Climate Change: Evisceration the Fourth

My first three posts on global warming, er, climate change, um, I mean climate disruption… oh, what’s the term for it this week, dammit?

Climate Change: Why I No Longer Believe. . .

Revisiting “Climate Change”

Climate Change: Evisceration the Third

 

I’LL BELIEVE IT’S A CRISIS… WHEN THOSE WHO SAY IT’S A CRISIS ACT LIKE IT’S A CRISIS

Did you hear the one about Leonardo DiCaprio’s eyebrows (link in original):

Together with a fellow actor, DiCaprio flew a makeup artist 15,000 miles round-trip across the Pacific Ocean to tidy up their eyebrows for the 2017 Oscars, according to the Independent (UK). Dicaprio and fellow actor Tobey Maguire insisted on seeing brow artist Sharon-Lee Hamilton, despite the fact that she lives in Sydney, Australia — 7,500 miles from Los Angeles.

This stuff writes itself, folks.  And let us consider the alarmism of “hottest year on record”; here’s a foreword by Paul Dreissen to Overheated claims on global temperature records (bolding added):

Over and over, we are confronted with claims that last month or last year was “the warmest on record.” Each claim is accompanied by dire warnings that the alleged new records portend “unprecedented” chaos for wildlife, humans and planet.Virtually never do these scary press releases mention that the supposed change is mere hundredths of a degree higher than previous measurements. Never do they admit that the margin of error in these measurements is far greater than the supposed increase. Never do they suggest that a little more warmth would be infinitely better than a colder world, with less arable land and shorter growing seasons. And most certainly, never do they admit to the massive deficiencies in the system that supposedly tracks Earth’s temperature … and always blames any increases on humans and fossil fuels.This article by Dr. Tim Ball and Tom Harris points out all these highly relevant but often (deliberately) ignored realities.

Said article needs to be read in full.

 

THE CRACKED CRYSTAL BALL

They’ve started to hedge their bets in case their alarmist predictions don’t match the calmer reality, Cloudy Outlook for Climate Models:

You will see the abstract is very careful at the end to say that they aren’t saying that projections are large warming aren’t necessarily wrong, just merely that the uncertainty may be even larger than we thought.

They predicted the “end of snow” – how’s that working so far?

 

They make predictions about dire consequences aplenty, are shown to be wrong, but the Faith never changes.

Though there are predictions that do get fulfilled, My Climate Forecast From Three Years Ago:

During March of 2015, I predicted that Carl Mears at RSS, under extreme pressure from the climate mafia, would alter his satellite data to match the fraudulent NASA surface temperature data sets.

Here’s one of the graphs, but go read the whole thing.  Notice how the curves are lowered on the left and raised on the right to rotate the trend and amplify it?

And while this article, Things Your Professor Didn’t Tell You About Climate Change, has multiple excellent points repeating things I’ll say here as well as have said in prior pieces, this is a new argument (bolding added):

If you look at climate change predictions, almost all of them are bad. Critics refer to these views collectively as climate alarmism. Alarmists believe the Earth’s climate is warming because greenhouse gases are being added to the atmosphere through human activities, primarily the burning of fossil fuels. They claim unless the buildup of greenhouse gases is stopped, global temperatures will begin to rise exponentially, which will have terrible consequences, such as major flora and fauna extinctions, coastal inundation caused by melting ice caps, heatwaves, drought, famine, economic collapse, war, and the potential for human extinction.

That’s actually pretty astute. While it may very well be that there are more bad effects than good, the Warmists never seem to mention anything on the upside to a warmer planet. Somehow, to me, that doesn’t pass the smell test. Nor does the punishment – outright punishment – for questioning the Holy Writ, e.g., Australian professor punished for challenging orthodoxy that global warming is destroying the Great Barrier Reef (bolding added) :

But if the science is so solid, why not take on critics directly? The approach of silencing dissent tells you all you need to know about their real confidence in their scare-mongering.

The “science is settled” so shut up.

 

THE HOLY WRIT

As I’ve said both above and in previous essays, one of my bigger issues with the whole thing is the fact that no matter what new data come out, the conclusion never waivers. Take this article, Climate: Cancel the Boiling Oceans:

The abstract of the study itself calls this sudden warming “enigmatic.” Yet somehow we are told today that our observations of ocean temperature and other environmental change must be attributable to human activity.

Not only is this not understood, the temperature change seen in the last 50 years is within the margin of error. And consider this news which is dire; the headlines are alarming… from the early 1900s when CO2 emissions were still virtually nil. For example, glaciers are melting:

All of this heat and melting ice wrecked the global warming scam and billions of dollars in funding, so NOAA and NASA simply erased it.

Greenland’s ice is apparently melting… because of volcanism beneath it, Earth’s hot core, not global warming, responsible for Greenland’s melting ice sheet:

Its record levels of melting are expected to contribute to sea level rises and could potentially change patterns in ocean circulation in the future. Global warming alarmists have long pointed to this melting as being caused by human activity, but this study shows quite clearly that nature itself is responsible for the melting ice sheets in Greenland.

Yet despite this news about a new-found non-climate-related melting, the ice is actually increasing, arctic ice and Greenland ice packs are not vanishing (images respectively):

 

Texas, as just one example of pre-CO2 aberrant weather saw record-high temperatures on Feb 1, 1911. Is this one data point? Sure. But it’s a record excursion that, as the author points out, were it to happen today would be pointed to as proof. But this was before the rise in CO2, so what caused it? The same for other pre-CO2 rise record temperature excursions the site’s author has highlighted. Those who claim the “science is settled” and everything is known to within a gnat’s ass can’t also say “I dunno” when confronted with anomalies like this.

In carbon-transport news, apparently when dead, squid sink; likely other animals too. That’s a carbon transport mechanism previously unknown. But shut up. There’s this little gem, from Worst-case global warming scenarios not credible: study:

But uncertainty about how hot things will get also stems from the inability of scientists to nail down a very simple question: By how much will Earth’s average surface temperature go up if the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is doubled?

So things are not known to within a gnat’s posterior? Again, you wouldn’t guess that from the dead-cinch certainty with which these people speak. Apparently the rise in sea levels has taken a hit, The fantasy of accelerating sea level rise just got hosed:

Using these modelled estimates, the globe should now be seeing a rapid acceleration in sea level rise. Yet no evidence of this can be found so far. In fact the real measured data show the opposite is happening: a deceleration in sea level rise is taking place.

Prediction made. Fine, that’s what theories are supposed to do. But when the data show – not just no statistically-significant increase – but an actual decrease, the Faith never waivers. For example, for years herpetologists have been screaming “climate change” over declining frog populations. Oopsie, perhaps not – it certainly appears that one of the prime causes is a fungus spread by the herpetologists themselves; Warmists foiled again: Answer to what’s causing frog populations to decline is just plain embarrassing.

Lastly, it’s facepalm time on the hubris of geoengineering and wanting to use aerosols or other techniques to reduce sunlight hitting the earth.

I see things like the above, the fanaticism, the willingness to block sunlight from the earth with all the risks that entails, and cry out like Oliver Cromwell:

I beseech you… think it possible you may be mistaken!

It’s a religion, not a science. In a science, people change their mind… it’s when it’s a faith that people believe they’ve been converted (bolding added):

The New York Times spoke to several people from different industries who all associated their conversion to climate activism as at a type of religious epiphany.

Not convinced.  Not had their mind changed.  A religious conversion.

 

FRAUD UPON FRAUD

It’s easy when you make up data, 2017 : Fakest Year On Record At NOAA:

Again, I reprise Stalinist Russia: The future is always known; it’s the past that keeps changing. Speaking of changing the past, check this post out (bolding added)

Over and over again, we find that the temperature records from decades ago have been changed, with no explanation and no transparency. We have documented this fact around the world, and always the “adjustments” are in the same direction–temperatures from decades ago are lowered, and recent temperatures are raised.

No explanation?  No transparency?  No verification, no audits, no replication?  To adapt the new Washington Post motto, Science dies in darkness.  And the above article quotes another article (bolding added) :

Under the new nClimDiv system, introduced in 2014, NOAA’s methodology is extremely opaque. They don’t, to the best of my knowledge, publish the data and adjustments used.In essence, we are asked to accept NOAA’s version without being able to check or verify it.Whatever the reason for the adjustments, the climate record for New York State has been changed out of all recognition, and bears no resemblance to the actual official data.

So we have the gatekeepers of the data adjusting the data by amounts even larger than the margin of error, not being accountable for those changes, and simultaneously screaming for more and more and more money to solve the problem their adjusted data now shows. In any other situation this would result in jail time. And adjustments don’t happen to just US data:

And from the same article, artic melting fears… from 1923:

In other words, you are paid to research “climate change” – and if the data do not show “climate change” as your political masters desire, you change the data to give them what they want. This results in more funding and continued employment. Oh, and have I mentioned that the lecture circuit can be very lucrative on a personal level?

 

MONEY AND POWER

While researching for this essay I came across this video. You’ve probably seen it, but if you have not, it’s not for the squeamish. So, regardless of if you have or have not seen it before, watch it again.

OK? Now… THINK about the message here. It’s plain, it’s stark: If you don’t get with the climate change program, you should be killed. Understand, someone conceived this idea, someone paid for it, and people put it out there. There is even a play now entitled Kill Climate Deniers. Remember, there are Warmists openly saying that this will end all life on earth, so hearken back to my second essay on the topic, and this quote (bolding, italics, and links in the original):

if you truly believed that humanity is the defining threat to the biosphere, what wouldn’t you do to stop it, what actions couldn’t you rationalize? Don’t forget that it was American Progressives who were behind the Eugenics movement that forcibly sterilized undesirables to “improve humanity” – so surely saving all life on earth is orders of magnitude importanter. Marxism of various forms murdered over 100 million civilians in the 20th century in a True Believer pursuit of the “Great Utopia”; one trembles thinking what would they do with absolute power to save the biosphere itself. Suddenly, merely being jailed for being a Denier might not be so bad given the historical precedents…

And following up from the idea just above is The climate Gulag archipelago:

The point here is to illustrate the totalitarian mindset of these people. They can’t let reality speak for itself; they have to silence those who point out that they have been wrong on many occasions. Like Herod imprisoning and then murdering John the Baptist, these people will do anything to shut the mouths of those trying to stop their dreams – dreams that, experience suggests, will become nightmares to the majority if enacted.…These people do not belong anywhere near the mechanisms of power.

And there’s a lot of money at stake (link in the original):

With trillions of dollars in research money, power, prestige, renewable energy subsidies, wealth redistribution schemes, and dreams of international governance on the line, the $1.5-trillion-per-year Climate Industrial Complex is not taking the situation lightly. Climate fear-mongering is in full swing.

Addendum: Al Gore’s business model: 

And it’s not just universities, professors, and green organizations that have reaped financial benefits from the climate panic. Former vice president Al Gore has done quite well for himself, too. As Bloomberg News reported, “In the last personal finance report he filed as vice president, Gore disclosed on May 22, 2000, that the value of his assets totaled between $780,000 and $1.9 million.”

…

Gore was essentially either a founder, a member, or a partner in a whole wide range of groups that were profiting or poised to profit from a green energy stimulus and federally mandated carbon trading schemes if they became law. Gore would have personally benefited if the carbon cap-and-trade bill he supported had become law. The media never treated his Congressional testimony in support of the climate bills for what it actually was—a former vice president supporting legislation that would make him richer. These reports prompted one sarcastic skeptic to suggest, “Maybe Al Gore Should Be the Subject of a RICO Investigation.”

An inconvenient truth, indeed.  But it IS a great – albeit unethical – business model.  Create a panic over doom-and-gloom, market “the solution”, and invest in taxpayer-funded projects that make megamillions for you and your cronies.

 

SUMMING UP

There is no question that the environment is important.  There is no question that pollution – actual pollution – remains a serious issue.  There’s no question that “green energy” should have a seat at the energy table.  Whether on a global scale, or local, we should all do better to conserve the resources of this planet, and not soil our own nest.

But a “science” built on provable fraud, where normal standards of evidence, replication, and outside / independent verification are shunned – and that shunning of normal procedure is accepted while it would be rejected in any other discipline – is not a science.  A “science” where, despite massive numbers of unexplained counter-examples are shown, but the belief never waivers, is not a science.  (I’ve debated enough Creationists to recognize the ossified mentality of the Warmists.)

Science depends on accepting skeptical viewpoints, independent review of data, data collection methods, replication of results, and free exchange of ideas and competing views.  If “Eureka – I have found it!” is the most wonderful phrase in research, perhaps the second one should be “Wow, I never thought of that – thank you!”

Absent these, it is not a science.

And one last thing.  Throughout my four essays, I have attempted to be logical, and build a case presenting why I changed my mind and now hold to that changed stance.  I was open-minded enough to make observations, investigate, and based on that new information, change my mind… because unless you also understand the “other side” one cannot be informed:

The liberal philosopher John Stuart Mill once explained that, “The greatest orator, save one, of antiquity, has left it on record that he always studied his adversary’s case with as great, if not with still greater, intensity than even his own.” Mill held that unless we carefully study the views of those with whom we disagree, we will never really know what they’re right or wrong about. “He who knows only his own side of the case,” Mill wrote in his 1859 book On Liberty, “knows little of that.” Our opponents could be right for all we know or care, because they may know a fact or offer an argument we’ve never thought to consider. And even if they aren’t right, Mill points out that specks of truth may exist among their falsehoods which can guide our minds in new directions.

I’m a Type I, as defined here, Two Kinds of People in the World: 

The first kind of person, when presented with such information, attempts to vet it by studying both (or more) sides of the issue and, if finding out the information is true (within human limits of discovering “Truth”), adjusts their CT accordingly to assimilate the new information. This can result in old information being supplanted, and very often in a belief being changed. The typical reaction of such people, when first presented with new information like this, is to the effect of “Wow, I’d never heard that – thank you for telling me. I need to investigate…”

The second kind of person, when similarly presented with information that doesn’t match the CT, not only reject the new information a priori, they deny it, seeking out only like-minded people and information sets which already conform to their CT to reinforce that CT lest their framework – and belief system – need to be altered. Their typical reaction is to get enormously defensive, and even go on the attack ad hominem, questioning character, motives, ridiculing and denigrating the other’s viewpoint, etc.

If you are of the CO2 Alarmist side of the debate, I don’t expect that I’ve convinced you to switch.  And that’s fine.  As my late father once told me, “A man convinced against his will is a man unconvinced still.”  There’s truth in that.

But by the same token, if you can read Parts I – IV and not have even a scintilla of doubt enter your mind about the CO2 alarmism… then I would say “Go back and read them again.”  And open your mind.  Because it was the opening of my mind to new information – not agreeing with it at first, but being determined to dig and examine multiple perspectives before settling on what I believed – that started this journey for me.

 

© 2018, David Hunt PE