Writing for PJM Helped Make Me Enemy of the State Number #38
As for myself, I’m a cosmologist, with a special interest in the anthropic principle, as my National Academy of Sciences security police dossier correctly notes. Twenty odd years ago, I co-authored a book, published by Oxford University Press, on the anthropic principle. As my co-author and I pointed out, the essence of the anthropic principle is eliminating human bias from the interpretation of observations, and we focused mainly on eliminating such bias from cosmology.
But human bias is human bias. I myself have looked at some of the raw data from surface stations that measure the Earth’s temperature. The raw data are from selected sites in the USA, in New Zealand, in Australia, and in Sweden. I selected these sites because I’m reasonably sure they will not have bias due to changing human habitation, or human wars, or human politics. These sites show no warming in the twentieth century. So I have to conclude that we don’t even know if there was any warming on Earth in the twentieth century.
Notice that I am not saying that there has been no warming, just that the available raw data that I’ve personally been able to check do not show it. Until all the raw temperature data are placed online, so the data can be checked by anybody, a rational person has to suspend belief in global warming, to say nothing of AGW.
The official government adjusted data for these sites do show a warming trend. All the warming is in the “corrections.” Sorry, I don’t buy it. Especially from “scientists” who are known to “correct’ their raw data to “hide the decline.”
There have been calls to silence the 496 scientists on the list. Besides “climate deniers,’ we have been called “traitors.” We all know the penalty for treason.
So far, no federal agents have come to pick me up. But nowhere in Mein Kampf does Adolf Hitler call for the extermination of the Jews. Hitler does repeatedly refer to the Jews as “tuberculosis bacilli.” What does one want to do with tuberculosis bacilli?
I’m an enemy of the state. It’s an honor.
It’s sad when the hard sciences have become politicized.When I was a graduate student(geology) one of the best professors I ever had said,”It’s data,data data”. Today it’s fit the data to suit your presumptions with many researchers.
Hang out at a few academic research parties and hear the jokes about how all you need to do to get a grant is tie it to AGW.
It’s the invisible, but deformed hand at work.
Freeman Dyson? Wow, you really are in good company. Sometimes the ridiculousness of it all is too much to comprehend.
@Pedro – if there is anyone who fits data to conclusions it’s people who seek Christian-compatible conclusions, like Mr. Tipler.
@TheGman – “ridiculousness” is what you get when you have people who still hold Bronze Age beliefs in the 21st century.
Thanks, LB, I was just thinking that what this thread really needs is some good old-fashioned religious bigotry. Do you hate Jews, too? They control the world, you know; probably caused global warming so they can sell us more coats!
Not everyone on the “List of 496″ is a religious person.
And what do spiritual beliefs have to do with scientific rigor?
Try again, son; show your work next time.
MikeC, one quibble–which religious denominations have come out against AGW? You give BS too much credit.
See who (see above) is out there? Your data doesn’t matter because “you hold (wrong) beliefs”. No WAY you could be write and disagree with MY beliefs…or that seems to be the message.
It’s really sad the way atheists try to squeeze a discussion of their religion into every conversation.
“Atheist” is not a religion, it relates to the number of gods believed in by a person. Note: Budhists do not believe in any gods and are therefore “atheists”. Give it a rest.
A religion is anything taken on faith. Prove to me that there is no god. If you can’t than atheism is entirely a matter of faith.
What _set_ of beliefs do Budhists have in common with the “hyper atheist” twits who are upset about “in god we trust” on money? Both are types of atheists.
Buddhism is a religion. According to Dictionary.com, the second entry in the definition is: “a specific fundamental set of beliefs and practices generally agreed upon by a number of persons or sects: the Christian religion; the Buddhist religion.” If you do not know the definition of a word, please don’t lecture us about it. Kthx!
According to Dictionary.com, the first entry for religion is “a set of beliefs concerning the cause, nature, and purpose of the universe, esp. when considered as the creation of a superhuman agency or agencies, usually involving devotional and ritual observances, and often containing a moral code governing the conduct of human affairs.”. Don’t try and lecture people after you disengenuously skip the first entry which supported the other poster, in order to cherry pick one more suiting to your argument. Kthnx.
There’s a reason why there is more than one entry.
If you are trying to argue that only the first entry matters, then explain why the dictionary includes the other entries.
Even in the entry that you quote, the word “esp.” shows that the definition does not mean exclusively supernatural as you are trying to claim.
It’s amazing how touchy athiesits get, whenever their religion is questioned.
Christian pot to kettle: “You’re black!”
I get annoyed at people misusing words.
I didn’t misuse the word.
Phillep Harding makes a poor pedant – he doesn’t even spell Buddhist correctly.
Are you not using “atheist” as a single religion? Everyone who is an atheist is alike? There are several atheistic religions, just as there are several monotheistic religions. Christians and Moslems are monotheists, therefore they are the same? Not hardly.
3. LoadofBS, that pen name fits your post admirably, I love truth in advertising. When you have actual content to add to the conversation come back and play with the big boys, enough of your ad homonym.
Meanwhile Load of BS, Google Georges Lemaître,
So what does Christianity (or lack thereof) have to do with honesty and scientific rigor?
Unless of course you believe as I do that God created the Corvette and the Devil created the Gulfstream and that one should be able to enjoy either or both (in proportion to one’s available means, of course) without the nanny-state putting its boot on your neck in the pursuit of social-control goals wrapped up in pseudoscience?
There’s nothing in AGW that is incompatible with mainstream christian doctrine. Take a good look at the environmental opinions of the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople and you will find a real green. In my opinion that’s not a mark in his personal favor but it says nothing about his faithfulness to christian doctrine and nobody else thinks that way either.
Your assumption is based on bigotry and ignorance. Please correct it.
BS, good name for you.
The belief that humans can cause global warming is much more like the pre-bronze age belief that ripping someone’s heart out causes the sun to come up in the morning or that picking the magic berries causes a volcano to erupt.
The AGW crowd’s behavior is much closer to that of a fanatical new religion than to science.
if there is anyone who fits data to conclusions it’s people who
seek Christian-compatible conclusionsfeel threatened by conclusions that differ from mine, likeMr. TiplerI’m dong right now.FTFY
Isn’t arguing against Mr. Tipler’s Christianity, besides being inherently juvenile, a perfect example of ad hominem? Well, at least Load shows he/she can live up to the screen name.
Sir you missed my point.When I was working as a field geologist I applied the knowledge I learned in school. I make no statement on religion. I wanted facts and not ideology.I am also a Christian,who had the opportunity to study under the great biblical scholar Pierre Benoit.
As usual, the exquisite irony of ignoring actual data and clinging to a pre-Christian terror of the consequences of offending the Earth Goddess, yet projecting superstitious beliefs on to their critics, escapes the inhabitants Reality-Based Community. The Earth Goddess must be appeased with the blood (or at least the careers) of the evil Deniers (sounds so much more sophisticated than “evil doers,” doesn’t it?) Yes, we True Believers in the original sin of Mankind know that the day of apocalyptic retribution is nigh. Repent, ye satanic devotees of the fossil fuel. Tremble before Gaia’s wrath, ye mere observers of empirical fact. Our myth of the Fall and the Redemption must not be questioned!
You’re making a mistake, ‘Load’. First off, Frank’s work has been PEER-REVIEWED by /NASA/. /NASA!/, for goodness sake! Anybody who says that another person is wrong when they are agreed with by such prestigious Administrations is extreemly unreasonable.
Secondly, it’s very unreasonable to say that God doesn’t exist when it’s impossible to DISprove His existence. Allow me to ask you this: All peach trees came from seeds, right? Everything that has EVER came into existence has been caused by something else. Therefore, the universe is CONTIGENT on /something/, and so, God is a nessecity for the universe. Why? How about because of all the proofs that Francis Collins, Hugh Ross, and Frank Tipler have provided? Go and bend your bias around a subject somewhere else.
Feels good to be the enemy of the state, doesn’t it? Considering the state of teh state these days it makes one feel outright brilliant.
“First they came for the scientists, but I was not a scientist…”
Wasn’t that the plot of the original “V” series?
I was wonder how Dyson, perhasp the prominant scientist/mathematician alive today (this side of Hawking) ended up at #3. The list says: “Names are sorted in descending order of citation count, on their #4 most cited work. This somewhat idiosyncratic choice of sort key stresses depth against any potential “one big paper” effect. This does seem to make a reasonable proxy for prominence in their field.”
I guess by “potential “one big paper” effect” they mean, revolutionizing your field, to say nothing of all of Physics (or all of human knowledge for that matter) does not count.
Wow. This sort of reminds me of when Hitler got several hundred scientists to sign (on pain of death) a letter declaring Einstein was wrong. Einstein’s famous retort was: “If I was wrong if would not take hundreds, it would only take one.”
I guess we know where the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences are coming from.
AGW is the big lie that makes all the other leftist lies and desires logical. AGW makes mass regulation of human activity not only logical but necessary. They wont let this one go.
Exactly right, Ruebacca.
I tend to side with Richard Feynman’s views of Science. The Study of Climate is not a science. It is not something we can conduct controlled tests with.
Please do not misunderstand me, the Study of Climate is important. But it is not a science. As such, different rules of evidence apply. All collected evidence must have its original provenance so that others can review the accuracy of its data. In the “Climate-Gate” scandal it appears that much of the provenance of their data was discarded.
Thus they have un-assailable and un-reviewable data. Convenient, Eh? It could be that the earth is warming. Even if that were accurate, though, we do not know how certain we should be about such prognostications. With the way they’re going about this unscientific effort, we’ll never know for sure.
I’m not a scientist but in the courtroom when one side destroys evidence we call it spoliation, we impose a presumption that the destroyed evidence was harmful to the spoliator’s case, we impose other serious sanctions, up to and including adverse judgment, and we discipline, up to and including bisbarring, complicit lawyers.
There are similarities between the law and scientific methodology.
There are more similarities between scientific methodology and “open source” (ironic considering how many members of the Linux community believe AGW). A “scientific claim” is not supposed to require a court order or an FOIA request to get the data out where it can be inspected. It is supposed to be fully open.
“AGW supporters: SHOW THE SOURCE CODE” or share SCO’s fate.
The ability to make controlled experiments is not the only thing that makes something a science; if it were, Astrophysics would not be a science. The thing about science is that it lets you make PREDICTIONS; the more rigorous the science, the better the predictions. “If the following is observed, then probably these other things may have preceded it, so look for the preceding events to happen again and see if they are followed by the observed event. If they do, then your theory is at least on firm footing, remembering all the while that correlation does not prove causation.” But AGW is NOT rigorous science; none of the computer models can take the known climate conditions of 50 years ago as a starting point and predict this afternoon, or even this hurricane season, a much larger event. The fact is, the total human contribution to the Greenhouse Effect, which is quite real and makes the earth warm enough to be habitable, is less than a half of a percent. In other words, down below the limits of observational error. Atmospheric carbon, which is mostly due to natural causes anyway, is NOT the main driver of the Greenhouse Effect; water vapor is. 95% of it, in fact. We humans look upon our works and think we OUGHT to be important, but we aren’t. The world doesn’t really care.
I always enjoyed the enthusiastically hopeful attitude of those Believers who thought hydrogen-powered cars would help to save us from AGW because their only byproduct is water vapor. DUH!
And I do think the world cares about us. It’s Earth that barely notices.
Polly, sadly, most of the AGW crowd probably missed the irony…
Very well put, John C., and oh so correct!! May I add that truly rigorous science demands that data, testing protocols and the like be divulged to the wider scientific community such that the experiment–and presumably, results–may be replicated by non-involved, i.e. potentially biased, individuals. If these are not made available and/or the results not reproduceable, then either the data, the testing protocol and/or the result must be called into question.
Kudos to Mr. Tipler for his having landed on the list!!
So they published a study that looked at the degrees of the skeptics, but not their data? How quaint. Who knew scientific inquiry could be ad hominem?
Science as a high school clique.
Where, exactly, does one go to get a degree in “climate science?” I mean, these are the same people who, when faced with the reality that most weatherman don’t believe in AGW started claiming that “weather” (meteorology) was different from “climate.”
Apparently, climate doesn’t involve weather, physics, or math… what exactly constitutes climate study then? Just the impact of climate change and not the mechanics (which I am sure include some weather, physics and math)? And even the impacts have to be studied by specialists– biologists, oceanographers, geologists, etc…
Seems to me a “climate scientist” is merely someone with a certain point of view who publishes an analysis of cherry-picked information from real, working scientists in order to validate a pre-existing conclusion.
You sir, are in fine company.
It’s funny that a field who’s core is analyzing data doesn’t appear to want to involve anyone with knowledge of statistics either.
Their making of computer models doesn’t seem to include computer scientists either.
You have to wonder what they do do. apart from jaunt to Indonesia, Bali etc …
Man, that is exactly how these acadmic scientists work, like vicious cliques in a bad high school.
“Academic politics are so vicious precisely because the stakes are so small.”
- Attributed to Henry Kissinger
Kissenger must have lived in a boarding house. The brawls over small steaks can be vicious!
Correct. And faculty politics is the best way to understand the imbecilic viciousness of the president, sometime law school faculty member.
But the stakes in climate science for the academics who are supported by grants, and whose tenure depends on toeing the line, are high. This is not the usual meaningless little snit between experts in some obscure irrelevant field. these people have sold themselves to the gods of tenure and grants, in exhancge for proppoing up the power dreams of politicians, the vast money schemes of the GEs and Goldman Sachses and Kleiner Perkinses, and the religious zealotry of the useful idiot New Age Gaia worshippers.
These environmentalists were the same kids in school who often went home with their underwear stretched out from being placed over their heads while still wearing it, or were to be found upside down with their heads in a toilet. So – they take their revenge on the rest of us with their shrieking lies.
Environmentalists are invariably people that want others to use less energy!
If Obama/Gore really believed global warming, they would talk non stop about lowering speed limits to 50 and demand that Americans stop jack rabbit starts and stop racing to lights that are red.
Virtually no Americans believe it either; just look at the fuel wasting driving habits; that also fund the other sides war against us! If you believe the hurricane may kill you/your family: you leave. The driving habits prove no one believes it.
Post the data showing the randomly selected locations where temperature and snow pack are documented for 1 million years and that will tell the tale. Select locations that meet your agenda: liars figure but figures do not lie!
Earth wobbles, sun spots, ocean currents/temperature, volcanoes, solar storms/winds et al are conveniently ignored in “true believers” data;
Parking mores in shopping center parking lots also prove no one believes it; who parks at the first space you comes to, which by definition is furthest from the door, and turns off the motor and walks across the parking lot? There are no environmentalists (approaching zero) in these United States;
The congress/press are selling a scam, for profit, not seen since the middle ages; The cap and trade scam is a variation of the “indulgences scam” used, among other things, to man the crusades/get bad people to go somewhere else!
I agree with your post 99%, but the environmentalists you speak of are not real environmentalists. On the grassroots level, they are potential environmentalists who have bought into a big lie heaped onto of a number of small truths. Most people are not for pollution (and I don’t mean carbon dioxide) or other real environmental problems that truly exist. But that’s not what the Environmental Movement is about. All those things can be brushed aside, and mankind himself is declared the real problem, thus we need heavy handed governmental control over all activity. The prominent movement that is pushing AGW is eugenicists in disguise.
We who question AGW are in good company and the question should primarily fall to the data (or lack of data) for the hypothesis, I agree!
Also, the strongest influence of religion on this debate is from those who religiously believe in AGW, the anti-human religion.
The National Academy of Sciences clearly has no sense of irony.
While using the term “denier” in order to associate those with non-aligned views with Nazi sympathisers, it uses exactly the same tactic which was used in Hitler’s Germany to suppress so called “Degenerate art” (Entartete Kunst).
With apologies to Gilbert and Sullivan:
“As some day it may happen that a victim must be found, I’ve got a little list–I’ve got a little list.
Of diverse unbelievers who might well be underground, And who never would be missed–who
never would be missed.”
Beyond egregious.
This article should perhaps help people around me understand why I left the world of science years ago and have never looked back. It should also help trade journals understand why I stopped subscribing to all of them last year.
When has reality ever infringed on someone’s opinion? When reality kills you. It is starting to kill us all, at least financially.
“This is the West, sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend”
replace legend with myth and we have Al Gore, the man who shot believable science.
I’m glad I was a vaccination causes autism denier… because you know if a celebrity says its true, means it must be true.
If you want to inject yourself with mercury, dude, go for it!
I’ll ingest a minuscule amount of mercury if it helps prevent going back 400 years to a past when fatal and/or disfiguring communicable diseases were the norm.
Ah, the fallacy of the False Dichotomy.
Sorry, we have the technology to produce vaccines without
Thimerosal (ethyl mercury) so it’s not a choice between
vaccine or no vaccine.
It’s a choice between an effective preservative and a less effective, more expensive preservative. Neither preservative has the slightest health risk.
If you want to die of a preventable disease,and take most of your family with you. Go for it.
BTW, there have been dozens of studies that have looked into the issue, none of them found any problems with the use of the vaccines or the mercury based preservative.
Just like nobody has ever found an issue with the lead that is used in the amalgam that makes up the fillings in your mouth.
It’s the dose that makes the poison, and the amount of lead or mercury that you get from filings or vaccinations is too small to measure.
Lead in dental amalgam? It was standardized in 1895, and never
contained any lead. What kind of nonsense is that?
Sorry, it’s mercury, not lead. Same difference.
Liquid Mercury makes up 50% of dental amalgam;
I have a mouthful of fillings, some 35 years old,
and they have nere ghiften mie ane prollums.
Like the Sodium and Chlorine which make up table salt,
the amalgam components are too tightly bound to react.
Teflon (Polytetrafluoroethylene) is even worse;
a good hot spark can decompose it into carbon
and Fluorine, the chemical which killed the first
several Chemists who isolated it and breathed it in
after it ate its way out of their equipment.
I would point out that the refusal to have vaccinations has an effect on society at large, not just one’s family. I have a friend whose family had responsibly had the DPT shots. She and her infant daughter later became VERY ill with Diptheria because those with whom they had contact had refused to do so.
Oh, man, don’t get me started on that. Grrr!
The problem is that it is easy to swindle the masses because a very small percentage understand the limitations and trade-offs of the technology used to arrive at the conclusions these settled-scientist types use. Having been in both the Instrumentation and Scientific Computing market since 1980, I can’t find any reason to believe that they have modeled anything, other than using visualization techniques to “pretty up” the conclusions they’ve drawn from statistical analysis of the raw data (correction, massaged data). Pure assumption based projection.
This is all about Statistics, and again the great majority of the population has less than a 9th grade math education. Attached to the desire to clean up the planet, it is very effective propaganda. It’s sad that the real issue is around responsible extraction and replenishment of resources. But the oil spill is being used for the carbon agenda instead of refocusing efforts around prevention and response to these kinds of disasters.
My uncle has spent his scientific career studying tree rings over the last 500 years (and now going back over the past 1000 years). There is a warming trend, which makes sense if you look at the data showing a “mini ice-age” from about 1300 a.d. to about 1850 a.d. As to the cause(s) of this warming, well the jury is still out. And the CRU folks, according to him, have deliberately manipulated the data.
I’ll believe the 496 before the fascist-scientists.
Your uncle being at such an advanced age, that makes you what?… 425? At what point did the dementia kick in?
My uncle has spent his scientific career studying tree rings over the last 500 years
How does he do it? Diet? Exercise? My oldest uncle (actually, my only surviving uncle) is only in his 80s.
I have no living uncles, but I have thousands of tree rings
It is ridiculous. Congratulations to all of you on the list. They are afraid of you. Just keep stating your position. Good luck and God bless.
Is this a joke? Have they really published an enemies list of scientists not to be trusted? Now we have national science bodies following Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals and targetting and isolating their opponents?
Lately it seems like we have all gone through the looking glass and are living in some bizarro alternate reality…
Doggone! I left the NAS years ago. I love being on lists. Doggone! I just think anytime the Liberal Fascist Establishment puts you on a nasty list, it increases your virility, means you can throw away those Viagra pills, date girls around 20, go 90 on the freeway (mostly in the UK and parts of Germany and west Texas), eat red meat, drink (more) Vodka, smoke cigars, and all sorts of things the Establishment wants to avoid from real people.
Having spent most of a mini-career sniffing out parsed and otherwise altered data, the great buffoon’s show was so obviously fake that I thought it was a slam-dunk loser. Then all these social science Ph.D.’s began singing its praises – and I knew it was an even worse fake – and then environmental scientists came out in favour of the hypothesis (after we had explained to them what an hypotheses was) and I knew Big Al was spreading the money like a Chicago Alderman on voting day to get people on board.
This has set the respect for general science back by decades. Piltdown Man is less of an embarrassment than Al Gore.
By the way, congratulations at coming in within the Top 50! That’s pretty good!
The first obvious question to you would be about the sites you “selected” and why you selected them, given human bias etc. I can tell from the average first and last frosts in my area that there has been some general warming, even since I moved here in 1977. I know this because I have a garden, and when frost kills or threatens things, I pay attention.
I am not prepared to say why this warming is taking place, if it is a longer term trend, or if it can be stopped, because I do not have an axe to grind on that point at the moment. Do you?
What changes have occurred in your area?
Has your town gotten bigger, have they been putting in more roads and parking lots?
Regardless. 1977 was the end of the last cool cycle of the PDO, it’s been in it’s warm phase since then, up until a few years ago.
It’s hardly surprising, given that single fact, that your area has gotten marginally warmer.
Beyond that, the sun has gotten quite a bit more active during the last half of the 20th century. Numerous studies have found a linkage between how active the sun is and how warm the earth is.
DWIGHT:
After reading some of your troll type comments on various articles on the Pajamas Media site, I have three or four questions for you. Have you ever read anything other than the Daily Kos propaganda? How can you expect to have an adult conversation about anything when you seem so limited in your exposure to common sense and the real world? Do you get paid by someone for making inane comments?
If not, why do you do it and embarrass yourself? And no, this is not an ad hominem attack. Inquiring minds want to know.
Hmmm, Evidently you have no problem with a lot of the bluster not uncommon on this site, which says somethings about your powers of discernment…or lack thereof. Fortunately there are also some reasonable level-headed folks with experience and common sense here too. Given the general and content-free nature of your blurt, I will assume that you are not one of them.
I will assume, until you can prove otherwise, that I can blow you out of the water, once we start discussing specifics. I may have been on Kos once in my life; I am sure that there are over-the-top yahoos there, just as there are here. If you are sensitive about being called a yahoo, then don’t be one.
As for our current topic, I have read probably a couple million words on AGW over the last several years at both warmist and skeptic sites. I also read about a third of the leaked emails. I am more skeptical than I used to be, and am really not sure that we could cut down CO2 emissions even if we wanted to, but I also think it likely that all the stuff we put out into the atmosphere probably has some effect.
What do YOU bring to the table? Inquiring minds want to know.
As for changes in the land, the most relevant one would be a the ten-house subdivision across the street, slightly uphill from me. We get more cold air sinking down the hill at night, because it has less resistance than when there were trees there, but it is going over asphalt which was warmed during the day. Anyone who is a gardener can tell you that trees will protect you a little from borderline frost, but asphalt does warm things some, so I say think the subdivision is about a wash. Also for the REGION, the average frost free dates need to be adjusted, although the question remains what date is SAFE, not just SAFE on average. The presence of possums and the increased number of robins who stay year-round are also decent indicators of warming.
Actually, the scandal about the rising temperatures being “caused” by thermometers which were in sites which had become more urban etc. may reflect the point that the whole earth may be warming some because it is becoming more urban and paved over…along with increased CO2, and other changes as well.
You’d have trouble blowing a rubber ducky out of the water.
As to your belief that the whole world is getting paved over. I can only conclude that you are a city boy and have never spent any time outside of a city.
1) About 73% of the world’s surface is water. Exactly what percentage of the oceans do you believe to be paved over?
2) Of the land’s surface, less than 10% is developed, much less paved over.
Ah, you build up your straw men, then burn them up. You don’t have any particular knowledge of what percentage increase in asphalted or urbanized surfaces would have some effect on temperature, (Watts is certainly all steamed up over the effects that urbanization has on the official thermometers) but you have to create some scenario about my being a city boy, blah blah.
The odd thing is that we are arguing when we probably agree on 99% of the “facts” here. You choose to frame it as fraud and corruption…and yet again we come back to my basic beef with many Pajama’d folk is how they howl, yowl, bluster, see the end of freedom as we know it and all sorts of other melodramatic crap, evidently because they get more of a high out of talking trash than really sorting things out. The latter is difficult, more boring, and can be addressed only very erratically in the form we try to do it.
The evidence is in. And most of what you believe to know, isn’t so.
The fact is that it has been proven, beyond a shadow of a doubt that UHI exists and is a major factor in contaminating the ground based measurement system.
The fact that you choose to believe otherwise does not speak well towards your open mindedness.
The fact that you see nothing wrong with massive increases in energy taxes and turning control over energy production to the govt also does not speak well of you.
It also demonstrates that you are a liar when you claim to be a moderate.
Can you read, or more to the point, understand what you read?
I was NOT questioning that UHI exists, if fact quite the opposite. It is another example of your losing track of what is going on in your excitement over getting a chance to cast yet more aspersions. Try to respond to what I am saying not what your fevered brain imagines is being said. My point is that UHI DOES exist and may be one cause of overall global warming. If you will think a little further, such a phenomenon lessens the chance that CO2 is the only culprit, hence, possibly giving the skeptics more ammunition for not taxing carbon.
Evidently, in your mind, anyone who does not jump on a denier bandwagon and start calling climate scientists “frauds” must be a warmist believer. Try to pick up on at least a few of the fine distinctions, even if such is not your specialty.
Dwight, in your eagerness to disagree with me, you have already forgotten what you wrote just a few days ago.
I’ve already dealth with your belief that urbanization was causing the whole world to warm.
It is making the cities warm, and that is where almost all of the climate stations are located.
The ones located in areas that are truely rural, are showing little to no warming.
But then someone who is as much an expert as you claim to be already knew that. Right.
As others have pointed out, the most damning details are not the e-mails, though those are bad enough. The worst are the code that was also released. The code shows the extent to which the data was massaged in order to acheive the desired results.
Mark,
to validate your point, I’ve spent several hours going through the leaked fortran code and it’s associated REM statements…some time back. It was gobbledyguck. spaghetti code typical from Universities. the remarks were most disturbing. but again, 95% of the population is ignorant. And for me Tipler’s opinion carries alot of weight (as would most notable physicists).
We live in the internet intellectual age. access to information is great, but now everyone is a self-proclaimed genius.
As one who has been around for a few years (75), I can testify to summers much warmer and longer than those we have experienced during the past 10. The year in which I was born had drought and very high temperature, so my history books and my elders told me…There was a summer in the mid 1950′s which was long and very hot…another in the 70′s, and, does anyone here remember the heat wave in the mid 90′s?
Likewise warmer where I am, but that does not mean AGW is at fault. Climate changes naturally over time.
“I fell down and broke my leg therefore a witch cast a spell on me” is logically identical with “The climate where I live is getting warmer, therefore humans are causing it.”
The scary thing is, the belief is not paranoia,
but a common human viewpoint in primitive societies
(and individuals): Nothing happens, everything is caused.
can’t wait to see it my god ~！~
Where does the Scientific Method use “number of publications” to establish the scientific credence of claims such as those involved with CO2-CAGW, and thus the “expertise” of people making such claims?
No, instead the PNAS, enc., has dogmatic “tenets” by means of which to define “deniers”.
Hence, Climate Change CO2-CAGW “believers”.
CAGW is ambiguous.
There is a group called Citizen Against Government Waste (CAGW).
A more appropriate acronym is
CACA (Catastrophic Anthropogenic Climate Alteration).
Exchange between 2 climatologists:
- “How’s that CACA study going?”
- “Please wait until I get out of the latrine.”
How is this any different from a blacklist, really?
It’s really more in the nature of a “white list” (those who might be trustworthy) than a “black list”, although I doubt that the publishers meant for it to be treated as such. (Use of color names in this context is not used with any racist motive.)
If I wrote a cancer research paper and did the following:
1. Picked patients that supported my theories instead of random sampling
2. Hard coded values in a computer model that demonstrated my theory
3. Conviently Lost my research notes
4. *I can’t remember the one other malarkey certain, “scientists,” pulled
5. and apparently “Corrected” my data where it didn’t support my theories
What would peer review consider my research? Is this not a direct parallel of what the current AGW researchers (fear mongers or eco terrorists – Earth First any one) have done?
The oft-quoted Dick Feynman RESIGNED from the National Academy of Sciences because (approximate quote) “….they mostly sat around and talked about who was WORTHY of joining the National Academy of Science…”.
So he resigned and – in spite of pleas from the officers of NAS – he stayed resigned. Kind of embarrassing when the leading American physicist resigns from your organization on the above grounds.
You might try reading Gleick’s biography of Feynman – “Genius” – to check out Feynman’s thoughts on contemporary education. He didn’t like that bureaucracy either…
Charles Babbage:
“The Council of the Royal Society is a collection of men who elect each other to office and then dine together at the expense of this society to praise each other over wine and give each other medals.”
http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Babbage.html
Babbage was one of the inventors of the idea of a computer. He was a Lucasian professor of Mathematics at Cambridge. Other Lucasian Professors have included Newton, P.A.M. Dirac, and Hawking.
The authors “declare no conflict of interest.” [Snort!]
They’ve just lost what little credibility they had, since they can’t see their conflict with demanding that the other side of a discussion be silent.
Good company indeed. And if Richard Feynman were still alive, he’d be muttering about “cargo cult” science, I betcha.
What is stunning is that the people who put together and published this list reveal that no one should take THEM seriously. Anyone who creates or endorses such a list lacks the curiosity and open-mindedness to do good science or to judge good science.
Science proceeds by checking work, not checking people.
It proceeds by evidence, not ad hominem attacks.
I feel for #496. Just objectionable enough to make the list, but not enough to really rate.
Since when has climate ever not changed? Why is change necessarily bad?
Very good RPD! All of the back and forth, scientific studies and blacklists can be boiled down to your simple question. Warm is good. CO2 makes things grow. If it’s only half a degree or 3 degrees over the last century the question might better be, what can we do to speed it up a bit? Besides, I want my recent investment in 10,000 acres of prime Greenland real estate to pay off before I die. If the Norsemen could make a go of it why shouldn’t we? Why is that last little bit of information left out of the hysterical rants of warmists? Hmmmm, nothing to do with money and power at all.
I was hoping that AGW was real as well. What a disappointment!
(Especially as I sit here, looking up at the glacier carved mountains above us. A brief study of a graph of glacial maximums and minimums strongly suggests that we are overdue for the glaciers to come back. I’d rather not see that happen.)
Dwight,#21,
Has the population grown in the county you live in? Is there a UHI change in other words? Have there been other changes-neighbors cutting down trees , putting asphalt driveways in .etc.? Not that a change over three decades in one locale is anything more than one piece of data.
Edward Lorenz wrote that the Navier Stokes differential equations which describe the atmosphere are non-linear. Because of that non-linearity, they can not be predicted long term. It is not random, so the “average temperature” is completely dependent on the sample. Temperature swings in one day in the Antelope Valley of California can be as much as 40 degrees. Temperature changes over 100 years would have to be at least 2 or three days worth to be meaningful. Old temperature data is normally taken in one or two degree measurements, providing a significant sample noise.
What we see now in the worst Glowball Worming predictions is evidence of sample bias using nonlinearity to barely creep above the sample noise.
This is one of the common fallacies amoungs climate change skeptics.
Weather forecasts are not climate forecasts. Weather forecasts take current conditions and then try to run the atmosphere for a specified period into the future. Weather forecasts fail because it is impossible to know current conditions well enough to project how those conditions will change over time.
Climate forecasts work on an entirely different theory. You don’t need to know current conditions. Climate forecasts do not try and tell us what the temperature in NYC is going to be at 11am on June 12th in the year 2121. Climate forecasts try to tell us on average, how things will be different if say CO2 were to increase, or decrease.
A lot of alarmists try to claim that because of this ability to ignore initial conditions, it’s a lot easier to forecast climate than it is to forecast weather.
They are wrong.
Weather forecasts are not concerned with how small changes in temperature affect the size of lakes or ice fields. They do not concern themselves with how small changes in precipiation will affect the amount and types of plants that grow in a particular area.
There are 5 spheres in climatology
atmosphere
biosphere (plants and animals)
hydrosphere
cryosphere
lithosphere (land)
These spheres interact with each other.
With 5 entities there are potentially 10 regions of interaction between them. None of these regions of interaction are understood. Much less understood well. Until they are, it will be impossible to make climate predictions.
From five, choose two, where order is important, showing the direction of influence. (A influences B might be different than B influences A.) So that should be 5*4 = 20, not ten.
I, too, want to be on the list.
Wait a minute, that’s wrong. There’s no removal from the list, so it’s 5*5 = 25 , not 10 (A can influence A.)
Gads, it’s wronger than that. There’s at least three more spheres! (Solar (radiation), Solar system (bombardment), and geothermal.) Now some of these do not appear to be much affected by the first five, but they can definitely affect those first five. So maybe not 8*8=64, but still, (guessing) 32 >> 10.
“Climate change skeptic”? Hogwash. That is a highly biased label.
The AGW crowd (let’s not forget the “warming” part) do not understand basic scientific methodology. To oversimplify:
1) Show everything started with. Everything. Be ready to defend leaving parts out.
2) Show and explain everything done with what you start with. Be ready to defend every part of it.
3) Show the results. All of them.
4) Make all of the above freely availible for inspection, especially by people who have a strong interest in disproving the claim.
Science is supposed to be “open source”. None of it should require a court order or an FOIA request. Nothing is proven, nothing is valid science, without disclosure. AGW is garbage until everything is public. Don’t like it? Tough.
I’m not a mathematician. Whatever happened to “complexity?”
“We all know the penalty for treason.”
BOOK DEAL!!!
Gentlemen, be of good cheer. Now that NASA must include the contributions of Muslims, we are saved!
This, like the ridiculous editorials espousing the ‘Warmist’ position in Nature, just shows why Argument by Authority is not Science but, literally, Anti-Science.
Any good scientist knows that the opinions of ‘experts’ carries no weight compared to the conclusions of one well-designed, properly controlled experiment. Climategate opened my eyes. Not the snarky e-mails but the snippets of computer code that showed extensive manipulation of the data. As a professional scientist, I know that if I did that with my data, I would be fired.
The AGW hypothesis is a house of cards that will probably go down in history as one of the biggest scams ever wrought.
DD
p.s. You should consider it an honour to be placed on the ‘Deniers’ list.
You are not a denier – you are a heretic.
This is, after all, not science but religion we’re talking about for these folks.
*** Stop the Presses ! ***
So if you aren’t an ‘anointed’ climate ‘scientist’ you can’t speak? How very odd!
Did anyone else notice that one of the authors of this ‘report’ – James W. Prall – is an electrical engineer? Well, if a mathematician can’t be a physicist, doesn’t it follow an E.E. can’t sign on to a climate ‘report’?
And doesn’t anyone else find it hilarious that ‘scientists’ publish a ‘report’ which says – in so many words – “my watch is right by my watch”?
I would like to be on record as requesting a paper for the PNAS on the expertise in expertise of the four authors of the paper. They seem to be two biologists, a computer scientist, and a ‘climate change consultant’ who designed his own BA and later received and MBA.
Not a single expert in scientific methodology in the bunch as far as I can see.
Using their own criteria of determining expertise by number authored articles and memberships in associations, I feel confident that they would come in at the bottom of a matrix of Expertise Experts.
Do these guys really not see the lameness of analyzing data outside of their own fields to criticizing skeptics for the very same act?
I am a physician scientist. I teach medicine and run a research laboratory.
As a scientist, I am a skeptic about climate change, but then, I’m a skeptic about nearly everything. I thought being skeptical about data was a necessary and proper attribute to be a good scientist.
I am skeptical about the findings in my own field of research. I’m skeptical about the data my own laboratory generates, which is why I do so many control experiments. I’m skeptical about the claims made by my best, dearest colleagues. I’m willing to be convinced by evidence, but I look at that evidence carefully, mindful of my own shortcomings and careful to understand the data.
I review manuscripts for professional journals, and I am skeptical. I review grants for NIH, and I am skeptical. I can be convinced, but I think I’m reasonably good at figuring out what papers and grants are good (you should be skeptical about that claim).
James Lindgren in comment #29 has it right: science proceeds by checking and validating the claims — hypotheses — made by others. A claim that cannot be validated is correctly rejected, and a claim that cannot be tested is properly regarded as a matter of faith, not science. A hypothesis that is validated today can be invalidated tomorrow based on new data.
Galileo provides two quotes (in addition to the Einstein quote above) that are instructive:
“In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual.”
“I think that in the discussion of natural problems we ought to begin not with the Scriptures, but with experiments, and demonstrations.”
Galileo understood that it’s data, data, data, with reason and logic to bring order to the data. And skepticism, always, to understand where data ends and scripture (belief) begins.
A final question: the list currently stands at 496. Are they taking applications?
Could you please give us the quotations from Galileo to support your statements? Galileo was a man of faith.
Contrary to the popular view of him as a lone suffering agnostic scholar.
I see nothing incompatible with being a man of faith in that.
The bible is poorly laid out for use to prove anything, and I see many people “reason” themselves into the position of using the bible to tell God what he can and cannot do. The bible is for morality, not investigation of the physical world.
Definitely. Chronicles II Chapter 4 Verse 2
It is both frightening and laughable when the National Academy of Sciences publishes a LIST of scientists NOT to be believed on their opinions of AGW because thee scientists haven’t had peer-reviewed papers published on the subject.
Nazis are running the Academy!
What the –?! I am not on this list! It’s an outrage. I demand a recount. Where is Theresa LaPore when you need her? Who do I call to get my name on the list?
Does oil consumption cause global warming? Let’s examine the numbers.
The world total consumption of oil is about 27 billion barrels each year.
This is about 1.03 cubic miles of crude oil.
If this amount of oil were spread across the entire surface of the Earth, how thick would the film of oil be?
It would take 12 years worth of total oil consumption to be as thick as a sheet of copier paper, or 0.004 inches thick.
The atmosphere above the thin sheet of oil out weighs the yearly oil by 1.27E6 to 1.
Another irrelevant objection.
First off, when burned, each atom of carbon in the oil is combined with two atoms of oxygen to form CO2. If I remember right, the atomic weight of oxygen is 16, while the atomic weight of carbon is 12. (I’m going to ignore the various isotopes of O and C.)
So a molecule of CO2 weighs about 3.75 times as much as the original atom of C.
Beyond that, it’s ridiculous the claim that just because a gas is trace, it can’t possibly have any affect on climate.
The reason why CO2 has little affect is because it’s absorbtion qualities are already maxed out, and that’s before considering the fact that most of the absorbtion bands for CO2 overlap with other atoms, especially H2O.
It must be the hydrogen from the hydrocarbon fuel combining with oxygen that is causing the oceans to rise. The point is that all the oil ever consumed would be very thin compared to atmosphere above it. Maybe as thick as 6 to 8 sheets of paper.
Why do the ice caps on Mars melt? Did those electric rovers do that?
Does anyone else find it disturbing that the National Academy of Sciences actually has a Stalin-esque “blacklist”?
Poll after poll has clearly shown that the majority of scientists are skeptical of mankind’s influence on climate change – does the academy have the gall to blacklist half of the scientific community? Imagine that – scientists being skeptical —outrageous!
Does anyone else remember the ICC’s petition intended to imply to and persuade the world community that a consensus within the scientific community had been made such that acceptance of man-made ‘global warming’ (later referred to as ‘climate change’ because global warming could not be documented)had reached unanimous acceptance in the scientific community? The petition was signed by an entire 400 people, later revealed that nearly half of the signers had absolutely no background in the sciences.
Does anyone remember the impromptu counter-petition, signed by 40,000 people, all of whom were scientists, and all of whom remained skeptical of mankind’s influence on climate change? I suppose you may not remember it; media did not take kindly to it.
Polls are not science. In our zeal let us not become what we fight against.
I have been skimming rapidly down these comments and may have missed a few but yours is the first one I have found which addresses the really crucial point. As a retired physics professor I am astounded and deeply saddened by this action of the NAS. I hope there will be a strong reaction by the scientific community, but I am not hopeful.
Scientists are very intelligent people; unfortunately the word ‘intelligence’ is almost meaningless. Any brain can be very sharp in one or more areas and yet will be–perhaps almost by necessity- very mediocre in countless others.
So let’s see – paper written by William R. L. Anderegg, James W. Prall, Jacob Harold and Stephen H. Schneider suggests that I should trust them instead of people on the list that has Freeman Dyson near the top? Are they really nuts?
Even if I knew no math and science whatsoever (and I do know more than enough math and CS to see a fraud in current AGW research – especially after reading source code of Fortran progam that was leaked during Climategate + the absence of original data that was deleted “to save disk space”) I would sure bet on Freeman Dyson rather than those “scientists”.
Hey now, they upgraded their backup systems. oops.
As a working scientist who has published several papers in PNAS over a 25 year career, I find this paper an outrage, and a discouragement to publishing in this journal in the future. That the NAS would publish this paper, which is not science but is rather, as someone stated above, merely high school level politics, is beyond depressing, it’s scandalous. Unfortunately, members of the Academy are allowed to contribute some number of papers without much review, they only have state that they have had their paper peer reviewed. This method of contribution can short circuit normal peer review, which is apparently what happened here. But the NAS really should have put the brakes on this one. Their failure to do so further tarnishes what was already a fairly political organization and journal.
Interesting.
So this is how the vaunted “consensus” on AGW can be formed. Just leave out anybody who doesn’t swallow the whole con. Then, by definition, whoever is left forms the consensus. Voila! And so the ecochondriacs can insist that “the science is settled.”
So, did Dr. Ferris use his own byline for this communiqué from the State Science Institute?
Funny thing, the top AGW “scientists” are a railroad engineer from India (the UN head of IPCC) and a divinity school dropout (the sex crazed poodle).
Wow! – Nothing speels “open-mindedness” like a good old-fashioned enemies list. So much for scientific rigor. And this on top of Penn State’s exoneration of Michael Mann of any wrongdoing in connection with the East Anglia e-mails.
Let’s all face it. The “anointed” (to use Thomas Sowell’s term) in Western society are going to jam a “climate control” agenda down our throats whether we like it or not. (Personally – I don’t) It has been mentioned numerous times but bears repeating – “Climate Change” is not about science, it is about POLITICAL POWER. The bureaucratic and societal controls that will be created to stop “global warming” will inject government into every minute corner of human life (in the U.S. and Europe anyway.) It will also insure remunerative and stress-free employment for vast numbers of academics, government workers and media types. (I can see the coming of some huge NEH-type organization called “The Department of Enviromental Arts.”) “Enviromentalism” is simply a platform from which to attack Western concepts of freedom and personal liberty. This is not paranoia. An increasing percentage of “elite opinion” is on record as saying that it will be necessary to forego traditional notions of liberty in order to “save the planet.” Naturally this loss of liberty will have to be borne by the “little people” since the elites cannot be expected to subject themselves to any inconvenient limitations.
Lysenko was just too far ahead of his time.
The ‘emperor has no clothes’ article on global temperature was published in by Bjarne Andresen et. al. in the Journal of Non-Equilibrium Thermodynamics. Here’s the reference:
http://www.uoguelph.ca/~rmckitri/research/globaltemp/GlobTemp.JNET.pdf
If you don’t happen to be a physicist, there have been a number of explanatory articles, such as:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/03/does-a-global-temperature-exist/
I prefer Wattsupwiththat.com
Honest reporting of climate and science news.
=======
Atheism is a religion. Pretty nasty one when it becomes the official State religion.
Christianity’s keepers have been the biggest stunters of scientific progress. Without the directive from Jesus to Question Everything, we wouldn’t have the impetus to go ahead with our experiments in the face of tyrannical dogma mongers.
Does anyone remember the leftist claim that science under an Obama administration would no longer be politicized???
See: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=93539298
Snork!
You know he doesn’t actually run the national academy of sciences right?
Neither did Bush.
Which probably explains why the academy’s position hasn’t changed since January 2009. NASA, on the other hand is run by the executive branch. http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/03/17/60minutes/main1415985.shtml
To bad the people who actually make up the NAS, as opposed to the politicians who run it, disagree with the actions of the counsel.
The University of Toronto is also the proud originator of ‘Israeli Apartheid Week’, along with York U.
Here’s the concluding paragraph:
Ultimately, of course, scientific confidence is earned by the winnowing
process of peer review and replication of studies over time. In the meanwhile,
given the immediacy attendant to the state of debate over perception of
climate science, we must seek estimates while confidence builds. Based on the
arguments presented here, we believe our findings capture the differential
climate science credentials of the two groups.
Wow, This is nothing more than a peer-reviewed “appeal to authority”.
If it weren’t for Al Gore and others pushing for a massive, collectivist solution to AGW, nobody would care. It mean, we would *care*, obviously, the same way we’d care about anything to do with pollution or the environment or sunspots. But we wouldn’t get in any of these huge philosophical/scientific/political arguments if the Left weren’t stridently demanding that the Government take charge and force everyone to Do Something. If you left out the politics, we might be able to have a civil discussion and maybe even do some *real* science. Unfortunately, Gore and his minions have made that impossible. Ironic that the “greenest guy in the world” is also responsible for most of the opposition to greenness.
Good point, and I largely agree with you. It is also true that many of the right will go nuts if any kind of tax/restriction is proposed on anything. It becomes a plot to…blah, blah, blah.
Let’s face it, it does not take much to get the left and right to argue these days.
The fact that those on the far left believe letting govt run everything is the path to nirvana is not evidence that there is anything wrong with those who don’t believe in this particular little utopia of yours.
Now let’s settle this issue of whether AGW exists once and for all. All in favor? All opposed?
There. The science is settled.
Next we’ll vote on whether the value of pi should be rounded down to 3 even, and then whether rainfall should only be allowed at night.
Precautionary Principle says AGW could kill us…let’s kill ourselves first. Have I told you about my new healthplan?
I vote that rain should only be allowed at night.
Isn’t science wonderful!
The key to understanding the global warming debate is to recognize that it is not a discussion about science but about advocacy. Advocacy is not about establishing reproducible facts but about producing political and economical results. The discussion about global warming is interestingly similar to the debate over breast cancer screening. In the case of breast cancer screening, advocates who have an economic interest in the debate (such as mammography providers, breast surgeons, hospitals, mammography unit manufacturers)create an emotional reaction to the debate in order to create more demand for their services/products. A less emotional evaluation of the debate shows that some of the recommendations regarding breast cancer screening are questionable at best. Similarly, the “believers” in anthroprogenic climate change are trying to achieve economic and political results as advocates. Why are they advocates? They are from various groups that stand to benefit economically and politically from the decisions made as a result of the debate. Only by creating an emotional hysteria about the subject and concurrently avoiding a hard look at the science can they achieve their political and economic goals. Those who want to talk about the science stand in the way of their advocacy and goals. That’s why they don’t behave like scientists at all. If they did, they would welcome a healthy debate.
Dr. Tipler, thank you for the work you do regarding this matter. Us regular folks appreciate the efforts you and your fellow “deniers” put forth to show that science must be free from bias and politics so as to reveal the truth.
I found your column here very informative.
And congratulations on being #38!
So what is it 24 climate scientists vs 496 legitimate scientists?
I agree with those who suggest that the cooling trend that caused such hand-wringing over an impending ice age in the 1970s and the warming trend that’s caused the current AGW flap are probably nothing more than manifestations of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, but PDO is such an awkward term! Thus, in honor of the Great Man, I propose the phenomenon be renamed “Al Gore Rhythms”.
A terrific pun, Swen!! All in favor say “aye”!
Steve McIntyre… at #302 ?!? This is the man most responsible for bringing AGW data obfusctions and manipulations to the forefront of the debate (the CRU’s #1 nemesis) and because of a totally flawed methodology he is buried. How sad. I guess they even fear people seeing his name and looking him up because, geez, they might see real data and real questions.
“E pur se muove.”
“If my theory were wrong, one voice would suffice to destroy it.”
What, no Ray Kurzweil and Burt Rutan on the list? They’ve done a thing or two for science.
Hello Dr. Tipler:
Don’t worry. You said their magical mantra word: “believe”. I got my degree in Physics in 1991 at the end of the Cold War. The defense positions all dried up as these were no longer needed now that the Soviet Union was trumped during Gulf Storm. I went back to school after reading about the “Greenhouse Effect” and furthering myself with James Hanson. Well, to put it short, I found out that this “science” really was more politics and public advocacy about alternative energy. And I was taking Atmospheric Science and Chemistry courses! AT GRADUATE LEVEL!
A solar physicist, Dr. Charles Sonnet, changed me in one sentance: The sun puts out more incident energy onto the surface of the earth than all of mankind creates in a year, in about 5 minutes. That is to say, that if the sun flickered a bit, so does this planet. It is just that simple.
I went into the semiconductor world in 1994 and never looked back. But I have been watching, researching, challenging, and pressing all the fools and advocates who merely blurt eco talking points of their new found religion: AGW. It is always satisfying to trade barbs and blind foolery with logic and fact when I have debates at cocktail parties and family events. One thing I have noticed: of all the people supporting this nonsense, they truly “believe” in AGW. Science is not about beliefs. Science is about facts, data, theories. It is about right and wrong. There is no truth that an electron fills certain states around a nucleus. Drude Theory was thought right in explaining electron gas in metals. It was shown to be wrong. Nothing wrong with that, we from the world of physics understand failure and move forward.
That is the core of the problem. People want to believe in something, so they believe in this AGW nonsense. They cannot believe in a God, or at least a Christian god, so they follow this golden cow. Now that the flimsy flimflam is falling apart, they do not want to be seen as a failure. Most of these have never really experienced it, so to find out that all the mercury filled light bulbs that cost more to manufacture than incandescents CFLs are nothing more than a crock of stinky, they risk implosion.
I am not a man of religion, but have noticed that we are really seing a distorted version of Galileo’s trial. Here we open-minded individuals who question man-made computer programs lacking to incorporate all the laws of physics, let alone models of cloud cover, generated by those who spout fear and the end of the world due to a 1/10,000th change in a molecule consumed by organic life forms, are now in Galileo’s seat. We are being charged with the fact that we believe the sun is the central force in our universe of atmospheric control and not Man. They, the believers of their new Gaian religion, AGW, are trying us of EcoHeresy. Man is central. Well, Western man. Everyone else gets a reprieve for now.
They are going to lead us all to the new land of prosperity and harmony after they blacklist and rid all those who dare question their models and programs. Just do not lift up the curtain and look for where in the models the Second Law of Thermodynamics is used. It is not.
They are selling a perpetual motion machine. Everyone wants to fall for it because it is the free forever approach.
Thank you for one of the best posts I have seen on this subject. The reference to Galileo’s trial was particularly apt. Amazing how blind the eco-facists are to their own logic.
I’m with you chambers, JDubya did a heck of a job (sorry couldn’t help it). Short sweet and simple. It’s the sun, stupid! JDub, can I suggest you change your handle ’cause, you know, the warmists will only make a point of your name and not read what you write. They are kinda’ like liberals that way. Just kidding. Excellent post!
What chambers said. Wow!
Dear Dr. Tipler,
As #183, I am also honored to be on this list, but I must quibble with your description of the sequence being “in order of scientific credentials.” There are several folks I know well (Greg Canavan, Harold Agnew, Dean Judd) who are far more qualified than I, but are listed later.
Keep up the good work!
David
I’m reminded of Wizard’s First Rule:
I would like to thank you also, Dr. Tipler, and also those great hackers that retrieved and made public the information that broke this silly fraud wide open.
It seems to me that there are some people willing to fall for almost anything, and those looking to exploit their naivete. Within this subset of rubes are those that apparently jump on the bandwagon, the ‘consensus’, because it makes them feel superior to those not in the ‘popular’ group. They are among the very last to accept the truth that they were scammed.
There is a significant amount of evidence that this data was not hacked, but rather leaked by an insider.
As a scroll down and read all these comments, I shake my head at all the lefties who honestly believe conservative are nothing but a bunch of stupid knuckle-draggers. Once you all started rolling out your solid scientific data, it was interesting to see all the trolls disappearing into the night. This truly is an amazingly interesting and highly educated group of readers.
Unfortunately, not all of them have fled. A few remain to try and form a rearguard action.
Freeman Dyson’s only qualm with AGW as it exists today, are the models’ inability to account for certain factors. He certainly doesn’t dispute that it’s real or caused by man burning fossil fuels. So what gives? Why is he on this list? For another reason?
The fact that he questions the accuracy of the models is enough.
Anyone who disagrees with the notion that the models have proven that temperatures are going to rise catestrophically unless we do something drastic, now, qualifies for this list.
My husband is a chemist in the pharma industry. He drives his bosses insane because he steadfastly follows the science and refuses to waste time and money pursuing avenues the science doesn’t dictate. His name is on 3 patents, a slew of published articles, and a couple of blockbuster drugs. He also thinks AGW is a crock and would be pleased to see his name on such a list!
I dare any AGW believer to go to YouTube and watch with an open mind the two part interview with Freeman Dyson on global warming. I double-DOG dare you. With an open mind.
Fascinating stuff.
My summary of what he said would be that CO2 could be a serious problem because of its effect on ozone depletion in the Arctic, but he believes that once we understand the CO2 intake/output phenomenon from various areas, that we can control CO2 levels with land management, not restrictions on coal and oil.
I’m sure that righties will welcome potential land management proscriptions/restrictions with open arms, right?
Land management has always been the real issue. We destroy CO2 sinks (forests in Brazil) to grow sugar cane (for ethanol). Not to mention the cooling effect of forest ecology.
Likely that any global warming would max out and swing the other way if we let nature take its course, even if CO2 were the culprit its made out to be.
Since I don’t accept that enhanced CO2 is a problem, why should I agree to do anything to limit CO2?
Enhanced CO2 is making the world greener and healthier. We need more CO2, not less.
What a load of crap! Do you shovel what you peddle? Get over yourself already. Climategate was perpetuated by global warming deniers like yourself and many of your uninformed commentators. Have fun living within ~30 meters of sea level!
Was that an attempt at sarcasm? If so, it wasn’t all that well done.
“Do you shovel what you peddle?” What the heck is that supposed to mean?
Last time I checked, the oceans were many miles deep, so why should an ocean less than 100 feet deep be much of an issue?
I recently took a university class where a group of students had to design and run their own experiment relating to the environment and ecology. I found that many groups decided to use elevated CO2 and temperature levels as their experimental factors. However, it often wasn’t because they honestly believed that global warming was an urgent problem, but because they knew that it would be easier to find lots of other published scientific material to justify the factors, and because it would appeal to the board approving our proposals, making it more likely they would get the grant to start their project.
It’s very sad to watch the whole direction of scientific inquiry forced to march in lockstep like this, instead of encouraging people to put such beliefs to the test.
Number 56,63, and 65 nice take on events.
All in all this seems to be less about Science than it is about Strategy.
Look at some of the references made during skirmishes just here – ad hominem, straw man, false dichotomy, someone is doing their homework, but not quite enough. To start with the article is in reference to an act of propaganda. The reference on Alinsky is telling. But look at the other side of the coin, less than 2% seem to be able to sway public opinion – dangerous people right – but have they exploited that such that the other 98% are not in a position to control “the science” anymore. No of course not because the game is bigger and has more players and coalitions and more is at stake than science. This would not be the first time a “business” has been started up because of a lie or a law. Or maybe better said, it’s not the first war on science. From the Galileo faction – me signing off.
In AGW, CO2 is not the cause of the warming. It’s a “forcing” agent and supposedly it traps heat, which “forces” more water vapor, which forces more CO2, which results in more water vapor, until one day, we are all boiling. It’s not about climate change, it’s about socialism and control over energy. If you control energy, you control everybody and everything. It’s that simple.
When somebody says something like, “stopping climate change” or keeping the temp within “2 degrees”, I know, either these people are freakin crazy as a loon, gullible as possible, or has an agenda which is so great, they do know care if some think them total fools….such as getting millions of $ in govt. grants.
Before they try to stop climate change or control global temperature, I suggest they start out with something small, like stopping a tornado or a Cat 3 hurricane, or just a small thunderstorm. Get some practice before taking on the big stuff!
Dr. Tipler,
Congratulations! Please keep up the good work. I’m taking a look at your “Crackpot Physics” article, it looks to be an enjoyable and informative read.
They’re making a list,
they’re checking it twice,
they’re gonna find out
who’s naughty and nice:
Satan’s cads are stealing the globe.
Now thats a BADGE of honor. can i get a t shirt with the list?
W
The thing that scares me about the AGW hoax is that there *are* things we can and have done to permanently damage the environment (e.g. extinctions). I worry about deforestation, for instance, and wish there was someone studying whether there is an objective “point of no return” that we need to stay far away from. But all the grant money is in the AGW hoax, so precious little real environmental science gets done.
I used to contribute to Nature Conservancy, whose focus was on solid research to efficiently protect biodiversity, but they’ve jumped on the AGW bandwagon.
I loved “Garbage” magazine, a very politically incorrect environmental journal edited by Patricia Poore, which mysteriously stopped publishing late ’90s (my subscription was changed to “Outdoor” magazine). I haven’t found out what happened to her yet.
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There is obviously a lot to know on this topic. I think you made some good points here also. Keep up the great work!