Unfortunately, some misuse science. Some of their intentions, are far from benevolent. They see science as a mechanism for political power and control. There is great danger from those who would use science for political control over us.

How do they do this? They instill, and then continuously magnify, fear. Fear is the most effective instrument of totalitarian control.

Chet Richards, physicist,

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/03/science_in_an_age_of_fear.html

Tuesday 15 November 2011

How to Get Expelled from School, a guide to climate change for pupils, parents and punters






















This does look promising!



'HOW TO GET EXPELLED FROM SCHOOL:
A guide to climate change for pupils, parents and punters

Ian Plimer
Foreword by Václav Klaus,
President of the Czech Republic

RELEASED DATE: November 2011

$29.95
ISBN: 978-1-921421-80-8
Paperback, (250 pages approx)

Are pupils, parents and the public being fed political propaganda on climate change? Now is your chance to find out. Professor Plimer gives 101 simple questions with answers for you to ask teachers, activists, journalists and politicians. The climate industry adjusts the temperature record and withholds raw data, computer codes and information from scrutiny. Computer predictions of a scary future don’t agree with measurements. Past natural climate changes have been larger and more rapid than the worst case predictions yet humans adapted.  Is human-induced global warming the biggest financial and scientific scam in history? If it is, we will pay dearly.'

(h/t Phillip Bratby, comment posted on 'Unthreaded'  Nov 15, 2011 at 11:40am at Bishop Hill)

Tuesday 8 November 2011

This is how it should be: thoughtful climate science in a high school

Roger Pielke Snr maintains an excellent - informative, civil, thoughtful, substantial - blog on climate science.  He recently met with pupils at an American high school, and reports on the question and answer session here. (hat-tip: Tom Nelson)

Q&A For Climate For High School Students


What a contrast to some of the material and motivations I have reported on in this site.  Let me pick out a few highlights to encourage you to read the original post:

'In addition to these human climate forcings, natural climate forcings and feedbacks are also quite important. We need to consider these natural effects as clearly the climate is much more complex than is commonly reported by the media and even the IPCC. For example, the global average temperature anomalies are cooling!'

'Since the CO2 effect is but one of a number of first order climate influences, as discussed above, I have concluded we know much less about the future climate than is claimed by the IPCC and the media.  This does not mean we should not be concerned as to how much CO2 we insert into the atmosphere, but the claims that we know its effect on the climate is very much overstated, in my view.'

'Finally, in terms of climate metrics, I encourage your class to research yourselves from orginal data what is the current status of these metrics. You would be surprised how many of them do not follow the behavior predicted by the multi-decadal global climate model predictions, and being reported in the news.'

Pielke puts most 'climate educators' to shame with his basic scientific honesty, not to mention his straightforward prose.  When, as must surely happen one day, our curricula are cleansed of the IPCC-inspired hyperbole and scare stories, we know there are some, such as Pielke, who could fill those precious places in the curricula with decent science.  They would seek to inform and inspire the young, rather than frighten them into 'political activism' for a soul-destroying and economically ruinous cause.  A cause which is, in my view, riding on the back of speculative and wholly inadequate computer models.

Note added 7 Dec 2011:  Bob Tisdale has stumbled across a criticism on the SkepticalScience blog of Pielke's Q&A reported on above.  He has taken the trouble to analyse the criticism, and, as you would expect, shows it to be vexatious (by misdirection) and lacking in substance.  He summarises it as follows: 'Yet again, SkepticalScience has highlighted their inability to comprehend a topic of discussion, or has illustrated their need to mislead their readers, or both.'.

Sunday 6 November 2011

Climate Classroom Projects: testing the sagacity of the Royal Society

http://4umi.com/swift/gulliver/laputa/5
The regrettable participation of the Royal Society in the spreading of alarm over climate was partially corrected by their revised, and far less inflammatory statement on climate issued in 2010.
  
The new statement is full of cautions and provisos, but two of the least ambiguous remarks are to be found in paragraphs 45 and 49 relating to sea levels (I have added the emboldening):


‘45 Because of the thermal expansion of the ocean, it is very likely that for many centuries the rate of global sea-level rise will be at least as large as the rate of 20 cm per century that has been observed over the past century. Paragraph 49 discusses the additional, but more uncertain, contribution to sea-level rise from the melting of land ice.
49 There is currently insufficient understanding of the enhanced melting and retreat of the ice sheets on Greenland and West Antarctica to predict exactly how much the rate of sea level rise will increase above that observed in the past century (see paragraph 45) for a given temperature increase. Similarly, the possibility of large changes in the circulation of the North Atlantic Ocean cannot be assessed with confidence. The latter limits the ability to predict with confidence what changes in climate will occur in Western Europe.’
 

Project 1: what is actually happening to sea levels?

Recently sea levels have been falling in quite a pronounced way (Climate4You has graphical summaries).   

The projected rise in sea level by the year 2100 using a 3-year running mean has fallen to 22cm in the year 2010, and the data suggests it is likely be below 20cm shortly.  If the recent drops continue, then the naïve extrapolation will in due course be for a fall in sea level by the year 2100. 

A report of a recent study using data from an EU satellite, claims a naïve extrapolation of only 8 cm rise by the year 2100.

The C3 site has more leads.



Project 2: what is actually happening to the big ice sheets?

As for the ‘the enhanced melting and retreat of the ice sheets on Greenland and West Antarctica’ of paragraph 49, that should provide scope for another informative class project.  Plenty of leads on the topic can be found here: http://www.c3headlines.com/are-antarcticgreenland-about-to-totally-melt/ .  For example headlines such as those below could be checked for veracity and relevance:

# New Research Out of Greenland Proves Stability of Ice Sheet Over The Last 2 Decades

# New Antarctica Research: The IPCC "Consensus" Science Is Turned Topsy-Turvy

# IPCC Science Wrong: Current Antarctic Climate Conditions Are Not Unprecedented, Peer-Research Determines



Both of these projects could be sustained over many years to come, with different waves of pupils adding to the collective insights and preparing their own summaries from the latest data.  The link to the Royal Society’s claims will add a topical touch.

Cultural aside.  If you or any of your pupils have a literary bent, you might enjoy a (re-) reading of Gulliver’s Travels to accompany these projects.  Here is a commentary on part of them by Shirley Galloway:

 ‘The main focus of social criticism in the voyage to Laputa is on intellectuals, such as scholars, philosophers, and scientists, who often get lost in theoretical abstractions and conceptions to the exclusion of the more pragmatic aspects of life, in direct contrast to the practical Brobdingnagians. Many critics feel Swift was satirizing "the strange experiments of the scientists of the Royal Society," but may also have been warning his readers against "the political projectors and speculators of the time," (Davis 149-150). The Laputians excel at theoretical mathematics, but they can't build houses where the walls are straight and the corners are square. Instead, they constantly worry about when the sun will burn out and whether a comet will collide with the earth. This misuse of reason is hilariously elaborated on in Chapters five and six, where the various experiments occurring at the Grand Academy of Lagado are described. Of course, the point is highlighted as Gulliver professes his sincere admiration for such projects as extracting sunbeams from cucumbers and building houses from the roof down. The satire in Voyage three attacks both the deficiency of common sense and the consequences of corrupt judgment (Quintana, 317).’

I guess modern Laputians would excel at computer modeling, and be constantly worrying about when CO2 will bring catastrophe.  Oh for a modern Swift to warn us against ‘political projectors and speculators’!

Note added  13 April 2012: The key claim by the Royal Society is that sea level rise rate will be more than the historical 20cm per century we have seen over the last 100 years or so.  Not much sign of that so far.  Here is a plot for a site in England:













Note added 08 May 2012.  Less than two years since their revised, more moderate 'statement' on climate (a statement that makes an utter mockery of the spirit of Nullius in Verba, but which is at least a bit more dignified than the worse tosh which preceded it), the studies are coming in to refute them.  'New empirical evidence from New Zealand scientists document the lack of "accelerating" global sea level levels. The island nation in the southern Pacific has not been swamped by the rising seas and the confirmed trend indicates only a 7 inch rise by 2100.'  See: http://www.c3headlines.com/2012/05/tide-gauge-station-data-global-sea-level-rise-nz.html

Note added on 12 December 2012.   Recent satellite surveys of sea level confirm the deceleration of the rate of rise.  Projections from recent rise rates points to an end of century rise of 13cm or less.
See: http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/noaa-2012-report-finds-sea-levels.html
[using figures from this report: http://ibis.grdl.noaa.gov/SAT/SeaLevelRise/documents/NOAA_NESDIS_Sea_Level_Rise_Budget_Report_2012.pdf ]

Note added 30 April 2013.  An update on sea level forecasts:
'Conclusions: 1. Expert climate model predictions of catastrophic accelerating sea level increases are wildly wrong 2. CO2-centric climate models that focus almost entirely on the impact of human trace emissions of greenhouse gases produce erroneous and unreliable predictions for policymakers 3. The IPCC and large government computer climate models can't predict squat'
 http://www.c3headlines.com/2013/04/reality-wake-up-call-climate-experts-sea-level-prediction-found-to-be-wildly-wrong-.html

Note added 6 May 2013.  UK Sea Levels–No Increase In Last 10 Years

Note added 03 July 2013. 'New study using GRACE data shows global sea levels rising less than 7 inches per century'.  That's less than 18cm per century.  Still not looking good for the Royal Society.  http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/07/03/new-study-using-grace-data-shows-global-sea-levels-rising-less-than-7-inches-per-century/

Note added 28 December 2013.  'A paper published today in Global and Planetary Change finds global sea level rise has decelerated by 44% since 2004 to a rate equivalent to only 7 inches per century. According to the authors, global mean sea level rise from 1993-2003 was at the rate of 3.2 mm/yr, but sea level rise “started decelerating since 2004 to a rate of 1.8 ± 0.9 mm/yr in 2012.”'  http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/new-paper-finds-sea-level-rise-has.html

Note added 17 September 2014  More charts on sea-level rise 'I’ve recently looked at sea level trends on the US eastern seaboard, and shown how the rate of sea level rise was higher than now around the middle of the 20thC.  We also get the same pattern across the Atlantic.':
 http://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2014/09/17/long-term-sea-level-trends/

Thursday 3 November 2011

Alarming the Children: creating climate activists in Africa

Outside of religion, outside of totalitarian regimes, has there ever been such targeting of the young to win recruits for a cause such as we are seeing being used by climate campaigners around the world?  With fear as the spur to catch their attention: you are going to be doomed/suffer greatly/kill polar bears/etc etc unless you, your parents, your teachers, your communities, your businesses, your governments follow the party line - a line which calls for weakening your society's ability to respond to climate variation by, for example, subsidising windfarms and discouraging more reliable and less expensive ways to generate electricity.

By what stretch of a tortured imagination, can it be found desirable to abandon the basic adult responsibility of protecting the young from being terrified of their future?  The fact that this abandonment is based ultimately on computer models that can be tweaked to produce anything the owners of them want to see [apart from verisimilitude] is even more jaw-dropping.
(text and link in brackets added 4 Nov 11)

Here it is happening in Africa.  Read this extract from a press release by UNICEF dated 31 October 2011:

'UNICEF urges media to hear the voices of children on climate change

PRETORIA, 31 October 2011 - As South Africa prepares for the 17th Conference of Parties (COP 17) of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change in Durban from 28 November to 9 December 2011, UNICEF is urging media to consult with children on what they believe to be the key issues surrounding climate change, its impact on the children of South Africa, and what role children can play to address climate change.
A new study commissioned by UNICEF in partnership with the Department of Environmental Affairs and the Department of Women, Children and People with Disabilities, to be launched in mid-November 2011, highlights the importance of child participation in designing effective responses to climate change.
The study ‘The Impact of Climate Change on Children in South Africa’ highlights the expected impact of climate change on children’s health, education, nutrition, safety and access to adequate housing and sanitation in South Africa – both directly and indirectly. However, in spite of their increased vulnerability, children cannot be viewed simply as victims of climate change. Children need to be – and have a right to be – actively involved in the discussions and planning of mitigation and adaptation strategies, as well as policies and plans by various levels of government.
The study also reveals that there are a number of existing initiatives in South Africa through which children are participating in the climate change agenda. These could be strengthened to create a solid foundation for effective participation by children on climate change issues that can feed into, and strengthen policy and national response.'



(hat-tip Messenger for this link: http://newnostradamusofthenorth.blogspot.com/2011/11/unicef-children-should-participate-in.html )

Further reading
(1) Creating 'little climate activists' in UK schools

(2) Something similar in Canada
http://climatelessons.blogspot.com/2011/03/canadian-climate-campaigners-how-to.html 


(3) Why do they pick on children?  Some thoughts here:  


(4) How much harm can they cause?  Examples here: 
http://www.eco-imperialism.com/main.php

(5) Opposition in the USA to alarm-indoctrination in schools: http://climatelessons.blogspot.com/2011/08/propaganda-pantomime-of-climate.html

Also includes this quote from the UK:
This week, I met a 17‑year-old pupil from a girls’ public school that, in the past, has been more famous for turning out Sloaney husband-hunters than for filling its pupils with useless scientific facts. But the stereotype is out of date, it seems. The GCSE syllabus ranges far and wide, taking in the physics, chemistry, biology, geopolitics, economics and ethics of climate change. In English lessons, girls “debate” (ie, heartily endorse) the proposition that global warming will kill us all. And guess what topic has been chosen for French conversation?
But parents shouldn’t worry that their girls will turn into eco-loons. “Honestly,” says my informant, “we’re all, like, sooo bored with climate change. I can’t wait to leave school to escape.”’

There’s hope yet!

Tuesday 1 November 2011

Something for the classroom wall: Central England not part of the G in CAGW?


















Source: http://c3headlines.typepad.com/.a/6a010536b58035970c0120a7c87805970b-pi



What is so special about central England that it should escape the man-made 'global' warming we have been told is so worrisome that we must do all we can to destroy industrial civilisation, including deliberate efforts to scare children into becoming 'little climate activists'?  The projected catastrophe seems to be passing England by - that part of the sceptred isle can be seen to be enjoying a modest, and pleasant warming excursion of a kind it has seen many times before.  At least until the recent summers ill-suited for barbeques despite the fervent hopes of Met Office modellers, and recent winters well-suited for cross-country skiing.

Nothing seems extraordinary in this temperature series, one which shows a modest trend and a lot of irregular variation about it. The rising CO2 emissions look quite irrelevant.  There is clearly no basis here for alarm.  We need the services of computer specialists willing to speak as oracles of doom in order to provide enough substance for political activists to spin an entire body - the IPCC, numerous governments, and a great many in the mass media, into severe agitation.  Sadly, a great many teachers have been caught up in the swirl, and of course sadder still, a great many children have been told their societies, and of course the polar bears, are all but doomed.  Unless they obey, and get their parents to obey, and get their societies to obey, the diktats of those political activists.

Hat-tip for drawing attention to the graphic: Tony Brown.

His WUWT article today on climate (esp temperature) history is well worth reading in its own right.  He concludes:
'The globe appears to have been gently warming for 400 years- with numerous reversals and cold periods interspersed with warm ones. Within this overall trend can be discerned regions running counter cyclical to the warming trend, as was observed in the article ‘In search of cooling trends’.
http://diggingintheclay.wordpress.com/2010/09/01/in-search-of-cooling-trends/
We estimated around one third of all stations to be cooling, a figure now endorsed by the Berkeley study. The assertion regarding lack of climate variability cited at the top of this article by two of the most prestigious climate organizations cannot be supported-there were periods around as warm as today as well as very cold periods, demonstrating great variability, no doubt there were also areas running counter cyclical to the prevailing trend, as can be seen today.'

Tuesday 25 October 2011

Something to amuse you and then your senior pupils: a potted history of climate-alarmism, leaving the BEST to last

The recent spinning of the BEST results to claim they refute the arguments of sceptics by merely showing that the widely used global climate records do indeed show a modest warming in the 20th century is but the latest attempt at mass deception by those who have found advantage in climate alarmism.   Here, from Maggie's Farm, is a trenchant view of it all:

Global Warming 4.0


'I have a tough observation test for you (if you dare to take it, and I highly recommend you don't), but first a bit of history, written in my usual calm, clear, objective, pusillanimously pseudonymous style.


Global Warming 1.0 was the original theme (see accompanying photograph taken from Moon Base Alpha), basically launched by NASA's James Hansen as NASA began its decades-long plan to bankrupt the American economy by building a completely worthless trillion dollar space station as well as destroy entire nations as witnessed by the South Seas island nations who have been told that their islands will soon be inundated with water from the melting ice pack and have thus abandoned any future plans for their nations' growth.  Well done, NASA, well done.


Global Warming 2.0 was when it was realized that, dammit, the earth wasn't warming as quite as fast as it should, and the hurricanes we got clobbered with in 2004 and 2005 turned out to be the predicted results of typical hurricane patterns, not to mention that the hurricanes then had the temerity to go away in 2006 — and what a disappointment that was.  As a result, 'climate change' was created to cover more bases.

Global Warming 2.1 to 2.8 was when we saw the massive expansion of things that were going to affected by the new, improved 'climate change', and this was especially effective because you can work in both directions, hotter and colder.

Global Warming 2.9 was when earthquakes were deemed to be the result of man-made global warming.  This one was given its own special sub-version number so future historians will be able to pinpoint with precision the apex of mankind's stupidity.

Global Warming 3.0 was a little more insidious, in while it claimed that, yes, global warming was entirely man's fault, we didn't need to take such drastic measures as those espoused by the Kyoto Protocol and, later, Cap & Trade.  This version was spearheaded by Danish video rock star Bjorn Lomborg.  It was very seductive to the fence-sitters, and Tigerhawk, for one, took it seriously, as did other bloggers whose names you might recognize.

All of which brings us to today... '

[see the article link for the rest, which includes a link to an article in The Guardian in which 4.0 first sees the light of day.]

Notes added later on 25/10/11:  
(1) Dr Ball has interesting things to say about the BEST study:

'The fact they even attempted the project indicates lack of knowledge or understanding of the inadequacies of the data set in space or time or subsequent adjustments. Lamb spoke to the problem when he established the Climatic Research Unit (CRU). On page 203 of his autobiography he said,
“When the Climatic Research Unit was founded, it was clear that the first and greatest need was to establish the facts of the past record of the natural climate in times before any side effects of human activities could well be important. A worldwide record was needed particularly on the time scale of human history a project which surprisingly no other body had attempted in any coordinated way.” “We are living in a time when the glamour of the much more expensive work of the mathematical modeling laboratories, and the tempting prospect of their theoretical predictions are stealing the limelight. The confidence generally characterizing the pronouncements from those quarters has since given way to more cautious statements in later years. It does not seem to have been widely recognized that the theoreticians work was proceeding without adequate prior study (or any sure understanding) of the sometimes drastic swings of climate that have occurred over periods from a few years or decades to some centuries, often settling in abruptly and some of them still unexplained.”
The BEST study confirms Lamb’s concerns.  It adds nothing to advancing the understanding of the degree of climate change. Until that is adequately defined and described there is no hope of determining the underlying causes and mechanisms of change.  The failure to understand the complete inadequacy of the existing temperature record is troubling. It makes it appear that there is an incompetence or a political motive, or both.'
(2) James Delingpole is even more damning:
'What is going on is exactly the kind of utterly reprehensible dishonesty and trickery I anatomise more thoroughly in Watermelons. The Warmists lost the battle over "the science" long ago; that's why the best they can do now is resort to the kind of risible semantic ruse like this deliberate conflation of "global warming" with "man made global warming".'
(3) Willis Eschenbach provides a more technical assessment (but still a very accessible one):
'I remind folks again that the hype about BEST showing skeptics are wrong is just that. Most folks knew already that the world has been generally warming for hundreds of years, and BEST’s results in that regard were no surprise. BEST showed nothing about whether humans are affecting the climate, nor could it have done so. There are still large unresolved issues in the land temperature record which BEST has not clarified or solved. The jury is out on the BEST results, and it is only in part because they haven’t even gone through peer review.'
Note added 27 October 2011
This link to Nature may not last long since the comment by Prof Singer in it conflicts with and criticises their notorious stance with respect to climate science.
Extract:
'But unlike the land surface, the atmosphere has shown no warming trend, either over land or over ocean — according to satellites and independent data from weather balloons. This indicates to me that there is something very wrong with the land surface data. And did you know that climate models, run on super-computers, all insist that the atmosphere must warm faster than the surface? And so does theory.
And finally, we have non-thermometer temperature data from so-called 'proxies': tree rings, ice cores, ocean sediments, stalagmites. They don?t show any global warming since 1940!
The BEST (Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature) results in no way confirm the scientifically discredited Hockeystick graph, which had been so eagerly adopted by climate alarmists. In fact, the Hockeystick authors never published their post-1978 temperatures in their 1998 paper in Nature, or since. The reason for hiding them? It's likely that those proxy data show no warming either. Why don't you ask them?
One last word: You evidently haven?t read the four scientific BEST papers, submitted for peer review. There, the Berkeley scientists disclaim knowing the cause of the temperature increase reported by their project. They conclude, however: 'The human component of global warming may be somewhat overestimated.' I commend them for their honesty and skepticism.'

( I have corrected some punctuation typos, esp. where '?' was printed instead of apostrophes, and I added the emboldening at the end.)

Note added 30 October 2011.  A useful overview in the Mail on Sunday:
(note that the vertical scales are slightly different, and the horizontal scales are very different between the charts)
Extract:
'But today The Mail on Sunday can reveal that a leading member of Prof Muller’s team has accused him of  trying to mislead the public by hiding the fact that BEST’s research shows global warming has stopped.
Prof Judith Curry, who chairs the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at America’s prestigious Georgia Institute of Technology, said that Prof Muller’s claim that he has proven global warming sceptics wrong was also a ‘huge mistake’, with no  scientific basis.
Prof Curry is a distinguished climate researcher with more than 30 years experience and the second named co-author of the BEST project’s four research papers.
Her comments, in an exclusive interview with The Mail on Sunday, seem certain to ignite a furious academic row. She said this affair had to be compared to the notorious ‘Climategate’ scandal two years ago.'

(hat tip: Bishop Hill , where some discussion of this newspaper article can be found)

Note added 7 Nov 11.. Report of very poor data quality in the BEST study:  http://climateaudit.org/2011/11/06/best-data-quality/

Thursday 20 October 2011

A Perspective on Climate Knowledge: Geophysicist Deming speaks out as a 'Denier'

Any teacher wondering whether to take issue with the conventional, or establishment, view of the causes of climate variation might find the following essay helpful as a spur to their own reflections and for broadening their own background knowledge of the subject (hat tip: Tom Nelson's blog). Deming is unusual in being willing to accept the 'denier' epithet. His approach may well help to undermine the malevolent intent of those who deploy it. A key part of his position is based on the difficulty of defining, and measuring, an 'average temperature' for our planet. Given that climate discussions are often around actual or projected changes of less than one Celsius degree in 'average temperature, however defined', his concern is a very reasonable one.

Why I Deny Global Warming


I'm a denier for several reasons. There is no substantive evidence that the planet has warmed significantly or that any significant warming will occur in the future. If any warming does occur, it likely will be concentrated at higher latitudes and therefore be beneficial. Climate research has largely degenerated into pathological science, and the coverage of global warming in the media is tendentious to the point of being fraudulent. Anyone who is an honest and competent scientist must be a denier.

Have you ever considered how difficult it is to take the temperature of the planet Earth? What temperature will you measure? The air? The surface of the Earth absorbs more than twice as much incident heat from the Sun than the air. But if you measure the temperature of the surface, what surface are you going to measure? The solid Earth or the oceans? There is twice as much water as land on Earth. If you decide to measure water temperature, at what depth will you take the measurements? How will the time scale on which the deep ocean mixes with the shallow affect your measurements? And how, pray tell, will you determine what the average water temperature was for the South Pacific Ocean a hundred years ago? How will you combine air, land, and sea temperature measurements? Even if you use only meteorological measurements of air temperature, how will you compensate for changes in latitude, elevation, and land use?

Determining a mean planetary temperature is not straightforward, but an extremely complicated problem. Even the best data are suspect. Anthony Watts and his colleagues have surveyed 82.5 percent of stations in the U.S. Historical Climatology Network. They have found – shockingly – that over 70 percent of these stations are likely to be contaminated by errors greater than 2 deg C [3.6 deg F]. Of the remaining stations, 21.5 percent have inherent errors greater than 1 deg C. The alleged degree of global warming over the past 150 years is less than 1 deg C. Yet even in a technologically advanced country like the US, the inherent error in over 90 percent of the surveyed meteorological stations is greater than the putative signal. And these errors are not random, but systematically reflect a warming bias related to urbanization. Watts has documented countless instances of air temperature sensors located next to air conditioning vents or in the middle of asphalt parking lots. A typical scenario is that a temperature sensor that was in the middle of a pasture a hundred years ago is now surrounded by a concrete jungle. Urbanization has been a unidirectional process. It is entirely plausible – even likely – that all of the temperature rise that has been inferred from the data is an artifact that reflects the growth of urban heat islands.

The "denier" is portrayed as a person who refuses to accept the plain evidence of his senses. But in fact it is the alarmist who doesn't know what they are talking about. The temperature of the Earth and how it has varied over the past 150 years is poorly constrained. The person who thinks otherwise does so largely because they have no comprehension of the science. Most of these people have never done science or thought about the inherent difficulties and uncertainties involved.

And what is "global warming" anyway? As long ago as the fifth century BC, Socrates pointed out that intelligible definitions are a necessary precursor to meaningful discussions. The definition of the term "global warming" shifts with the context of the discussion. If you deny global warming, then you have denied the existence of the greenhouse effect, a reproducible phenomenon that can be studied analytically in the laboratory. But if you oppose political action, then global warming metamorphoses into a nightmarish and speculative planetary catastrophe. Coastal cities sink beneath a rising sea, species suffer from wholesale extinctions, and green pastures are turned into deserts of choking hot sand.

In fact, so-called "deniers" are not "deniers" but skeptics. Skeptics do not deny the existence of the greenhouse effect. Holding all other factors constant, the mean planetary air temperature ought to rise as the atmosphere accumulates more anthropogenic CO2. Christopher Monckton recently reviewed the pertinent science and concluded that a doubling of CO2 should result in a temperature increase of about 1 deg C. If this temperature increase mirrors those in the geologic past, most of it will occur at high latitudes. These areas will become more habitable for man, plants, and other animals. Biodiversity will increase. Growing seasons will lengthen. Why is this a bad thing?

Any temperature increase over 1 deg C for a doubling of CO2 must come from a positive feedback from water vapor. Water vapor is the dominant greenhouse gas in Earth's atmosphere, and warm air holds more water than cold air. The theory is that an increased concentration of water vapor in the atmosphere will lead to a positive feedback that amplifies the warming from CO2 by as much as a factor of three to five. But this is nothing more that speculation. Water vapor also leads to cloud formation. Clouds have a cooling effect. At the current time, no one knows if the feedback from water vapor will be positive or negative.

Global warming predictions cannot be tested with mathematical models. It is impossible to validate computer models of complex natural systems. The only way to corroborate such models is to compare model predictions with what will happen in a hundred years. And one such result by itself won't be significant because of the possible compounding effects of other variables in the climate system. The experiment will have to repeated over several one-hundred year cycles. In other words, the theory of catastrophic global warming cannot be tested or empirically corroborated in a human time frame.

It is hardly conclusive to argue that models are correct because they have reproduced past temperatures. I'm sure they have. General circulation models have so many degrees of freedom that it is possible to endlessly tweak them until the desired result is obtained. Hindsight is always 20-20. This tells us exactly nothing about a model's ability to accurately predict what will happen in the future.

The entire field of climate science and its coverage in the media is tendentious to the point of being outright fraudulent. Why is it that every media report on CO2 – an invisible gas – is invariably accompanied by a photograph of a smokestack emitting particulate matter? Even the cover of Al Gore's movie, An Inconvenient Truth, shows a smokestack. Could it be that its difficult to get people worked up about an invisible, odorless gas that is an integral component of the photosynthetic cycle? A gas that is essential to most animal and plant life on Earth? A gas that is emitted by their own bodies through respiration? So you have to deliberately mislead people by showing pictures of smoke to them. Showing one thing when you're talking about another is fraud. If the case for global warming alarmism is so settled, so conclusive, so irrefutable...why is it necessary to repeatedly resort to fraud?

A few years ago it was widely reported that the increased concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere would cause poison ivy to grow faster. But of course carbon dioxide causes almost all plants to grow faster. And nearly all of these plants have beneficial human uses. Carbon dioxide fertilizes hundreds or thousands of human food sources. More CO2 means trees grow faster. So carbon dioxide promotes reforestation and biodiversity. Its good for the environment. But none of this was reported. Instead, the media only reported that global warming makes poison ivy grow faster. And this is but one example of hundreds or thousands of such misleading reports. If sea ice in the Arctic diminishes, it is cited as irrefutable proof of global warming. But if sea ice in the Antarctic increases, it is ignored. Even cold weather events are commonly invoked as evidence for global warming. People living in the future will look back and wonder how we could have been so delusional.


For the past few years I have remained silent concerning the Climategate emails. But what they revealed is what many of us already knew was going on: global warming research has largely degenerated into what is known as pathological science, a "process of wishful data interpretation." When I testified before the US Senate in 2006, I stated that a major climate researcher told me in 1995 that "we have to get rid of the Medieval Warm Period." The existence and global nature of the Medieval Warm Period had been substantiated by literally hundreds of research articles published over decades. But it had to be erased from history for ideological reasons. A few years later the infamous "hockey stick" appeared. The "hockey stick" was a revisionist attempt to rewrite the temperature history of the last thousand years. It has been discredited as being deeply flawed.

In one Climategate email, a supposed climate scientist admitted to "hiding the decline." In other words, hiding data that tended to disprove his ideological agenda. Another email described how alarmists would try to keep critical manuscripts from being published in the peer-reviewed scientific literature. One of them wrote, we'll "keep them out somehow – even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!" Gee. If the climate science that validates global warming is so unequivocal, why is it necessary to work behind the scenes to suppress dissent? You "doth protest too much."

As described in my book, Science and Technology in World History: The Ancient World and Classical Civilization, systematic science began with the invocation of naturalism by Greek philosophers and Hippocratic physicians c. 600-400 BC. But the critical attitude adopted by the Greeks was as important as naturalism. Students were not only allowed to criticize their teachers, but were encouraged to do so. From its beginnings in Greek natural philosophy, science has been an idealistic and dispassionate search for truth. As Plato explained, anyone who could point out a mistake "shall carry off the palm, not as an enemy, but as a friend." This is one reason that scientists enjoy so much respect. The public assumes that a scientist's pursuit of truth is unencumbered by political agendas.


But science does not come easy to men. "Science," George Sarton reminded us, "is a joykiller." The proper conduct of science requires a high degree of intellectual discipline and rigor. Scientists are supposed to use multiple working hypotheses and sort through these by the processes of corroboration and falsification. The most valuable evidence is that which tends to falsify or disprove a theory. A scientist, by the very definition of his activity, must be skeptical. A scientist engaged in a dispassionate search for truth elevates the critical – he does not suppress it. Knowledge begins with skepticism and ends with conceit.
Finally, I'm happy to be known as a "denier" because the label of "denier" says nothing about me, but everything about the person making the charge. Scientific theories are never denied or believed, they are only corroborated or falsified. Scientific knowledge, by its very nature, is provisional and subject to revision. The provisional nature of scientific knowledge is a necessary consequence of the epistemological basis of science. Science is based on observation. We never have all the data. As our body of data grows, our theories and ideas must necessarily evolve. Anyone who thinks scientific knowledge is final and complete must necessarily endorse as a corollary the absurd proposition that the process of history has stopped.

A scientific theory cannot be "denied." Only a belief can be denied. The person who uses the word "denier" thus reveals that they hold global warming as a belief, not a scientific theory. Beliefs are the basis of revealed religion. Revelations cannot be corroborated or studied in the laboratory, so religions are based on dogmatic beliefs conservatively held. Religions tend to be closed systems of belief that reject criticism. But the sciences are open systems of knowledge that welcome criticism. I'm a scientist, and therefore I must happily confess to being a denier.





October 19, 2011
David Deming [send him mail] is a geophysicist, associate professor of arts and sciences at the University of Oklahoma, and author of the books Science and Technology in World History, Vols. 1 & 2.
Copyright © 2011 by LewRockwell.com. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is gladly granted, provided full credit is given.