Researching the Scares and the Spins: what made one man change his mind about rising CO2 being a crisis

The harm being caused by so many people's naive acceptance of the crisis-PR put out by the IPPC, sundry 'academics', and no end of financially-interested NGOs, is dreadful.  Their spins have dominated the press and airwaves and school and university curricula for decades.  It is likely that most of the general public have never actually read or listened to the counter-arguments. When major institutions such as the BBC and the Royal Society have been corrupted by their leaderships to promote climate alarm as unassailable dogma, who can blame that public for knowing no better?

One man has recently written about his journey from 'true-believer' to having a calmer and more balanced view of CO2 and climate (hat-tip: WUWT).  He is David Siegel:

'Over the years, I built a set of assumptions: that Al Gore was right about global warming, that he was the David going up against the industrial Goliath. In 1993, I even wrote a book about it.
Recently, a friend challenged those assumptions. At first, I was annoyed, because I thought the science really was settled. As I started to look at the data and read about climate science, I was surprised, then shocked. As I learned more, I changed my mind. I now think there probably is no climate crisis and that the focus on CO2 takes funding and attention from critical environmental problems. I’ll start by making ten short statements that should challenge your assumptions and then back them up with an essay.'

Here are his 10 points:

1Weather is not climate. There are no studies showing a conclusive link between global warming and increased frequency or intensity of storms, droughts, floods, cold or heat waves.

2Natural variation in weather and climate is tremendous. Most of what people call “global warming” is natural. The earth is warming, but not quickly, not much, and not lately.

3There is tremendous uncertainty as to how the climate really works. Climate models are not yet skillful; predictions are unresolved.

4New research shows fluctuations in energy from the sun correlate very strongly with changes in earth’s temperature, better than CO2 levels.

5CO2 has very little to do with it. All the decarbonization we can do isn’t going to change the climate much.

6There is no such thing as “carbon pollution.” Carbon dioxide is coming out of your nose right now; it is not a poisonous gas. CO2 concentrations in previous eras have been many times higher than they are today.

7Sea level will probably continue to rise, naturally and slowly. Researchers have found no link between CO2 and sea level.

8The Arctic experiences natural variation as well, with some years warmer earlier than others. Polar bear numbers are up, not down. They have more to do with hunting permits than CO2*.

9No one has shown any damage to reef or marine systems. Additional man-made CO2 will not likely harm oceans, reef systems, or marine life. Fish are mostly threatened by people, who eat them.

10The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and others are pursuing a political agenda and a PR campaign, not scientific inquiry. There’s a tremendous amount of trickery going on under the surface.'



His blog contains a great deal of material to back up his claims, and he is also intent on campaigning to 'educate influential liberals'.  The term 'liberal' in the United States is used these days to denote 'leftwing', and that may well include the majority of schoolteachers and academics.  Here on this blog we hope that in due course there will be massive efforts to help repair the damage that has been done to the minds and spirits of wave after wave of schoolchildren from recent decades.  David Siegel's campaign may well be a crucial early step towards such a pastoral effort actually taking place.

PS Paul Matthews has compiled a list of relatively prominent people who have 'recovered their senses' about climate:  https://ipccreport.wordpress.com/2015/01/08/converts-to-scepticism/