As the Republican-called witness at a recent hearing, I was denounced by the Democrats for denying a fossil-fueled “climate crisis” that, as their witnesses testified, results in violence against women, asthma and obesity in children, and deadly storms. But few actually questioned me. After all, “the debate is over.”
So instead, the latest belle of my party’s ball, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, left the dais to urge protestors outside to drown me out. She’d previously written Google and Facebook, asking them to block me and the CO2 Coalition of 50 unalarmed scientists I direct from speaking at conferences they sponsor.
At the hearing, I presented data from the United Nations contradicting the accepted wisdom that extreme weather is destroying the planet and is traceable directly to a man-made climate crisis. There are no such trends in rates of sea-level rise, hurricanes, floods, or droughts. One Democrat who stuck around to actually question me simply asserted that our coalition is funded by energy companies. I wish! Another wanted to know, “Do you believe in climate change or not?” When I asked him to define it, he cut me off with: “That answers it all…That gives us a hint where you’re coming from.”
Indeed it does. Where I’m coming from is academia, where defining the scientific terms we discuss is elemental.
The whole affair shows just how much has changed. A decade ago I’d been the one pummeling a Republican-called witness, a little-known pollster named Kellyanne Conway, in my role as counsel to a Democratic committee chairman. And the last time I’d been a witness, as director of a foreign policy group in 1994, I’d been called in by Democrats who were backing our “no arms to dictators” bill. But now I am a heretic for using scientific facts to dispute exaggerated talking points.
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Where I’m coming from is academia, where defining the scientific terms we discuss is elemental. (Photo by Graeme Jennings/Washington Examiner)…
Oppenheimer has long voiced concerns about consensus (e.g. his 2007 paper). However, Oreskes has been consensus enforcer in chief, originating the 97% thingy.
You can see where this is going from the title of this article; most of this is an attempt to justify alarmism. But they make some interesting points. Excerpts:
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Lets stop manufacturing consensus about climate change. Lets open up the scientific debate on climate change and celebrate disagreement and use it to push the knowledge frontier of climate science. The whole consensus thing has done little to reduce global CO2 emissions, which was the point of the whole exercise. It’s time for new approaches to both science and policy.
A few decades ago it was “consensus” science that CO2 levels had reached 400 ppm (and even up to 500 ppm) during the Early Holocene, with rising amplitudes of greater than 200 ppm and rates of 65 ppm in less than a century. Then the “consensus” opinion changed.
In 1982 it was still quite acceptable for Dr. Flohn, a climate scientist, to acknowledge that changes in CO2 concentration changes are significantly determined by temperature “rather independent of” fossil fuel emissions, but also that Holocene CO2 concentrations reached 350 to 400 ppm between 8,000 to 6,000 years ago (Flohn, 1982).
Why the discrepancy between “consensus” CO2 and historically recorded CO2?
Polish physicist Dr. Zbigniew Jaworowski (1997) was a fierce critic of the means by which ice core data have been collected to assign CO2 concentration values to past epochs.
His criticisms center around the post-1985 tendencies for fellow scientists to openly employ selection bias in making pre-determined decisions about what measurements are “right” and which ones are “wrong” – effectively rendering their results meaningless.
He cites Pearlman et al. (1986), for example. These authors collected 74 Antarctic ice core CO2 samples. Of those, 32 (43%) were rejected because they had values that were too high or too low to match with the agreed-upon pre-determination.
In what other branch of science is it acceptable to discard measured data we don’t agree with?
In the first 5½ months of 2019, over 200 scientific papers have been published that cast doubt on the position that anthropogenic CO2 emissions function as the climate’s fundamental control knob…or that otherwise serve to question the efficacy of climate models or the related “consensus” positions commonly endorsed by policymakers and ²²²²mainstream media sources.
These 200+ new papers affirm the position that there are significant limitations and uncertainties inherent in our understanding of climate and climate changes, emphasizing that climate science is not settled.
More specifically, the papers in this compilation support these four main skeptical positions — categorized here as N(1) – N(4) — which question climate alarm.
by Dr. D. Thresher, January 4, 2019 in ClimateChangeDispatch
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The results of NASA GISS’s climate model, oft-cited as proof of global warming, are thus still questionable since the model is almost certainly full of bugs.
Pointing all this out, particularly on RealClimatologists.org, is how I became known as a climate change denier.
In 2018, over 500 scientific papers were published that cast doubt on the position that anthropogenic CO2 emissions function as the climate’s fundamental control knob…or that otherwise serve to question the efficacy of climate models or the related “consensus” positions commonly endorsed by policymakers and mainstream media sources.
For those still blindly banging the ‘97%’ drum, here is a in-no-way-comprehensive list of the SCIENTISTS who publicly disagree with the current consensus on climate change –namely the IPCC’s catastrophic conclusions.
There are currently 85 names on the list. Though it is embryonic and dynamic.
Suggestions for omissions and/or additions can be added to the comment section below and, if validated, will serve to update the list.
SCIENTISTS ARGUING THAT GLOBAL WARMING IS PRIMARILY CAUSED BY NATURAL PROCESSES
— scientists that have called the observed warming attributable to natural causes, i.e. the high solar activity witnessed over the last few decades.
Friends of Science Society is critical of the IPCC SR15 report, pointing out the following:
We are in the Meghalayan, not the Anthropocene. The IPCC SR15 report claims to view climate change through “the lens of the Anthropocene.” This term is popularly used to describe a modern geological period wherein humans are assumed to have a larger impact on the world than nature. On July 13, 2018, the International Union of Geological Sciences (IUGS) issued a statement that the earth is now in the Meghalayan, a period that began 4,200 years ago. In response to questions as to why the term “Anthropocene” had not been included, at least for the past 50 years of presumed human influence, the IUGS responded that the term “Anthropocene” has not even been submitted for consideration and that the term has only sociological, not scientific relevance. The IPCC should not use this ‘lens.’
All climate models (simulations) used by the IPCC run ‘too hot’ versus observations. The computer simulations project future warming (thus being the rationale for global warming climate policies) show significantly higher temperatures than what is being observed. Only the Russian climate model and satellite/weather balloon data closely match present temperatures in the lower troposphere. This suggests that most climate models ascribe too great an effect of warming (climate sensitivity) to carbon dioxide.
This means the climate models should not be used to set public policy.
No temperature can be accurately measured to a precision of less than ±0.1°C. global temperature data is a metric of averaged and adjusted data from many sources, suggesting that a 0.5°C difference in temperature is moot and an arbitrary figure. It does not reference an actual measurement of earth’s temperature; people are being misled.
Le physicien Jacques Duran, fondateur du célèbre site Pensée Unique et pionnier du climato-réalisme en France, est décédé ce vendredi 26 octobre 2018.
Son site internet est toujours online. Si vous ne le connaissez pas, allez vite le voir. Copiez le et diffusez le. Il est vraiment Unique! Il est abondamment documenté et illustré, et représente une véritable mine de connaissances sur le climat. Son site, créé en 2006 sous le pseudonyme de Jean Martin, est dédié à tous ceux qui ont conservé un esprit critique et qui se refusent à absorber sans réfléchir une grande partie des nouvelles de toutes sortes qui nous parviennent chaque jour.
Much of my rebuttal was put together from prior WUWT posts on this subject, there’s at least one new addition to the vast evidence of scientific division (Stenhouse et al., 2017).
Stenhouse et al., 2014 told us that atmospheric scientists are very divided on climate change over the past 150 years.
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89% × 59% = 52%… A far cry from the oft claimed 97% consensus.
The Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC) is what its name suggests: an international panel of nongovernment scientists and scholars who have come together to understand the causes and consequences of climate change. Because we are not predisposed to believe climate change is caused by human greenhouse gas emissions, we are able to look at evidence the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) ignores. Because we do not work for any governments, we are not biased toward the assumption that greater government activity is necessary.
NIPCC traces its roots to a meeting in Milan in 2003 organized by the
Science and Environmental Policy Project (SEPP), a nonprofit research and education organization based in Arlington, Virginia. SEPP, in turn, was founded in 1990 by Dr. S. Fred Singer, an atmospheric physicist, and incorporated in 1992 following Dr. Singer’s retirement from the University of Virginia. NIPCC is currently a joint project of SEPP, The Heartland Institute, and the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change.
In media interviews or discussions with the public, the most frequent opening challenge is; “But don’t 97% of scientists agree?” It is usually said obliquely to imply that you know a lot, and I don’t understand, but I assume you are wrong because you are in the minority. I don’t attempt to refute the statistics. Instead, I explain the difference in definitions between science and society. Then I point out that the critical 97% figure is that at least 97% of scientists have never read the claims of the IPCC Reports. How many people reading this article have read all the IPCC Reports, or even just one of them? If you have, it is probably the deliberately deceptive Summary for Policymakers (SPM). Even fewer will have read the Report of Working Group I: The Physical Science Basis. Naively, people, especially other scientists, assume scientists would not falsify, mislead, misrepresent, or withhold information. It is worse, because the IPCC deliberately created the false claim of consensus.
by Wallace Manheimer, June 4, 2018 in ClimateChangeDispatch
A claimed nearly unanimous scientific consensus on fear of climate change has caused a push to substantially reduce or even eliminate the use of fossil fuel in favor of solar and wind.
But three crucial questions are: 1) is the scientific community really united? 2) can solar and wind take over any time soon to provide the required vital energy for the maintenance of modern civilization in today’s world of 7 billion people?, and 3) has CO2 caused any harm yet? The answer to all three questions is no.
A major theme of this essay is that many assertions can easily be checked out by a simple Google search.
A new study by climatologists Nicholas Lewis and Judith Curry concludes that Earth’s “equilibrium climate sensitivity” (ECS) to more atmospheric carbon dioxide is as much as 50% lower than climate alarmists have been claiming. That their paper was published in the Journal of Climate suggests that the asserted “97% consensus” of climate experts may be eroding.
Or as Cornwall Alliance founder Cal Beisner puts it (paraphrasing Winston Churchill) it may not be the beginning of the end of climate alarmism. But it could be the end of the beginning of alarmism as the dominant, ever-victorious tenet of our times.
Indeed, say other noted climatologists, there are good reasons to think ECS and alarmist errors are even greater than 50 percent. For one thing, there is no persuasive reason to assume our planet’s climate system (…)
President, Europäisches Institut für Klima und Energie (EIKE)
US Climate and Energy Policy after 10 Months Trump
Zero Hour for Climate Alarmists?
Marc Morano
Editor in Chief www.climatedepot.com and Director of Communication CFACT
The German Energiewende – Germany’s Green Path, between Illusion and Reality,
Electricity Consumers Fully Support Scientists’ Letter to EPA Calling for Immediate Reopening of its GHG Endangerment Finding
Key Points: This Letter from over 60 highly credentialed scientists states that: “We the undersigned are individuals who have technical skills and knowledge relevant to climate science and the GHG Endangerment Finding. We each are convinced that the 2009 GHG Endangerment Finding is fundamentally flawed and that an honest, unbiased reconsideration is in order.”
Debate and controversy concerning the issue of climate change generally results in the hindering and obstruction of social and governmental action on this issue. This paper analyses the scientific background, i.e. the reference list of the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report ‘‘The Physical Science Basis’’ and an alternative climate change report of a US think tank institute ‘‘Climate Change Reconsidered II. Physical Science’’.
The period from 2000 to 2016 shows a modest warming trend that the advocates of the anthropogenic global warming theory have labeled as the “pause” or “hiatus.” These labels were chosen to indicate that the observed temperature standstill period results from an unforced internal fluctuation of the climate (e.g. by heat uptake of the deep ocean) that the computer climate models are claimed to occasionally reproduce without contradicting the anthropogenic global warming theory (AGWT) paradigm. In part 1 of this work, it was shown that the statistical analysis rejects such labels with a 95% confidence because the standstill period has lasted more than the 15 year period limit provided by the AGWT advocates themselves.
by Paul Matthews, August 13, 2017 in CimateScepticism
In many ways, the climate debate has hardly changed since I got interested in it about ten years ago. Public opinion wobbles up and down with hardly any real change. The same tired arguments and claims come round again: every climate conference is the last chance to save the planet; the Arctic ice is always about to vanish in one or two years, or ten years; climate scientists continue to be accused of selecting data sets to create hockeysticks and manipulating data; and teams of climate scientists keep producing reports saying almost exactly the same thing as the previous reports, which then get misrepresented and hyped by the media.
In understanding climate change risk, and deciding on the ‘if’ and ‘what’ of ‘action’, we need to acknowledge that we don’t know how the climate of the 21st century will play out (Deep Uncertainty, folks). Four possibilities:
It is possible that human-caused climate change will be swamped by much larger natural climate variability.
It is possible/plausible that the sensitivity of the climate is on the low end of the IPCC envelope (1.0-1.5C), with a slow creep of warming superimposed on much larger natural variability.
It is possible/plausible that the IPCC projections are actually correct (right for the wrong reasons; too much wrong with the climate models for much credibility, IMO).
It is possible that AGW and natural variability could conspire to cause catastrophic outcomes
A new opinion poll of 10,000 European citizens reveals majority of Europeans reject the claim that climate change is mainly or entirely caused by humans.
For the last few decades, questions about the causes and impacts of climate change have dominated the climate debate. The IPCC and many climate scientists have been claiming relentlessly that the global warming trend since the second half of the 20th century is mainly if not entirely man-made, i.e. as a result of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. This dogma is habitually claimed to be the global climate consensus.
The climate consensus now has two derogation levels for those who disagree. Climate ‘contrarians’ like Bjørn Lomborg disagree about mitigation policies. Climate ‘deniers’ like Judith Curry disagree about the underlying climatology
During the first 6 months of 2017, 285 scientific papers have already been published that cast doubt on the position that anthropogenic CO2 emissions function as the climate’s fundamental control knob…or that otherwise question the efficacy of climate models or the related “consensus” positions commonly endorsed by policymakers and mainstream media.
These 285 new papers support the position that there are significant limitations and uncertainties inherent in our understanding of climate and climate changes. Climate science is not settled.
La géologie, une science plus que passionnante … et diverse
