Wall Street Op-Ed Global Warming Wars, Denial, Hysteria

A few days ago a group of scientists wrote an Op_ed in the WSJ about the lack of need to panic about Global Warming. They were immediately slimed by the alarmosphere and have written a reply to the hysteria they received in response to their original editorial . And I love the lack of hysteria and spitting in this article. Too bad the alarmosphere isn’t capable of that. Kudos to these guys.

The authors of the Jan. 27 Wall Street Journal op-ed, ‘No Need to Panic about Global Warming,’ respond to their critics.

Editor’s Note: The authors of the following letter, listed below, are also the signatories of “No Need to Panic About Global Warming,” an op-ed that appeared in the Journal on January 27. This letter responds to criticisms of the op-ed made by Kevin Trenberth and 37 others in a letter published Feb. 1, and by Robert Byer of the American Physical Society in a letter published Feb. 6.

The interest generated by our Wall Street Journal op-ed of Jan. 27, “No Need to Panic about Global Warming,” is gratifying but so extensive that we will limit our response to the letter to the editor the Journal published on Feb. 1, 2012 by Kevin Trenberth and 37 other signatories, and to the Feb. 6 letter by Robert Byer, President of the American Physical Society. (We, of course, thank the writers of supportive letters.

Here’s the rest: No-Panic Scientists Reply To Critics

This article is also now on WUWT: “No Need to Panic about Global Warming”, revisited

2/28: Cambridge Prof, who’s hardly a skeptic, slams the alarmists.

Global Warming Pseudoscience

This is from a Matt Ridley (warning, Heretic alert) speech: The Angus Millar Lecture of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, 31 October 2011

The speech was posted on WUWT, but a full PDF can he found here.

Here are some clips, but it’s important to read the whole thing.

My topic today is scientific heresy. When are scientific heretics right and when are they mad? How do you tell the difference between science and pseudoscience?

Let us run through some issues, starting with the easy ones.

• Astronomy is a science; astrology is a pseudoscience.
• Evolution is science; creationism is pseudoscience.
• Molecular biology is science; homeopathy is pseudoscience.
• Vaccination is science; the MMR scare is pseudoscience.
• Oxygen is science; phlogiston was pseudoscience.
• Chemistry is science; alchemy was pseudoscience.

…

Experts are worse at forecasting the future than non-experts.

Philip Tetlock did the definitive experiment. He gathered a sample of 284 experts – political scientists, economists and journalists – and harvested 27,450 different specific judgments from them about the future then waited to see if they came true. The results were terrible. The experts were no better than “a dart-throwing chimpanzee”.

…

I’ve looked and looked but I cannot find one piece of data – as opposed to a model – that shows either unprecedented change or change is that is anywhere close to causing real harm.

…

Does it matter? Suppose I am right that much of what passes for mainstream climate science is now infested with pseudoscience, buttressed by a bad case of confirmation bias, reliant on wishful thinking, given a free pass by biased reporting and dogmatically intolerant of dissent. So what?

After all there’s pseudoscience and confirmation bias among the climate heretics too.

Well here’s why it matters. The alarmists have been handed power over our lives; the heretics have not. Remember Britain’s unilateral climate act is officially expected to cost the hard-pressed UK economy £18.3 billion a year for the next 39 years and achieve an unmeasurably small change in carbon dioxide levels.

…

At least crop circle believers cannot almost double your electricity bills and increase fuel poverty while driving jobs to Asia, to support their fetish.

At least creationists have not persuaded the BBC that balanced reporting is no longer necessary.

…

…did you know that the collective annual budget of Greenpeace, WWF and Friends of the Earth was more than a billion dollars globally last year? People sometimes ask me what’s the incentive for scientists to exaggerate climate change. But look at the sums of money available to those who do so, from the pressure groups, from governments and from big companies. It was not the sceptics who hired an ex News of the World deputy editor as a spin doctor after climategate, it was the University of East Anglia.

…

In conclusion, I’ve spent a lot of time on climate, but it could have been dietary fat, or nature and nurture. My argument is that like religion, science as an institution is and always has been plagued by the temptations of confirmation bias. With alarming ease it morphs into pseudoscience even – perhaps especially – in the hands of elite experts and especially when predicting the future and when there’s lavish funding at stake. It needs heretics.

Read it all, here

My only quibble:

He says, ” I fully accept that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, the climate has been warming and that man is very likely to be at least partly responsible. ”

And then says, “For, apart from the hockey stick, there is no evidence that climate is changing dangerously or faster than in the past, when it changed naturally.” (emphasis mine)

So what is man partly responsible for, when there’s no evidence that there is anything different about whatever current change may be happening?

Updates:

More by Matt Ridley

WUWT search for Matt Ridley

Blinded by Common Sense

Apparently some wag, name of Kevin Anderson, a director of a Tyndall Centre somewhere in the U.K., sees a problem with a (completely imaginary) 4C+ rise in temperatures. The Reference Frame disposes of him quite nicely:

So the population will happily continue to rise to 9 billion by 2050. Suddenly, the global mean temperature will apparently jump from 15 °C to 20 °C, we’re told, and 8.5 billion people will suddenly die because 20 °C is surely deadly.

I wonder whether those loons actively realize what they are saying – and what their colleagues are saying – and whether at least some of them know that the likes of Mr Anderson are mentally ill. You see that the U.K. doesn’t have any counterpart of the ObamaCare if they can’t afford to store Mr Anderson in a psychiatric asylum.

The rest: Climate “scientists”: 95 percent of people fry to death at 20 °C

So if Mr. Anderson is serious, and not just practicing his worrying in order to write some bad SF book, then yeah… I’d say he’s in need of medication.

Luboš Motl also feels that a 13C increase would be fine, not that there’s any chance of it happening, but it would be fine. Given what we see when we look back at the history of this planet I see no reason to disagree. Not that I know anything, but warming is clearly far better than cooling and the world has clearly been just fine with much warmer temps.

Phil Jones Now Says Warming is Significant

I expect any significance is due to the cherry picking of start and stop dates,methods used to crunch the numbers, and so on. From WUWT:

Climate warming since 1995 is now statistically significant, according to Phil Jones, the UK scientist targeted in the “ClimateGate” affair.

Last year, he told BBC News that post-1995 warming was not significant – a statement still seen on blogs critical of the idea of man-made climate change.

the rest: Phil Jones does an about face on “statistically significant” warming

To be fair, when Prof. Jones last commented on the subject he did say that the temp rise was just barely not significant. The warm 2010 bumped it up just enough to become significant. If 2011 is cold enough to bump it back down again, will he make another remark on the subject?

I expect he was the subject of a few choice remarks by people from the warm side of things, due to his making that previous statement. If things do down again then he might decide to just clam up. Probably a wise decision for a man in his position.

Links to the O’Rly? remarks by the commenters on the WUWT post:

• Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science – takes issue with the meaning of the analysis
• Statistical Significance since 1995? Not with HadCrut! Lucia, at the Blackboard, says, “I don’t know what Phil Jones did nor do I know what data he used or what method he used. But if I claimed statistical significance for tests I do without accounting for serial autocorrelation or using a one sided test, people would scream bloody murder or patiently explain that I am daft.”
• Bishop Hill remarks: Jones: post 1995 warming “significant”
• Does a Global Temperature even exist?
• The Air Vent comments: Experts or little white lies?

 

So, You Think Global Warming is Causing These Problems?

C3 Headlines has something to say about Global Warming and disaster losses:

“The Dutch researcher reports that “most of the 22 studies have not found a trend in disaster losses, after normalization for changes in population and wealth.” In fact, he says that “all 22 studies show that increases in exposure and wealth are by far the most important drivers for growing disaster losses ,” a conclusion that has also been reached by Changnon et al. (2000), Pielke et al. (2005) and Bouwer et al. (2007). And he adds that “no study identified changes in extreme weather due to anthropogenic climate change as the main driver for any remaining trend.”…Reiterating these observations in his paper’s concluding paragraph, Bouwer says that although “economic losses from various weather-related natural hazards, such as storms, tropical cyclones, floods, and small-scale weather events (e.g., wildfires and hailstorms), have increased around the globe,” the 22 studies he analyzed “show no trends in losses, corrected for changes (increases) in population and capital at risk, that could be attributed to anthropogenic climate change.”” [Laurens M. Bouwer 2011: Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society]

The whole post: Dear Gov. Christie: 22 Peer-Reviewed Studies Prove That Global Warming Is Not The Cause of Increased Disaster Losses

Seems like this kinda goes hand in hand with that nonsensical article on ethics, written by Brown.

More on the lack of connection: Bastardi on the non-existent climate-tornado linkage

Warming? Cooling? Which is really Next?

For some background on warming cooling media cycles, see this post, then the following will make more sense.

OK, you’re back. It’s been settled that CAGW is bunk. So what is real? Is the world warming a bit or cooling a bit? (We’ll pretend, for the moment, that a “global temperature” actually has some meaning.)

Let’s assume that we’re entering a cooling phase, especially since there’s been no warming for awhile. In a few year the media will have forgotten the warming scare and will be writing up the cooling. A few more years and the “new ice age” headlines will be popping out, just like they did before, more than once.

Roughly 30 years from now it will likely start warming again. Give it a few years and the ice age headlines will be ignored and a new warming scare will begin.

In my opinion the media is looking for sensational headlines, on the idea that those headlines will sell more product. In addition, they are, politically, overwhelmingly on the side of the party which is pushing the scare, either scare (said party starts with a “D.”) For this reason I don’t think we can expect our media to change. Whichever way the climate seems to be going we can count on wild headlines appearing. Perhaps their best value is in comic relief.

I think we’re at the beginning of a new media cycle. Those of us who are skeptical of GW “science” should, I think, remain skeptical of the cooling stories, too. Especially when Mr. Gore and Co. start telling us that we have to make him rich, destroy our economies, and hand governmental power to the UN in order to fend off the coming ice age.

 

Global Warming and Intolerant Greens

Good stuff in an article on Spiked.com – The author of Chill: A Reassessment of Global Warming Theory,
explains why he’s sceptical about manmade global warming — and why greens are so intolerant.

The science around climate change is not as settled as it’s presented as being. I used to think it was, until about 2003 – and then, feeling that the remedies being proposed for climate change would be more damaging to the environment than climate change itself, I took it upon myself to look at the science.

In my book on biodiversity, Beyond Conservation, I had mentioned in one of the chapters that perhaps the man-made global warming theory was not all it was being cracked up to be. The changes we are seeing now, I wrote, suggested that some other processes were at work. I then took time out, visited the science libraries, and checked the original science upon which today’s models are based.

I was shocked by what I found…

The rest: Meet the green who doubts ‘The Science’

The (not quite) Interview

Climate Skeptic was asked to give an interview on… climate. He was asked some leading questions, from an obviously alarmist bias, and gave his answers.

The Air Vent listed the same questions for any interested commenters.

So, just for fun, here are my remarks, but CS has better ones.

Do you believe that global warming and climate change are a grave problem to the world at the moment ?

Yes, but not due to temperature fluctuations. Oh, you just mean temperature? Then no.

IF NO

What gives you reason to believe that global warming and climate change are not really happening?

Nice dodge. Note the change in question from the “Do you believe” above. Global warming has happened to the tune of  maybe 1 degree F over the last 120 some odd years.

Climate change has been happening for billions of years.

Of course, catastrophic warming is what the original remark was addressing and there is zero evidence to believe in CGW.

Is there any scientific evidence to support that global warming and climate change is not really that harmful?

The question is backwards and should be, “Is there any evidence to show that global warming is harmful?”

Or one could look at it this way: Climate change has been proven to be disasterous. Try to imagine living under a mile of ice. Much of Europe would be wiped out as would Canada, most of the northern US, and so on.

There is zero evidence to show that global warming is harmful (and by that I mean real global warming, not the CGW nonsense.)

Are most scientists wrong?

About what, exactly?

Most scientists have been wrong about most things since science was invented. Good scientists look at the data obtained and go back and fix their hypotheses. Eventually they refine their hypotheses into theories, through the collection of real world data, and have a better estimate of what’s real.

Then another scientist comes along and proves them wrong. Einstein and Newton, for example.

What do you think is causing temperature changes on a scale never seen before?

What changes? On what scale? And why do you think they haven’t been seen before? Unless you’re only looking back a few years?

This is an odd question since we’re not seeing temperature changes on a scale never seen before. There is nothing about the slight amount of warming that has not been seen before. Many times.

Science tells us that there have been many times in the past with far faster rises and drops. Though the rises usually occur from the coldest levels and the drops from the warmest.Clearly the climate is extremely stable, though within a certain range it shows definite variation. All natural.

Clearly the questioners are unaware of this fact.

What did you think to the results of Copenhagen?

Quite nice. It was lovely to see so many power and money hungry would-be dictators go home disappointed, especially after burning all that carbon to get there.

I expect they had some great parties, though.

Why do governments seem so concerned with the issue?

Because Al Gore is a superb marketer and because the issue is a bit win for lovers of big government (and socialism, totalitarianism, etc.)

The issue has a built in constituency. The Pols that shout “WARMING!” the loudest have all the greens automatically supporting (voting for) them. Gore shows his hockey stick and millions of people show an interest in him. Intoxicating. Not to mention what it did for the value of his investments.

Then there’s the vast amounts of tax money and the intoxicating power of being dictators.

If fossil fuels will run out anyway, surely we should move to find alternatives. Why not now?

The question has nothing to do with warming. Actually, if we burned off all known fossil fuel reserves we would not double our CO2 levels.

There are lots of reasons to move away from fossil fuels, certain political reasons being the big ones and CO2 being the least of them. Cutting our dependence on foreign oil has massive political benefits, but not if it cripples our economy.

Drill and build here first, then cut the ties as new domestic energy sources allow.

Even if it is not guaranteed that manmade emissions are to blame, wouldn’t it be wise to act anyway? It’s a hell of a gamble to our children’s future.

To blame for what? There is zero evidence of warming catastrophe so what’s the gamble?

However, we DO know that insane Gov spending is vastly more damaging to our kid’s future than is climate change.

CGW mitigation is a worthless waste of money and resources.

Don’t we have a duty to protect or planet for future generations? (i.e. save it from deforestation, pollution etc)

A separate question entirely and one that has nothing to do with warming. If fact, warming is probably last on a long list of environmental concerns, it’s just that it has the best chance to generate those increasing investments and massive tax revenues.

Of course we have a duty to prove a clean living space for our kids and we’ve been doing just that. The fact is that the world is much cleaner and greener than it was 30 years ago.

Since all the mitigation factors seem to be designed to make Al Gore and Goldman-Sachs very rich and massively increase governmental control and keep the 3rd world from developing and since those factors will do nothing to stop the non-existent CGW I think we do have a duty. That duty is to fight the CGW crowd every inch of the way.

IF YES

How bad is climate change at the moment?

Given the economic destruction planned by the CGW crowd  I think it’s potentially disasterous. The cures, not the climate change. Millions of people will live far less happy lives so that Gore, Pachauri, and various Governments can grow richer and more powerful.

What did you think to the results of Copenhagen?

Woot!

Is it increasing at an uncontrollable rate? Or is there still a chance to reduce climate change and alter its predicted course of events?

Yes, Gov lust for money and power does seem to be increasing rapidly. What’s increasing more rapidly is the frustrations of the would be dictators pushing the CGW issue.

Climate change is uncontrollable and it’s not increasing, but there’s likely to be a pretty major change coming along at some point. It’s called an ice age.

Do you have any comments on the recent e-mail leak scandal that was publicized?

Wasn’t that great? Now we know what passes for science among the “in” crowd.

What do you think about the rising levels of climate change skepticism?

It’s a beautiful thing and absolutely necessary. It’s because of the skeptics that we might actually be able to generate some real climate science and get away from the Al Gore fantasies.

How could and/or will climate change or similarly global warming affect the Middle East region in particular the Arabian peninsula?

Climate change over the last 12,000 years has had significant effects on the middle east. Seal level rise after the last ice age seems to have drowned a few cities.  The deserts have been much greener in the past and maybe, with a bit of warning, they will be again.

What about other vulnerable countries?

The economic hardships planned by the CGW community will be far more damaging than warming. If there’s major cooling then those countries are likely to be the choice of  many people leaving the glaciered areas.

What can the average citizen do more or less to help reduce climate change and its impact?

Start by getting the CGW types out of office, especially Al Gore and his ilk. Strong economies will make adaptation to catastrophic weather effects and cooling much easier to deal will.

What do you predict will happen to major cities in the world if the problem of global warming is not addressed immediately?

Life will go on, much as it has. If warming is addresses, with the recommended “cures,” then their economies will collapse. However, the CGW crowd might see some heads exploding out of sheer frustration. Duct tape is a good preventative.

How will an increase in global warming change the earth’s natural weather activities i.e. how will people and animals be affected, ecosystems, the weather….

Based on actual historical records, warming will clearly be a good thing for people, plants, and critters. A warmer climate will likely bring about fewer storms and less chaotic weather.

Plants and animals will be able to expand their ranges and be less stressed. Crops will have longer and better growing seasons. There will be less winter-kill.

Critters in marginal environments (eg: polar bears) will be less stressed.

Any areas experiencing droughts will be outweighed by the areas experiencing improved conditions.

All in all, it would be a good thing.

How can we move forward on this issue?

By respecting the skeptics and working for real science. Send the Al Gore crowd on its way and lets get a real discussion going, instead of the endless stream on contempt heaped upon the skeptics.

Are you confident we can find a solution?

There is no warming problem to find a solution to, so the question is moot. Other, real, pollution problems have solutions and those are being used to good effect.

What are the chances of a new technology saving us? (for example, carbon capture)

Saving us? From what? Alien invasion? Carbon capture schemes are a poor idea. Drop the exotic tech and plant more trees.

Is carbon trading effectively passing the buck? Does it actually help?

The only people that it helps are those playing the carbon credit game (Gore, Soros, Goldman-Sachs, etc.) It does nothing for the environment, makes the poor poorer, and the truly poor will become desperate. Or starve.

Did the Germans Give Up on Global Warming?

James Delingpole quips in the Telegraph: When the Germans give up on AGW you really do know it’s all over…

From WUWT, the German Magazine Spiegel Online has an eight part series on the Warming issue:

• Part 1: A Superstorm for Global Warming Research
• Part 2: Politically Charged Science
• Part 3: A Climate Rebel Takes on the Establishment
• Part 4: The Smoking Gun of Climatology
• Part 5: The Reality of Rising Sea Levels
• Part 6: The Myth of the Monster Storm
• Part 7: Climate Change’s Winners and Losers
• Part 8: The Invention of the Two-Degree Target

Pretty impressive for a mainstream mag.

Increased Strife from Global Warming? Not Likely.

One of the scenarios posted by the scaremongers is that a warming world will be a more violent world. In addition to stress from being warmer people will fight over dwindling resources, such as water.

Nevermind that there is little to no evidence of the resource issue occuring, and that there is a lot of evidence that a warmer world is a better one for people,plants, and critters.

CO2science has a paper that demonstrates that the issues would come from global cooling, not warming (emphasis mine.)

The results of Tol and Wagner’s analyses provide additional evidence that, as they describe it, “periods with lower temperatures in the pre-industrial era are accompanied by violent conflicts.” However, they determined that “this effect is much weaker in the modern world than it was in pre-industrial times,” which implies, in their words, “that future global warming is not likely to lead to (civil) war between (within) European countries.” Therefore, they conclude that “should anyone ever seriously have believed that, this paper does put that idea to rest.”

The rest: War and Peace … and Climate Change

I’m solidly in the camp that says, “Extreme claims of problems/damage from global warming should be taken with large grains of salt, at best. Generally, it’s probably best to laugh at them.”