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/

Climate Scaremongering Antidote: resisting the demonisation of CO2

While the search for a cure-all for CO2 alarmism continues, we shall, in the meantime, have to make do with piecemeal treatments to help young people cope with the deluge of woefully inadequate information relating to climate.

The problem is sometimes the information is wrong, but perhaps more common is a severe lack of balance.

The fact that the gentle overall warming of the last 150 years or so is generally very beneficial is not acknowledged,  whatever combination of factors has caused it.  Nor is the positive impact of higher ambient CO2 levels on agricultural productivity often recognised.

When your goal is to scare people to get their attention, I guess you don't want to dilute your messaging.  But we who don't care for their tactics nor their cause, need to be ready to respond to them, or at least help reduce the harm they must cause.

A new report from the GWPF provides parents and teachers with help to do that by providing an excellent background briefing on the benefits of CO2.

Image: GWPF

From their press release:

'... former IPCC delegate Dr Indur Goklany calls for a reassessment of carbon dioxide, which he says has many benefits for the natural world and for humankind.

Dr Goklany said: “Carbon dioxide fertilises plants, and emissions from fossil fuels have already had a hugely beneficial effect on crops, increasing yields by at least 10-15%. This has not only been good for humankind but for the natural world too, because an acre of land that is not used for crops is an acre of land that is left for nature”.'

There is also an excellent foreword from the extremely distinguished physicist, Freeman Dyson, who concludes (my italics, bolding and layout):

'Indur Goklany has assembled a massive collection of evidence to demonstrate two facts. 

First, the non-climatic effects of carbon dioxide are dominant over the climatic effects and are overwhelmingly beneficial. 

Second, the climatic effects observed in the real world are much less damaging than the effects predicted by the climate models, and have also been frequently beneficial. 

I am hoping that the scientists and politicians who have been blindly demonising carbon dioxide for 37 years will one day open their eyes and look at the evidence. Goklany and I do not claim to be infallible. Like the climate-model experts, we have also evolved recently from the culture of the cave-children. Like them, we have inherited our own set of prejudices and blindnesses. Truth emerges when different groups of explorers listen to each other’s stories and correct each other’s mistakes.'

 

The report can be downloaded free of charge from this link:  http://www.thegwpf.org/content/uploads/2015/10/benefits1.pdf

PS
For those who may want to keep up to date on this topic, or to find out more from the scientific literature about it, this site is invaluable: CO2 Science.

Note added 15 Oct 2015.  The reformed ex-Greenpeace leader, Patrick Moore gave the GWPF Annual Lecture last night arguing we should 'celebrate CO2'.  Details via this link: http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2015/10/15/should-we-celebrate-co2-cartoon-notes-by-josh.html

Can It Be This Easy? Helping young people learn about climate reality

Screenshot from the video

'Watch the double take students do when confronted with the straight facts that there has been no dramatic global warming as they’ve been led to believe.

The good news?  Students got it.  Some were upset. Virtually all were surprised. The only thing they needed was access to the truth.

You’ll be heartened to see these bright youngsters casting aside the politically-correct hype they’ve been fed and forming valid conclusions based on sound scientific data.'
Source: http://www.cfact.org/2015/08/20/watch-students-wake-up-about-warming/

Here is the video from CFACT: 

Note added later on 28 Aug. I think it likely that the young people in the video are amongst the brightest of recent high school leavers, and probably typical in their condition of being very poorly informed about climate change.  An official, well-designed sample-survey of senior high school pupils is long overdue to estimate the scale of the damage being inflicted upon them by climate scaremongers.

Second note on 28 Aug.  Here is a copy of the temperature plot shown in the video.  Why not print out your own copy and try it out on your friends and acquaintances, especially if they happen to be parents of high school pupils?

Source details and further commentary can be found here:  http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/08/06/the-pause-draws-blood-a-new-record-pause-length-no-warming-for-18-years-7-months/

Alarming Climate Predictions: an informative cartoon for the classroom wall

(Ht: http://www.weatheraction.com/)

One thing anyone concerned about the harm being done to schoolchildren by climate alarmism must do is help them see how incompetent so many of the prominent pushers of alarm are when it comes to science.  The above cartoon would help encourage the youngsters to take the fear-mongers' confident assertions with a pinch of salt, and perhaps just a hint of amused contempt.

Some resources for project work by pupils, parents, or teachers , on the inability of the climate alarm 'community'* to give useful guidance about the future:

1. http://dailycaller.com/2015/05/04/25-years-of-predicting-the-global-warming-tipping-point/
2. http://climatechangepredictions.org/
3. http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/04/02/the-big-list-of-failed-climate-predictions/
4. http://wattsupwiththat.com/?s=predictions
5. http://notrickszone.com/climate-scandals/
6. http://notrickszone.com/category/stupid-predictions/
7. http://quadrant.org.au/opinion/doomed-planet/2015/01/warmists-take-hardest-hits/
8. http://notrickszone.com/2014/06/24/laughing-stock-met-office-2007-peer-reviewed-global-temperature-forecast-a-staggering-failure/
9. http://climatelessons.blogspot.co.uk/2010/12/only-bourgeois-science-compares-facts.html
10. http://climatelessons.blogspot.co.uk/2014/11/background-briefing-for-climate.html
11. https://hauntingthelibrary.wordpress.com/2011/01/06/james-hansen-1986-within-15-years-temps-will-be-hotter-than-past-100000-years/
12. http://notrickszone.com/2011/03/30/robust-science-more-than-30-contradictory-pairs-of-peer-reviewed-papers/,
13. http://icecap.us/index.php/go/joes-blog/ten_major_failures_of_so_called_consensus_science/
14. http://www.forecastingprinciples.com/index.php/global-warming-audit
15. http://www.kestencgreen.com/statedeptclimate2010.pdf
16. http://www.climatedepot.com/2010/05/05/team-of-scientists-counter-us-govt-report-global-warming-alarm-will-prove-false-climate-fears-based-on-faulty-forecasting-procedures/
17. http://www.thegwpf.com/climate-forecasting-models-arent-pretty-and-they-arent-smart/
18. http://www.c3headlines.com/predictionsforecasts/
19. http://www.lowerwolfjaw.com/agw/quotes.htm
20. http://nofrakkingconsensus.com/tag/predictions-that-failed/
21. http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/barbara-hollingsworth/climate-scientist-73-un-climate-models-wrong-no-global-warming-17

*Note added 26 August: I think 'industry' would have been better.  It is a very lucrative sector - with fear and alarm essential for continued income.

Note added 26 August: the emotive mess and fatuous prophecies of alarmist personalities is exemplified by the Australian climate clown Tim Flannery.  In 2005, he expected the Warragamba catchment and Dam would suffer permanent drought.  Then what happened?  In 2012, it overflowed.  In 2015, it has just overflowed again.  See: http://www.climatechangedispatch.com/australia-s-chief-climate-alarmist-fails-in-another-of-his-predictions-after-just-7-10-years.html

Note added 28 August: trying to ride on the back of destructive weather is a hallmark of junk scientists and their followers intent on climate scaremongering, so their claims about hurricanes provide a rich seam of their machinations:  http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/08/27/throwback-thursday-5-failed-global-warming-driven-hurricane-predictions-10-years-after-katrina/

Note added 01 September: the UK Met Office has long been a prominent rider on the scaryglobalwarming bandwagon, and has a correspondingly poor record when it comes to forecasting the implications of it for the UK:  http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/09/01/another-bbq-summer-fiasco-met-office-gets-it-wrong-again/

Note added 31 October.  A handy compilation of 'last chance' forecasts on 'saving the climate' on the Climate Predictions site: :

2001, Bonn    2005, Montreal   2007, Bali    2008, Poznan
2009, Copenhagen   2010, Cancun    2011, Durban     2012, Doha 
2013, Warsaw    2014, Lima     2015, Paris

Typical drivel ahead of each of these meetings: 'The scientists are telling us that this is the world’s last shot at avoiding the worst consequences of global warming.'
(hat-tip: http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2015/10/30/the-last-chance-saloons.html )

Note added 13 November.  Anthony Watts has noted that The Independent newspaper has removed their report of the notorious David Viner's ex cathedra prediction that children would not know what snow was: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/11/12/one-of-the-longest-running-climate-prediction-blunders-has-disappeared-from-the-internet/snowfalls-are-now-just-a-thing-of-the-past-the-independent/
He had, fortunately for benefit of the record of all this sort of drivel over the years, kept a copy of the original article: https://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2015/11/snowfalls-are-now-just-a-thing-of-the-past-the-independent.pdf

Climate Scaremongering in 2009. Followed by 6 Years of Negligible Climate Change, Just Like the 10 Years Before Them

Six climate headlines from 2009 that tell us something important ...

An extract from a guest post at WUWT by Larry Kummer:

'The following snippets show one theme from that massive bombardment of stories intended to arouse people’s fear and so create a stampede for far-reaching public policy measures to save the world. These headlines warned that the end was near and time was running out.

(1) “President ‘has four years to save Earth’” says climate scientist James Hansen in The Guardian, 17 January 2009.

(2) “Global warming has reached a ‘defining moment,’ Prince Charles warns” in The Telegraph, 12 March 2009. “The world has “less than 100 months” to save the planet.

(3) “‘We have hours’ to prevent climate disaster” by Elizabeth May (Member of Parliament and leader of Canada’s Green Party) in The Star (Toronto), 24 March 2009. This was run as news, not an op-ed.

(4) “Just 96 months to save world, says Prince Charles” in The Independent. 9 July 2009. “If the world failed to heed his warnings then we all faced the ‘nightmare that for so many of us now looms on the horizon’.”

(5) “Five years to save world from climate change, says WWF“, Australian Broadcasting Company, 18 October 2009 — Excerpt…

“Karl Mallon, a scientist with Climate Risk and one of the key authors of the report, says 2014 has been calculated as the point at which there is no longer enough time to develop the industries that can deliver a low carbon economy. ‘The point of no return,’ he said.

“’If we wait until past 2014 or that’s what modelling shows, then simply put, it will be impossible for industries to grow to the scale that has to be achieved in the time that is available.’”

(6) “Gordon Brown said negotiators had 50 days to save the world from global warming and break the “impasse”.“, BBC, 19 October 2009. Brown was the UK PM.'

End of extract

Enjoying the Bandwagon

Well, the Copenhagen Conference in December 2009 that these stories were softening us up for was a dramatic failure, thank goodness.  But the fearful headlines were but the tip of an iceberg of propaganda that was already working its way into schools around the world.  The reasoning seemed to be this: scare the children to scare the parents to get them to tolerate our policy goals.  Since such goals often involve much destruction and needless suffering, some special strategy was obviously required.  See for example the UK's Climate Change Act of 2008, and all that followed it.  Or the suffering caused by the forced adoption of bio-fuels.   Meanwhile, we have had cohorts of children leaving school with at best a cynical view of their teachers, and at worst with a dreadful view of the world and their future in it.  And by the way, those now younger than 20 years of age, have seen no sustained global warming in their entire lives.

Note added 9 August 2015.  It is hard to keep up with the junk being exposed month after month in the scientific, let alone the political, work of climate scare merchants.  Here is a recent one about ocean pH. (hat-tip: http://climatescience.blogspot.co.uk/).