Beware The Planet Saviors!

Nobody’s killed as many Communists as Stalin. Nobody’s killed as many Muslims as Osama bin Laden. That’s why whenever somebody wants to save me, maybe I don’t reach for a gun, but I surely prepare for self-defense against the saviors. As I wrote some time ago in “History, a Murderous Farce“:

Napoleon, the Emperor of the French, destroyed the Holy Roman Empire in 1806, thereby establishing the basis for the ascent of the German Empire that was going to humiliate France in 1871.

Prussia and Austria fought hard to establish their leadership over Germany. The result was a militarized Prussian class that killed Germany once in the First World War, and then again with its support for Hitler.

“Of course” Adolf, from Austria of all places, dedicated his life to the nationalist cause, with the result that Germany was annihilate and Prussia airbrushed from history at the end of World War II.

Those are not the only ironies of history. The end result of the Christian Crusades was the undermining of the Byzantine Empire, and the opening up of Eastern Europe to the Ottoman Muslims. Nobody has killed as many Communists as Stalin, or as many Chinese as Chairman Mao, and since Tamerlane perhaps nobody has killed as many Muslims as Osama bin Laden and his loose “organization”.

I am sure there are many more examples of unbelievably unintended consequences. Hadn’t it been for the continuous slaughter, History would be a topic to laugh very hard about.

And it’s the history that could as well repeat with contemporary environmentalism and its “green zealots”. From the recent James Delingpole Daily Mail op-ed:

[…] If you read the private emails of the Climategate scientists, what you discover is that most of them genuinely believe in the climate change peril.

That’s why they lied about the evidence and why they tried to destroy the careers of those scientists who disagreed with them: because they wanted to scare politicians into action before time ran out. This was not science, in other words, but political activism.

A similar ‘end justifies the means’ mentality seems to prevail among all those environmental lobby groups. They don’t exaggerate or misrepresent because they’re bad people. They do it, as a former head of Greenpeace once charmingly put it when accused of having overstated the decline in Arctic sea ice, to ‘emotionalise the issue’; because they want to make the rest of the world care about these issues as much as they do. […]

One of the grimmest ironies of the modern environmental movement is just how much damage it has done to the planet in the name of ‘saving’ it. Green biofuels (crops such as palm oil grown for fuel) have not only led to the destruction of millions of acres of rainforest in Asia, Africa and South America, but are now known to produce four times more CO2 pollution than fossil fuels.

Wind farms, besides blighting views, destroying topsoil and causing massive noise pollution, kill around 400,000 birds a year in the U.S. alone. Environmentalists, in fact, have a disastrous track record when it comes to predictions and policy recommendations […]

Somebody ought to start an environmentalist group to save the environment from the environmentalists.

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Lysenkoism And ‘Global Warming’ _by Professor Cliff Ollier

Infamous Soviet scientist Trofim Lysenko has become topical again after the recent WSJ “Don’t Panic (about global warming)” letter (read about it also here and here). In the interest of historical record, I am posting here the recovered text of “Lysenkoism And ‘Global Warming’” written some years ago by Professor Cliff Ollier and mentioned in this blog almost four years ago.

The original link does not work any longer (and the WaybackMachine hides the text for some reason). There is also a slightly different version in the Lavoisier Group website. (h/t Justin Ert)

Lysenkoism And ‘Global Warming’
by Professor Cliff Ollier

Trofim Denisovich Lysenko [Трофи́м Дени́сович Лысе́нко; pictured left] (1898 – 1976) was an insignificant agriculturalist who thought he had a new way of developing crops that would vastly increase food production in the starving Russia of Stalin. It was called ‘vernalisation’, and it included treating seeds before cultivation to affect their behaviour.

Significantly, Lysenko introduced his ideas first through politics, in which he benefited from weighty support. Some argue that his precepts had a Marxist flavour, because they asserted that biology could be modified in the way that communists wanted to control people’s behaviour. The government was anxious to increase food production and to quell disturbances among the growers, while Lysenko was an adept propagandist. He became a cult leader who impressed the peasants.

Lysenko was the head of the Soviet Lenin All Union Institute of Agricultural Sciences, and he ran the nation’s research in this field. He promised to triple or to quadruple crop yields.

He demonised conventional genetics, which again suited his masters, who believed this to be the basis behind fascist eugenics.

No Opposition Tolerated

Opposition to Lysenko was not tolerated, and was labeled ‘bourgeois’ or ‘fascist’. Lysenko used his position to denounce Mendelian geneticists as “fly-lovers and people haters”, which had serious consequences. From 1934 to 1940, with Stalin’s blessing, numerous geneticists were shot, and others exiled to Siberia. Nikolai Ivanovich Vavilov [Николай Иванович Вавилов; pictured left] (1887 – 1943), for example, a truly great geneticist and biogeographer, was sent to Siberia, where he died of starvation in 1943, while Lysenko, in person, took over his role as Director of the Lenin Academy of Agricultural Sciences. Any survivor of the purge had to keep quiet. In 1948, genetics was officially labeled a ‘bourgeois pseudoscience’, and genetic research came to a halt. Krushchev also supported Lysenko, but, after his departure in 1964, the Academy of Sciences investigated the records, and a devastating critique of Lysenko was made public. The ban on genetics was finally lifted in 1965.

When Lysenko denounced Mendelian thought as reactionary and decadent, he also announced that his speech had the approval of the Central Committee of the Communist Party. The parallel for the ‘Global Warming’ movement is the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the IPCC, which works through national and international organisations. The IPCC claims its reports are written by 2500 scientists, but in reality they are drawn up by only about 35 people, and are effectively ‘controlled’ by an even smaller number.

Opposition to ‘Global Warming’ is often likened to ‘Holocaust Denial’. We are repeatedly told that there is no debate – hardly a scientific approach. The influence of the IPCC has spread, and it has become increasingly difficult to get research funding without being a ‘believer in Global Warming’.

A New Religion

Why would governments be persuaded to follow this idea before it was scientifically evaluated? One reason may be that there was a rising tide of what some have likened to a new religion – ‘Environmentalism’. Of course, no politician wants to be seen as ‘anti-environment’, or to lose the votes of the ‘Greens’. The ‘Greens’, for their part, are happy to follow the climate-change line because it gives them enormous political power. As a minor party or influence they hold the balance of power, and the major parties dare not offend them.

The propaganda machine of the IPCC is magnificent, with its greatest tool being the Al Gore film, An Inconvenient Truth. This still has enormous impact, although the High Court in Britain did decide it could not be shown in schools without comment because it contained major errors. I suspect that this film was the reason that the Nobel Peace Prize was given to Al Gore and to the IPCC.

Another propaganda hit was the infamous ‘Hockey Stick Graph’, purporting to show that temperature was rising at an ever-increasing rate. This has been totally discredited, but it still seems to be branded on the collective mind of politicians and the public. Much Government propaganda has been lent to support ‘Global Warming’, and major media outlets, such as the BBC in Britain, have chosen to join in on the ‘Global Warming’ side.

No Siberia

Climate change, like Lysenkoism, is much easier to understand than the complexities of real science. This appeals to the public, and also to politicians and other influential people, who can talk as if they understand it. If questioned about details, they simply refer back to the IPCC reports.

So-called ‘independent reports’ on climate change have been produced by Nicholas Stern in Britain and Ross Garnaut in Australia. Both Stern and Garnaut make it plain that they are not scientists and have based their conclusions on the IPCC reports. Yet, both continue to make public statements warning about the increasing dangers of climate change. This merely keeps their reports in the public eye, and echoes the flawed science of IPCC ‘Global Warming’.

At a lower level, without the need for evidence, everything can be blamed on ‘Global Warming’ – droughts, floods, malaria, hurricanes, and even global cooling! The IPCC rhetoric continues, although their predictions have failed to come true, just as Lysenkoism continued when the promised crop-yield increases never arrived. The IPCC forecast ever-increasing temperatures, but average global temperatures have become lower since 1998. They have now put off ‘Global Warming’ for 15 years because some other factors have intervened. The models did not predict this, but such details do not affect ‘the faithful’.

Some scientists sided with ‘Global Warming’ in the early days, and are so committed that they cannot now get off the bandwagon. Others worked for the IPCC, but resigned when they realised how their work was being used, or that real science did not support the claims that were being made. Luckily, we do not have the equivalent of Siberia to deal with these scientists.

‘The Global Warming Affair’ has already lasted over twenty years, and many administrative and scientific research centres have sprung up – most of the latter involving computer simulators. Computer simulation has a part to play in science, but it should not replace observation, hypothesis-testing, and falsification. There are now ‘Departments of Climate Change’, for which read ‘Departments of Global Warming Blamed on Anthropogenic Carbon Dioxide’.

A Lesson From History: Parallels With Lysenkoism

We should not forget a basic fact, namely that the one villain of the piece – and the one that is costing billions of dollars – is anthropogenic carbon dioxide. This is the equivalent of ‘vernalisation’ in the Lysenko era.

In summary, the comparisons between Lysenkoism and ‘Global Warming’ can be rehearsed as follows:

1. Work first through political organisations;

2. Claim that the science is settled. There is nothing to debate;

3. Disregard, or deny, all the accumulating evidence that the predictions might be wrong;

4. Demonise the opposition (Mendelian geneticists; ‘Global Warming’ Deniers);

5. Victimise the opposition (execution and exile; loss of jobs or research funds, public and media humiliation);

6. Relate to a current ideology (Stalinism; Environmentalism);

7. Support a vast propaganda machine; and,

8. Create a huge bureaucracy where many people have careers dependent upon ‘the ruling concept’.

The parallel can be seen perfectly in a work by Helena Sheehan(1), who wrote of Lysenkoism:

“What went wrong was that the proper procedures for coming to terms with such complex issues were short-circuited by grasping for easy slogans and simplistic solutions and imposing them by administrative fiat.”

Lysenkoism was eventually replaced by real science. The same will happen to ‘Global Warming’, because real science will not go away. _____________

(1) Helena Sheehan, 1993. Marxism and the Philosophy of Science: A Critical History. (Humanities Press International, Inc.).

Further Reading: Paul Reiter, 2004. ‘Passion and politics cloud the climate debate.’ (Nature 431, 739, October 14, 2004|doi:10.1038/431739c).

Killing FOI

(I have left this comment at Andy Revkin’s “A Legal Defense Fund for Climate Scientists”)

Andy – I’m very surprised by the phrasing of your FOI question. So what if there is “fishing” involved?

The important bit about FOI is that it applies no matter what the intentions of the requester are.

Otherwise every Government agency will always argue FOI exemption by claiming the requester is “fishing” for information. And especially so if the requester is a journalist (who is presumed to be looking for something to publish, therefore pretty much single-mindedly interested in “fishing”).

Intention-dependent FOI is not freedom, rather a gracious (and always temporary) concession on the part of the State. It’s like trying to define as democratic a Parliament you can vote for only if invited to the electoral polls.

Are you sure decades of struggle to get FOI in place should be considered as wasted just to defend publicly-funded scientists who can’t understand their rights and duties, and pretend FOI is a waste of time when in reality it’s a clerical activity?

ps I’ve been subject to FOI In the past and anything I write at work can potentially be used in a court of law

John Cook: Skeptical Science Is Unsuccessful and Counterproductive

You know things are going down the drain when an English Major interviews a Cartoonist to talk about psychology and the identification of scientific “myths”.

The level of absolute idiocy is reached of course when the owner of a website purportedly debunking 173 climate change “myths” and well-known for its unethical treatment of non-compliant commenters writes:

Debunks that offered three arguments, for example, are more successful in reducing the influence of misinformation, compared to debunks that offered twelve arguments which ended up reinforcing the myth.

and

Avoid dramatic language and derogatory comments that alienate people. Stick to the facts.

Who knows, John Cook might one day read his “Debunking Handbook” and ditch Skeptical Science completely.

NOTE TO ALL READERS: About Climate Or Anything Else, Don’t Let Up On The Bully

NOTE TO ALL READERS

If you see strange trackbacks on websites from “Ocasapiens” in Italian after I post a comment, there is this feckless Italian journalist whose main activity appears to be following me on Google in order to post abysmal bullying attempts at her blog.

I would feel proud of being an inspiration of anything, however if a blog is measured by the quality of its content, a blog where I am the content can’t be that good.

On The Slow, Painful (and Deadly) Demise Of The IPCC

Climategate 2.0 is helping filling some knowledge gaps, for example in the way the IPCC has been slowing killing itself, and several thousands humans to. The following concerns Regional Projections, and it’s a tragedy of communication.

Willingly or not, the IPCC has become a source of deadly confusion exactly because it has provided the information its audience wanted, even if it was scientifically unprepared to prepare that information.

Live Microblogging Of Launch Event For “Poles Apart: the International Reporting of Climate Scepticism”

This is an ordered version of my live microblogging (Twitter – @mmorabito67) of the Launch Event of the RISJ publication “Poles Apart: the International Reporting of Climate Scepticism” (British Council, London, November 10, 2011):

1. At The British Council for the launch of “Poles Apart:the International Reporting of Climate Scepticism” by J Painter
2. Due to start at 6pm, slightly late. No @BBCRichardBlack
3. Benny Peiser is here. I’ve said hello to chair John Lloyd, had met him years ago in Oxford
4. Finally it starts. Delay was all the fault of video-linked @Revkin 🙂
5. Lloyd : report is unique. Climate change important. IEA says today that door is closing
6. Video link not perfect. Painter says he’ll be brief
7. Painter : “summoned by science” published 1 yr ago. Found difference in skepticism.
8. Painter: people confused about different types of skepticism.
9. Painter keeps mentioning academic research they wanted to complement
10. “Is climate skepticism an Anglo Saxon thing”?
11. Two newspapers per country, left and right leaning but not in China
12. Focus on 2007 wg1 and wg2 IPCC publication time and Copenhagen time
13. Shows increase in skeptical voices in US and UK around Copenhagen
14. “What explains country differences? ” interviews suggest factors
15. Media and extramedia factors (listed in report)
16. India – CC as a nationalistic point
17. Brazil- very large coverage. Journalists said strong science.units in newspapers
18. Lalaland time
19. Climategate moved some.uk newspapers away from the others
20. Lots more analysis for the UK – skeptical voices more in right leaning newspapers
21. Explanatory factors -.in the report again
22. . @Revkin frozen in time. Video still imperfect.
23. Rebecca Nadin talks about China. She’s been there for years to work on climate change
24. Complex diagram showing interactions in China.
25. Says mostly discussion is not about AGW vs natural
26. Chinese government has strong position about AGW. It’s not politically contentious
27. Over 2200 newspapers and many social media networks
28. Very limited debate about integrity of climate scientists and no much nimbyism
29. Pollution concerns very high.
30. Core group at Beijing uni and academy of sciences debating speed and severity
31. Mentions agriculture body saying production in inner Mongolia will increase
32. Immediately adds a however
33. Some.skeptics depicted as nationalistic nutters
34. Sciama; starts.with Allegre and another skeptif
35. . @Revkin alive again
36. They’re using Webex not Skype
37. French revolution replacing aristocracy with meritocracy and support for science
38. Laments lack of skepticism in France?
39. No coal lobby in France
40. France is very centralized so importance of State intervention high
41. He’s explaining belief in AGW in France in purely non-scientific terms!!!
42. Ends saying opposition to.State.may.make climate policies impossible in uk and USA
43. Revkin : report.defines skepticism others didn’t
44. Skepticism and support are variegated
45. Mentions Inhofe giving floor speech saying hoax is about catastrophe of global warming
46. USA exceptional for many reasons. More fuel consumption and many climates
47. Public discourse always degenerates in.shouting matches
48. Policy debates are legitimate @Revkin
49. Bob Ward laments the GWPF – skeptic voices given opinion pieces
50. Revkin mentions Delingpole as selective and duplicitous. Liberal opinion makers in USA stretching “but”.
51. Lloyd : ft not into entertainment. Penchant for combat eg debating societies
52. Tom of ecologist magazine asks about treatment of skeptics in TV media
53. Revkin talks of study about fox news. Pretty clear which way they lean.
54. Networks fairly “progressive” on climate change
55. Benny Peiser : report is comprehensive and balanced. Definition of skepticism but gwpf skeptical of policy
56. Thanks Bob ward for the hits
57. Gwpf focus not on science rather government approach so more media coverage
58. Revkin says Peiser is.right problem is policies leftists is USA did.disservice making AGW a single sentence
59. World will end soon
60. Blogger mentions criticism of NYT by Romm.
61. Another q: science cannot settle debates
62. Phone rings at the Revkins
63. Part of the news.process means being wrong.some of the time Joe Romm is.never wrong – laughs
64. Painter talks of think tanks bloggers tradition of questioning the.science
65. Revkin : even without fuel lobby there’d be not much action
66. Difficult to.change as.fossil fuels still.cheap -.forces of.stasis.have an easy task
67. Left.journalism to work on fostering innovation
68. Meeting now of climate scientists about ozone.treaty
69. . @Revkin gone.
70. Online media amplifying skeptical coverage?
71. Empirical evidence of coverage online depending on generating traffic
72. Blogospheric.pressure in France? New.phenomenon
73. People outspoken to generate traffic? Not in France
74. Chinese blogosphere? Environment not.global warming
75. Water pollution more meaningful to people’s life
76. Rapley – skeptics talk of uncertainties to prevent action. Risk assessment?
77. Painter : haven’t looked at framing. Quantitative analysis
78. Should understand what kind of skeptics “we’re talking about”
79. Climategate emboldened the daily express in mentioning skeptical voices
80. More.questions showing French reaction not as in uk
81. Elite debate in France for.years.
82. Steve.Jones of bbc report fame. Says typical reporting strives for balance
83. Media.don’t understand debate in.science?
84. Due impartialityis important according to Painter
85. Lloyd bbc criticized for having expoused. Climate change not easy for the bbc
86. I asked.about need for academic findings so.report isn’t much good.
87. Another q: more people.haved moved away from extremes.
88. Another q: media lacking about political economy of climate change
89. Not many people talk of policy?
90. Nadin: change in degree of skepticism yes in China. Debate on adaptation.
91. Talks of “climate change” forcing people to.relocate
92. Sciama: science journalist talking science. (Maybe that’s problem?)
93. Shift in position towards warming but natural
94. More worried about disappeared climate reporting than space given to skeptical voices
95. Datasets are academic conclusions less so

Socrates, Or Pointing The Way For The Future Of Climate Science

Roger Pielke Jr laments the withering of climatology:

Climate science — or at least some parts of it — seems to have devolved into an effort to generate media coverage and talking points for blogs, at the expense of actually adding to our scientific knowledge of the climate system

Actually, it was December 2009 when I wrote in the pages of the Spectator (UK):

This might be the most important lesson of the 1974 report on global cooling: that we need to grow up, separate climatology from fear, and recognise — much as it pains politicians and scientists — that our understanding of how climate changes remains in its infancy.

Here we are, almost two years later. For example, what do we understand about the past? Willis Eschenbach at WUWT shows it in the non-smoothed BEST reconstruction graph:

"BEST global surface temperature estimates. Gray bars show what BEST says are the 95% confidence intervals (95%CI) for each datapoint"

And what do we understand about the future? Patrick Frank in Skeptic.com’s Reading Room:

"The Special Report on Emission Scenarios (SRES-SPM-5) A2 projection from Figure 1 showing the physical uncertainty of the projected temperature trend when including ±10.1% cloud error (light shading), or the uncertainty in greenhouse gas forcing (dark shading). Inset: A close-up view of the first 20 years of the A2 projection and the uncertainty limits."

In other words: for the past, all we know for sure it’s that the error bars cover from -5C to +3C if we go back to 200 years ago. For the past, all we can estimate for sure it’s that error bars cover an enormous span if we move forward 100 years (even removing cloud uncertainty, still the 2100 error goes from -10C to +16C).

For all we know, Romans were conquering a world that was 50C colder than today, and oceans will boil before the XXII century. Or vice-versa.

=====

Please do not start speculating about uncertainty as a reason for doing nothing – it isn’t.

Think of science instead: what’s the way out of this cul-de-sac made up of giant error bars? How can our understanding finally leave its infancy? The way out has actually being indicated already, by a guy born in 469BC:

Socrates was wise in that he knew the he knew nothing, whereas others were unaware of their own ignorance.

If and when such a realization will become widespread, only then climate science will be able to mature away from silly manipulations, towards the approach so nicely described by Professor Sir Bernard Lovell to David Whitehouse:

One evening we unrolled the pen recorder data in a long ribbon down the corridor outside the main observing room. “Now,” he said, “look at the data. Get to know it.” His point was that before us was what the universe was saying, and that it was more important than any theory.” Data is never inconvenient. It beats theory every time.

An unexamined climate is not worth studying…

If Freud Had Met Climate Catastrophists…

Some quick rewording on an old statement by Sigmund Freud, referred to by Gordon Marino on the NYT:

The climatology of catastrophic anthropogenic global warming (cAGW) is not opposed to science, it behaves itself as if it were a science, and to a certain extent it makes use of the same methods; but it parts company with science, in that it clings to the illusion that it can produce a complete and coherent picture of the future of the Earth’s climate. Its methodological error lies in the fact that it over-estimates the epistemological value of its computer-based operations… But cAGW has no immediate influence on the great majority of mankind; it interests only a small number even of the thin upper stratum of intellectuals, while all the rest find it beyond them.

They’re At War – 1 – The Belief Of The Unpleasant

WUWT wonders why warmists are almost invariably and incredibly rude, constantly choosing to appear as unpleasant as possible

But, hasn’t it always been that way since the very beginning of the issue? The combination of perceived moral high ground mixed with the educated liberal mindset, combined with a dash of anonymity, in my opinion, leads AGW proponents to revert to tribal mannerisms in dealing with others whom they perceive as inferior in intellect and creed.

On the plus side, this very behavior, which seems to be omnipresent in AGW proponent circles, (though skeptics have a few bad examples too) is part of the reason why skeptics are winning the war of public opinion.

There is one important bit missing in the above. It’s not just perceived moral high ground mixed with the educated liberal mindset, combined with a dash of anonymity: there is also a strong war-like mentality, since the Cooks and dana1981s and taminos of the world are literally (in their view) protecting the planet against us evil skeptics.

When one believes to be at war, a war for survival no less, then there is little time for niceties and considerations about the feelings of fellow human beings. And just as well, the first casualty of war is truth and that’s why there isn’t much of it alive at Skeptical Science, or RealClimate, or Tamino, etc etc.

The IPCC Is Dead

This is it, guys and gals. The IPCC is dead.

Either that, or following Piero Manzoni’s example the bowel movements of scientists should be labelled “scientific stool”. That’s the end result of going the authoritative way, believing anything coming out of a scientist is necessarily scientific.

Now, of course the death of the IPCC way means nothing regarding the reality of AGW, or of CAGW. We’ve wasted “only” 23 years, and countless more in the future whilst people keep trying to ride the dead IPCC horse.

Why AGW Is A Communication Issue

Shub Niggurath has just made the startling (?) discovery that PR people think the problem with AGW not having become a religion for the masses can be solved by…PR people.

Talk about a hammer convinced the whole world is a nail. Or turkeys consensually rejecting the notion of Christmas.

Sarcasm aside, there is a grain of truth even in the most mendacious Desmogblog statement, and so there is here. In fact, “communication” implies a source, a destination, a medium and a message. Failure of any of those components is a failure at communication.

The issue of course is that close-minded PR people will rationalize their problems as some issue related to the medium, and act accordingly, and quite wrongly (they remind me of Father Dougal panicking in “Speed 3” and so resorting to the one thing he knew how to do, celebrating Mass).

In the real world instead, the real communication failure has been at the level of the message. As I wrote in Nov 2008, AGWers have  nothing to show:

for all the huffing and all the puffing, there is very little that AGWers can show to support their claims

This doesn’t necessarily mean AGW is nothing and will have no consequences. What it means is that True Believers behave as if they have yet to understand what the issue is about, and keep reverting to type in the face of absolute cluelessness:

they use the tools learned to protect pandas or clean up the Hudson river. And for most intents and purposed, they fail: because, as Revkin has realized, Anthropogenic Global Warming, aka Climate Change, truly is a completely different beast

Expect plenty of claims for the foreseeable future then, about this or that phenomenon as evidence of global warming or climate change. Luckily though, due to the intrinsically inflationary nature of their approach, everything they say will quickly lose in importance.

Policy Lass (And The Climate Bullies) Didn’t Get It

I knew I was asking for a miracle even bigger than catastrophic anthropogenic global warming, still for a few short hours my optimist side took over and kept waiting for any signal that Policy Lass would “get it”.

“It” being the rather obvious fact that by antagonizing anybody that doesn’t adhere to their particular aspect of climate faith, by focusing on exclusivity nobody will ever be able to see approved and then implemented any policy, climate or otherwise. That applies to democracy, but also to pretty much all dictatorships apart from Burma and North Korea perhaps.

Now, considering also the fact that 19 years of international climate efforts have been even less effective than 40 years of international illegal drugs efforts, one starts to wonder

does Susan/Policy Lass/Shewonk actually care about the environment, climate change and the planet, to the point of being willing to participate to the building of effective, practical, realistic, implementable environment and climate change policies…or is she just interested to participate to a good fight?

The end result of my probing? Susan “Shewonk” didn’t get it, actually launched into a tirade of extreme pessimism regarding policy of any kind. That still doesn’t explain what she would find worthwhile in berating people that don’t totally agree with her. Also somebody (Friedman?) said pessimists are right, but it’s the optimists that can change the world. So Susan can’t change the world, and doesn’t even want to.

Another commenter “sharper00″ went a step further, and appeared to justify the aforementioned berating by the desire to tell people when their attitudes and decisions are not based on science, where “science” is whatever “sharper00″ means it is. It’s the famous strip, why don’t you come to sleep, wait, somebody’s wrong on the internet. This doesn’t strike as a particularly effective way of saving the planet either.

In a few short hours things degenerated, as usual, with the all-too-predictable actions of a pair of bullies, the aforementioned sharper00 and the notorious Dhogaza, transformed in the Climate Torquemadas, spending their Saturday by reading my contributions to Steven Goddard’s blog in the insane attempt of finding a mistake for me to admit. I’m feeling honored already.

What they found, was instead a collection of sarcastic remarks. Alas, they didn’t get that either. How many people really equate sarcasm to “joke”, I wonder. Apart from climate believers that is.

Anyway…what I find ridiculous in the extreme, beyond sarcasm even, is that those that scour the web in search of a “denier” to bully, are the same people that claim the world is going to experience a series of disasters unless something’s done pretty quickly.

It makes absolutely no sense.

Reposting anyhere my complete blog presence since January 2003 will do nothing, nothing, nothing at all wrt preventing the AGW disasters they fill their mouths and keyboard with. So why would anybody do that?

Why do they do that?

There has to be somebody out there capable of explaining themselves.

Will CO2 Cause Bieber Fever In Fish Worldwide?

No, I am not talking about this Fish. Or that Phish. I am talking about fish of the swimming variety, recently in the news as under multiple lines of attack by (you guessed it right) increased CO2 in the atmosphere.

Poor little ocean inhabitants will run out of breath, or go deaf. Or maybe not, as both papers compensate with novelty what they lack in robustness.

In the meanwhile, though, there are some indications that, at least for now, great white sharks are into AC/DC. That could be useful news (if under threat of attack, just convince a fellow diver to burst into a watery version of “Back in Black” and you’ll be fine. You, that is, not the fellow diver).

Why stop there, though? We can combine all these pieces of evidence to come up with a realistic scenario (as realistic as anything ever written by the likes of David Suzuki or Paul R. Ehrlich, that is): with human-caused CO2 emissions apparently unstoppable, fish the world over will experience irregular heartbeats, and hearing difficulties causing a decline in musical taste.

That is, they will all suffer “Bieber Fever“.

Please help prevent such a tragedy, by reducing your CO2 emissions.

Magical #AGW Thinking

A shameless copy-and-paste of a great comment by Willis Eschenbach at Judith Curry’s blog, that ties up nicely with my “AGW is logically impossible” page. Who knows how many superb considerations are missed in the vast oceans of the internet simply because they are “just” comments?

it’s great that you have declared yourself to be against “magical thinking”, Judith. My suggestion is that you apply that excellent mantra to:

1. Moonbat. Anyone who plans to save the world through economic collapse is heavily into magic. Or mentally disturbed, but I’m going with the former.

2. CO2. The change in forcing from a doubling of CO2 is less than a 1% change in total forcing. The idea that a 1% change in a complex natural system will throw the system totally out of balance is “magical thinking” at its finest, and one that I would love to see you (or anyone) defend with examples. This one involves what I call “kid magic”. This is the kind of magic where we imagine ourselves to be much more powerful than we are, we are the “sorcerer’s apprentice” and we’re able to control things that we can barely understand.

3. Renewables. It would take a very heavy dose of magic for them to take over any amount of the requirements for just industrial power, much less total power requirements.

4. Climate mathematics. You see, you just substitute what you want, and the answer magically comes out the way you want it. (There is a subsidiary magic here, which causes problems in the mathematicians’ spines when it comes to objecting to this kind of nonsense … but I digress).

5. Climate models. Somehow, despite being unable to model the climate at annual or multi-decadal timescales, they magically can predict the climate at hundred-year scales … I see these as the modern version of “sympathetic magic”, where the power lies in the resemblance or similarity of the object to reality. If the model results look enough like the climate, it is just as magically effective (through “sympathy” or similarity) as sticking pins in a doll that looks kinda like your enemy … magical thought at its finest.

6. Mitigation of CO2. No one has ever shown that a) mitigation is practical or b) mitigation is cost-effective or c) mitigation will work. Experiments such as Kyoto have been a total failure. Despite that, mitigation is being pushed, and pushed hard, as a “solution” to your imaginary problem … and that is a point of view so heavily imbued with wishful and magical thinking as to not come close to passing the laugh test.

7. Fixing bad science through communication. This is what I call “modern magic”, where everything that is wrong is assumed to be a failure of communication. Believing that we can fix bad science through communication is magical ideation of the highest order.

And you claim to be agains “magical thinking”?

Because if you actually acted against that kind of magical thinking, Judith, you might be more credible. As it is, though, you believe in and espouse enough magical claims to give Chris Angel a headache or to make Teller speak out loud … and that’s heavy magic indeed.

Lomborg Cools It In London

Live microblogging of the screening+Q&A of Bjorn Lomborg‘s “Cool It“, organised by Legatum at London’s Soho Hotel on May 5:

1. Almost ready to go for #Lomborg and #cool_it – Lord Monckton just sat next to me
2. Legatum explain their interest as climate change “unfortunately” an ideological debate
3. Climate change alarmism “one of the biggest threat” to a free society –
4. The Man starts as usual with a T-shirt – flew out of Los Angeles yesterday – 86 minutes
5. What if fear IS the point?
6. Wave power in Scotland … 35 years ago, same as the Climategate inquiries
7. Stephen Schneider comes out of this movie really badly – mostly because of himself
8. So I agree with Gore – geoengineering is nuts
9. Movie ends – around 100 attendees – refreshments now
10. I suggested to reframe the solution in terms of a worry otherwise none will listen –
11. Does he trust the science? Mentions Pielke Sr – says IPCC is broadly trusted
12. Times journo asks why no mention of targets – L says q is ill posed as cuts depend on costs
13. L says prob is Kyoto solutions cost more than future climate – current policies are “incredibly poor investment”
14. Green taxes a bad idea. R&D a waste most of the time? Allocation a prob for Copenhagen Consensus 2012
15. Governments pick “right” solutions instead of allowing researchers to work in different directions
16. We should address specific ideas – example is X Prize. solution in numbers
17. Economist from DECC – economies of scale? Cost of.behavioral changes? Talks of computers with vacuum tubes
18. We should go for scale when technology is ready not too early
19. Shame people for doing what they do or use prices? Opts for prices. Dramatic choices not using propaganda
20. What is the proof of AGW for L? Apart from computer models? Refuses to answer directly
21. Poor Bioengineering is getting cornered. Benny Peiser buys him some time
22. Poor Bjorn not Bioengineering thank you Android
23. Strongest argument finally: warming is coming but doesn’t know what feedbacks there will be
24. Makes argument by authority and separation of careers! Yikes!
25. Voice falters – should stick away from climate science in these occasions
26. Monckton says mitigation cost effectiveness is an almost unknown topic. Done any calculations?
27. Sends effusiveness towards the Lord. Debate starts on metrics
28. “If it made money somebody would have done it”
29. Chemtrailer spoils the night. L doesn’t believe in conspiracy but in people trying to make things more dramatic
30. “You cannot scare people for 100 years”.
31. Peiser ends thanking Lomborg for contributing to a calmer debate

BBC Science Coverage: It’s Worse The We Thought

BBC News’s “Science & Environment” pages have seldom been a paradigm of in-depth, unbiased, trustworthy coverage. Yet, they’re now sinking to new, sensationalistic lows. And it’s not just climate change.

Latest offerings: Richard Black on absurdist claims that million-year-long processes are changing right now; Black again telling the world that coal is now good (and reporting the energy policy ideas of a Professor of Ecology & Environmental Biology); Mark Kinver crying that penguins are “suffering” (whilst whales and seals are thriving, as reported well hidden in the same article); Pallab Ghosh fantasizing about Soviets getting the Moon before the Americans (forgetting that the key technological factor was the development by the US of combustion chambers able to withstand enormous pressures, so the Saturn-V could do with 5 engines on the first stage instead of 30).

Expect soon articles on how people feel about string theory, and the dangers to the fabric of the Universe caused by pesky European particle accelerators (oh…nevermind)

Andy @Revkin Points To The End of The Line For The IPCC And Its Lot

Thanks Andy!

Beginning in the 1980s, [University of Pennsylvania Professor Philip] Tetlock examined 27,451 forecasts by 284 academics, pundits and other prognosticators. The study was complex, but the conclusion can be summarized simply: the experts bombed. Not only were they worse than statistical models, they could barely eke out a tie with the proverbial dart-throwing chimps. […] The least accurate forecasters, [Tetlock] found, were hedgehogs: “thinkers who ‘know one big thing,’ aggressively extend the explanatory reach of that one big thing into new domains” and “display bristly impatience with those who ‘do not get it,’ ” he wrote. Better experts “look like foxes: thinkers who know many small things,” “are skeptical of grand schemes” and are “diffident about their own forecasting prowess.”

So there we have it…experts of the “big thing” called “climate change”, aggressive (to the point of hiding declines, preventing publication of competing ideas, inserting unsubstantiated critiques in the IPCC report, etc etc) and definitely “impatient” with us little humans wondering aloud about their certitudes (any post at RC, Connolley, Deltoid, Romm, etc etc keeps confirming this point).

Note how none of the above can be defined as “gross negligence” or “conspiracy”, and yet despite all the whitewashing by the Climategate inquiries, there is a scientific consensus, and the best of our scientific knowledge demonstrates, that all that bunch, and pretty much all the bigwigs around the IPCC, they ARE “least accurate forecasters”. QED.

For more discussion about “wrongology”: here and here. Read also here a critique-essay by Tetlock himself, listing a set of criteria suggested by David Freedman, author of Wrong: Why Experts* Keep Failing Us—And How to Know When Not to Trust Them as signs of claims we should be “especially wary of”

1. dramatic (“claiming to have invented the psychological equivalent of the telescope qualifies”)
2. a tad too clear-cut (“devoid of qualifications about when propositions do and do not hold”)
3. doubt free (“portraying findings as beyond reasonable doubt and one’s measure as 100 percent pure”)
4. universal (“implying that one is tapping into powerful unconscious forces that, hitherto unbeknownst to us, drive all human behavior”)
5. palatable (“likely to appeal to one’s favorite ideological constituencies”)
6. receiving “a lot of positive” media attention (“widely covered in the mass media and millions have visited the website”)
7. actionable implications (“claims about what employers now need to do to guarantee true equality of opportunity in workplaces”)

Let me now make a statement that is dramatic, very clear-cut, doubt-free, universal, palatable (to most of my readers), yet likely media-ignored and hardly actionable: the “scientific consensus” on climate-change (rather, the unscientific stuff that constitutes the IPCC–led propaganda bandied about as “scientific consensus”), scores 7 out of 7 on the Freedman scale and therefore should lie at the bottom of anybody’s trust level:

1. dramatic (having reached the computational power needed to project future climate just as CO2 emissions got to a previously-unknown “dangerous” level)
2. a tad too clear-cut (with climate change almost completely due to a “thermostat” called CO2)
3. doubt free (the IAC spent an inordinate amount of time complaining about the absurd IPCC policy of underplaying uncertainties)
4. universal (everybody will feel the (bad) consequences of climate change, and everybody is guilty of it)
5. palatable (as it happens, the usual evils of capitalism and freedoms are the underling cause of climate change)
6. receiving “a lot of positive” media attention (shall I really comment this?)
7. actionable implications (every ha’penny worth of a politician understands how many things can be pinned upon the bandwagon called “climate change”)

And I find one sentence by Tetlock as especially relevant to the climate debate:

Whatever may be the merits of the underlying science in the peer-reviewed literature, in the public forum, the ratio of pseudoexpertise to genuine expertise is distressingly high.

ps Yes, I might be wrong. On the other hand, I am not asking for billions of dollars for dubious research, have never attempted to restrict anybody’s liberty, don’t use the ‘net to show off my superiority complex, do let almost every comment free on this website, etc etc)

Disasters Caused By (Fear Of) Climate Change

Climate change has caused incredible suffering already.

Actually, climate change hasn’t done much, or perhaps anything at all (yet?). The reason for the “incredible suffering” has been the fear of climate change. For example:

• Billions of euros stolen from European citizens to give away free money to major polluters in the ETS scheme (not to mention outright fraudsters and money-launderers), with no positive result whatsoever
• Yes more billions thrown away in the support of “green” dictatorships
• Increased risk of famine, plus impoverishment of the already-poor, thanks to the massive use of corn for biofuels especially in the USA
• Hundreds of more billions wasted for no good reason at all (eg in Japan)
• The upcoming all-lights-out energy crisis in the UK, primarily caused by the silly idea to build no more power stations of any kind apart from useless wind turbines

How many more victims of AGWers are needed, before the catastrophists see what they’re doing to our world?

Nuke The Toxic Humans!

Recent entries from the Warmist camp:

1. Genghis Khan was good regarding CO2 emissions, in particular due to his mass-killing attitude
2. Nuclear war is good for global warming, as it reverses it for a while (no prob there, we can start a new war when needed)
3. Exploding people including children is good for action against global warming/CO2 emissions/climate change

Who’s going to join the dots and push the appropriate nuclear button, for the good of the planet of course?