Is it a coincidence that global warming “skeptics” make a lot of scientifically questionable claims?
Question: Is it a coincidence that global warming “skeptics” make a lot of scientifically questionable claims?
Roy Spencer is a huge proponent of Intelligent Design (he also claimed the lower atmosphere was cooling until his analysis was proven wrong). Roy Lindzen doesn’t think secondhand smoke causes lung cancer. Neither does Fred Singer, or that CFCs caused the hole in the ozone layer.
An article written by columnist Christopher Booker has recently been cited by “skeptics”. Booker has previously argued that asbestos is “chemically identical to talcum powder” and “poses no measurable risk to health”.
Why is it that these sources of global warming “skepticism” so frequently make such scientifically questionable (or more often, just flat-out wrong) claims?
Answer:
Answer by Cheezass H. Kriest
Something tells me they won’t just go away.
Dana, you often bring up very interesting and scientifically relevant points. Thus I am surprised when you resort to ad hominem attacks.
Why is Richard Lindzen the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology at MIT, arguably the top technical college in the United States (apologies to Cal Tech fans)?
Why was John Christy a lead author of the IPCC? Why have he and Roy Spencer together won NASA’s Medal for Exceptional Scientific Achievement?
http://science.nasa.gov/ssl/pad/sppb/NSSTC-CSPAR_Colloquia/FAL-01/christy_bio.html
Why did you provide information from Roy Spencer in another of your posts?
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Here is some interesting information from Christy on the “consensus” and the quality of the IPCC authors:
http://icecap.us/images/uploads/EPA_ChristyJR_Response_2.pdf
“And, more importantly, the “consensus” exercise is a false scientific process because the authors tend to write about their own publications and are given the final review-authority of the products (i.e. this is not a peer-reviewed process in the sense that the product could have a relatively high probability of being rejected by independent reviewers. The selected authors KNOW their words will be published since they have the “last word”.)
Indeed, the great majority of the IPCC authors were, on the one hand, not climate scientists and were, on the other hand, pre-approved by their governments in a political process (this is a pattern followed by the CCSP reports as well.) This should lead to considerable caution when interpreting their statements – the reports had as their final editors those who were appointed by the political process. Thus, scientific results deemed inconsistent with personal views of the authors were far less likely to be considered in the reports.”
Read also Christy’s comments on page 9 under explanation 3.1, especially the heavy-handedness of what appear to be authors selected because of their politics.
It is Richard not Roy and how do you know what he thinks.
I think he said it was weakly linked in statistical studies. Just because you hate tobacco companies and it clearly causes cancer to smokers doesn’t mean it causes cancer to others. It reminds of the woman bus driver who insised she got contact highs from her kids after she tested positive for Marijuana. The cancer may require heat. I don’t know and neither do you. I have heard recent studies that seemed to provide a better link but correlations doesn’t prove causation. Science requires a degree of skepticism, not a willingness to gorge yourself on any flavor of KoolAid you can find.
Everything that the ecoscientists say is proved to be at best flawed to manipulated and at worst down right lies!
What is questionable with the following
In the UK, every mild winter saves 20,000 cold-related deaths, and scaled up over northern Europe mild winters save hundreds of thousands of lives each year, also parts of ice caps are melting yet other parts are thickening but this isn’t reported as much (home experiment: put some water in a jug or bowl, add a layer of ice cubes and mark the level — wait until the ice has melted and look again, the level will have fallen). Data from ice core samples shows that in the past, temperatures have risen by ten times the current rise, and fallen again, in the space of a human lifetime.
Atmospheric carbon dioxide levels, currently only 350 parts per million have been over 18 times higher in the past at a time when cars, factories and power stations did not exist — levels rise and fall without mankind’s help.
96.5% of all carbon dioxide emissions are from natural sources, mankind is responsible for only 3.5%, with 0.6% coming from fuel to move vehicles, and about 1% from fuel to heat buildings. Yet vehicle fuel (petrol) is taxed at 300% while fuel to heat buildings is taxed at 5% even though buildings emit nearly twice as much carbon dioxide!
A report in the journal ‘Science’ in January of this year showed using information from ice cores with high time resolution that since the last ice age, every time when the temperature and carbon dioxide levels have shifted, the carbon dioxide change happened AFTER the temperature change, so that man-made global warming theory has put effect before cause — this shows that reducing carbon dioxide emissions is a futile King Canute exercise! What’s more, both water vapor and methane are far more powerful greenhouse gases than carbon dioxide but they are ignored.
The planet does not need saving, but taking this on anyway, removing every car from every road in every country overnight would NOT produce any change in the carbon dioxide level of the atmosphere, as can be seen using the numbers from Fact 4, and in any case it is pointless trying to alter climate by changing carbon dioxide levels as the cause and effect is the other way round — it is changes in the activity of the Sun that cause temperature changes on earth, with any temperature rise causing carbon dioxide to de-gas from the oceans.
Extreme weather correlates with the cycle of solar activity, not carbon dioxide emissions or political elections, the recent heavy rainfall in winter and spring is a perfect example of this — it occurred at solar maximum at a time when solar maxima are very intense — this pattern may well repeat every 11 years until about 2045.
As carbon dioxide emissions from cars and factories does not have any measurable impact on climate, these taxes are ‘just another tax’ on enterprise and mobility, and have no real green credentials.
Scientists draft reports for the IPCC, but the IPCC are bureaucrats appointed by governments, in fact many scientists who contribute to the reports disagree with the ’spin’ that the IPCC and media put on their findings.
The latest report suggests that the next 100 years might see a temperature change of 6 Celsius yet a Lead Author for the IPCC (Dr John Christy UAH/NASA) has pointed out that the scenarios with the fastest warming rates were added to the report at a late stage, at the request of a few governments — in other words the scientists were told what to do by politicians.
There are nearly 18,000 signatures from scientists worldwide on a petition called The Oregon Petition which says that there is no evidence for man-made global warming theory nor for any impact from mankind’s activities on climate.
Many scientists believe that the Kyoto agreement is a total waste of time and one of the biggest political scams ever perpetrated on the public … as H L Mencken said “the fundamental aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed, and hence clamorous to be led to safety, by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary” … the desire to save the world usually fronts a desire to rule it.
Dr Pachauri, the UN’s leading “climate official”, is personally involved in a great many organisations which stand to benefit from the IPCC’s recommendations
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/6847227/Questions-over-business-deals-of-UN-climate-change-guru-Dr-Rajendra-Pachauri.html
Collapse of Copenhagen
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/copenhagen-climate-change-confe/6857072/Copenhagen-climate-summit-talks-held-to-ransom-Gordon-Brown-says.html
Climate Gate
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424…
Moscow’s Institute of Economic Analysis claims the Hadley Centre selected temp data from Russia and Siberia that fitted its theory of global warming, ignoring data that did not ..
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-…
If CFCs caused the hole in the ozone layer, then banning them should have caused the ozone hole to repair itself over time. Certainly some progress would have been made by now – as was originally predicted back in the 1980s. But the ozone hole is no smaller now than it was when CFCs were banned.
I realize that now they’ve changed their prediction, claiming that CFCs were ‘bigger and badder than originally believed’ and that it will take another generation before the ozone hole repairs itself. This is called buying more time, instead of questioning one’s own conclusions.
CFCs didn’t produce the ozone hole.
The ozone hole grew over the decade or so since we started taking measurements. We have no idea what happened before then or what will happen hence.
But maybe Multiple Account Disorder Dana could help you (see below).
“Why is it that these sources of global warming “skepticism” so frequently make such scientifically questionable (or more often, just flat-out wrong) claims?”
Because they are generally ideologues, paid industry shills, or both. Don’t forget Lord Monckton, a top denier “expert” who believed AIDS patients should have been quarantined. It’s important not to broadbrush all skeptics, but to analyze them on a case by case basis, as you’ve done here.