The "real science" of Climate Change




As a form of introduction, this is from The Logic of Science blog, which is about the contradiction inherent in a particular logical fallacy ...


... namely, the argument that implicitly assumes someone must be correct just because they are a scientist; however, in so doing, it also implicitly assumes that thousands of other scientists are wrong despite the fact that they are scientists. Do you see the inherent problem here? It posits that having the support of a scientist is sufficient evidence that a position is correct, while simultaneously ignoring a much larger group of scientists that don’t support the positions. This is why it is a special case of cherry-picking. This fallacy cherry-picks which people to trust based entirely on personal biases and ideology rather than actual expertise.



I received three Climate Change Denial emails; here are my responses & comments:






 sorry that video is not available anymore ...
... instead watch this one: 




Carsten,

I did not watch it because I’ve seen David Attenborough recently testifying in the UK about climate change and he made such outrageous claims it was embarrassing to see a man destroy a reputation he built up over a lifetime. I have really enjoyed his documentaries. But he talks from emotion and not fact.

With respect, if you watch the ABC, SBS or read The Sydney Morning Herald, they all have an agenda. They are not only bias in their presentation but they are bias by omission….which is the worst bias.

No real scientist would claim “the science is settled”. Anyone who says this is ignorant of scientific method and the existing data where all the UN IPCC climate change models have been proven wrong by a long shot.

Attenborough argues from pure emotion. If you don’t agree with him, you are a terrible, loathsome person who doesn’t care about the environment. Greta Thornberg is likewise a joke. This Asperger affected savant who claims she can see CO2 falls into the same category as Attenborough. Both know nothing of the real science.

I have little tolerance for people like these who are so fixated on a particular point of view that they will not even consider facts that challenge their belief system.

xxx


Yes, I guessed from the content of your previous email …


Hi Carsten,

I’ve done a huge amount of reading and researching “climate change”.

My initial comment to you several years ago was that “global warming was political”…..you can probably see that now. I am more convinced than ever that “climate change” is a tool for the socialists to achieve their aims.

David Attenborough is a silly old fool who does not know the facts of climate change.
He makes outrageous statements and I am surprised anybody listens to him.

I can give you some facts if you want. You don’t get them on the ABC, SBS, Syd Morning Herald etc. I am not fooled by junk science and climate science is full of junk science which ignores all critical thought and analysis. I am a scientist and not easily fooled but you don’t have to be a scientist to know “climate change” is a scam and some people are making huge amounts of money from it and the Left of politics are using it as a recruitment tool for the young and uncritical generation who have not been taught to think critically.

“The Facts”? I can give you hard facts.

xxx

… you probably wouldn’t watch the program. But you know, the show is full of professors at respected unis working on Climate Change, that “silly old fool” just moderated the show … a job for which he doesn't need to know anything about CC, he just lets the experts speak; all the producers need him for is his high exposure ... to get bums on seats. What you are doing is allowing yourself to be distracted by the messenger as an excuse to ignore the message ... frankly, this sort of thinking is clouded and misguided.


Anyway, the “silly old fool” had very little air-time in the program, so you would’ve been safe just clicking mute when he was annoying you … but you would have had the benefit of some true climate scientists talking.


You do perplex me, you say "climate science is full of junk science which ignores all critical thought and analysis”, but then you don’t watch a BBC show brim full of just that ... critical thought and analysis; instead you listen to charlatans like Ivar Giaever.


You talk about “Facts”, and you refer to the talks by Steve Goreham (my blog 956 and while you’re there, don’t miss 954) and Prof. Ivar “I am not really terribly interested in global warming" (that was the point when I stopped watching the video) Giaever.


So, the good professor reckons a worldwide temperature rise of about one degree ... “is probably nothing”; do you agree with him? Because that stance is outright bad climate science … a consistent rise of that magnitude in just one hundred years is huge; naturally the climate warms or cools by about seven degrees in ca. one hundred thousand years, one degree in some fifteen thousand years.


From the comments on the Skeptical Science page on that talk:

After listening to Mr. Giaever I used as antidote the presentations of Mr. Crutzen and Molina.
... I do feel good again! During the speech of Giaever the public reacted on the humor, they laughed. I really wonder why nobody of the audience stood up and told Mr Grieaver to stop his non-scientifical talk. IMO it was not even pseudoscience.


Now, I know very little about climate science … that is why I’m guided by the IPCC. There are nearly three thousand climate scientist from all over the world (some of them in the BBC docu) reporting to them, they have the reports peer reviewed and then issue a summary report (every few years, the latest is SR15). That summary report is read (not by me) but by journalists like Peter Hannam, who writes about it in the SMH and the Age. And Goreham & Giaever reckon the IPCC falsify the records?! Give me a break! What ignorance; what delusional nonsense; what sort of clap-trap conspiracy theory is that?!


"I have little tolerance for people ... who are so fixated on a particular point of view that they will not even consider facts that challenge their belief system." To tell the truth, I have to say ... the emails quoted here very neatly fit that paradigm.

There is a saying by Ayn Rand that sublimely sums up CC Denialism:

"You can avoid reality,
but you can not avoid
the consequences of
avoiding reality."


To put it in context ... yes, we can ignore CC. Our government does a very good job at that (read the article by John Hewson below). But we will not be able to avoid the consequences of avoiding CC: Oceans rising, with consequences unfathomable for us, but very real to the inhabitants of the Pacific Islands, like Tuvalu (showing concern for them is referred to as "socialism" in these emails); more severe wild fires, floods, hurricanes, droughts etc. For details watch the BBC video.


Before you move on to the original story, here is a SMH article by Dr Andrew Glikson, an earth and climate scientist at the Australian National University:


"As fires rage across the Amazon - dubbed the "lungs of the planet" given it produces 20 per cent of the oxygen in the atmosphere - and while forests are ablaze in Siberia, Alaska, Greenland, southern Europe and parts of Australia, climate scientists might be justified in saying: "We told you so" about the tragedy that confronts us all ...


"And yet the human causes of climate change remain subject to extensively propagated denial and untruths, despite their foundation in the basic laws of physics and the empirical observations of global research bodies such as NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in the US, the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the World Meteorological Organisation, and our own CSIRO ... "



___________________________________



Attached is a 30 minute video of a presentation given by Prof. Ivar Giaever, Nobel Prize winner for physics, in Dec. 2017 regarding the “science” around global warming.

Listen to a real scientist discussing the quality of global warming science.

We have yet to reach “peak stupid” in this debate with the most recent UN prediction of the beginning of the end for the world in 12 years if we don’t believe their climate change story and take drastic action costing hundreds of billions of dollars, crippling industry, forcing electricity prices higher and higher and putting millions out of work and into misery.

Your kids/grandkids should watch this video as a balance to what they are being told in school right now. Education, information and common sense is the only way to fight the disgraceful and highly exaggerated “climate change” propaganda campaign.

https://youtu.be/SXxHfb66ZgM



The above is an email I received, one of many where the attempt is made to change peoples' minds about Climate Change (CC), people who may be convinced CC is real & human-made, based on scientific evidence. A thread that runs through the emails is that "real scientists" are quoted, who nevertheless (while Nobel price winners) are not climate scientists.


An article in today's newspaper is telling ... by John Hewson, a former Liberal leader, no less: "While others face climate reality, our government denies the undeniable"


Skeptical Science refer to Prof. Ivar “I am not really terribly interested in global warming” Giaever as a "Climate Pseudoscientist"; they show that his contrarian climate opinions come from a position of extreme ignorance on the subject, as Giaever admits. Giaever personifies the classic stereotype of the physicist who thinks he understands all scientific fields of study ...


Listening to Giaever's opinions on climate science is equivalent to giving

your dentist a pamphlet on heart surgery and asking him to crack your chest open.


FYI, this is my modus operandi: Before I watch a video about CC-Denialism, I research the author/presenter. This from Wikipedia, quoting Giaever:


"What does it mean that the temperature has gone up 0.8 degrees Kelvin*: probably nothing." Referring to the selection of evidence in his presentation, Giaever stated "I pick and choose when I give this talk ..." Giaever concluded his presentation with a pronouncement: "Is climate change pseudoscience? If I'm going to answer the question, the answer is: absolutely.”


*Does this error show the extend of his ignorance? It's not degrees Kelvin when we talk about a rise in global temperature ... but degrees Celsius; maybe it's just a typo (or tongue-in-cheek?). However, do read the Skeptical Science article, and read the comments at the bottom ...


Wow, that's simply amazing. His slide showing the temperature change in Kelvin must have been tongue-in-cheek. No real physicist would be so ridiculously arbitrary in the selection of units. Using a different temperature scale (Réaumur for example) one can get that the temperature increased from ~12.0 °R to 12.64 °R (5.3%). That is amazingly rapid warming!!!


To be clear about the unit used, this is an excerpt from a NASA study:

"The study also confirms what researchers have been saying for some time now: that Earth's global temperature increase since 1880 – about 2 degrees Fahrenheit, or a little more than 1 degree Celsius – cannot be explained by any uncertainty or error in the data."


As Giaever notes at the beginning of his talk, he has become more famous for his contrarian views on global warming than for his Nobel Prize, which have made him something of a darling to the climate contrarian movement and climate denial enablers.


It is telling that the author of the email refers to the good professor as a real scientist while putting the term "science" in quotation marks when referring to CC. I have blogged before on the issue with a similar premise, blog 956 and blog 954. Oh, and while you're here, check out blog 962.


What is interesting is that the author in the above email mentions "peak stupid", a term very well suited to the exertions by Giaever, as well as the content of the email ...


"... the drastic actions to combat CC will cost hundreds of billions of dollars"? Indeed, yet, inaction so far already did cost hundreds of billions (Storms? Floods? Wildfires? Not to mention thousands of deaths due to heatwaves) and not to act would cost trillions of dollars.


"... putting millions out of work"? Oh yes, and tens of millions into work; as indeed has happened time and again since the industrial revolution (change from horse-drawn carts to cars, buses & trucks?)

(Hand loom weaving to mechanised & computerised power weaving?)

(Hot metal typesetting to desktop publishing?)


"... putting millions into misery"? Probably not millions, but definitely thousands ... namely the climate change deniers of today, when they realise just how devastatingly wrong they were, and when their grandchildren ask them: "What on Earth were you thinking, grandpa? The evidence was so clear in your time."


So, I once again got sucked into the CC debate, in the end - while I had the email on file - by the newspaper article below (which while listing other truths debunks one more furphy by CC Denialists):


"The work also further debunks the claims of climate change deniers who often point to periods such as the Little Ice Age as evidence the climate is in constant flux. Rather, unusual conditions were typically confined to regions."


Anyway, that is perhaps too much detail for the ardent CC Denialist to compute, as are most likely these illustrations (about the "science" of global warming):












There is something interesting to observe about the last chart, the Holocene Temperature Variations. The fat line denotes the long term trend of average global temperatures ... and it can clearly be seen that the trend is downwards. This means nothing less than that 'naturally' the world is cooling, indeed heading for another (probably 'mini') ice age. Naturally the world is not warming, the warming is unexpected, unusual ... and man-made.


One last thing:

In the email it says, "... fight the disgraceful and highly exaggerated “climate change” propaganda campaign."Well, this is such an odd statement in view of the facts that are accepted by 97% of climate scientists ... the statement alludes to a severe disconnect with reality. The stance is un-educated, ignorant in the extreme, delusional and truly dangerous; just ask the Pacific Islanders ...


... or ask Ian Dunlop, who says: "Today, in the face of rapidly accelerating climate impacts, “existential threat” and “climate emergency” are common currency globally ... existential meaning the potential to destroy humanity as we know it."


So, who on Earth is Ian Dunlop? A Leftie-Greenie CC warrior? Well, Ian Dunlop is a former oil, gas and coal industry executive. He was chairman of the Australian Coal Association and CEO of the Australian Institute of Company Directors. He is co-author of the report What Lies Beneath: the understatement of existential climate risk, published by the Breakthrough Centre for Climate Restoration, and a member of the Club of Rome’s Climate Emergency Plan. See my blog 962.








I give the last word to David Attenborough ... take it away, Sir David (but then - as the author of the emails would say - what does he know?!):


Civilisation may 'collapse' if climate change ignored: Attenborough


Katowice, Poland:


Famed naturalist Sir David Attenborough says human civilisation may collapse unless the world takes action to curb climate change.


The British TV presenter of nature documentaries told leaders gathered for a UN climate summit that "right now, we are facing a man-made disaster of global scale, our greatest threat in thousands of years."


The 92-year-old added that "if we don't take action, the collapse of our civilisations and the extinction of much of the natural world is on the horizon."


If I haven't bamboozled you too much and you can handle some more reading ... go to my blogs 941, 942 about The Great Filter, and 943 about The Fourth Filter (careful, though ... your perception of reality may be shaken). And if that's still not enough, in this context read the story about The Great Filter.


____________________________



Human-caused global heating breaks clear from nature,

studies find - SMH

by Peter Hannam


Global heating in recent decades is of a pace and magnitude that's unique in at least the past two millennia, with human-caused climate change now "overwhelming" natural variability, new research has found.

According to three papers published inNatureandNature Geoscienceon Thursday, international teams of scientists used seven different statistical techniques to reconstruct global temperature during the so-called Common Era starting 2000 years ago.


The scientists studied variability over decades and centuries, including well-known periods of shifting temperatures such as the Medieval Warming Period and the Little Ice Age. They found no era had the spatial extent or intensity of the heating over recent decades.

"Periods of warming and cooling have happened in the past but they were nowhere near the magnitude or the speed of the current warming," said Benjamin Henley, a University of Melbourne researcher and co-author of one of the papers. "The main, overwhelming impact on the climate has been in the recent decades, since about 1950."


The papers build on a major global effort to reconstruct past climate using a range of data sources. The work also further debunks the claims of climate change deniers who often point to periods such as the Little Ice Age as evidence the climate is in constant flux. Rather, unusual conditions were typically confined to regions.

For example, while north-western Europe experienced a cold spell in the 17th century - as widely depicted in paintings of frozen rivers such as England's Thames - the central and eastern Pacific experienced the chill in the 15th century.

"By contrast, we find that the warmest period of the past two millennia occurred during the 20th century for more than 98 per cent of the world," another of the papers said.

Dr Henley said the new research revealed "incredible consistency" across different methods, adding to the confidence that current models can predict the future climate as greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise.

Volcanic influence


Interestingly, volcanoes were found to be the dominant influence for most of the Common Era, potentially masking the start of the impact of the Industrial Revolution on global conditions.

Volcanic particles pumped high into the atmosphere typically cause widespread cooling followed by a warming rebound as they dispersed over time.

Several large tropical volcanic eruptions within three decades of the first half of the 19th century triggered "substantial drops of summer temperatures over the Northern Hemisphere land areas", the third paper found.

"Only after the 1850s did the transition into the period of anthropogenic warming start," it stated.

For Michael Mann, the director of Penn State University's Earth System Science Centre, the papers offer fresh vindication of work he led two decades ago in the so-called "Hockey Stick" studies. These revealed the relatively recent ramping up of global temperatures (see graph above).

"We’re pleased that decades after our original work, independent, international teams of scientists using entirely different approaches, and more widespread now-available paleoclimate data, have come to virtually identical conclusions to those we offered in our original work," Professor Mann told the Herald and The Age.


These included that past climate episodes such as the Medieval Warm Period of about three centuries after 950 CE and the Little Ice Age "were far more regional in nature than the globally-pervasive warming of the past century", he said.

A second conclusion reaffirmed was that the current warmth at global and hemispheric scales "is unprecedented as far back as the estimates go - now more than 2000 years", Professor Mann said.

Heatwaves only part of the problem


The papers' release coincided recent heatwaves that have baked Europe - including setting records on Wednesday in several countries, with more expected on Thursday - and North America during their current summers.

Global temperatures in June were the hottest in more than a century of data,the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported last month. July is on course to set global records too.


For Dr Henley, though, heatwaves are temporary and, while among the clearest signals of global warming, are still weather-related.

"The far bigger concern is the long term and the far bigger changes we are making to the climate system," he said, noting effects ranging from more severe flooding and droughts, and rising sea levels.

"It’s more the cumulative impacts on the human system and the natural system," Dr Henley said. "Many of the ecosystems we have on earth won’t be able to handle the pace of change."


Peter Hannam

Peter Hannam writes on environment issues for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.