing that a con artist would say to sell carbon credits to his marks. Don’t let the mark think about it, make him act right now, otherwise he may figure out the jig, which is what the skeptics have done.

    Indeed, we have heard the urgency argument for so long, and so many deadlines and timelines have passed without the promised negative consequences that it now comes off as crying wolf.

    Last year, we were told that we only have 50 days before we reach the tipping point and it will be too late. Well, according to that, it is now too late. Same goes for Al Gore’s warning in his Oscar winning movie. And how much time does Prince Charles say we have before we reach the tipping point?

    Oh, thank God. He noticed that the end of the world was not coming fast enough to con anyone, so he gave us a reprieve:
    http://www.climatedepot.com/2015/07/28/prince-charles-gives-world-reprieve-on-global-warming-extends-100-month-tipping-point-to-35-more-years/

    It is not only the passing of all these deadlines that discredits the tipping-point argument, it is the wild disagreements on when the end will come. Because there is no supporting science to back up these claims, it seems that they are chosen arbitrarily, perhaps by the needs of the prognosticator to sell his carbon credits, or whatever.

    As for the evidence from the skeptics:

    1) I don’t expect to change your mind, as I said, you are too emotional for me to succeed;

    2) As you have stated on multiple occasions, you wouldn’t believe the skeptics anyway; and

    3) The onus is on the person with the hypothesis to demonstrate that it is true. So far, you have failed to present any evidence at all that the AGW negative consequences hypothesis (whatever those consequences may be) is true.

    There is no hypothesis that human activity has no effect on global temperatures, even the skeptics accept that there could be none at all, a little bit, a middling amount, or even a lot, they just want to see some evidence before deciding which; but there is a hypothesis that AGW occurs and has some sort of negative consequences.

    Meanwhile, I think that evidence of AGW and its negative consequences does not exist, which is why you can’t find it.

    I have given you a few suggestions for the negative consequences you may have meant when you first mentioned it, five days ago: more snow, less snow, droughts, and floods. But here is a better list from which to choose a negative consequence. Please note that each has a link to help you get started:
    http://whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICLES/globalwarming2.html

    In my opinion, this list actually makes the claims of negative consequences seem rather silly. This is not the fault of the person who compiled the list, it is the fault of so many people making so many claims. It does not help that some of them seem silly. If only they stuck to a couple, such as less snow and more floods, then it would not seem so unreasonable. As it is, it just looks like a way to con people, through fear and urgency, into buying carbon credits.

  • D. Messier

    >Of course you don’t. You haven’t read any of their evidence or arguments, as this thread has so clearly illustrated.

    You also say you trust the scientists who are telling us there is a serious problem, but I am willing to bet that you never read any of the climategate emails, and are ready to dismiss them as well as irrelevant. Had you, you would have found that these scientists are not as trustworthy as you think.

    > What do you know about what I’ve read?

    But then, that would require an open mind. No chance of that.

    > Right back at ya there,

    > For you to convince me, you need to start showing me actual evidence — not just say that there is evidence — of each of these factors. I have been asking you to start with the third. Let’s get this to stop being one sided and get your evidence on the record.

    Since you didn’t like my last source, here’s another website that deals with why climate change skeptics are wrong:

    http://skepticalscience.com/docs/Fact_Myth_Fallacy.pdf

    Sums it up pretty well.

    As for negative consequences, we’ll see sea level rises, storm surges, ocean acidification, lost coastlines, severe droughts, more severe weather. Lots of negative consequences.

    The larger site also addresses the flaws in the climate change skepticism arguments:

    http://skepticalscience.com/

    I’m not going to spend months going through scientific papers one by one with you.

  • D. Messier

    Edward:

    You want links to reports showing evidence and negative consequences.

    Links to 40 reports about global warming and its negative impacts:

    http://www.ucsusa.org/search/reports?f%5B0%5D=im_field_channel%3A187#.VyrG5b6E0Xc

    Here’s a series of reports from the National Academies of Sciences. There appear to be 29 reports in this collection:

    http://www.nap.edu/collection/34/climate-change?gclid=CjwKEAjwu6a5BRC53sW0w9677RcSJABoFn4sHMdmYStaj-VBeJNtG9tKPJVZZnJyEBOZEGU7bKAysxoCVRLw_wcB

    They’re all downloadable for free, so happy reading.

    Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
    http://www.ipcc.ch/

    All sorts of reports there.

    National Climate Assessment
    http://nca2014.globalchange.gov/

    Rather than go through all these reports one by one, why don’t you take some months and read through them? Then we’ll talk.

  • Doug,

    I hate to shock you, but I have actually read many of these already, including many Natioal Academiies reports as well as all of the IPCC reports, as I have already noted. I wonder, have you actually read them? I doubt it. If you had, you would have noticed that they became increasingly agenda driven and political over the years. While the first report, in 1990, was a very good summation of the science, later reports put the science aside to push the global warming agenda, to the point that the reports became unreliable. I read them myself, so I saw this first hand. However, here are a few links:

    From the Wall Street Journal, Der Spiegel, and the LA Times, among others, about the effort by the IPCC to deal with the pause in warming, which contradicts all its models:
    Warming Up for Another Climate-Change Report
    Warming Plateau? Climatologists Face Inconvenient Truth
    Global warming ‘hiatus’ puts climate change scientists on the spot
    Oh My: UN Climate Change Chief Admits No Global Warming Over Last 17 Years…

    Problems with the past reports:
    IPCC Admits Its Past Reports Were Junk

    The IPPC scandal from 2011, when it was discovered that sections of the IPCC report were written by Greenpeace activists, not scientists:
    Climate change panel in hot water again over ‘biased’ energy report

    More on these scandals about the IPCC reports:
    Climate Panel Faces Heat

    This link describes how much of the information in the IPCC reports use press releases from environmental activist organizations, not peer reviewed literature:
    IPCC Gives Up On Science, Makes Grey Literature Official

    By the way, this post by me points to two studies, one in Nature, that point to some beneficial effects of global warming:
    http://behindtheblack.com/behind-the-black/essays-and-commentaries/global-warming-is-good-for-you/

    I could go on. As I said, I have read the IPCC reports. A lot of information, much of it worthwhile. It helped teach me about the real science and debates that scientists are presently having about climate change. It also made me aware of the uncertainties (very clearly laid out in the first IPCC report) which have not been reduced in any significant way in the subsequent 25 years.

    You might find it helpful to read the citations you cite, y’know? :)

    By the way, many of the citations you list are actually quite credible. I don’t want you to think that I dismiss all of the science relating to global warming. I do not. I never have. All I want you to be aware of is that the science is far more uncertain that you think it is, and that you need to educate yourself a bit more about this fact.

  • Edward

    D. Messier wrote: “Since you didn’t like my last source, here’s another website that deals with why climate change skeptics are wrong:

    “Sums it up pretty well.”

    Except that I am not looking for a summary of opinions, I am looking for science, especially source papers. There are supposed to be mountains of these. Opinion is not evidence, otherwise you would not be rejecting the statements that we have been making here, you would be considering them as evidence.

    D. Messier wrote: “I’m not going to spend months going through scientific papers one by one with you.”

    Well, let’s just do one, then. It’s your argument, you choose one. If the case is clear, it should not take months and months. It should be quick.

    As I recommended, please choose your own case to discuss. Choose one for which you can make a convincing argument. If I choose, then we will be discussing the “pause,” and I don’t think you can be convincing with that one, as it overwhelmingly demonstrates the failure of climate scientists to predict future climates.

    If we cannot be certain of future climates, then how can we worry about their negative consequences? If we work to mitigate one climate but another happens, then we get blindsided and are harmed by the lack of preparation as well as the misspent resources.

    These are the concerns of the skeptics. Not a denial that climates never change, but that we are squandering scarce and precious resources on the wrong “battles.”

    If we spend decades preparing for and preventing global warming, then what happens if we are about to enter another little ice age or even a deep ice age?

    The “pause” has shown us that we know far less about climate and what effects it that skeptic thought even as recently as when Gore’s Oscar winning movie came out. That we are worrying only of CO2 when another factor(s) clearly dominates it should concern you.

    Of course, now that you have shown that the mountains of evidence that you cite are merely opinion pieces and not actual science, it becomes clearer to me why you are so emotionally bound to your opinion. You do not recognize an opinion when you see it and you believe it to be source science.

    I am looking for the science that these opinions are based upon. The IPCC reports should point you in that direction. Be careful, the IPCC reports themselves are opinion pieces based upon some science and a lot of opinion. As Robert points out, many of the references are not peer reviewed papers.

    Look for documents with an Abstract at the beginning and a Conclusion at or near the end, prior to the references section. Look for negative consequences that you can document have come true, and work backward to the science that predicted it. This is why I recommended choosing a negative consequence, before.

    I need the science that predicted it, because a con artist will send out a lot of mail with various predictions of the future, then try to con those marks in which he sent the correct predictions. “The market will go up.” “The market will go down.” “See, I told you the market would go down. Send me your money and I will make you a fortune.”

    Of course, the “we’ll see sea level rises” prediction has little merit, as the levels have been rising since the end of the last ice age. A correctly predicted increase in the rate of rise is much more convincing than a generality that is expected anyway.

    We have always had storm surges, did someone predict more or fewer, by how many and how was the number determined? Is it a local prediction (e.g. Eastern Seaboard) or a global prediction? Pulling a number out of his butt is what embarrassed Prince Charles into modifying the number of months left to us before it is too late. I don’t want to see storm surge predictions pulled out of someone’s butt; I want to see careful research that shows how much and why we should see that change. That is much more convincing than the Prince Charles method of prediction. It is even more convincing if it has come to pass.

  • D. Messier

    Oh, we’re back to the pause again. The hiatus. The Earth hasn’t warmed in xx years argument. Didn’t I provide a link to why that’s wrong already? If not, it’s in the links I provided. I don’t know how much more I can do here.

  • As I said, you continue to refuse to read any of the scientific papers or links we provide you. You are embarrassing yourself. And I read your one link. It doesn’t prove anything, only offers an opinion that the pause didn’t happen. However, the IPCC (a link you yourself offered) has admitted that the pause is happening, as I pointed at with these links:

    From the Wall Street Journal, Der Spiegel, and the LA Times, among others, about the effort by the IPCC to deal with the pause in warming, which contradicts all its models:
    Warming Up for Another Climate-Change Report
    Warming Plateau? Climatologists Face Inconvenient Truth
    Global warming ‘hiatus’ puts climate change scientists on the spot
    Oh My: UN Climate Change Chief Admits No Global Warming Over Last 17 Years…

    Note the last especially. The head of the IPCC himself admitted the pause was happening. In addition, these sources, the Wall Street Journal, Der Spiegal, the Los Angeles Times, are not wild-eyed skeptics who hate science. They are respected news media, of which you would be glad to work. If you are now going to claim that they are all under the thumb of big oil, you will make yourself look really ridiculous. You instead need to read these stories, and come to grip with the fact that there is serious data that says the pause does exist. At a minimum, there is uncertainty here, a great deal of uncertainty.

    But I really do think you are right, however. There isn’t much you can do here, since you refuse to engage.

  • Steve Earle

    FWIW, my epiphany on the matter came when I read a story about retreating ice in Greenland exposing the remains of Viking farms and settlements.

    Farms. In Greenland. Where even now with the ground exposed it is impossible to grow any real crops.

    The archaeologists agreed that the Vikings were driven out of Greenland by cooling temps.

    That tells me (and them) that it has been both warmer and colder than now WITHIN RECORDED HUMAN HISTORY.

    I don’t think the Vikings changed the climate with the fires in their Longhouses…..

    After that, I learned about the Medieval Warming Period, The Little Ice Age, and all the other oscillations in climate that have happened in just the last few thousand years. That, plus learning of the Climategate emails, the false “Consensus” and the fake “Hockey Stick” was all I needed to become what Bob called a “Wild-eyed Skeptic” :-)

    Modern Man may indeed be contributing some small amount of delta-vee to the process, but that amount, if it exists at all, is lost in the far, far larger signals of solar, oceanic, and volcanic effects.

  • D. Messier

    Well, Robert.

    The four sources you point to are from 2013. Three stories from September of that year, the fourth from February. So, the information is now between 2 years 8 months and 3 years 3 months old.

    As you know, scientists continue to study these matters, gather more data, and analyze them. And the data have indicated there has not been a hiatus after all.

    http://www.hngn.com/articles/185545/20160306/global-warming-hiatus-isnt-real-new-data-suggests.htm

    Is global warming on hiatus? After the National Atmospheric and Oceanic Administration (NOAA) published a 2015 study that removed the pause in global warming from temperature records, scientists have been unable to agree on the integrity of this move. Now, a new data set shows that this removal may have been justified and points to the perceived pause in global warming as a result of errors in the data set.

    Carl Mears, the scientist who runs the Remote Sensing System temperature data tracking and released the finding, applied a fix to a discrepancy in the data gathered from 15 satellites and claims that his conflict is what led to the initial reports of a global warming hiatus.

    Instead, Mears claims that over the last 18 years, the Earth has experienced a warming of 0.18 degrees Fahrenheit, supporting other studies that also point to the existence of global warming.

    “There are people that like to claim there was no warming; they really can’t claim that anymore,” Mears said.

    Sorry, Bob. Your data are out date. So are your conclusions.

  • Edward

    D. Messier wrote: “I don’t know how much more I can do here.”

    I have explained in very careful terms what you can do here. Please do it.

    I have also explained that I did not want to discuss the “pause,” as the very people that you reference as credible (e.g. Micheal Mann, as I linked, far above) agree with me that it exists and that it is caused by factors that the models did not consider. This means that you cannot win this argument. Your support for your point of view is removed by the same scientists that you consider credible.

    We have already discovered that CO2 is a minor factor, and that its effects have been overestimated and over hyped. This is the point of the skeptics, and it is also becoming the opinion of a growing number of climate scientists and other environmentalists. People such as Clause Allegre changed from alarmist to skeptic. So did Dr. Judith Curry, Caleb Rossiter (fired for diverging on climate), and James Lovelock.

    Instead, you have denied even what the climate scientists admit is true. Apparently, you are not reading the links that I provide, or — as Robert points out — that you provide.

    As Steve Earle points out, there are several other possible factors that can affect global temperatures and climates even more than the CO2 that humans emit. We need to understand them, and we need to be able to predict when the next ice age or little ice age is coming, otherwise we may discover with suddenness that we failed to find ways to grow enough food for the whole world. This could lead to the very wars that the Norwegian Nobel Committee conferred upon Al Gore for preventing.

    There can be negative consequences to being wrong and chasing the fox up the wrong tree. If the fox gets away, he raids the hen house. If we are unprepared for the next climate, we may starve, or we may drown or have terrible refugee problems due to rising seas and storm surges. We need to be sure we are barking up the right tree, because while we are over here, the hen house is unguarded.

  • Ah, I do not deny Mears adjustments exist, but they do not yet convince me, especially because of the amount of other questionable data adjustments done at NASA and NOAA, with no explanation, that always warm the present and cool the past. My skeptical mind begins to rebel when the only fixes they ever do to the data always works to the theorists advantage. Normal science simply never works that way.

    You should read this very interesting post from climate scientist Judith Curry, who generally believes in global warming but is also very open-minded about the uncertainties. She looks at the original Mears paper, reviews the questions that other scientists in the same field have with it (including the infamous Roy Spencer), and then comes to her own conclusions:

    Roy Spencer’s comments substantially reduce the credibility of the new data set. Their dismissal of the calibration problems with the NOAA-14 MSU is just astonishing. Presumably Christy’s review of the original submission to JGR included this critique, so they are unlikely to be unaware of this issue. The AMS journals have one the best review processes out there; I am not sure why Christy/Spencer weren’t asked to review. I have in the past successfully argued at AMS not to have as reviewers individuals that have made negative public statements about me (not sure if this is the case with Mears/Wentz vs Spencer/Christy).

    There is a legitimate debate on how to correct for the diurnal cycle, but based on my assessment, the UAH empirically based approach seems better.

    With regards to the ‘pause.’ The ‘pause’ in warming has generally been assessed using the lower tropospheric temperatures, which aren’t yet available from the new dataset. So it is not yet clear what impact the new data set will have on our interpretation of the pause.

    …And what of the years following 2016? Will we see cooling and then a continuation of flat temperatures? Or continued warming? I suspect that there will be some cooling and continued flatness. I’ve stated before that it will be another 5 years before we have the appropriate prospective on the current temperature fluctuations and whether or not the early 21st century pause is over.

    The science remains uncertain. I don’t claim to know. Neither does Curry. Why are you so sure?

  • Edward

    D. Messier,

    It is unfortunate that you have referenced NOAA’s modified dataset. And it is also unfortunate that the study, linked in the article, that confirms NOAA’s modified dataset is based upon NOAA’s modified dataset. This begs the question. It fails to justify or explain the modification of the dataset.

    There is a terrible problem with NOAA, and as you noted, scientists the world over are appalled that they have fudged their temperature datasets. They have made changes without explaining their rationale or even without announcing the changes. This is the very definition of fudging data. Robert’s data is not “out of date,” the “updated” version is unreliable until NOAA explains itself. Your link failed to provide this explanation.

    I wrote a little note on why this is a problem, in this case it was AVISO, a foreign climate organization, modifying TOPEX and Jason-1 satellite data:
    http://behindtheblack.com/behind-the-black/points-of-information/a-closer-look-at-the-fake-sea-level-data/

    As with you, respectable scientists used fudged satellite data to draw unreliable conclusions.

    If your point cannot be made without fudged data, then the point is questionable. Without explanation, we could easily conclude that the data was fudged so that people such as you could make your point. Indeed, you even called it yourself: “the National Atmospheric and Oceanic Administration (NOAA) published a 2015 study that removed the pause in global warming from temperature records.” This raises suspicions of the motives for fudging the data.

    After all these months, we are still eagerly awaiting explanations as to why satellite data from NOAA and AVISO (and others) have been modified. Until such explanations come forth, we have to suspect their veracity.

  • Doug,

    Since you might not have seen the post I put up earlier today about a review of Al Gore’s 2006 film, An Inconvenient Truth, you might not have seen this link to a February 2016 paper, published in the science journal Nature, which reviewed the data and found the pause does exist. From their abstract:

    It has been claimed that the early-2000s global warming slowdown or hiatus, characterized by a reduced rate of global surface warming, has been overstated, lacks sound scientific basis, or is unsupported by observations. The evidence presented here contradicts these claims.

    I included a graph from that paper in the post, showing the presence of the pause in the modern data, through this year.

    As I have noted repeatedly, my point here isn’t to prove the pause is happening, which I really can’t do, but to note that the field of climate science has enormous uncertainties. They can’t even agree on what their own datasets have been telling them for the past fifteen years! And yet, somehow, you are sure, beyond a shadow of a doubt, the theory of global warming is correct and happening.

    You are going to have a lot of trouble convincing people of your position under these circumstances.

  • Steve Earle

    This truly is “The thread that will not die…” LOL!

    Seriously though, thank you for trying to keep the conversation going here. I have several “highly educated” friends who sound JUST like Doug.

    They can get very emotional when challenged on their orthodoxy, and when that happens they tend to fall back on condescension and ad hominem attacks rather than address the actual question.

    It’s interesting how political this discussion gets when it should be strictly about the science. The fact that it becomes political and/or emotional at all should be a red flag to any educated person and yet…..

    Just like the SJW’s out there, the AGW ideologues are the first to shout: CONSENSUS! Now SHUT UP!

    There are none so intolerant as those who preach tolerance the loudest.

    And to continue my “AGW Epiphany” from above, when I started to question the “Hockey Stick” several years ago my search led me to Anthony Watts work on Ground Based Weather Stations and their crazy siting issues.

    That work alone should have opened the eyes of any thinking person to question the data. Sadly, it did not. When even pictures of ground temp stations sitting next to building HVAC vents fail to reopen a rational discussion you know you are now dealing with an political ideology and not science…..

  • Edward

    Steve Earle wrote: “Just like the SJW’s out there, the AGW ideologues are the first to shout: CONSENSUS! Now SHUT UP!”

    This is why I posted the link to the consensus research paper, way far above:

    It states clearly in the abstract that 66.4% of the climate scientists they studied had stated no opinion on global warming, which tells us that the conclusion of the study that the AGW ideologues use is bogus.

    BTW: both Robert and I would be counted as part of the consensus, because we admit either that warming has occurred (the data says so) or that some portion of the warming could be due to CO2 emissions from human activity (even if that is a very, very tiny portion, it makes sense to me, despite a continuing lack of evidence confirming it — hopefully D. Messier can help out with this), or both.

    Steve Earle also wrote: “There are none so intolerant as those who preach tolerance the loudest.”

    In college, I lived for a year with students who were just like this. They declared themselves intolerant only of intolerance, but they would not tolerate anyone who disagreed with them on most topics, calling them either racist, whenever possible, or fascist, when racist did not fit. This tended to shut up their victim, as intended. No one wants to be an “ist.” They seemed to be much more intolerant than those they shut up.

  • Steve Earle

    Edward said:
    “…This is why I posted the link to the consensus research paper, way far above:
    It states clearly in the abstract that 66.4% of the climate scientists they studied had stated no opinion on global warming, which tells us that the conclusion of the study that the AGW ideologues use is bogus…”

    Isn’t it interesting that the AGW crowd insists that all data and papers presented by their opponents be peer-reviewed, published, critiqued, and then, when all those barriers are cleared, dismissed nonetheless on flimsy excuses (usually like Doug’s claim above of political impurity…), but they will defend without a trace of irony a poor piece of work like this because it says what they want it to say….

    They can’t even agree on a definition of what a “Climate Scientist” is, never mind collect any usable data from such a flawed survey and sample group.

  • Max

    In my experience, the climate scientist is the crossbreeding between a political scientist and a Scientologist. To become one you need an official recognition credentials stating that you are receiving funding from the US government in the form of a grant. If your research mentions global warming no matter what the topic is, you may have a job for life.

    I see the article above has retracted that nitrogen is a global warming gas. That is sad, because they were on the right track. After all, nitrogen and oxygen make up 99.96% of the atmosphere! All other gases combine make up the .04% which they claim causes all of our heat retention. 10+ years of environmental satellite data has proven that the energy escapes with the same ease that it enters our atmosphere… Yes, the mythical greenhouse that we all know is there but cannot see, or touch has evaded detection. This is so frustrating for them, but heaven forbid that they re-examine their models for a better explanation that fits the data. If they just throw a few more billion dollars at it, maybe they can get that square peg in that round hole.
    If I was a betting man, I would wager their satellites show that the earth emits more heat than they can account for… Just like five of the eight planets in our solar system. Jupiter emits 2 1/2 times more heat than it receives from the sun. Under its atmosphere, it is five times hotter than the photosphere of the sun!
    The earth emits heat all night long, but the temperatures drop 30°, More or less depending on where you live. The weatherman gives the highs and lows every day, subtract the low from the high and that’s the total amount of heat that the sun warmed you on that given day.
    Has anyone proven where heat comes from? The engineers know that all heat is friction (or resistance) it’s presence can be easily measured, and the lack of heat tells you where it is not. The sun is the source of all light, photosynthesis and life cannot exist without it. It is the source of much heat as well but when we climb a mountain or go up in a plane, it gets colder the closer you get to the sun. The laws of thermal dynamics say that the closer you get to a heat source the warmer it will become.
    If you could make the sun hold still for a week or a month, how hot would it be? 40° below zero… At least that’s the average temperature at the South Pole during three months of continuous sunlight.( 70° below zero average during the winter)
    It’s much warmer at the north pole, but it is at sea level. (another clue)
    One more piece of evidence. The moon. On its Sun side the temperatures reach 250°, enough to boil water. On its shade side, it is 300° below zero putting the mean temperature at a -50°. The earths mean temperature is near 50°, 100° warmer than the moon in the same orbit… Without an atmosphere to filter out more than 50% of the heat, In the green zone!
    This is enough, some of you have heard it before. Others have new evidence seen in a different light to chew on. What heats the Chinook winds becomes self evident now. (look it up). There are a lot of good mysteries out there to be solved.

  • Wayne

    Max:
    >uniquely interesting take, on this whole affair!

    The one thing I’m positive of, as far as “heat,” 2nd Law of Thermodynamics is in effect. (unless Congress passes Legislation and refutes it thus…)
    “High-quality” energy from the Sun enters the Earth system through a variety of mechanisms & is converted to “lower-quality” heat energy and radiated away.

    Paraphrasing F.A. Hayek…
    “The curious task of Science is to demonstrate to Climate modeler’s, how little they really know about what they imagine they can design.”

  • Edward

    Max,

    You posted a comment on another thread, but I would like to reply on this thread. Here is the reference:
    http://behindtheblack.com/behind-the-black/points-of-information/judge-rules-white-house-showed-bad-faith-in-global-warming-case/#comment-885722

    Max wrote: “why does the phrase “consensus of scientists” keep reappearing?”

    This is the power of the big lie. Just as many people believe in global warming due to its constant reinforcement in all aspects of society (even sports is supposedly disrupted by the supposed global warming), many people believe the 97% consensus lie, even skeptics. This is exactly why we need to verify the actual science that is being perpetrated upon us.

    The Cook, et al. paper that I linked to is an excellent example of why we cannot take the statements of global warming advocates at face value. Few of them actually understand the science, and apparently even fewer of them bother to look at the science.

    The CRU emails are yet another example of untrustworthiness. They admit in their notes to each other that they have hidden the truth, because it would expose the flawed data — which has been conveniently lost in the way that was promised in one note.

    NOAA, AVISO and others have modified data without notice or explanation, destroying the trustworthiness of these organizations, as well. It is not scientific to use fudged data, and it only leads to the question, why could the point not be made without fudging the data?

    If they were proud of their work, they would display it for all others to see. Hiding it smacks of deceit and fraud.

    If the science is so settled, why does the data have to be continually modified? If the conclusion is based upon so much science, why is it taking so long for D. Messier to find the science? If the climate scientists are so sure of their data and conclusions, then why are skeptics being kept from publishing their own papers in the JGR and other publications? If the conclusion of global warming is so scientific, why do 66.4% of climate scientists have no opinion, and why do the global warming advocates have to lie about the consensus?
    Or hide the decline?
    Or silence skeptics?
    Or can’t correctly predict the negative consequences?

    Should not the papers that conclude that there is global warming be revisited when the data is changed? Since the data that these papers were based upon is now suspect by the climate science community or is considered obsolete, so are the conclusions derived from that data.

    Max wrote: “We need to establish the verified facts before we can consider the fantasies and the projections of computers.”

    This is so very true. The models are supposed to predict the future, but if they fail to predict the reality, then they are not useful for making policy. For instance, Germany’s policymakers may have squandered tens of billions of Euros unnecessarily on programs intended to reduce CO2 emissions.

    Garbage may be going into the computers, the algorithms may be garbage, and garbage may be coming out of them, but it is treated as gospel despite not agreeing with the climate reality. “Garbage in, gospel out” would be a more appropriate phrase.

    Max wrote: “It is easier to drink the punch, then to admit that your Life long convictions and beliefs are wrong.”

    You know, the first time I heard the phrase “drink the Kool-Aid,” I thought it terribly insensitive. It had been less than a quarter century since the Reverend Jim Jones did that to his followers in Jonestown Guyana, and thousands or tens of thousands of family and friends would still be alive to hear the phrase. However, I have decided that it fits many situations in which it is applied. This time, however, it is Al Gore playing the Reverence Jones, and we are the ones who are likely squandering scarce resources and leading to a worsened future by following what may very well be the wrong path.

    Gore, Mann, and D. Messier have not yet provided the science that demonstrates that they are correct. For now, they are relying upon what looks like fudged data.

    D. Messier,
    Are you still doing the research? If you are having trouble, the kinds of papers that you are looking for would be referenced similar to those in the “Science Papers” section of Robert’s new menu item: “Climate and Sun science bibliography”. In fact, you might want to start there; not only would you see what the science papers you seek would look like, some of the ones Robert lists could be useful to you. They may make your point, or their own reference sections may point to papers that do.

    Let me reiterate:
    “I am looking for the science that these opinions are based upon. The IPCC reports should point you in that direction. Be careful, the IPCC reports themselves are opinion pieces based upon some science and a lot of opinion. As Robert points out, many of the references are not peer reviewed papers.

    “Look for documents with an Abstract at the beginning and a Conclusion at or near the end, prior to the references section. Look for negative consequences that you can document have come true, and work backward to the science that predicted it.”

    I honestly am hoping that you find good science, so that I can have regain some or a lot of lost respect for the climate science field. Even though I had doubts about their conclusions, I had respect for the scientists until climategate showed that some of the most respected scientists were not confident in their findings.

    It has been a few days, and I have not seen you post anything at all on BtB. Is it too early to worry about your health again?

  • Max

    Thank you for your kindness. Consensus is like democracy, but in this case it comes under duress. It would seem by the evidence that a pre-conceived notion and its solution is what is driving the climate debate. The ends is all that matters, the means to those ends includes being browbeaten and subjugated by the consensus brownshirts. Al gore says we are saving the planet, as he gets on his jet plane and burns more fuel than most people do in a lifetime. He does not walk the talk! He is a fraud and therefore has alternative motives. Money? Power? Or the control of peoples lives? Those that think themselves gods need no morality. They are capable of anything as Robert has already demonstrated in the above link.

    Stare straight ahead, be amazed. Don’t look behind the curtain, all you’ll get there is frustration and disappointment. I think of myself as Dorothy’s Toto. Small and insignificant, but was instrumental in exposing the truth for all to see.
    Wayne teases that the Congress may repeal the second law thermodynamics…
    This may be necessary so that scientists don’t have to explain why the sun violates the laws of thermodynamics. The surface of the sun, photosphere, is measured at 9500°. The core of the sun is estimated to be 50,000,000°. The coronasphere is near 20,000,000°. This is like putting an ice cube in the oven with top and bottom elements going and the cube never melts. (violation of the zero law)
    The sun is said to be a fusion reactor, and yet there is very little evidence to substain this claim. Helium is four times heavier than hydrogen and would snuff out the sun with its own byproduct.
    Where is all the radiation? The neutrino problem is a discussion that’s brought up often, no satisfactory answer has ever been given. The energy produced should have a “factor of three” more neutrinos then we are experiencing. Enough to irradiate the earth lifeless with every rotation.
    It is said that in the beginning, the sun was pressing down on itself was so much force that the friction it generated had enough heat to begin the fission process. Yes, the heat pre-dated fission. without the evidence of fission byproducts and radiation, perhaps it never started. Every planet in our solar system undergoes the same process generating its own heat by the weight of its atmosphere in combination with the gravity. That is what causes global warming. Venus for example, has 90 earth atmosphere’s. The average temperature is 860° The upper atmosphere has been measured at 200° below zero because of carbon dioxide ice? This indicates that the suns radiation does not penetrate very deeply and it’s not the cause of its heat.
    Compare to Mercury’s sun side is 60°, colder than Venus mean temperature. The average temperature of Mercury is 200° because it has no atmosphere, the Darkside drops to 300° below zero.
    Does carbon dioxide have a role in the heat produced in our atmosphere? It does. Because it has mass, it adds to the friction like all the other air molecules in in our atmosphere in relation to its amount. Approximately one half of 1/10 of 1% of the heat.
    If carbon has really nothing to do with global warming, and the answer is so simple as stated above, why all the controversy? Why fool the world with a lie?
    For the power to fundamentally change everything!

  • Edward

    Max,
    Nice post. I enjoyed reading it.

    Be careful, though, because I *do* identify as a major deity, thus it seems that you think that I need no morality. Come to think of it, I really don’t *need* morality, but I find having morals to be very useful, otherwise I would use my powers selfishly for evil instead of selflessly for good (be more devil than benevolent god). (BTW: worship and tithes are always appreciated.)

    As for the sun, as I posted earlier today on another thread, I once worked with solar astrophysicists who were working on the cool-surface/hot-corona problem, among other mysteries. It is clear that there is some form of “heat pump” acting at the sun that transfers heat energy into the corona, otherwise the laws of thermodynamics would be violated.

    You can’t get ahead (conservation of energy), you can’t break even (your gizmo will always lose energy to the surrounding environment), and you can’t get out of the game (you will always lose energy until you reach a minimum energy state).

    People who think that the laws of thermodynamics do not allow for heat to move from a cool object to a warm object do not understand their own refrigerators. The laws require that energy be applied to the system in order to move heat from cooler to warmer objects, and that is what your refrigerator’s compressor does. We are still looking for the sun’s compressor equivalent.

    The effect that CO2, water vapor, and other greenhouse gasses have in our atmosphere are a bit different than the compression/friction that you express, however. Different chemicals absorb different light frequencies, and this absorption results in the heating of the chemicals. CO2 has its own absorption profile, but it overlaps with much of water vapor’s absorption profile. If there were no water in our atmosphere, CO2 would be a more important greenhouse gas than it is.

    One of the arguments for the importance of CO2 as a greenhouse gas is that the amount that it warms our air also affects the amount of water vapor in our atmosphere, which further adds warmth to the air. Warmer air can hold more water vapor, and will evaporate more, too. Thus there is a “positive feedback” that means that incremental increases in CO2 affects temperature more than the increase in CO2 alone would account for. The argument is over how much more this amount is. There is no science that definitively finds this amount, but many climate scientists have assumed the amount is 3 times as much. Models that use this number have failed to predict the actual temperature of today’s Earth and instead overestimated 2016 temperatures, thus 3 may be too high.

    As for fooling the world with a lie, the reason to do so seems to be for greed. Either political greed, as in creating laws and policies that tell others what to do and not do (the politician feels god-like by saying, “do as I say, not as I fly” — which would explain why they seem to have no morals), or financial greed, as in selling carbon credits and getting tens of millions of dollars richer.

    Climate scientists, however, mostly just pay the mortgage and grocery bill with the money they get from their grants, but they would not find government funding if they gave the politically incorrect answers in their papers. This is why those who are skeptical are assumed to be financed by the oil companies — because it is obvious that the government is not providing them with grants. So how are they paying their mortgages and grocery bills? Some people believe that it could only be the oil companies paying their salaries. And the Oil companies are always bad and the government is always good (despite taking our political power from us).

    Finally, you meant “fusion” rather than “fission” in how the sun works. It is an easy error to make, as they sound alike and look similar from afar. Both are nuclear in nature and release large amounts of energy by converting mass into energy.

    Fusion is when two atoms, such as hydrogen atoms, combine and release energy, and is most common with lighter elements. The sun is full of these light elements. Fission is when an atom splits apart and make two objects, perhaps two atoms or it remains the same element and loses a neutron. Either way, fusion or fission, energy is released.

    This may sound strange, because how can energy be released no matter which direction the reaction goes? It turns out that elements lighter than iron tend to release energy when they combine, and elements heavier than iron tend to release energy when they split, so the universe seems to be destined to turn itself into a whole lot of iron, when it finally reaches its minimum energy state. (Heavier elements are mostly formed inside exploding stars, where there is plenty of extra energy available to fuse atoms into the heavy elements.)

  • Wayne

    Steve/Max/Edward:
    Excellent commentary & information!

  • Max

    Edward, I appreciate that you’re a benevolent God and not quick to anger or to smite those who displease you. The world could use a few more gods like you.
    You’re right, I tend to use fission and fusion interchangeably not remembering which witch is which.
    Although heavier elements are created in the center of stars, particularly during supernovas. The heavy elements in the crust of the earth were created by temperatures and plasma greater than a supernova. They were created by two worlds colliding with such force that the energy was trapped between the two forcing the heavier elements into the rock rather than blasting them out into space in molecular form at escape velocity.
    This is why radioactive isotopes such as uranium have not lost the radioactivity billions of years ago. Their creation moment can be estimated by uranium’s half life.
    As for refrigeration systems in which I have certifications, I know if no case were cold transfers heat to the hotter elements. Entropy always moves heat to the colder. Hot “radiates”, cold does not. Cold will absorb the radiation. The evaporator coil’s will extract the heat from the objects in the refrigerator, the fluid moved by the pump will go to the condenser which will distribute the heat outside of the refrigerator.
    As for the suns heat pump, they heating from 10,000° to millions of degrees happens in the space of 100 kilometers. Convection is impossible, so there must be known element that creates heat in large amounts in a very small area. Nano flares more than fits the scenario that we are seeing on the surface of the sun. They are electric in nature, they create their own magnetic field and are regulated by that same field ( electricity flows slower in a magnetic fields and creates heat from the resistance ) electricity takes the path of least resistance so it climbs into the more rarefied atmosphere to complete its circuit ( in the Suns dark spots, the magnetic field’s are so strong that the Solarflares must climb to a higher energy level to overcome it. This is why there’s so much UV and x-rays emitting from the coronal holes )
    When the light from the sun is put through a spectrometer, it is closely related to lightning. This form of heating is also used in modern metallurgy. Particularly in melting down concentrate to pour into molds for electrolysis purification. It works so much better than convection of the old coal fired heating systems.

    Carbon dioxide and water vapor… The earth is estimated to have a covering of water vapor of 30% average. That’s 300,000 ppm. (not to be confused with the ice caps, or the hydrosphere which covers 78% of the earth ) and yet, as you pointed out, it’s a large driver in our heat retention. As well as reflecting a large amount of the light, heat back in to space. As for CO2, it is less than 400 ppm, a rare gas and there is not enough to affect much change or retain any heat. ( blow up a plastic bag, your breath has near 5%, 50,000 ppm, carbon dioxide. See how long it takes before becomes room temperature.)
    It’s true that carbon dioxide likes water vapor, but it likes ice more. The warmer the water becomes the more carbon dioxide is pushed out of the molecule. As rain falls, it heats up due to air pressure and releases the carbon dioxide. ( here is an experiment, pour pop into a glass with ice and one without and watch which one fizzes the most. If you take that ice and melt it in your mouth, you can actually feel the carbon dioxide fizzing as it escapes)
    Also the spectrum of heat that react strictly with carbon dioxide is at 700 nm and above. Wavelengths longer than 700 nm move around carbon dioxide missing it entirely. Wavelengths shorter than 700 nm have a larger chance of hitting oxygen and nitrogen which makes up 99.96% of the atmosphere. To sum this up, a small fraction of the suns energy at 700 nm has a one in 2,500 chance to interact with carbon dioxide which makes up less than one half of 1/10 of 1% of the atmosphere. That heat retention, by the way, is Less than a second before it resumes average air temperature.
    If carbon dioxide has no cause-and-effect relationship to the weather then the carbon the politicians talk about that we must reduce to save the planet, must be the carbon consumers…
    “if we just pay enough taxes, politicians can change the weather”.

    One final thing, methane gas. I’m glad we no longer hear about the cows producing methane. Someone must’ve pointed out to them that if the cows don’t eat the hay and grass that when it dies in the winter it would just rot on the ground and turn into methane anyway.
    Where did they get the numbers that tell them that methane is more harmful than carbon dioxide? They say 4 times worse, or 40 times worse even 14,000 times worse then carbon dioxide. I suppose they can make up any number they want because 14,000×0 is still zero. Methane is so rare that you need to be near a methane source to measure it. It oxidizes on contact with oxygen creating carbon dioxide and water vapor. Even the gas company says just open a window, the gas will be gone in a few minutes. (Standard procedure is to give it a few hours). Just the same, after 3 billion years Of stuff rotting you would think there’d be a lot of methane around somewhere….

  • Edward

    Max wrote: “I know if no case were cold transfers heat to the hotter elements.”

    Correct. That is where the compressor comes in; it adds the necessary energy to the system so that heat is moved from the cooler interior of the refrigerator to the warmer exterior. Something happens at the sun to cause the corona to be hotter than the sun’s surface, and this is what I meant by the “compressor equivalent;” it moves heat or energy from the surface of the sun into the warmer corona.

    My suspicion is that the surface of the sun is relatively cool because the heat energy is transported into the corona by way of the “compressor equivalent.”

    Max wrote: “[Methane] oxidizes on contact with oxygen creating carbon dioxide and water vapor.”

    Many people forget that chemical reactions occur naturally in the atmosphere. Although we can use methane as a fuel for fire, it need not be fire-hot in order to react with oxygen, but it will react at a slower rate at lower temperatures. My search of the internet finds that the half-life of CO2 in the atmosphere is seven or eight years, which makes sense to me.

    Once again, methane is another chemical that absorbs energy from light. I suspect that some people claim it is so many multiples worse than CO2, because they are trying to frighten us into complying with their demands.

    Dick Eagleson,
    Thank you for pointing to Doug Messier’s site.

    Doug Messier,
    I see from your own website, Parabolic Arc (looks nice, BTW), that you are still healthy and posting, but I am becoming concerned for your search for scientific papers supporting your point of view about negative consequences from global warming. It has been a week, and I thought you would be able to find something days ago.

    Is there anything I can do to help you in your search? Perhaps others can help, too.

  • Steve Earle

    On the topic of compressors and refrigerators, I own an RV with an LP refrigerator in it. I know just enough about it to get me into trouble, but I do know it has no compressor….

    Does the Sun have an Ammonia and Hydrogen cycle moving heat around? (or something similar?)

    Here’s a link explaining how they work:
    http://home.howstuffworks.com/refrigerator5.htm

    “…Gas and Propane Refrigerators
    If you own an RV, chances are you have a gas- or propane-powered refrigerator. These refrigerators are interesting because they have no moving parts and use gas or propane as their primary energy source. Also, they use heat to produce the cold inside the refrigerator.

    A gas refrigerator uses ammonia as the coolant, and water, ammonia and hydrogen gas to create a continuous cycle for the ammonia. …”

  • Edward

    Steve Earle,
    Although RVs commonly have propane as an energy source, here is another method, which uses electricity (thus not so good for RVs), to move heat from the cooler side to the warmer one:
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermoelectric_cooling

    The sun clearly has some way of using energy to pump the heat from its surface into the corona. Somehow, I doubt that we will find a practical use on Earth for whatever method it turns out to be, but at least we have a few useful methods of our own for pumping heat from cooler areas to warmer areas.

    I think that it is important that we understand the workings and the cycles of the sun, especially in relation to the temperature of the Earth. Our current interglacial period has remained warmer for longer than many of the ones that came before. I believe that this fortuitous occurrence has allowed us to gain the civilization that allowed us to develop the skills in performing scientific research and exploration in time to figure out a global solution to the coming glacial period, due any millennium.

    It is important that we pursue the correct avenue(s) of science to figure out when and how fast the next glacial period will come upon us and ways to counteract it or to otherwise feed several billion people. If we miss it because some politically greedy policymakers pursued the wrong cause of global temperature changes, we could end up far worse off than had we opened our minds to the possibility that the climate scientists have followed the wrong influences of global temperature.

    The sun is only one possible influence. The Earth’s axis wobbles, meaning that the star Polaris is not always above the North Pole. This wobble may also have a significant influence, similar to the influence that the tilt in the Earth’s axis has on the seasons.

    We may have to find a way to terraform our own planet before the effects of the next glacial period give us terrible negative consequences to cope with.

  • Edward

    D. Messier,
    I haven’t heard back about the offer of assistance. In fact I don’t see anything from you since 6 May, ten days ago. I am beginning to think that you have given up after a week and a half, despite saying on 30 April that you could keep up a debate for months. In fact, you were the one eager for a debate.

    It seems that a request for actual science has you stymied. Is this because you have come to realize that the original science is as unreliable as I suspect it is?

    What you have provided, so far, is not science but writings of people telling us that other people say that global warming is happening and what the negative consequences are. This is, at best, second hand information. When you say it, it becomes third hand, like a game of telephone, and the truth of the science may become just as misleading, misunderstood, and misused as has been the Cook, et al paper that I linked to on 30 April.

    If Gore were relying on second hand or third hand information, that would explain why his Oscar-winning movie turned out to be so inaccurate.
    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/earthnews/3310137/Al-Gores-nine-Inconvenient-Untruths.html
    “Al Gore’s environmental documentary An Inconvenient Truth contains nine key scientific errors, a High Court judge ruled yesterday.”

    Your lack of ability or willingness to find original science suggests to me that the second hand information may be more than second hand, and we may be getting much worse than a very poor understanding of the actual research. This is why I want to see the original science, not what someone says someone else says it says.

    I also would like to see how the updated temperature data — that you favored in your last comment on 6 May — affects this original research.

  • Edward

    D. Messier,
    I think I have figured out where you went wrong: you started a debate with an engineer but were unprepared with actual facts, just hearsay evidence. Engineers know that if they want something to work then they need to do some basic research. We make a design on the hypothesis that it will work, but then we do the math to make sure it will work. We may even make models (computer, physical, or both), but we must verify that the model matches reality, otherwise we cannot tell our customer that his widget will work.

    From a journalist’s point of view, it may not matter whether the person who said that someone else said something is right, because you can always print a correction later, but from an engineer’s point of view, it is mandatory to find out; trusting what someone else says that someone else says can cause catastrophic failure of your product or project, and can even get people killed. Boy! Am I glad you don’t design the airplanes that *I* fly on.

    In picking an argument with an engineer, you failed to realize that hearsay is not evidence, assumptions are not facts, and corrected data can invalidate previous conclusions. Unless the corrected data is fudged, in which case something nefarious is going on.

    We engineers must do as much verification and testing as possible or practical to make sure the widget works in the real world. If it does not work, what was the point?

    This is where several satellite projects get bogged down, such as the James Webb Space Telescope — its cooler didn’t work as designed. We cannot assume that what a vendor says is correct, otherwise the vendor’s strut may fail and destroy the Falcon 9 that is taking supplies to the ISS.

    So when someone says that someone else wrote something, we want to see the documentation that the source person has in order to verify what he wrote.

    It is even more important to be right for the global warming debate, as the consequences of being wrong can be expensive in terms of resources, prosperity, and habitability of the planet.

    In the case of global warming, the consequences of being wrong is not just the cost of unnecessary mitigation, nor is it the lost opportunity costs of what we could have accomplished if we hadn’t squandered resources on the wrong actions, it is the negative consequences that can happen by not taking action to mitigate the actual problem.

    If the problem turns out to be global warming, but it is not as bad as the person who told the person who told you said it is, then we squandered resources that could have provided more prosperity throughout the world. Perhaps it turns out to be OK for African nations to burn fossil fuels so that their citizens live better lives.

    If the problem turns out to be a coming ice age, then it may be mandatory for African nations to burn fossil fuels and for their citizens to live better lives in order to keep the planet warmer, keep the ice from coming as far south as Minneapolis, and keep the oceans from receding a few hundred feet.

    “He said that he said” is how the 97% consensus spread and became believed. No one checked what the original paper said.

    You seem to be telling us something similar to “Gore said that the IPCC said that someone else said that something bad was going to happen.” It is hard for us to know the original statement after all that interpretation and filtering.

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