Posted on 12/05/2013 12:19:03 PM PST by Kaslin
Back in 2006, around the time Al Gore's global-warming documentary, "An Inconvenient Truth," was released, I started a file labeled "What Climate Consensus?" Gore was insisting that "the debate among the scientists is over," and only an ignoramus or a lackey for the fossil-fuel industry could doubt that human beings were headed for a climate catastrophe of their own making. But it didn't take much sleuthing to discover that there was plenty of debate among scientists about the causes and consequences of global warming. Many experts were skeptical about the hyperbole of alarmists like Gore, and as I came across examples, I added them to my file.
The thicker that file grew, the more shrilly intolerant the alarmists became.
Over and over the True Believers insist that their view is not just widely accepted in the scientific community, but virtually unanimous apart from some crackpots. Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, has likened doubters to members of a Flat Earth Society. CBS news reporter Scott Pelley, asked why his "60 Minutes" broadcasts on global warming didn't acknowledge the views of skeptics, reached for an even more wounding comparison: "If I do an interview with Elie Wiesel, am I required as a journalist to find a Holocaust denier?"
It seems to make no difference that those challenging the doomsday narrative include some of the world's most distinguished scientists, or that numerous experts in climatology and related earth sciences have repeatedly gone public with their critiques. To climate ideologues, they're invisible. "Ninety-seven percent of scientists agree: #climate change is real, man-made and dangerous," President Obama tweeted in May.
Really? That's not what the American Meteorological Society learned from a recent survey of its professional members. Only a bare majority, 52 percent, said that climate change is mostly being driven by human activity. Scientists with a "liberal political orientation" were much more likely to regard global warming as human-caused and harmful, the survey's authors found — in fact, as a predictor of respondents' views on global warming, ideology outweighed greater expertise. "This would be strong evidence against the idea that expert scientists' views on politically controversial topics can be completely objective," the authors observe.
In that light, consider the findings of a new study published in the journal Nature Climate Change. Of 117 global warming predictions generated by climate-model simulations, all but three "significantly" overestimated the actual amount of warming that occurred during the past 20 years. The models typically forecast that global surface temperature would rise by more than twice as much as it did.
Why would so many scientists have relied on models that turned out to be so wrong? The authors propose several plausible explanations — volcanic eruptions? solar irradiation? — but their bottom line is that climate science still has a long way to go: "Ultimately the causes of this inconsistency will only be understood after … waiting to see how global temperature responds over the coming decades."
That understanding won't be advanced one millimeter by ideologues who thunder that the "science is settled" and that anyone who challenges the current consensus is no better than a flat-earther or a Holocaust denier. Perhaps all those climate models wouldn't have been programmed to overpredict global warming if the pressure to conform to the alarmists' view weren't so pervasive.
In a classic 1955 lecture on "The Value of Science," the celebrated physicist (and future Nobel laureate) Richard Feynmann warned that science would be hobbled if it tried to stifle its doubters and skeptics. "If we want to solve a problem that we have never solved before, we must leave the door to the unknown ajar…. [D]oubt is not to be feared but welcomed and discussed."
Science isn't settled by majority vote, and invoking "consensus" to shut off debate is authoritarian and anti-scientific. There are always inconvenient truths to challenge what the majority thinks it knows. Ninety-seven percent of experts may be impressed with the emperor's new clothes. That's no reason to silence those who insist he's actually naked.
Of course it does.
Tomorrow we will take a vote on what the freezing point of water should be.
Wasn’t there a woman on city council somewhere who wanted to change the law of gravity if it got in the way of the business of governing?
It is the owners of the fossil fuel industry who are foisting this scam.
Start looking for a tax on ICE CUBES.
With those two facts in hand it borders on a level of stupid that needs to be hospitalized to say that a temp fluctuation of one or two degrees is something of evidential significance.
Yep, and I’m demanding that Pi be normalized to 3.0. It’s for the children.
Bang Zoom No Net!
Science and Democracy have nothing in common.
Science is based on objective testing of all ideas, which include speculations, assumptions, hypotheses and theories.
Democracy is based on the tribal emotion at the time of voting, nothing more.
Science requires all Scientists to prove themselves wrong, and requires all Scientists to prove each other wrong. After exhaustive futile testing, the hypothesis might be raised to the level of a Theory, but must be tested as additional evidence is made available.
Democracy is based on the winner take all tribal emotion that “my Tribe is better than your Tribe.”
Thank you Benjamin Franklin for giving us a Republic, not a Democracy.
What do we burn besides witches?
Wood!
So how do we tell if she’s made of wood?
She’ll float!
What else floats?
A Duck!
So if she weighs the same as a duck, she’s made of wood,
and therefore, a WITCH!
Democracy is based on the tribal emotion at the time of voting, nothing more.
BINGO!
Sounds to me like they are having a helluva lot of global warming out there in the Midwest.
Northwest, too. If global warming gets any worse around here we could be headed for double digits on the thermometer...
Stay safe and warm my FRiend.
The part about Obama saying 97% of scientists agreed with the AGW theory is of course just another Obama lie, due to data manipulation.
For example (from Cook et al cited in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surveys_of_scientists’_views_on_climate_change):
“They found that, while 66.4% of them expressed no position on anthropogenic global warming (AGW), of those that did, 97.1% endorsed the consensus position that humans are causing global warming.”
One way to describe this is that 33% of scientists publishing in the area agreed with AGW, 1% disagreed, and 66% expressed no opinion. But, even look at the survey question: “endorsed the consensus position,” hardly a neutral proposition.
Taking a vote on the freezing point of water: When you can conduct laboratory experiments, it is pretty easy to obtain consensus.
Regarding temperature change of a few degrees:
1. The AGW position was formerly the hockey stick position; that global temperature had been remarkably contrast for more than a thousand years prior to the industrial revolution. As you point out, this has been massively contradicted.
2. The problem with acknowledging that there is natural variation is clearly that this is a complex problem and nobody really knows. So, why is this such an urgent thing that countries are willing to sacrifice 30 percent of global GDP which, with the redistribution of the wealth part of Kyoto, forcing the people of the advanced economies of the world to bear the brunt of this reduction? It is because of the conjecture that global temperature is regulated by a stable equilibrium. That is, that once global temperature rises past a critical level, we will head to the state of Venus; and, conversely, if global temperature were to fall past a critical level, we would head to the state of Mars.
3. This conjecture cannot be proved true or false unless we conduct the experiment and the theoretical possibility that it true means we have to do whatever it takes, including population control, to avoid the experiment.
4. But, this is all hokum. Because this planet is populated by a rather intelligent and resourceful species, were we to notice the temperature spiraling upward, we would do whatever we had to to arrest the trend. Indeed, this is what we’ve been doing the past 30 years or so, since the alarmists shifted from being afraid of global cooling to being afraid of global warming. It is only because the rise of temperature has stopped, that the alarmist position has become something of an embarrassment. But, let’s do the thought experiment. What if global temperature had continued to rise these past 15 years? What if the Arctic ice pack had disappeared? What if the Himalaya became denuded of their snow caps?
5. As it is, I think if the AGW theory continued to appear to be true, the most efficient way to deal with it would be to build nuclear power plants (for electricity) and then piping the condensed steam inland so as to irrigate the vast deserts of the world (in Australia, southwestern U.S., Saudi Arabia and the Sahara) and plant trees to pull carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. But, hey, what do I know?
It is because of the conjecture that global temperature is regulated by a stable equilibrium.
I mean “not regulated.”
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