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Belief systems: Proving or disproving AGW — 111 Comments

1. Even if one were to stipulate that AGW exists, reasonable people could disagree about what to do about it.

2. For a not small percentage of people it’s not a belief system at all but instead just going along with the perceived cool kids.

3. A good source is Dr Judith Curry, formerly a climate researcher at Georgia Tech…felt that the environment in academia had become so politicized that it was difficult to do good research or teaching there:

   https://judithcurry.com/

4. It sort of depends on whether you agree that the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age really existed.

   Here, for example, is an opinion that the Medieval Warm Period is a “Myth.”

   The evidence of farming on Greenland is ignored.

   Wikipedia doubts the Little Ice Age.

   The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Third Assessment Report considered that the timing and the areas affected by the Little Ice Age suggested largely independent regional climate changes, rather than a globally synchronous increased glaciation. At most, there was modest cooling of the Northern Hemisphere during the period.[11]

   This is convenient because only Europe has written records available.

   On the other hand, there is serious evidence in China.

   The period is traditionally defined as the early 14th century through the mid 19th century, although regions strongly impacted during this time greatly varied on the timeline. The Yuan dynasty and the Ming dynasty are two distinguished Chinese dynastic cycles that both fell during peaks of the Little Ice Age in China.

   Well, there you are. Personally, I think we were warming after 1850 to about 1950 and it has stopped. I also am concerned that cooling has begun. The lunatics running our country right now are trying to destroy civilization in hopes of stopping a mythical warming that has been driven (the myth that is) by government funding of biased research based on political theories.

5. …Judith Curry. I find her perspective fair, open-minded, and refreshing.
   –neo

   Indeed. And “Scientific American,” while pretending to be an advocate of “civil conversation,” smeared her as a “Climate Heretic” and intellectual thug.

   –“Climate Heretic: Judith Curry Turns on Her Colleagues:
   Why can’t we have a civil conversation about climate?”
   https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/climate-heretic/

   The article was a disgrace. One can no longer read the article without paying for it. I would prefer the article — and SciAm’s shame — remained freely available.

6. Griffin…”For a not small percentage of people it’s not a belief system at all but instead just going along with the perceived cool kids.”

   Yep. And there are others who made not really have the belief themselves, but believe it is necessary to *appear* if they do, if they want to be able to attract millennials and younger as customers and/or employees; this category includes a lot of F500 CEOs and other executives. (I suspect that some of them have been influenced by their own children and (in the case of male executives) their wives, and believe that the Green ideology is more widespread than it actually is, which is already plenty)

   And some just think the people in their countries are living too well. Germany’s new agriculture minister, for instance, wants food prices to be higher so that people will appreciate the value of food.

   https://www.rt.com/business/544609-germany-food-prices-inflation/

7. We cannot “prove” anything that has not yet happened. I think people who are equivocal about AGW ignore the obvious because they think, hope and fear that AGW may turn out to actually occur in the distant future. Never mild the cyclical nature of weather. Our low tonight will be in the 60s, and in two days it will be 30 degrees. Aghh! Call Bjorn Lomborg. Help us Mr. Biden, by spending trillions we do not possess, just on the off chance the earth will become 0.5 degrees warmer in forty or fifty years. Depends on your computer model and we all know GIGO is rampant.

8. There’s plenty of evidence that invalidates AGW. The polar bears are doing fine in the arctic. Anyone remember the climate morons ship that had to be rescued during the Antarctic’s summer? With the first rescue ship also getting frozen and having to be rescued as well? There hasn’t been an increase in global temperature in 20 years. A mind objectively looking at all of this would, at the very least, declare it to be an unproven hypothesis.

   So why the insistence? First and for most, a cause to which devotion gives their life meaning i.e. the Greta Thunbergs . Second, a revenue generating device ‘scientists’ Al Gore. Thirdly, a lever from which power can be gained (globalists).

9. Mike K:

   No, it doesn’t.

   I’ve read many AGW proponents who believe those things existed but for different reasons, and that something different is going on now.

10. This is the simplest I understand it.
    The planet has been warming between 1860 and 2000, by 1.9 Celsius.
    .4 Celsius of that warming is attributable to “human activity”.
    “Human activity” can be expressed as “energy consumption”.
    In 1860 humans used 100kg of coal equivalents per year, per person.
    In 2000 humans used 2000kg of coal equivalents per year, per person.
    That is a 20X increase in energy consumption per person.
    Additionally, there were 1B people on planet earth in 1860.
    In 2000 there were little more than 6B people for a 6X increase.
    Those factors combine to show a 120X increase in “human activity”.
    Therefore there is an increase of 120X in human activity which (according to the science!) results in a 0.4 degree increase in temperature.
    The climate is remarkably insensitive to changes in “human activity.”

11. The AGW arguments are generally stupid. We don’t know what temperature the “Earth” is supposed to be. The “Earth” is a big place. I live in an area that was covered by a mile of ice 10,000 years ago. Getting rid of petroleum-fueled cars and planes is truly insane. The pollution from cars is often matched by the pollution from volcanos, which can’t be controlled. The continents are always slipping and sliding and subducting, affecting ocean currents. They used to grow grapes in England, etc. etc. There are so many examples of climate changes in the short term (hundreds of years), longer term (thousands of years), and millions of years (I own an evergreen fossil I retrieved in Antarctica). Of course we have climate change, but turning us into serfs who live on insects will not prevent climate change. Making people like me ride bicycles will not prevent climate change.

12. So one doesn’t know who to believe, the A’s or the B’s.

    The B’s are always complaining that the A’s won’t engage with them at all, whereas the A’s call the B’s bad names such as “deniers”, and say they won’t dignify them by talking to them, even if on paper the B’s seem quite qualified. And the A’s never seem quite clear about exactly what it is they are claiming or what the B’s are denying. The A’s claim to be “the science”, but nothing they say sounds like science.

    The A’s don’t seem to see any difference between “the science” and policy prescriptions. The policy prescriptions seem to be both very severe and incredibly vague at the same time. THEY can do whatever they like, as long as they pay some vague fine, but the rest of us must make ever growing sacrifices.

    The A’s are happy to have bizarre choices of spokesmen, such as ignorant schoolgirls who keep screaming at us.

    For the A’s, it eventually all comes down to a paper that almost none of them have read and that has been hugely criticized, that claims that 98% of some vague group agree with some vague thing.

    So who to believe?

13. Mike K:

    No, it doesn’t.

    Maybe so but both were missing from Michael Mann’s “Hockey Stick.”

    it eventually all comes down to a paper that almost none of them have read and that has been hugely criticized, that claims that 98% of some vague group agree with some vague thing.

    97% of scientists agree with whoever is funding their grants.

14. Whenever the AGW debate comes up, I like to bring up the Urban Heat Island Effect on temperature measurements. Imagine Dallas now, with vast concrete roads and parking lots verses 100 years ago.
    Some years ago a friend of a friend, boasted on Facebook that he had “ peer reviewed” some AGW paper.
    So I challenged him to explain how the model he supposedly “ peer reviewed” accounted for feedback loops on future temps when climate change would be effecting plant growth rates and thus CO2 absorption. He would not engage or discuss how the model that he “ peer reviewed” dealt with changing plant growth rates. All he wanted to do was deny there was any feed back loop with plants, positive or negative, with changing climate.
    I took that to mean his supposed “ peer reviewed” model just ignored plant growth rates entirely.
    Some model.

15. Global warming, vaccines, mask usage, and the like decay into social markers for that segment of the adult population for whom high school never ends. In regard to vaccines and mask use, this occurred with astonishing rapidity. The issue is never the issue.

    There’s resistance among the rest of us because we’re all familiar with people peddling the idea that you must submit to some clerisy, peddling it in venues large and small, and moving on to some other excuse once the current one isn’t selling anymore. As long as the peddlers are getting government grants, professional appointments, and favorable coverage in outlets like New Scientist, it’s still selling.

16. I believe my own eyes been on this earth 60+ years and there is no AGW that amounts to anything! And study the lies and obfuscation from the greenies with a disprovable theory of doom without any realistic solutions.

    Happy New Year! I hope we can make it to the other side with this bunch of morons running things.

17. Scientific American used to be mostly about science and engineering for the non-scientist or non-engineer (30 + years ago); now it is political “science and engineering.”

    Who was the geneticist that Stalin and the Soviets trotted out, Lysenco? Mann is just as bad, whores for funding. Green on the outside, red through and through.

18. “But I can’t prove anyone right or wrong in this debate.”

    No one can. But you can look at the geophysical history of the Earth and look to observations (as opposed to modeling) to try to figure out what is probable. To short cut all this, I’ll observe that climate change is real and has throughout the geophysical history of Earth NOT been caused by humans. In general, when things get warm, that has been good for humans. When it gets cold, that has been bad. The last 1000 years have been the coolest millennium in the last 10,000 years, largely because of the Little Ice Age from 1300-1850. It has been getting a little bit warmer since 1850. Observation indicates that since 1850, the ocean levels have risen about 12 inches per century, a noticeable but easily managed rise, and lost amidst the noise from land rising and sinking as human development occurs. But look at the Netherlands. Most of the country is below sea level, and the Dutch are among the most prosperous people in the world.

    What to make of this? Things will change, and common sense should tell us that we are going to like it a lot less when the weather turns cold than we like it when things are warm. Human intelligence and adaptability are wonderful things. But prudent people should look to how to survive and prosper in cold as well as warm. And we run great risks if we spend our wealth in futile efforts to cool the Earth through the reduction of CO2.

    Everything that is being discussed to “address climate change” would have very little real effect, but would be very expensive. The climate discussion right now is hopelessly polluted with politics.

19. Every talk about climate change is really about the weather. The climate at the time
    of the dinosaurs is different from our present climate Climate is long rane while weather is short term. Our atmosphere is way too complex to be explained by such simple terms.

20. “…and that something different is going on now.”

    Ah, yes. This time it is different. Could be. Maybe it is better. In fact, I think it is. CO2 makes the plants grow faster.

21. AGW is an hypothesis for which there is little evidence other than computer models, which have been proven wrong over time. AGW has not been proven by a preponderance of the evidence let alone by clear and convincing evidence or beyond a reasonable doubt, the standard that should be met before we began undermining our economy and society with CO2 reduction mandates. What a waste. We have real problems. AGW is not one of them.

22. “and something different is going on now.”

    Because “I” am alive now and therefore all the data from the previous 10,000 years, much less from the Pliestocene, mean nothing.

    It’s always about me and now. Unless I am forecasting the future and what I will do to change it. Especially so if I can profit from it (Mann and Science, Inc.,) or use it to coerce others ….

23. “I believe my own eyes been on this earth 60+ years and there is no AGW that amounts to anything!”

    Interesting, because I’ve definitely heard from people in that age group that the seasons in the northeastern U.S. used to consistently follow the more expected pattern. Cold fall, even colder winter, warm spring. When it doesn’t get cold until mid-November, there are 50+ degree days in January, and the cool weather persists until late April, they find it unusual.

    But I looked up some temperature records and found that if you pick a particular winter date, and look back through random years, you do see considerable variation in temperature. If you go back several decades, you can see in some years it was in the 20’s on January 1st, and in some years it got up to the 50’s. In recent years, we’ve had some days in mid-February that get quite warm and it startles people, but if you go back through weather records you can see that it’s happened before. People seem to perceive that things are changing much more dramatically than they really are.

24. As a quick rule of thumb, I tend to accept theories that most scientists believe. I make an exception when there’s clearly something wrong, and I investigate, and my doubts can’t be resolved. At that point I may become convinced that the “consensus” is wrong, or merely that it’s unproven. In the case of AGW, I call it unproven though still possible. Where I completely part ways is with conclusions about what should be done during our present state of faulty knowledge, particularly considering the cost (both out-of-pocket and opportunity costs) of the proposed solutions.

    Mostly I think that the consensus completely fails to deal with the concept of whether the assumed positive greenhouse gas feedback mechanism exists at all, and certainly whether it exists at the assumed size. It seems to me to remain entirely possible that the feedback mechanism is negative, and that that explains why the models’ predictive capacity has been so disappointing. The models wouldn’t perform the way the progressives want if you just fed in standard greenhouse gas formulas. To get them to work, you have to assume what they called a “forcing” factor, i.e., a feedback mechanism.

25. They claim to be able to predict the temperature 50 years from now within one degree – I forget whether that’s Farenhit or centipede. How come they can’t predict the temperature next month?

26. The climate-change or AGW debate is interesting to think about in the sense that it could be said to be one of the first occasions in history in which what we could call a primarily scientific subject attained a level of life-changing importance for a whole lot of people. Whether or not we think that assignment of such weight is merited, it is clear that a ton of people have come to believe that it is. And, more to the point, a lot of governments and rulers have come to believe that it is. I can’t think of a scientific subject that was viewed as being so important to everyday life by so many people before. Maybe atomic power, nuclear weapons, pollution were like this in terms of having a similar mass psychological significance, but I wonder if this is different.

    I bring it up in this way because, before the first half of the twentieth century, roughly, people in general weren’t conscious enough of ‘science’ in the day-to-day to make it politically important. Surely nobody in the seventeenth century was making political decisions based on Newton having elucidated F = m*a, for example.

    So what you have now with AGW is a scientific topic – that is to say, one that could in principle be treated on a purely scientific basis, that means experiment, statistical analysis, etc. – that has taken on a political embodiment or reification in the daily life of Joe Average. But there is such a high barrier of entry to the subject in terms of understanding of physics, atmospheric chemistry, statistics, etc. that Joe Average has no realistic hope of understanding it.

    Thus, we have a terrible situation of Joe Average, the citizen, the voter, being put in a position of thinking (or being told to think) that this topic is terribly, decisively important – the “most important challenge of our time” that we keep hearing from the Marionette on down – while at the same time, a real understanding of the subject is hopelessly beyond Joe Average’s reach. Is there any better recipe for political despair in a democracy?

27. It might help you to spend a bit of time with Tony Heller’s videos on NewTube: newtube.app/TonyHeller

    Tony doesn’t really “argue” – instead he shows you government graphs from 20 years ago v. the “same graphs” from today, and they’ve been massively changed.

    Then he looks at the government reported average temps from the ’20s (low) and compares that to 1920s newspaper stories showing massive heat waves, etc.

    There’s a lot more there, and I think it will help you make up your mind. It appears to me that the Covid scare is very much like the Warming scare.

    Good Luck

28. I have a simple test for AGW and other things. If the Left believes it and is pushing it as a means to gain more power for government then I reject it out of hand. Especially when they keep changing the terms/names as one becomes a joke. Anthropogenic Global Warming is no longer the term of choice because it became a bad joke.

    I was around and on the Left when the “Green” movement was started as a means to destroy what the Left calls capitalism but what is really free enterprise. They love capitalism, just as they love slavery, when the only entity doing it is the State.

29. Neo: Agree about “Watts Up With That” –a very active site with lots of good back-and-forth in the comments, and a huge set of links to other resources. Anthony Watts is IMHO a hero of climate science simply because he insists on data and transparency. Rude, I know: but actually useful as the starting point.

    Also agree, even more strongly, about Judith Curry. She is just great: highly educated and widely read in her field (which is, surprise, climatology), and –no less important– very measured and temperate in her remarks. She has also gained credibility with me for building a successful business about local/regional weather/seasonal activity: this is the scale at which people will pay for information, whereas this week’s Doppler for thunderstorms is already covered by the weather service, and the huge panic-mongering claims about melting icecaps in 2100 are neither relevant nor, frankly, credible.

    Final point: so much of the Junk Science is a kind of quasi-religion which illegitimately seeks additional authority from credulous (science-intimidated? lazy?) readers and listeners. Do not be deceived.

30. Geoffb @ 10:55: “They love capitalism, just as they love slavery, when the only entity doing it is the State.”

    Capitalism by definition is competition: a State cannot supply it. Capitalism is the mechanism by which resources are attracted to the highest social use. If my Widget pleases people more, I gain market share, and that gain is vital information to me (and the market) on what pleases people, rewarding me but also teaching my competitors what’s wanted.

    This process is always guesswork but iterative (and quickly so, especially with nimble players) and the market actually discovers preferences while the State, through its bureaucrats at Central Widget Planning, can only impose them: which is not in fact preference at all.

    Huge difference.

31. Neo and Mike K: how deeply have you dug into the work done by Ross McKittrick and Steve McIntyre on the hokey stick (sic)? Preposterous and manipulative nonsense. And that doesn’t even get us to the issue of models that invariably return a hockey stick signal regardless of the data entered.

32. Phillip Sells: “But there is such a high barrier of entry to the subject … that Joe Average has no realistic hope of understanding it.” But a decent HS or college background in physics and chemistry can give you sufficient background [heat balance, gas laws, etc.] to understand the criticisms leveled by selected “skeptical” experts against their consensus driven scientific colleagues. Basically, the models DO NOT match observed measurements. Strictly speaking, all it takes is ONE sufficiently credentialled or believable skeptic on any evidence based topic (scientific, economic, historical, even perhaps legal?) to potentially refute a “consensus position”. In a sane world, such a skeptical charge would demand a meaningful examination of his argument and presentation of counter evidence if he is mistaken, misunderstood the issue, etc. Or grudging acceptance that the criticism has some merit.

    For AGW we now have dozens of such credentialled skeptics (Steve Koonin: Unsettled; Roy Spencer; Judith Curry; Fred Singer; Anthony Watt, et al.). We may not understand the details in the real scientific papers and model design discussions, but we can understand when these folks say something is not right, that we can and should slow down on policy actions meant to return us to a 1750’s life style [possibly including an oligarchic parliamentary system of governance].

    In addition to Koonin’s recent book, I came across and would recommend examining the work of the Heartland Institute (in Texas). They hold a yearly International Conference on Climate Change. The latest and 14th one was Oct. 15, 16, 17, 2021. The sets of keynote, scientific, and policy panel discussions are available via YouTube. Most of the presenters are older and retired or of non-academic backgrounds, so they are freer to truly speak their minds. Their graphics are also very helpful in understanding their critiques. And they are critiquing the latest 2021 IPCC Assessment Report #6, so they are addressing the latest on offer from the pro AGW-GHG camp.

    Earl, a friend of mine had just recently recommended examining Tony Heller’s work as well, so thank you for the additional endorsement to check him out.

33. And to augment Owen’s comment, Ross McKittrick gave a pitch at the Heartland Institute’s 14th conference (actually recorded in June, I believe) explaining that a 1999 paper providing a method of statistical analysis for climate data analysis was flawed. This 1999 paper is the foundation used by most climate investigators for almost all later climate data checking and confirmation of data regression and agreement. But McKittrick explains that the type of regression analysis needed is what he teaches to his first year economics students, and is commonly accepted in analyzing financial data. But the climate scientists were not educated about such methods and thus got it wrong.

34. shadow: “In recent years, we’ve had some days in mid-February that get quite warm and it startles people, but if you go back through weather records you can see that it’s happened before.”

    If “climate change” is real, then although the globe may be cooling some local area, there will be overall a solid gain in temps in most places.
    So it seems to me that virtually every day, regardless of season, you should be able to find a number, perhaps a large number of locations around the globe that have a record high temp for that day. It might be January and the temperature is pretty cold, it should still be a record high temp for that day.
    Because if the highest temp in the historical record is X and today’s temp is also X then you haven’t shown that there is a change happening. But if a bunch of global record temps are happening … now that would prove something.

35. And then there was Climategate. Hundreds of embarrassing emails demonstrating just how much of a racket AGW was and is.

36. The proofs against AGW offered here are not proofs either. I wonder how many people offering them have read extensively in the pro-AGW camp in addition to the anti. I have spent many a long hour – MANY – reading in both camps and each has some very convincing ways to explain itself and to debunk what the other is saying. For example, the Climategate emails which seem to obviously implicate the authors in lies are defended and explained in various ways that are at least somewhat plausible.

    The whole thing is more difficult and complicated than it seems if you just read one side or the other. For a long time I regularly exchanged emails with someone who does believe in AGW and is very very smart and well-informed about science, and that person made some good points. It is not at all a slam-dunk for either side.

    As I wrote earlier, I have settled on Judith Curry as my go-to person. Here are her reflections on Climategate, ten years later (2019).

37. AGW is simply irrefutable.
    It explains why global average temperatures go up.
    It likewise explains why global average temperatures go down.
    Most importantly, it explains why global average temperatures go up and then down…and vice-versa.
    (I’m not sure whether it explains why global average temperatures stay the same, should that ever be the case, but I have a hunch it does that, too….)
    Simply irrefutable (in a “follow-the-science” kind of way…).
    – – – – – – – – – –
    Regarding…
    “…Help us Mr. Biden, by spending trillions we do not possess…”
    …well, you can be sure “he” is doing his very best!…
    https://blazingcatfur.ca/2021/12/31/watch-this-its-only-2-minutes/

38. I think it time we addressed “addressing climate change”. It doesn’t mean anything.

39. Huxley – the article you refer to may be freely found here:

    “Climate Heretic: Judith Curry Turns on Her Colleagues:
    Why can’t we have a civil conversation about climate?”

    https://www.nature.com/articles/news.2010.577

40. Silly woman.
    “Why can’t we have a civil conversation about ANYTHING” should be rather obvious at this point…
    …given the utterly Manichaean “reality” that has been lovingly planted, nurtured and spread far and wide by our “betters”…

41. I wonder how many people offering them have read extensively in the pro-AGW camp

    Not any more. I did many years ago for avocational course work. I can give you the names of two faculty members I have known in meatspace both of whom are advocates of this thesis. One teaches at a research university in Virginia; he’s not a specialist in this particular subdiscipline, but others I’ve met in passing in his department are. The other teaches at a swank private college in New York and he is a specialist. I can tell you how they react to dissenting viewpoints. Not very impressive either one.

    The reality that (in the words of Steve McIntyre) the University of East Anglia chaps ‘lost control of their data’, that people like Lonnie Thompson have locked up their raw samples in warehouses, that the peer review process was corrupted, and that dissenters were subject to other species of professional harassment tells you its advocates do not want to argue and do not want to sit tight and wait for the actuarial tables to take care of the opposition. That smells of ‘sketchy thesis’.

    Faculty members tend to be people with orderly lives and they tend to be satisficers whose financial ambitions are quite circumscribed. They’re also the sort of people who invest in high art. That’s what’s good about them. They don’t have four kids by three different women, their children are not a trial for others, they don’t irritate the neighbors or the building inspector by allowing their property to rot, they don’t get into bar fights, they don’t keep divorce lawyers in business. Beyond a certain point, they cannot be bought. If they can save enough for a satisfactory retirement income, can save enough to finance the tertiary schooling of their semi-adult children, have a financial conduit to attend concerts and travel abroad now and again, and can afford tuition or can afford a neighborhood with satisfactory schools, they’re satisfied. A 1,300 sq foot condo and a 12 year old Toyota and secondhand clothes are fine for them. In a dozen different ways that do matter, they’re never the people making the world worse. And you have museums and you have a philharmonic because faculty members team up with old money and see to it you have them; they put money and sweat equity and influence into these institutions.

    That having been said, they’re clueless about and / or contemptuous of the non-faculty world even though they grew up in it. They’re often fundamentally supercilious people. They’re often deceitful and conniving. Much of what’s disgusting about Blue America emanates from faculty culture and from guild cultures adjacent to the faculty. The most intelligent people in America are the most other-directed and the most fashion-conscious, at least in reference to people they deem peers.

42. Art Deco…”The most intelligent people in America are the most other-directed and the most fashion-conscious, at least in reference to people they deem peers.”

    I think you mis-spelled ‘most credentialed’.

43. Neo, you seem to disregard the basic scientific notion that if a hypothesis is presented with a contrary single piece of evidence, then that hypothesis is then in question. In the case of AGW, there are so many pieces of evidence that go against the basic hypothesis, that at this point there is very little to support the basic idea. The burden lies with the hypothesis, not with the contrary evidence. As Einstein said, “No amount of data can ever prove my idea correct, but one piece of data can show it is wrong.” Science theories are NEVER proven, just supported by evidence until something comes along to change that. Why was everyone so excited about the Italians a decade or so ago when they seemed to have evidence of faster than light neutrinos? It was a chance to overthrow the cherished theory of Relativity. After much digging the measurement was found to be wrong. But, physicists were actually hoping to overturn a sacred theory as that is how we move on learning more about nature.

    The problem is that AGW was hijacked very early to be a political vehicle for power. If left as a purely scientific question, it collapsed long ago. AGW, or climate change, is now a religion where the dogma cannot be questioned in total opposition to the normal scientific process.

    I sent Kate my short paper outlining the evidence against the hypothesis, I can send it to you also if you wish. Just keep in mind Einstein’s statement, and that by another eminent physicist:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OL6-x0modwY

44. Owen,

    “Capitalism is the mechanism by which resources are attracted to the highest social use.”

    The USSR practiced “State Capitalism,” the State owned all the “Capital” and defined what was “the highest social use.” What you described is Free Enterprise. I was using the word Capitalism as it is used by the Left since their god, Marx, invented it.

45. Like most here, I’ve spent a lot of time reading arguments pro and con. Climate is an extremely complex subject and after diving fairly deeply I determined it’s not a subject I could master well enough to form a strong opinion regarding the AGW theory. Intelligent people spend decades studying it as their primary focus and there are still disagreements. What are the odds I’d find a new wrinkle studying it part time?

    So, then I thought, “What if I just cede the AGW alarmists their argument?” (Bjorn Lomberg and Michael Shellenberger have taken a similar approach.) The cure becomes worse than the disease. The cost and damage done by the proposals would be more detrimental to humans than letting the warming happen.

    So, then I thought, “What happens if we let it happen? Ignore it?” Humans will continue to innovate and improve. This is what humans do. Like most all animals, humans don’t like to live in their own sh*t. As societies develop to a level where most people in a community have their needs met they develop and adopt clever ways to mitigate filth and waste on the ground, in the air and in the water.

    What AGW alarmists (the non-political ones, at least) really want is for humans to pollute less. This has been happening since humans developed agriculture and will almost certainly continue as technological progress continues. We sometimes have periods of increased pollution as we work through some new innovations, but things always get cleaner and more efficient. Less waste.

    CFL light bulbs became available. I tried a couple. They were a headache when they broke. The light was too harsh. Their curly queue design was not aesthetic. LED’s became available. There was much I liked about the early ones but they were expensive and the light was not “warm.” Within a few years they were available at 1/10th the original price and in various color “warmths.” They give off far less heat, saving me money on air-conditioning. They last for 20 years, reducing my time climbing ladders. And, most importantly, they use far less electricity, saving me money on my utility bill. As incandescents burned out in my home I replaced them with LEDs until every bulb in the house was an LED. No government mandate or lecture from a pig-tailed, Nordic teen required.

    The air in London is no longer choked with coal dust. The streets of Philadelphia are no longer clogged with horse manure. The water in Lake Erie is no longer stained with toxic chemicals. It’s not really a “carbon” footprint we should be worried about, it’s humanities’ pollution footprint and that will undoubtedly continue to get better.

    Even if AGW is as bad as the most strident alarmist claims the way out is not back, but through. It’s what humans naturally do.

46. physicsguy,

    I know you’ve studied and understand the science much better than I, but another important piece that a few others have already brought up; the predictions made by the theory have not conformed with the theory. If you take the model used to make projections 20 years ago and plug in the real numbers observed over those 20 years they don’t fit the prediction.

47. neo

    For how extensively they plan on reordering society “somewhat plausible” isn’t enough. I may not understand the science but I can smell people trying to pull off a con from a mile away.

48. Dr. Douglas Hoyt, PhD atmospheric physics, used to keep a score card on the AGW predictions. He hasn’t updated it in over a decade but the AGW predictions were lousy.
    http://warwickhughes.com/hoyt/climate-change.htm

49. I think you mis-spelled ‘most credentialed’.

    There’s a distinction between ‘intelligent’, ‘capable’, and ‘articulate’. People who build their own business or perform well in combat are capable. They’re drawing on a full-spectrum of skills, not just ‘g’. Physicians and surgeons are more capable than faculty as they’re trained to work every day under more pressure than a faculty member will ever experience. Engineers are more capable as their trades have strict operational measures of competence.

    With some exceptions, faculty members have ample ‘g’ and, in their mundane life, tend not to have the sort of problems which are generated by short time horizons. That they’re credentialed doesn’t preclude ample intelligence. Being intelligent doesn’t mean you’re endowed with perspicacity. See the diversity discourse.

50. Generally, I don’t buy the A part of AGW at all, and whether GW is occurring or not is an issue beyond my and my children’s lifetime. My own opinion is human capability is far exceeded by what the Earth and Sun can do.

    That said, the best argument I’ve personally heard about AGW goes like this. Earth from an engineering standpoint can be seen as somewhat a closed system. We do lose some energy to space and gain some from the Sun, but otherwise, AGW must rely on energy spiking because of humans within this system to cause more heat. One way that happens is humans pulling stored potential energy from the ground and turning it into kinetic energy on the surface, which is essentially what the oil and gas industry does.

    As a matter of fact (collecting potential energy and converting to kinetic energy causes more warming), I agree with that argument. However, the same can be said about any given active volcano on the Earth. And following the argument through would suggest humans should stick to potential energy sources on the surface, such as trees (great for converting solar energy into potential energy) or whales (great for collecting solar energy converting plankton into a single storage location).

    I concur with physicsguy at 9:13am and how I tend to handle the argument is well described by Rufus at 9:49am. I try to explain to most people that solving AGW should be less about greener sources of energy and more about efficient use of that energy, with lightbulbs being one of the best commercial examples.

51. Wisdom and commonsense are the deciding factors when trying to understand complex issues like AGW. Intelligent people can process complex information without getting deep in the weeds of scientific data. The consensus argument doesn’t impress me. I agree with physicsguy: science advances when its data can be falsified (Karl Popper).Obviously science has been politicized. There are lots of reasons to be skeptical.

52. Rufus, Exactly. The GCMs predictions on temperature increase do not match the data. And it’s data from multiple sources of balloon and satellites. The problem lies in the feedback factor they use which tries to calculate the increase in water vapor greenhouse effect due to increasing CO2 levels. Even the IPCC has decreased the sensitivity factor for doubling of CO2 from about 3.5 degrees C to 1.5 degrees, but the models are still failing at the 2 sigma (95%) level.

    On the political/sociological side, it amazes me how one person can start or sustain a scientific fraud that takes over a society. Jim Hanson is the climate equivalent of Fauci. Though as he’s now 80, MIchael Mann has taken over the main role. Sad.

53. Speaking of WUWT, a nice post here about alarmists mis-representing the issue of plastics in the world’s oceans: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2022/01/01/yet-another-man-made-crisis/

54. I should have added, in my personal experience any time the issue of AGW has risen to a topic of debate I have always found the person raising the issue less informed than I.

    Small sample size: me.

    But 100% of the time I have encountered folks working it into conversation and raising concerns they have never known anything beyond rudimentary headlines or bumper sticker quotes on the subject. Once they understand I know facts and details better than they do they change the subject. None have ever expressed curiosity in learning more.

55. physicsguy,

    It is also sad that there is not a ubiquitous and pervasive outcry among scientists lampooning Mann for his refusal to release all his data. Any scientist should find such behavior disturbing and alarming. Anathema to the fundamental principles of the scientific method. Mann may be correct (he’s not), but regardless of the answer, all scientists should be repulsed by his secrecy.

56. The global statistic has little significance to regional and local climate patterns and weather events. A component of climate change occurs when there is sustainable divergence from a natural range (excluding impulse events) over a 30-year period.

57. n.n,

    Precisely why this is such a great tool for any nefarious operators using it for political or economic purposes. By the time one has the answer decades of political and/or economic change have occurred. Any short-term events that don’t adhere to the theory can be ignored (although they never hesitate to use short-term events fitting their data as irrefutable, concrete evidence).

58. Several thoughts by someone who is not a physics guru, but focuses on what the actual data show and what the political forces have done to corrupt the data for the obvious reasons. The argument that CO2 is the control knob for our climate is belied by one of the best geologic records, the Vostok ice cores. Every rise of CO2 in geologic time on average is preceded by a rise in temperature by about 800 years. In other words the theory is backwards from the geological evidence. The politics is most obvious in the government alteration of its own historical temperature records. The current government data does not reflect what is well documented at the time where temperatures were recorded without politics in mind. The government would have you believe that things have never been warmer in the USA, when a simple check at Wikipedia regarding the record high temperatures historically by state reflects that a plurality were recorded in the 1930’s, a time when atmospheric CO2 was significantly lower than the current time.

59. It is also sad that there is not a ubiquitous and pervasive outcry among scientists lampooning Mann for his refusal to release all his data.

    He hasn’t disclosed who is financing his lawsuits either. He has a judgement against him issued by a Canadian court; at last glance, he hadn’t paid the opposing parties the money they’re owed.

60. one thing to remember in all the AGW frufurall is back when it was global cooling that was gonna kill us, the solutions were always the same thing as they give for Global Warming, and none would actually do what they want. Also, their proclamations have the habit of never coming about, so the goalposts get moved.
    Or as was the case with the signs in Glacier Park, get removed and memory-holed.
    They also started refusing to show their work after people good with numbers and familiar with modeling found their numbers and models garbage.

61. Believing, or not, is not a science based approach. The data either confirm the hypothesis or they do not. Consensus is opinion, not science. Computer models are not data. People expressing their beliefs about AGW or Covid or whatever are not engaging in a discussion of the facts. They are often attempting to shut down discussion.

    Watts Up With That is a very good forum on AGW and Climate Science.

62. The dominant “earth-warming” gas is not CO2.
    It is water vapor.
    What are we going to do about that?

63. Neo wrote: “I wonder how many people offering them have read extensively in the pro-AGW camp in addition to the anti.”

    I first became aware of the AGW hypothesis when I wrote a series of environmental papers on acid rain, the ozone hole, and global warming (as it was known then) for my high school biology class in 1985. For another 20 years or so I followed the issue fairly closely. But there came a time when I stopped paying specific attention to the “pro” camp (and not a whole lot of attention the the “anti” camp as well). I think I had valid reasons.

    1) After 20 years, I wasn’t seeing much of anything new, just more and more of the same arguments.

    2) The “pro” camp was largely disingenuous. When I got into a discussion and it became clear to the other side I had actually studied the issue, either the subject was dropped entirely, or I was denounced as a Nazi “raping the Earth.” I realized then that the issue was political (almost religious) and not scientific.

    3) Historical source data useful to an engineer to figure out for himself what was actually happening began to disappear or, worse, were altered. (e.g. temperatures in datasets were reduced for the 1930s and increased for the 1990s).

    4) The details were no longer important to my engineering prescription concerning the issue. Even if true, AGW was likely to be beneficial to mankind (longer growing seasons, greater crop yields) and the few downsides could be easily mitigated against.

    5) Geological and biological timescales are completely swamped by technological timescales. Even if true, the worst effects of AGW won’t happen for centuries, but within a century or two a sizable proportion of humanity will be living in O’Neill cylinders in space with an artificial climate set to whatever the inhabitants desire.

    I will admit that my positions on the issue are not typical for either side, but they are formed by careful thought and not an insignificant amount of study on the issue (in college I majored in engineering and minored in social science specifically so I could study issues like these).

    It’s unfortunate that the issue has become so political, because if the politicians don’t screw things up, the next two centuries of humanity’s growth are going to be amazing.

    It certainly does look like they’re going to screw things up, though.

64. Owen, I have read quite a bit of both.

    The climate-change or AGW debate is interesting to think about in the sense that it could be said to be one of the first occasions in history in which what we could call a primarily scientific subject attained a level of life-changing importance for a whole lot of people.

    The judge deciding to Guillotine Lavoisier, the world’s greatest chemist, said “The Republic has no need for scientists.”

    I was interested and weakly pro-AGW until the UEA computer scandal. Then my opinion changed.

    My own background is as an engineer and surgeon, not a climate scientist, but I know enough to know that climate science is totally observational, the least scientific branch of science.

65. one thing to remember in all the AGW frufurall is back when it was global cooling that was gonna kill us, the solutions were always the same thing as they give for Global Warming, and none would actually do what they want.

    We can check the literature. I don’t recall any ‘solutions’ being offered in academic or popular literature. (One of the papers on ‘global cooling’ was published in Science and had Carl Sagan on its chain of authors). My recollection is that it was just a fragment of the panic porn of the era. Back then, the main current of panic porn pitched to the professional-class was a conjoined environmental / economic catastrophe and promoted by the Club of Rome, Paul Ehrlich, and Garret Hardin. The more vernacular panic porn consisted of the evening news’ business reports (rendered in novel form as The Crash of ’79) and derivatives of dispensational eschatology (The Late Great Planet Earth). Then there was a run of years (approx 1979-84) where politico-military panic porn was in vogue at several levels. (See The Day After). One series of conversations I alluded to above was with a climatologist who was the issue of Michigan State. He and I are about the same age. I was burned out on all the panic porn, but he’d sunk money into the General Circulation Model he’d recently acquired and responded to resistance with annoyance.

66. “Belief systems” as applied to the Covid narrative:
    “Only The Most Brainwashed ‘True Believers’ Will Cling To The Failed Narrative”—
    https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/its-2022-and-pandemic-over

    Clearly, there is a connection between belief in AGW and the orchestrated response to Covid.

    Related:
    “How to Break Free of Fear Addiction”—
    https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2022/01/02/how-to-overcome-fear-addiction.aspx

    Key grafs:
    ‘In his book “United States of Fear,” psychiatrist Mark McDonald diagnoses the U.S. as suffering from mass delusional psychosis, driven by an irrational fear of what is now a rather innocuous virus.
    ‘The fearful overreaction didn’t have its origin in what happened in 2020. Government, corporations and powerful individuals have engaged in a systematic “grooming” effort toward irrational fear addiction for decades
    Without fear, they cannot rob us of our freedoms.
    ‘The underlying motivation of this psychological campaign has been an attack on the core structures, foundations and institutions of society in order to nurture a sense of dependency on government.
    ‘To overcome their addiction to fear, a person must still have a sense of curiosity and be willing to look at new information. If they’re not, they’re not treatable and cannot be stopped from trading their (and our) freedom for a false sense of security. So, the key is finding those who are still open and receptive to new information, so that we can reach a tipping point where there are more fearless people than fear addicted ones.’

67. Neo:

    Frankly, I’m surprised and disappointed in you. Did you forget your Latin? Cui bono!

    The Libs benefit from CAGW and that’s why I call it a scam. In fact, it is the greatest scam in the history of the world. It is a daisy chain of corruption and Bill Clinton confirmed it. See blog post below.

    The Omaha Public Power District has an elected Board of Directors. The Green Zealots have captured 5 or 6 out of the 8 seats. OPPD has adopted a net carbon zero policy. Using OPPD’s and the EIA’s own numbers, I calculated that OPPD will have to spend and borrow $41 billion to achieve this goal and service that debt. OPPD only has $1 billion in revenue. Rates will only go through the roof if this liberal insanity isn’t stopped. Look what has happened in Germany.

    DDB (that’s me!) has a secret plan to stop this foolishness. It will become known by March-April of this year. I’m not kidding.

    Do not crucify Nebraskans on a cross of wind turbine blades! Nebraska is the Cornhusker state; not the Chinese solar panel state! Do not hand the ChiComs the keys to our economy!

    My blog post is here:https://21stcenturywisdom.wordpress.com/2021/12/22/the-seven-deadly-sins-of-todays-liberals/

68. Art Deco:

    That’s one of my main points. The Libs have been wrong about global warming for 50 years. Why are they right now?

69. The Green Zealots have captured 5 or 6 out of the 8 seats.

    And why did the normies in greater Omaha allow that?

70. Art Deco:

    Omaha has become a Democrat city. And the OPPD Board election is a name recognition thing and isn’t an issues driven campaign. Politics is life for the libs and so they have sought out these seats. And, of course, most voters are clueless.

    I seriously thought about running but who wants to lose every important vote?

    But with my secret plan, I’m going around the OPPD Board. They are in for a big shock!

71. China benefits from the CAGW scam and the Green New Deal. America is last.

    CAGW hands the keys of our economy to the ChiComs. Stupidest thing ever!

    https://21stcenturywisdom.wordpress.com/2021/12/29/handing-the-chicoms-the-keys-to-our-economy/

72. Rufus T:

    You raise some very important points.

    1. If the tiny Omaha Public Power District is going to have to spend $41b to go net carbon neutral, how much will it cost in CA, NY, FL and IL? McKinsey says it will cost Germany $6 trillion euros to achieve net carbon zero.

    2. Your light bulb example is excellent. GE used to make light bulbs in VA. They closed it and moved production of the new bulbs to China. Higher prices to the consumer and lower cost to GE. I heard the CEO of WMT speak at Davos about 6-8 years ago and he said WMT customers hadn’t yet gone all in on the Green thing. His interest was self-interest. If products have a higher wholesale cost, and his markup is the same, WMT makes more money net. We are seeing that with EVs.

    CAGW is the biggest scam in the history of the world. China and rich liberals are the main beneficiaries.

73. A rational person would think that after the covid models all proved to be wrong that people would be way more skeptical about climate predictions for the year 2100.

    Warren Buffett said it well at the last live BRK meeting: We’re alot more humble about our ability to fix the climate.

74. On models, CAGW and Christianity.

    https://21stcenturywisdom.wordpress.com/2021/03/30/cagw-and-christianity/

75. Cornhead:

    You should be neither surprised nor disappointed. I’m surprised you are surprised.

    I’ve written my position on AGW in many blog posts over the years and it has not changed.

    What’s more, my position on most matters is quite consistent. I always try to be both skeptical and willing to look at both sides. In the case of AGW, there’s equal amounts of garbage in and out on both sides, as far as I can tell. Do you read Judith Curry? She is the person I find most credible, and she is not doctrinaire on one side or the other, and in addition she is VERY critical of many things about the AGW crowd. She makes the most sense to me. I have read a great deal of what she’s written.

76. Barry Meislin:

    I agree about the perniciousness of the purposeful driving of fear by the media and the left.

    I also agree that Omicron is relatively innocuous. But there’s still plenty of Delta around, and it’s not innocuous, particularly for the unvaccinated. I say this as a person who has known a previously healthy man in his fifties who died of COVID, and I also have known healthy people in their thirties who became extremely ill and were hospitalized for many weeks with it. It’s certainly not the majority, but that is also a reality and I don’t ignore it. What’s more, I have known many people who have lost elderly parents or close relatives to it, and although I’m not as old as those people I’m in that general category. What’s more, most people over 65 have comorbidities (if you count high blood pressure or diabetes or overweight), and their risk is higher.

    For that matter, I had a friend who at the age of 52 came within a hair of dying from H1N1 around a decade ago. She was placed in a coma and on a ventilator for a while. It took her about a year to fully recover. That certainly got my attention, and H1N1 didn’t have nearly the same hype. But it is not innocuous. COVID is not the only disease that kills only a small fraction of people but is not innocuous. It is, however, the only disease that has been hyped like this and used to destroy livelihoods and control people. That is the problem.

77. Here’s a comparison of the model predictions versus the satellite measurements from 5 years ago.

    http://www.drroyspencer.com/2015/11/models-vs-observations-plotting-a-conspiracy/

    Scroll down to the spaghetti plot. Notice that there are 90 models. If they actually understood the science there would only be one model.

    All the models run hot with respect to the measured satellite temperature. The model mean (more bs, there is no such thing since each model uses different physics ) shows a rise in temperature over 30 years of 1 C = 2 F. This is to be compared to an average temperature difference of Boston and NYC of 5C = 10F (from the USDA plant hardiness zone map). The rise they predict is barely noticeable to gardeners.

    The models are all wrong.

    The criterion of a correct theory since the time of Galileo has been agreement with experiment or observation. The claims of consensus used to legitimize models hark back to an earlier time when one could quote authority, e.g., the Bible or Aristotle, to win an argument without reference to physical reality. The modern day version is to claim that computer models are somehow real. The fact is that computer models have no inherent connection to physical world, after all, they can make Spider Man jump from skyscraper to skyscraper and T. Rex eat a lawyer.

    AGW/Climate Change is a religion and a racket, not science.

78. Great subject and a lot of good comments.

    I’ve been a skeptic since 1994 when I frequented the blog, Real Climate. It’s a warmist site run primarily by Gavin Schmidt, the NOAA scientist. I was on board with them until they couldn’t answer my questions with any degree of transparency/specificity and eventually they barred me from the site. That spurred me to investigate further and find such climate scientists as Dr. Roy Spence, Dr. Joh n Christie, Dr. Roger Pielke, Dr. Judith Curry, Anthony Watts, and Joe Bastardi.

    There are many good books out there dealing with the subject. I’ve read a lot of them.

    The argument boils down to one thing. That is: Can a minor trace gas like CO2 create enough warming to endanger civilization as we know it? The answer is: Noone knows for sure. The alarmists claim that an increase in average global temperatures of 1.5C will be the tipping point. They cannot explain why it won’t be 1.3 C or 1.7C. It’s an “informed” guess. Yet, they want to dismantle our energy system and replace it with an unworkable technology. 🙁

    I ask people to consider this. Everyday somewhere on Earth will have temperatures of over 100 degrees F and temperatures under minus 60 degrees F. And people live in these areas. More people actually live in the warm areas than in the cold areas. Indicating that warm temperatures are more habitable than the cold. We are adaptable. And we are more able to adapt when we have fossil fuel energy. Could we humans not adapt to increases in temperatures if we used fossil fuels? I day, yes. Further, since this is a long-term issue, would it not make sense to transition to nuclear power over the next seventy-five years while becoming more energy efficient?

    The alarmists want to eliminate fossil fuel usage and got to all wind and solar power. I would be all for that, if it worked. Right now, it won’t work. To use intermittent power, you need some kind of storage. There is, at present, no feasible way to store wind and solar power on the scale needed. It frightens me to hear the alarmists claim that if we just abandon fossil fuels and go to wind and solar, that the technology will be found. Three countries have gone a short distance down that road – Denmark, Germany, and the UK. All are experiencing soaring costs and energy shortages. It.Does.Not.Work!

    Going to nuclear power to replace fossil fuels is possible and would actually be very green. But the alarmists are against nuclear because….DANGEROUS! The U.S. Navy has been safely using nuclear power for its ships for sixty-six years. Hmm.

    Since the argument to abandon fossil fuels is obviously so wrong and dangerous to people who look at the facts, this is either a moronic idea or it’s a ploy to give government more control over the citizens. My guess is that it’s a ploy. We’ll see.

79. Neo:

    I look at human nature which has been unchanged since the earliest days of civilization. Cui bono? Who benefits? The Left benefits. The Left benefits from federal income tax credits. That’s what’s driven this insanity.

    Here’s an example. Why in the world would Texas – home of oil and gas – have so many wind turbines that ended up failing last year and which caused people to die? Answer: Rich people in TX wanted those federal income tax credits.

    One of the goals of the CAGW scam is to move the oil and gas wealth away from TX, OK, LA, ND etc and send it to Boston and Silicon Valley.

    I was astounded to learn that OPPD had *no idea* it was going to cost them $41 billion to achieve net carbon zero. They don’t care about the costs. The Left doesn’t look at the costs v. benefits. A liberal attacked me in the OWH letters section by writing that we shouldn’t care how much it costs to save the planet and our grandkids. Please!

    I know scamsters. I’ve seen them in real life. I think I know human nature at age 64. All this “science” is just a prediction about events in the far distant future. We have no idea what the world’s climate will be in 2100. All I know now that in the year 2022, lots of people are going to get rich on the CAGC scam and they don’t care what the science is. BTW, I’m going to buy the lithium ETF this week. DDB might as well make some money. Might buy F too. I missed out on Tesla.

80. Neo,
    There is no question that it is a serious disease, but it can (and should) be treated EARLY on; moreover it can be neutralized, or somewhat weakened, by taking precautionary or preventative treatments.
    However, such treatments were not only NOT encouraged by governments; they were ridiculed and information about them was censored and squelched and nipped in the bud, while those epidemiologists, MDs and others recommending such treatments were shut down. Silenced. Shunned. Ostracized.
    CANCELED.
    Thus, effective and proven treatments were QUASHED by official policy.

    It is precisely this official response, this government-driven negligence—NOT to treat those suffering from Covid and NOT to encourage preventative measures—that is the most sinister aspect of this whole grotesque and murderous charade. Sinister AND criminal.
    From the get-go all the way down the line.

    Which raises the question that Cornhead (and others) asks: “cui bono”?… the answer to which is not pretty.

81. Another belief system: Build Back Better (which won’t cost the American taxpayer a penny, nossir!).

    The following explains why “Biden” needs billions of dollars to help bail out failed Democratic Party-controlled states (in addition to media corps, unions, etc.) :
    https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/leaving-illinois-another-wealthy-chicago-entrepreneur-votes-his-feet

    File under: No, more malarkey. In fact much, much more.

82. Art Deco,

    “Being intelligent doesn’t mean you’re endowed with perspicacity.”

    Though not strictly by definition, the “intelligent” who lack perspicacity are idiot savants. Today’s ‘teaching profession’ conclusively demonstrates that to be so.

83. Cicero and I are the only ones to mention Bjorn Lomborg (and I spelled his name incorrectly and I think Cicero may have mentioned him cynically). I agree that Judith Curry is the real deal, but Lomborg goes into the economics and UN politics much more than Curry. He’s been around for years and one can find lots of articles and interviews on-line featuring his views. If you have not heard him this podcast, https://www.spiked-online.com/podcast-episode/the-madness-of-net-zero/ is a pretty good rundown of his perspective. You’ll find real numbers on the global, economic impact and detriment to humans if the policies are followed, in comparison to doing little or nothing.

84. I DO believe that CO2 will continue to increase in the atmosphere. So far from about 200 ppm to over 400, maybe 450 ppm.
    Ask most climate-porn alarmists how much CO2 is in the air, and very very few of them are at all close.
    “By mole fraction (i.e., by number of molecules), dry air contains 78.08% nitrogen, 20.95% oxygen, 0.93% argon, 0.04% carbon dioxide, and small amounts of other gases.”

    Fact: plants need CO2, and most plants are growing better today than with 200 ppm CO2.
    Lists of big storms and frequencies are not persuasive to make any skeptic believe that CO2 increase has meant more storms. So far.

    The only full catastrophe is rising sea levels, which make some small islands under water.
    The USA should promise to allow immigration of all such inhabitants of such islands, starting when 30% (50%? 10%?) of their land is under water.

    Droughts, fires, floods, tornadoes, hurricanes, cold snaps (like Texas last year!) all have mitigations possible with engineering.

    The recent Colorado fires, like prior California fires, are hugely the fault of “environmentalists” who refuse to support water reservoirs to avoid such problems and often also oppose controlled burning of excess undergrowth.

    In general, there will be more habitable land in the Northern Hemisphere if there actually IS global warming, far more than the reduced island populations. Moving from 2 feet above current sea water to 6 or more feet above current sea water levels is not such a socially catastrophic problem, tho it’s very annoying for those with mansions on the beach (or at Martha’s Vineyard, where Obama bought).

    It is certain that there is NO Crisis as long as UN gov’t paid bureaucrats use jet travel to meet in person rather than Zoom or some virtual equivalent. The UN should be reformed to be multiple rooms of video displays but with few people, and the UN reps should live in their own countries and work “remotely” from zoom — if it’s good enough for US kids, it’s good enough for the UN.

    I have been hoping for global cooling due to a lack of sunspots, but that hasn’t been happening – cooling is far worse for humans than heating.

    Solar power air-conditioning should be more promoted – like solar panels over gov’t parking lots to be used to power gov’t building air-conditioning. With costs fully transparent.

    Yes to nuclear power, despite real dangers (like Chernobyl. Now there are some great movies about that disaster, and the 3 men who “saved Europe” from a more massive potential meltdown explosion.)

    The climate-porn addicts don’t really want solutions, they want more gov’t power to stop normal folk from achieving the Middle Class American Dream.
    A single family home in a nice area with low crime and good schools and not-too high taxes.

85. Rufus T. Firefly:

    Bjorn Lomborg’s great!

    His book, “The Skeptical Environmentalist,” freed me from decades of environmental dread and made it much easier for me to switch sides on global warming when ClimateGate was exposed.

86. JJ…”The U.S. Navy has been safely using nuclear power for its ships for sixty-six years.” And similarly, France has been generated 70% of its electricity from nuclear for many years, with a good safety record.

    Here’s a recently-introduced Small Modular Reactor (300Mw) from the GE-Hitachi joint venture. Compared with current reactors, it is much more factory-built rather than site-built, and has safer failure modes.

    https://nuclear.gepower.com/build-a-plant/products/nuclear-power-plants-overview/bwrx-300

    Initial customers are in Canada and probably Poland; not yet clear whether Karen will allow us to use these systems in the US.

    And I’d sure hate to be the GE-Hitachi sales rep for Germany.

87. I have my own opinions on the subject of Climate Change, but I am a retired lawyer and mature historian, so they are entitled to no weight. But, I have sources that come from men with intellectual authority. Here are three books everyone should read on the subject of Climate Change. They are quite recent, authoritative and very readable for those of us who are not scientists.

    “‘Unsettled: What Climate Science Tells Us, What It Doesn’t, and Why It Matters” by Steven E. Koonin • April 27, 2021
    https://www.amazon.com/Unsettled-Climate-Science-Doesnt-Matters/dp/1950665798/

    For almost thirty years, Dr. Koonin was a professor of theoretical physics at Caltech. He also served for nine years as Caltech’s Vice President and Provost. Dr. Koonin served as Undersecretary for Science in the US Department of Energy under President Obama from 2009 to 2011. Before joining the government, Dr. Koonin spent five years as Chief Scientist for BP, researching renewable energy options.

    “False Alarm: How Climate Change Panic Costs Us Trillions, Hurts the Poor, and Fails to Fix the Planet” by Bjorn Lomborg • October 19, 2021
    https://www.amazon.com/False-Alarm-Climate-Change-Trillions/dp/1541647475/

    Lomborg is an economist from Denmark. His work for the past 20 years has been centered on trying to figure out what is the most economically effective way of dealing with poverty and disease in the poor countries of the world. Needless to say Teslas for rich Americans is not among them.

    “Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All” by Michael Shellenberger • June 30, 2020
    https://www.amazon.com/Apocalypse-Never-Environmental-Alarmism-Hurts/dp/0063001691/

    Schellenberger is a longtime environmental activist who is concerned that the movement he has worked to promote fro his entire life has been mortgaged to hysteria and posturing, instead of helping people and solving problems.

    I would also add a website that is focused on Climate Change and Energy Policy:
    https://wattsupwiththat.com/

    I particularly recommend posts by Jim Steele, Director emeritus of San Francisco State University’s Sierra Nevada Field Campus, and author of Landscapes and Cycles: An Environmentalist’s Journey to Climate Skepticism. His videos are excellent.

88. The problem I have with AGW is that so many people studying it really, really really, really, really want it to be true.

    The other problem I have with AGW is that so many people studying it really, really really, really, really want it to be bad.

89. “And I’d sure hate to be the GE-Hitachi sales rep for Germany.”

    I find 99% of the recurring Russian Bear Fear Mongerings laughable and sometimes criminal.

    However… were the above mentioned sales rep to be found deceased on a park bench in the Tiergarten and glowing in the dark from having ingested some obscure isotope in his Tchibo Feine Milde, I’d be inclined to doff my ushanka and give a knowing wink to Vlad the Horological Gollum himself.

90. Yet, they want to dismantle our energy system and replace it with an unworkable technology.

    The rejection of nuclear power is a “tell” for me. It tells me this is all political.

91. It’s true that it’s hard to be sure if there’s a problem or not. One thing that makes me think there is no threat from AGW is this: if the warmers actually believe they have solid evidence, why do they keep lying? Michael Mann’s infamous “hockey stick” graph was proven to be a fraud almost as soon as it was published, but he suffered no consequences and went on to be one of the most prominent “authorities” on the subject. NASA’s Goddard Institute has been caught fiddling with the historical temperature record: https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2015/11/24/german-professor-nasa-fiddled-climate-data-unbelievable-scale/
    Then of course there’s the “climategate” scandal from 2009, wherein the clique of climate alarmist promoters (prominently featuring Michael Mann and NASA’s Gavin Schmitt), exchanged emails discussing ways and means of suppressing publication of any studies that would cast doubt on their narrative, and of fluffing their data to make it appear more alarming. As I recall they were quite pleased with themselves for succeeding in getting an editor fired for publishing the work of a heretic. All in all, it looks to me like the climate panic is a grift, aimed at getting control of energy, and therefore all economic activity. Once that’s accomplished, the oligarchs of big government and big business, AKA the Feudalist Society, will be our absolute rulers. As we’ve seen over the past couple of years, if they can gin up a “crisis”, they can simply rule by decree and nobody will stop them.

92. The rejection of nuclear power is a “tell” for me. It tells me this is all political.

    Mike K:

    Exactly.

    There are a few responsible environmentalists such as Michael Schellenberg and Stewart Brand who took their climate concerns seriously enough to change their minds on nukes, but the choir won’t have it.

    John McCarthy, the computer science pioneer who created the Lisp programming language (and is a god in my pantheon), has an extensive set of archived web pages on the Sustainability of Progress and the need for Nuclear Power which were crucial in changing my mind about nukes.

    http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/progress/index.html
    http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/progress/nuclear-faq.html

    These pages are gold for getting one’s arms around the problem.

93. NuScale is another small modular nuclear power design firm. My former employer is working on the instrumentation aspects of their systems.

    Recently Rolls-Royce announced they were entering the small modular nuclear power generation business as well.

94. More good comments.

    I forgot to mention Bjorn Lomborg, and Dr Steven Koonin. I’ve read their books. Lomborg made me a believer in adaptation as opposed to mitigation of climate change. Koonin and Lomborg are both what I call like-warmers. They believe that CO2 is actually creating a problem but are not apocalyptic in their views. Both recognize there is no feasible road off fossil fuels in the near term. Realists like them are who we need making policy.

    I haven’t done much investigation of nuclear power in recent years because it has been such a pariah to policy makers. I’m glad David Foster mentioned the new nuclear power development. Unfortunately, nuclear engineers and salesmen are probably pretty lonely these days. Their phones aren’t ringing off the hook. Rather than spending a few billion on a 300,000-person Civilian Climate Corps, (basically climate activists) why not spend a few bucks on promoting nuclear energy development? Or at least studying the feasibility? IMO, it’s where we need to go eventually.

95. The summing up:
    https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/sunday-collum-2021-year-review-part-1-crisis-authority-age-narratives

    (Long, but worth it….)

96. Thank you, Art Deco at 8:10, physicsguy, Cornhead and Mike K (plus a newcomer!), for your comments on AGW. What’s Left to add? Too much.

    Here’s Judith Curry lite and easy for noobs, (unlike her dense Ten Years After Climategate retrospective), in a recent conversational interview with a Canadian podcaster
    https://www.judithcurry.com/2021/01/30/interview-climate-change-a-different-perspective-with-judith-curry

    Plus, from over a year before that, see Guy Sorman’s interview/article with Curry (SEE link below) in City Journal.

    Now, I’m tempted to argue that Curry is another changer — but one who’s not gone far enough — just as physicsguy and others here have argued. Not far enough to put fire to the feet of scientists who’ve betrayed data driven science.

    Because back in 2005, Curry famously smeared Colorado State University’s world leading hurricane forecaster, climatologist William Gray, for having a “fossilized brain” over his AGW skepticism. Why be hot to a scientific skeptic but not to privileged insiders?

    Back then Curry trusted her fellow climate scientists to be honest and pitted them against Gray.

    Only after Climategate in late November, 2009, did Judith Curry investigate her side’s worthiness, and learn that they were not really so trustworthy about their “science” at all. And hence she revised her estimate of this field (as did her climatologist-husband, Peter Webster). Emphasizing “uncertainty” became her respectable fig-leaf for voicing immodist criticism. It failed to work and it failed to keep her respectability.

    “What could lead climate scientists to betray the very essence of their calling? The answer, Curry contends: ‘politics, money, and fame.’ Scientists are human beings, with human motives; nowadays, public funding, scientific awards, and academic promotions go to the environmentally correct. Among climatologists, Curry explains, ‘a person must not like capitalism or industrial development too much and should favor world government, rather than nations’; think differently, and you’ll find yourself ostracized. ‘Climatology is becoming an increasingly dubious science, serving a political project,’ she complains. In other words, ‘the policy cart is leading the scientific horse.'”
    (Guy Sorman in City Journal, https://www.city-journal.org/global-warming)

    In fact, Curry along with NOAA mathematical climatologist Rex Flemming are both AGW supporters who’ve changed their minds.
    https://www.listennotes.com/fr/podcasts/the-delingpod-the/delingpole-29-dr-rex-fleming-U4NXsnWMrGI/

    Only Flemming has gone further, perhaps, as suggested by the title of his book published by Springer, “The Rise and Fall of the Carbon Dioxide Theory of Climate Change” (SEE link for another LINK).

    I like to contrast these two with another great scientist, yet one who’s been misled by wrongly understanding the evidence — namely, NOAA atmospheric chemist Susan Solomon who’s climbed to MIT and Harvard University fame.

    Solomon contends that the effects of global warming will be and have been experienced first in the high mountain west. Sharing this publicly at Denver’s Museum of Science to an audience of 1200 in 2007, she examined temperature changes in the Colorado’s mountains — but not in Boulder, at the foot of the Rockies. Here, there is no warming. (Her similar recorded lecture is on YouTube, last I looked, but done before an audience in Idaho.)

    In Boulder, Colorado, warming didn’t operate. Which told me that she didn’t know and understand the weakness of the data she cites to support her thesis.

    Namely, the urban heat island (UHI) effect is especially effective to occupied homes in narrow elevated valleys — and Boulder is not that. And more, Boulder temps are recorded in it’s Western margins in a pristine site — upwind ok f prevailing winds and therefore completely unaffected by UHI effects seen in the mountains. Therefore her thesis is bunk.

    Then later, in 2009, Solomon published her modelled claim that CO2 persists in the atmosphere for hundreds, even eight hundred years, thus cooking the planet much longer than thought previously.
    https://jennifermarohasy.com//wp-content/uploads/2009/09/Carbon-dioxide-residence-time.jpg

    Yet this claim is contradicted by many actual measurements by physics that result in half-life persistence of CO2 that’s a small fraction of what the IPCC claims.
    https://jennifermarohasy.com//wp-content/uploads/2009/09/Carbon-dioxide-residence-time.jpg
    (

    Instead, we’re asked to believe complex models and their universities assumptions against hard measurements.

    Finally, the past year has seen the scientific case against AGW grow markedly on two fronts. William Happer and Wijngaarten from Princeton University and Canada have published two papers expanding measurements of sunlight proving that CO2 is close to saturation of any enhanced Green House warming effects. https://www.heartland.org/news-opinion/news/study-suggests-no-more-co2-warming (SEE illustrative graphs here https://joannenova.com.au/2010/02/4-carbon-dioxide-is-already-absorbing-almost-all-it-can/. Here’s the first of two papers by H and w:https://notrickszone.com/2020/11/26/physicists-a-co2-rise-to-800-ppm-causes-hypothetical-10c-upper-atmosphere-cooling-1-4c-surface-warming/)

    Bookending that fundamental finding finding is another: a lengthy mid-October paper in Nature by Henrik Svensmark and Nir Shaviv, uses satellite data collected on the earth’s radiative energy budget to cast new light on natural climate change forces.

    Critics have argued that Svensmark’s cosmoclimatology theory’s effects — based on ionizing by cosmic rays, and therefore cloud creating consequences — aren’t substantial enough to matter to climate change compared to increasing CO2. But actual measurements refute this.

    They show that a week of natural change in cosmic ray flux can change the earth’s radiative budget roughly equal to 200 years of hypothetical CO2 change. (SEE link here https://notrickszone.com/2021/10/31/new-study-with-groundbreaking-results-connection-between-cosmic-rays-radiation-budget-reaffirmed/)

    Danish Television produced this thoroughly intriguing hour long exposition of Svensmark’s theory in 2008 (BB asked on a best-selling book translated into 15 languages, “The Chilling Stars”): “The Cloud Mystery”
    https://youtu.be/ANMTPF1blpQ

    Climatologist Rex Fleming favors cosmoclimatology to supplant CO2 theory. Meanwhile, Judith Curry argues that since CO2 models cannot account for very similar range of climate change during the first half of the 20th century, then we must look to the natural causes of climate variation. Fleming thinks Svensmark does this.

    Since politics he as become evermore fierce and the Big Lie more pervasive vans powerful, one wonders what predated the past six years? The many years earlier war over Truth versus lies about climate change is the prevarication model that’s
    dominates politics today.

    Was AGW the example they followed? I wouldn’t doubt it.

97. Here’s a nifty “solution”…
    “EU Seeks To Classify Some Natural Gas And Nuclear As Green:”—
    https://www.zerohedge.com/energy/eu-seeks-classify-some-natural-gas-and-nuclear-green

    Nice to see the EU showing some creativity for a change…

98. Tom Grey: “The only full catastrophe is rising sea levels, which make some small islands under water.”

    Sorry Tom, that’s BS. Here’s the data from Univ. of Colorado:

    https://sealevel.colorado.edu/

    Now what has changed with their data is that they now “fit” the data with a quadratic function which then yields an “acceleration”. Once again, fitting the data to the theory rather than the other way around. Note they do not show error bars or the R^2 value. Why? Well, look again at the data. Even without error bars the data could just as easily be fit with a linear function which gives a straight line and thus zero acceleration. A linear fit gives a sea level rise of about 2.9mm/year. So by the end of the century: 2.9mm/year x 80 years = 232mm= 10.5 inches. Are you going to sell your beach front property over 10inches??

    But, ok, lets say UC is correct and take their fit with a velocity of 3.3mm/year and an acceleration of 0.098mm/yr^2 So how much according to their fit will the sea rise in 80 years? sea level rise = 3.3mm/year x 80 years + 1/2 (0.098)*80^2 = 859mm = 39 inches. So unless you live right on the beach at zero sea level, I doubt 3 feet in 80 years is still a problem. BUT, I emphasize my previous point: the data can just as easily be fit by a linear function, AND up until this year UC did just that. I wonder why the change?? Rhetorical sarcastic question.

99. TJ: “expanding measurements of sunlight proving that CO2 is close to saturation of any enhanced Green House warming effects”

    The papers you cite is an example of Beer’s law at work in the atmosphere. Beer’s law is over a hundred years old and states that CO2 IR absorption is logarithmic and saturates at about 400ppm ie, the 15 micron photons are “used up”. It’s good to see some direct evidence that it also applies to non-laboratory large scale atmospheric mixing as has been suspected.

100. Only 99 comments?

     We can push this one into triple digits!
     😉

101. More from John McCarthy. This item on the prejudice of scientists and activists against nuclear energy:
     _______________________________________________

     Here the default [bias against nuclear energy] is quite an old one, and many thousands of deaths from coal smoke and much CO2 in the atmosphere may be ascribed to it. However, there are reasons why the establishment didn’t and doesn’t defend nuclear energy that may partly carry over to the other issues.

     A large part, perhaps a majority, of the scientific community opposed the U.S. reliance on nuclear weapons. The anti-nuclear movement, however, equally opposed U.S. nuclear weapons and nuclear power. Attacking nuclear weapons and defending nuclear power simultaneously was too hard for almost all scientific activists. The most they managed was an occasional mutter in favor of nuclear power.

     The environmental movement, parts of which supported nuclear power as cleaner than fossil fuel, switched early to opposition. For example, the Sierra Club switched in 1975, four years before the Three Mile Island accident. It was too hard to remain pro-establishment on one issue while being anti-establishment on others. There is just a hint of change on the nuclear power issue because of concern about global warming. In Kyoto, 58 organizations declared that nuclear energy could be no part of the response to global warming. However, several important organizations didn’t sign the declaration, e.g. the Environmental Defense Fund and the Natural Resources Defense Council. Maybe it’s a tiny hint.

     It seems to me that some of the alliances formed in the days of the anti-nuclear weapons campaigns have persisted, at least psychologically, to this very day.

     Also environmentalist causes in general often regard corporations as the enemy, and this has created alliances that prevent open disagreement with organizations like Greenpeace.

     http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/commentary.html
     _______________________________________________

     I am so disappointed how scientists have cooperated with the politicization and debasement of science with regard to nuclear energy and climate change.

     Once upon a time I thought Lysenko could never happen here.

102. What we can know:

     — We know that global warming scientists lied relentlessly. We can read their emails.

     — We know that the claim that warming in the 2d half of the 20 century was unprecedented is simply wrong.

     — We know that the models fail badly. We know that they employ a stats approach that is flawed. We know that they disagree among themselves as to the climate sensitivity to CO2 by huge margins. We know the science can’t possibly be settled given all the different models.

     — we know that the temperature data bases are altered every 3 months to make the past cooler and recent years warmer.

     — we know that the hockey stick was a fraud. Improper data series included, use of data upside down, inaccurate code for principal component analysis, failed verification stats. And we know that “hide the decline” was deliberate scientific fraud.

     — we know that Monnett’s famous polar bear study is the most incompetent joke in the history of science. Seriously. And he does too. Look at the interview he did with govt agents looking into claims of his improper handling of funds. We know that the polar bear population has increased from about 6000 to over 30,000. And we know that when a polar bear researcher states that fact they are intimidated and abused by other scientists for undermining the narrative.

     — We know that the (supposed gold standard) CRU’s databases are a hopeless mess. See Harry Read Me.

     — We know that 90% of the US temp monitoring sites flunk basic science siting requirements. We know the rest of the world is even worse.

     — We know that the heat island effect is real and that the temp databases fail to account for it properly.

     — We know that climate science cannot explain why the earth has experienced vastly different climates. Or why it was warmer in the MWP and Roman periods than currently despite lower CO2 levels. Or why temperatures were lower in the dark ages and little ice age. Or why they started warming about 200 years ago.

     — we know that the global warmists abuse and intimidate any researcher who disagrees. That no young climate scientist will buck the narrative because to do so is instant death for their career. We know that dissent is censored from major science journals.

     And that’s just a small sample of things we know. Only a fool would listen to the lies, incompetence, intimidation and abuse of dissent and believe.

103. “The rejection of nuclear power is a “tell” for me. It tells me this is all political.”

     Vive la France!

     They have gone the other way on nukes. They do other boneheaded stuff, though.

104. They have gone the other way on nukes. They do other boneheaded stuff, though.

     Wretched excess in welfare spending generally, public housing, rent control. With a side-order of irreligion and institutionalized adultery. And they have these amusing bathroom fixtures for washing one tiny part of the anatomy while assiduously refusing to wash any other part.

     And yet, they have developed what may be the most handsome and elegant spoken language in the world, they know how to build public bureaucracies which can execute their missions satisfactorily, and they are (in their way), admirably (and maddeningly) inner-directed.

105. stan,

     It’s also a very inconvenient truth that we can’t really know what natural climate would be without human activity without the benefit of thousands of years of time passage. Weather phenomenae are rather erratic. It’s difficult to discern true trends without hundreds of years of observation. Even though we’ve been trending out of an ice age for thousands of years, climatologists working in 1650, around the start of the first, Little Ice Age, would have falsely assumed the warming trend had halted and we were heading down another path towards a new ice age.

     Anyway, I thought AGW was the goal. “Everyone complains about the weather but nobody does anything about it.” Humans are finally making the whole planet more like Miami yet we still complain! There’s no pleasing some people.

106. emperature Data Fraud,
     All US data sets agree; their independence is fake! Sen. Cruz asks NASA about it and meets denial and others agree and deny!
     Independent documents show that the data keepers are cooling the past and warming the present

     Heller’s “Climate Colusion and Fraud (Part 1)” Aug 18, 2020
     https://youtu.be/CqsvYAW1idg

     Heller’s “Climate Colusion and Fraud (Part 2)” Aug. 19, 2020, Climategate smoking gun Email, NOAAs Climate History keeper Tom Wigley wants to get rid of the “1940s blip” of warming
     https://youtu.be/FqjQxv6HtUA

107. (Sorry to fail to clean up my post in time: I’m posting via cell phone.)

108. Physicists have been trying for years to find a Unified Field Theory that can tie together the physics of the very small (subatomic particles, etc) , presently modeled/explained by quantum mechanics, with that of the very large (stars, galaxies, etc), presently modeled/explained using relativistic mechanics (think Einstein’s relativity theory).

     A Unified Field Theory, or a THEORY of EVERYTHING (TOE) , would enable one overall encompassing theory to be used in modeling/explaining all aspects – from the very small to the very large – of the universe. It would essentially “reconcile” quantum mechanics and relativistic physics.

     Well, you physicists out there; such a theory exists !!!
     At least an analogue to what you seek.

     It called AGW or simply Climate Change.
     It explains every conceivable type of weather or climate or storm.

     Too hot? too cold? no snow? too much snow? too wet? to dry? to windy? no wind? too many tornadoes ? no tornadoes? hurricanes? no hurricanes? building collapse due to faulty concrete? building remains standing despite faulty concrete? El Nino? no El Nino? rising sea levels? rising land masses? population increase of polar bears? population decline of polar bears? melting ice caps? expanding ice caps?……..

     I could go on, but you get the picture. Climate “scientists” have successfully devised a THEORY OF EVERYTHING (TOE) !!!

     And how, pray tell , have they done this?
     By “TUNING” their computer models; which they readily admit ( how nice of them.).
     Of put more bluntly, they keep adjusting the input parameters of their computer models, until they get as close as they can to the result they seek.
     True, they still !!! get the wrong answer (i.e., their model results do NOT conform with actual, measured data), but so what. Their TOE also includes producing wrong answers and yet, just stating, just claiming that their models are correct and using these models that produce the wrong answer is no reason not to use them to predict the future climate.

     Einstein, Newton, Oppie, Feynman, Dirac, Planck, Heisenberg, Bohr, Bethe, et. al. are spinning in their graves wondering why they did not think of doing this; producing wrong results , but just claim the results are not really wrong, so use them to predict future events. What a grand idea.

     The TOE also included “massaging” historical temperature data, data, say, from 1900 through 1970, and lowering the actual measured temperatures.
     TOE requires that not some, not a few, not just the data that needs to be lowered, but lowering ALL the data, so as to make today’s temperatures appear much higher than the actual recorded temperatures.
     Now, one would expect if historical data needs “adjustments,” some of the data would be changed higher, some lower, and some not at all.
     But TOE does NOT allow this !!!!
     TOE demands that our existing climate is the warmist in the last 3 BILLION YEARS.
     And,folks, TOE does just that.

109. Rufus,

     this classic post agrees with you. An excellent first look at how a scientist with integrity looks at CAGW

     https://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/06/22/a-response-to-dr-paul-bains-use-of-denier-in-scientific-literature/

110. Neo,

     If you are unfamiliar with Dr. Brown’s post which I posted above, please read it. I believe it is impossible for any rational, honest person to address the points he makes and embrace the CAGW position. We do not know and simply cannot know enough to conclude that CAGW is proven.

     You say you like Judy Curry. She has certainly been moving to a position with more integrity. She admitted some years ago that she willingly lied to the public by signing global warming statements without any knowledge of the underlying science. Of course, she was just one of thousands of scientists joining in the lies. She gets props for being embarrassed about it.

111. There is still posting activity and thus interest in this thread. And no one has mentioned The Skeptics Case against AGW. This is a short but data driven set of arguments by Dr David Evans who headed Australia’s Greenhouse Office, to do carbon accounting to meet the nations commitment to the Kyoto accords some 15 years ago.

     So, even this LINK rich but simple brief is years old. But it explains his change from a Believer to denying an AGW problem for the world.

     “The Skeptic’s Case

     “Who Are You Going To Believe – The Government Climate Scientists Or The Data?

     Guest Post Dr David M.W. Evans

     “We check the main predictions of the climate models against the best and latest data. Fortunately the climate models got all their major predictions wrong. Why?”

     Beyond prediction failure, Evans explains the failure to find a tropical hotspot — an atmospheric region of accelerated warming — acknowledged in IPCC Report documents.

     Without this mechanism, there is no physical way for AGW to be excessive, instead of minot, because then increasing CO2 levels cannot amplify temperature levels and thereby drive hydrogeological cycle (ie, water vapor) that could create bad weather, and dramatic clinate events harmful to humans and nature.

     Secondly, he cites satellite measurements first identified by climatologist Dr Roy Spencer that show the Earth’s measured radiation budget is net negative to positive temperature purtabations.

     The climate change models all predict positive climate system reactions. But the actual measurements falsify this assumption.

     AGW needs a climate system in jeopardy that can be destabilized for there to be a problem we have to address. But the facts contradict this fundamental assumption.

     Therefore, he’s a skeptic of the AGW harms Believers insists require our action.

     The problem they insist on solving simply doesn’t exist because the evidence proves it doesn’t exist.

     https://joannenova.com.au/2012/01/dr-david-evans-the-skeptics-case/

     This segues nicely to another changer because if 2009s Climategate revelations, the great science writer Dr Matt Ridley (Zoology, Oxford).

     His presentation to the Royal Society (of Science – the oldest such outfit in the world – in 2016 finds him emphasizing that the best evidence is that human caused warming can only be small, and that increasing evidence from multiple researchers finds the net benefits of added CO2 is very positive and is greening the planet.
     https://youtu.be/j5M1qtN62yk

     Yet this good and great news gets hidden. (Such as the multi-trillion dollar benefit of free fertilizer goosing production of human staple crops, reducing world hunger.)

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