My belated condolences. I always enjoyed reading his posts and will miss his insight and wide ranging views. May hew…
Why would anyone believe a single word coming out of their mouth?
One of the climate alarmist’s standard responses to any criticism of the theory of global warming is that unless the person is a climate scientist themselves, the point being made is from a position of ignorance and can therefore be ignored. As with most propaganda designed to silence any opposition, there’s an element of truth in it.
However, I think there are a number of obvious rebuttals to such an arrogant and dismissive stance.
The regularity with which the skeptic community eviscerates alarmist papers indicates to me that they’re actually more on top of the hard science than the alarmists researchers. In general, the depth of science expertise in the skeptic community is reflected in the technical content of the leading skeptic sites and the quality of the comments, which indicate an unusually high proportion of visitors with some sort of science, engineering or mathematical background; slightly geeky to be frank but the knowledge in other areas extends well beyond those narrow confines.
In contrast, the alarmist blogosphere doesn’t really do much in the way of hard science content, but rather acts as an uncritical cheerleader and a launchpad for various propaganda initiatives. “That’s what they’re for” was the sneering remark made about them by one of their own high priests in the Climategate emails leak.
This science lite flavour is reflected in the character of the regular commenters there, who’re more like politically chic activists seeking some type of scientific authority figure’s validation of their belief system and sometimes exhibit an unquestioning acceptance coupled with an appalling ignorance of even the most basic principles of science. They’re more of an arty rather than sciency crowd, perhaps because they mistakenly assume art is somehow a less demanding discipline than science. Fittingly enough, any time I’ve seen them trying to put art at the service of the cause, it’s been truly dreadful.
This knowledge weak audience demographic is reinforced by the ferociously intolerant moderation policies, which tend to shunt the enquiring or technically minded visitors of an undecided persuasion over to the skeptical sites. What can one say except thank you for all those quality recruits you’ve driven in our direction in the last few years. We have the wherewithal to persuade an open mind, rather than just demand their blind compliance. One volunteer is worth ten browbeaten conscripts.
There is a tacit admission of this difference in the level of expertise between the two communities by the alarmist retreat from provocative hard science papers, which run the risk of being shredded by the skeptics, and a new vogue of papers based on polls and other essentially subjective metrics, which yield the requisite propaganda headlines but can safely be argued over to no definitive conclusion ad nauseam. They’re more metaphysics than science and they all tend to revolve around the novel idea of scientific proof by consensus.
Georges Clemenceau, the prime minister of France during WWI, famously remarked after yet another military disaster that war is too important to be left to the generals. In an analogous fashion, when a branch of science is being used to justify the complete restructuring of the global economy, it’s no longer a scientific issue but a political one.
More importantly, it’s the ordinary person who’s being asked to finance initiatives, which will lower their standard of living and significantly increase their tax burden for the coming decades. If you’re the one actually doing the paying, you very definitely want a say, even if you’re not a rocket scientist. He who pays the piper, gets to call the tune.
So, if global warming is too important to be left to the scientists, how can the ordinary person arrive at a reasonable judgement as to its validity? We all have our own way of getting to understand something and personally being a from first principles type of person, asking basic questions about it has always been mine. When it comes to people, meaning the climate scientists in this particular instance, I find the most revealing questions to ask usually begin with why, so let’s take that approach. The seemingly simple but difficult trick is to ask the blindingly obvious questions.
Why is it that every one of the cockups and blunders we uncover in their papers always err towards a warmer global climate?
Why do they persistently withhold the data on which their conclusions are based?
Why do they, in their own words, hide behind Freedom of Information laws, as a reason to keep such data hidden?
Why do they, in their own words again, hide behind Non-disclosure Agreements, as a reason to keep the data hidden?
Why are they so vague about the exact methods used on the data to derive their results?
Why do all their computer climate models run hot?
Why have they consistently overestimated the climate’s sensitivity to CO2?
Why don’t they ever design experiments attempting to disprove their theories?
Why do the Climategate emails reveal their deep private doubts about the science, which they’ve publically reassured everyone was settled?
If the science was so solid, why’d one of their number feel they had to resort to identity theft to discredit the opposition?
Why are they telling each other to delete emails to circumvent Freedom of Information requests?
Why do they feel they’ve got to “redefine the peer review process” to prevent dissenting science papers being published?
Why do they need to get science journal editors removed from their jobs because they dared to publish a dissenting paper?
Why, after being the beneficiary of billions of dollars of research funding in the last two decades, haven’t they by now proved their case beyond a reasonable doubt?
Why is anyone who simply questions the science being equated with a holocaust denier?
Why are they attempting to substitute science by consensus for scientific proof?
Why do they say the world suffering six successive years of freezing winters is somehow caused by global warming?
Why have global temperatures not risen in the best part of two decades while CO2 levels have kept on rising?
Why in the decade following 1990, were the number of ground temperature stations selected to calculate global temperature reduced from the available 14,000 to a mere 4,000?
Why for Russia, with a land area over twice the size of the USA , are only a handful of southern ground-based thermometers selected to calculate its temperature?
Why has the Moscow-based Institute of Economic Analysis (IEA) been saying for years that the average temperatures calculated for Russia are quite simply wrong?
Why did it fall to a skeptic volunteer force organised by Anthony Watts to regrade the data integrity of the alarmist’s few cherry picked temperature stations?
Why is there an unexplained divergence between the global temperature derived from satellite observations and their ground based measurement?
Why did it take them nearly fifteen years to finally concede that the global temperature had not risen in all that time?
Why at the end of nearly every one of those fifteen years was it loudly proclaimed to be the hottest one on record?
Why did the experts we’re supposed to trust, not feel the need to correct such annual scientifically inaccurate claims?
Why, in the absence of the heat predicted by their theories, do they suddenly assert it must be by some mysterious mechanism hiding undiscovered at the bottom of the world’s oceans?
Why isn’t the Argos network of ocean monitoring buoys showing any such warming?
Why, in the absence of any global warming, did they switch the threat to climate change?
Why do we see supposedly objective scientists acting like catastrophists, haranguing us to do as they say or we’re all going to die?
Why can’t we get a straight answer to those simple questions rather than abuse, outright propaganda or simply being ignored?
Why can’t these supermen of miraculously settled science ever say they just don’t know?
There are no doubt a lot more simple questions like these which a more knowledgeable person than myself might pose and there may perhaps be a reasonable answer to one or two of those questions, but when they all begin to stack up like that, the ordinary person knows there’s only one inescapable conclusion – they got it wrong and know it. It’s by now all about them scurrying to protect their status, reputations and that mountain of research funding our taxes are paying for.
There is no other reasonable conclusion to be drawn.
It’s all a cruddy morass of deception, exaggeration, evasion and ever bigger lies to cover up the shrinking corner they’ve painted themselves into, and with every establishment investigation of their activities, that paint always turns out to be a rather thin coat of whitewash.
When you catch a liar out, they invariably cover themselves by telling bolder and more outrageous lies. That’s the tangled web of deceit we’re looking at and by this point in time, and as always happens, people start ignoring whatever they’re saying.
You see, in the end, you don’t need to be a climate scientist to make your own mind up about them. After all the lies, deception and dishonesty, why would anyone believe a single word coming out of their mouth?
©Pointman
Related articles by Pointman:
Know your enemy : the alarmist scientist.
Comments
50 Responses to “Why would anyone believe a single word coming out of their mouth?”Trackbacks
Check out what others are saying...-
[…] people of a different persuasion:- Why would anyone believe a single word coming out of their mouth? | Pointman's Wisdom is ofttimes nearer when we stoop than when we soar. – William Wordsworth (1770-1850) […]
LikeLike
-
[…] mentioned The Pointman before, and his most recent post asks 32 questions that, he says, deeply irritate him — because the orthodox never provide good […]
LikeLike
-
[…] Source: Why would anyone believe a single word coming out of their mouth? | Pointman’s […]
LikeLike
Pointman's 
Because the UN has to wrap cts around their name – Simples.
LikeLike
Exactly right.
Pointman’s recent post – “A Berlin story : Eva“ – tells the rest of the story:
1. The top rungs of society are richly rewarded for violating moral principles – lying, cheating, conniving, etc. – without getting caught.
2. The bottom rungs of society are addicts and mental patients trying to follow moral principles.
Pointman is talented at communicating information that we would all prefer to ignore.
With kind regards,
– Oliver K. Manuel
Former NASA Principal
Investigator for Apollo
LikeLike
You are right, climate science is not hard science.
My research mentor used fallout to study global air currents, published ~300-400 peer reviewed papers and had a dim view of modern consensus science.
Click to access Creator_Destroyer_Sustainer_of_Life.pdf
With kind regards, – Oliver K. Manuel Former NASA Principal Investigator for Apollo Sent from my iPhone
LikeLike
Excellent post, Pointman, I’m saving this one in my favourites.
LikeLike
You took a lot of the words (and questions!) right out of my mouth, Pointman (either that or you’ve been reading my mind!). There are a few questions I would add:
Why is it that when they finally concede (e.g. the U.K. Met Office and “the pause”) a “point” they invariably declare (in effect) that it doesn’t materially affect their results/the “usefulness” of their models etc?!
Why is it that having discovered the new, improved, social media (e.g. twitter) – as a tool for “outreach”, they still practice “communication” as though it is a one-way street on which they alone direct (and/or misdirect) the traffic?!
Great post, though, Pointman (as your others have been, of course!)
LikeLike
One of the most irritating features of “the consensus” is the tactic of saying, whenever one of their claims is blasted out of the water, that it doesn’t affect the underlying solidity of “the science.” It seems that nothing can affect “the science”, least of all science. It is increasingly reminiscent of Monty Python’s Black Knight sketch.
LikeLike
As you point out in the litany of credibility crushing problems, by now anyone who takes the trouble to look into the matter seriously is almost certain to be skeptical about alarmists’ claims, regardless of any technical training. Indeed, has anyone heard of someone moving from skepticism to alarmism? Rather the list of “conversions” seems pretty much one way.
But even without the long history of malfeasance by climate practitioners and their Greek chorus, one’s neck hairs should stand on end when any group sets itself up to be the monks who appoint themselves guardians of dogma. Sparks should light up those neck hairs when you read the pronouncements of “scientific institutions” which resemble more and more the Mandarins of long gone oriental bureaucracies. They speak with one voice when they deign to speak; diversity of thought is frowned upon; and scientific debate is out of the question. Funding agencies are members of this network of Mandarins, as are many societies such as the National Academy of Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the Royal Society.
In my own case, I am a Ph.D. physicist with long research experience. I have never published or worked in climate. But my training and experience made easy pickings of the science case for CAGW. This was five years ago, and things have hardly improved for the alarmists since then.
LikeLike
“Sparks should light up those neck hairs when you read the pronouncements of “scientific institutions” which resemble more and more the Mandarins of long gone oriental bureaucracies.”
Indeed. As a Ph.D physicist, perhaps you can provide some of the answer. Why do the membership of these august societies rarely if ever attempt to intervene in the pronouncements of the leadership? Do the majority simply never explore any are of science outside their own areas of expertise? Or are the societies set up in such a way that the membership have no control? In which case, why remain a member?
LikeLike
There have been several attempts by strong membership minorities to get societies to moderate their stance. As far as I know, all have failed. Here is one from four years ago. http://physicsfrontline.aps.org/2009/11/10/aps-council-overwhelmingly-rejects-proposal-to-replace-societys-current-climate-change-statement/
But things are changing slowly and grudgingly. I would look for some moderating steps in the future. Many people in a leadership position who are reasonably honest now know that there is a real scientific problem with the dogma. However there are still many others joined at the hip with the political and funding aspects of the movement and some who are simply ideologues.
A couple of other thoughts:
I have found that most scientifically trained people have simply not taken the time to look into the case for strong AGW. They seem willing to accept an idea that is plausible. After all who would think that “2000 scientists” can be wrong (we know that this is a bogus slogan, but you get the idea). But again this is changing gradually as the realization dawns that it is OK to question the dogma.
Why stay as a member? Quite a few have not, including some very prominent folks (e.g., http://www.climatedepot.com/2011/09/14/exclusive-nobel-prizewinning-physicist-who-endorsed-obama-dissents-resigns-from-american-physical-society-over-groups-promotion-of-manmade-global-warming/ ). It is of course a personal decision. So far I have remained a member of my “home” society mainly so as to be able to have some small influence toward moderation and scientific truth.
LikeLike
The questions you pose are quite reasonable, if pointed (as one might expect, Mr Pointman).
To me, though, a better set of questions (since, actually, the “science” is taking a back step and has been presented for some years now as a given) is why the “environmental” movement has prioritised CO2 above all else so that it no no longer seems bothered by clear logging to provide wood chips for retro-fitted power stations; rooting up of the rain forests to be replaced by palm oil plantations for biofuels; the mass slaughter of bats, raptors and seabirds by wind turbines; the toxic pools of acid tailings from rare earth extraction — much of which is used in wind turbine alternator magnets; the thousands of massive concrete bases driven into, in some cases, endangered peatlands to provide foundations for said turbines.
You’ve no doubt read these remarks when I’ve posted them elsewhere. But I’d argue that perhaps the most potent arguments against modern “environmentalism” is on their own ground. They aren’t environmentalists, and terrible things are being done to the environment because of their obsessions. This is the kind of attack which will endanger their base support. Arguments around the fiddling of temperature records, bogus palaeo-climate hockey-sticks, CO2 sensitivity, etc are old hat.
I’ve read your postings carefully, especially your somewhat jaundiced “anatomy of…” series. But what I don’t get is how we have this surreal alliance of Sierra Club plutocrats, ex-Maoist statist Eurocrats, professional PR-based NGO “activists”, the SWP(!), mid- to high-level career civil servants, a wide tranche of disaffected middle class public sector professionals, and proto-hippy tribal/circus-skills (basically petit-bourgeois) drop-outs singing off the same sheet. It’s the most unlikely confederacy, and hard to identify the political core of it.
It seems to me that to truly understand the opposition we need to understand this essential conundrum.
LikeLike
“Follow the money”.
LikeLike
The Green calamity, a war on a many fronts.
Politicians, can savour and sell a scam like pigs love the scent of s^%t and the trough. Along came the green myth to provide the bacon.
CAGW, it is the perfect vehicle: saving mother Gaia, what politician wouldn’t wish to nail his or, her colours to that particular mast. It’s a no brainer, nebulous promises [whose gonna call yer out?] about saving the planet for future generations “for all our children’s sakes!” – all promises and no substance and with it so they believe, an unquestionable, an unshakeable truth. Until that is, the supposition was thrashed: there is no truth to man made GW.
Then, a secular society groaning under extravagant consumerism funded by massive over borrowing, a society in a crisis and a moral vacuum but no God to turn to, with the guilt complex lying deep in mankind’s psyche. Christianity trashed replaced by green idols and icons, a dumbed down populace, empty heads are easily filled – saving Polar bears – ticks the boxes.
Money, money, money – as Cat’ alludes to, CAGW perfect for the corporates, its bankers, insurers and hedge funds always manipulating commodity prices and outcomes – invention of catastrophe scenarios play right into their pockets.
NGO’s – taxpayer dollars fill their pension schemes and pays for the junkets/hol’s in foreign lands – they don’t give a flying ***k about the planet, even less about their fellow human beings.
A civil service green to the gills, local councils beholden to the green agenda and money and pensions dependent on selling the climate change scam, councils run education authorities………….
The anarchy of the green agenda fulfills many lives and dreams, it also helps their kids through school. You don’t even have to know any science and ain’t that a wonderful thing.
It’s no longer a technicolour coat, it’s a green hued coat and Jesus – he has lost his job to Al Gore and Michael E. Mann’s disciples.
LikeLike
Braqueish, I enjoyed your reply and in particular, I think you corralled believers quite well: “Sierra Club plutocrats, ex-Maoist statist Eurocrats, professional PR-based NGO “activists”, the SWP(!), mid- to high-level career civil servants, a wide tranche of disaffected middle class public sector professionals, and proto-hippy tribal/circus-skills (basically petit-bourgeois) drop-outs singing off the same sheet.” This is indeed an ‘unlikely confederacy’ of disparate groups.
For my money, I see Pascal Bruckner hitting the nail quite well. In fact, underpinned by Jung who identified the elemental spiritual dimension of the humanity mind, many/most appear to crave succour in a/any ‘belief’ that assists their transcendence of present moment turmoil. This, it has also been suggested, has a genetic basis that favours survival.
Given a wide societal exodus from institutional religion, particularly by the proudly secular groups you identify as members of your ‘unlikely confederacy’ it is unsurprising that they reflexively and unconsciously cling with religious fervour to an ecological mantra that demonises a trace gas, that impoverishes and restrains progress, and that hampers prosperity all with the promise of their salvation in ‘saving the planet’.
It is difficult nigh impossible to derail faith. And as others have correctly shown, faith excuses rationality and suspends reason. It permits the justification of any behaviour or action. Rational challenge threatens the believer and perversely ensures a tightened grip on doctrine and faith. The believer is after all, in the throes of divine and unassailable insight. They feel supported and imbued with mission. That said, a persistent drip of rational explanation, inconvenient questions and relentless science will eventually erode and deplete faith in all but barking and perhaps most invested.
A further and final step is required to facilitate the conversion. Displacement. The successfully displacement of one belief by another more compelling spiritual engagement that provides a similar measure of helpful transcendence. The promise of human progress provides a panoply of opportunity in this regard.
I’ll take the glass half full anytime over the sanctimonious catastrophisers. Their meme is desperate and thin, soulless, without any opportunity for transcendence. They are the idiomatic puritans of this age and they will forment change, that will I think inevitably result in their exclusion from rational and civilised society.
LikeLike
I’d agree with most of that, and thanks for the compliment Manfred :). You’re right that what drives the “cause” is a visceral sense of lost innocence overlaid with a framework which looks like science to the uninitiated and fulfils its ostensible secularity. I don’t agree that “follow the money” covers anything more than the superstructure of the belief system.
Having been a lurker and occasional commenter on the various blogs that cover this I value the work of people like McIntyre for revealing the egregiousness of the plump Manns of this world. However, it strikes me that the Achille’s heel of this juggernaut is that they’re not environmentalists. There’s not a single initiative which springs from the CAGW meme which isn’t something that a less “mature” Friends of the Earth wouldn’t have chained themselves to fences over. Mercury vapour lightbulbs with embedded rare earth transformers, anyone?
Neither, of course, is it humanitarian. Although they cover their blatant Ehrlichian misanthropy by accusing those of us who don’t believe that humans are some kind of cancer on the planet of “feigning concern”.
Since, for most of my life, I’ve been embedded in the milieu I describe (excluding the first three categories, obviously) my friends are universally “with” the programme. I find that squabbling over the trends to be observed (or not) of hundredths of a degree Centigrade is really of no interest. However, the demonstrably destructive fallout from decarbonisation and the demonstrably impoverishing effects of “sustainable development” do have some leverage.
For too long the critique of the Global Warming bandwagon has come almost exclusively from the libertarian right (with, perhaps, the exception of Ben Pile and his questionable background). It’s time that there was a proper critique from the left. I, personally, find Steven Goddard and James Delingpole uncomfortable bedfellows.
LikeLike
“It’s the most unlikely confederacy, and hard to identify the political core of it.”
I think its Marxism. We’ve seen how easily it invaded the social sciences. Its like a cancer, this “long march through the institutions”. You’ll notice that all the solutions, whether its Global Cooling or Warming, involve giving up Liberty to the State. And of course the redistribution of wealth by rationing out energy production and consumption.
As for the non-socialists, I think they are motivated by something similar to the old Catholic practice of issuing Indulgences against future sin. Kind of a “yes I made a pass at the babysitter but I’m trying to save the planet too so I can’t be a total loser, right?” They’ll be the first set purged if the marxists ever accomplish their goals.
LikeLike
Just beautiful . You are a star. Thanks for all the pleasure your writing gives me/us. And the ammunition of course….
LikeLike
CAGW is dead.
What’s left?
Desperation, cant and more BS ‘correlation’.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-23538771
Can the BBC stoop any lower?
Affirmative – to that:
LikeLike
Why do people join cults, why do people self harm, why do people watch horror movies? I think there’s a fundamental inability in humans to be… content. If there’s nothing bad happening, they have to invent it. AGW is like a disaster movie. People are quite excited by the idea of weird weather. It also offers an endless excuse to blame all real problems on the usual suspects capitalism/oil companies/government. So it doesn’t really matter to the public what tripe the climate scientist come up with, it feeds the fantasy.
It is surprising how long it’s taking the well educated to catch on that climate science is well below par and I think the explanation is down to a moral imperative. They see cutting CO2 as an upstanding thing to do and even questioning it is sinful. White, western guilt and all that. Unfortunately there is enough real science in AGW to keep the blinkers on for ages yet.
LikeLike
To turn your point around, how is it that we’ve gone from banging rocks together to the Internet in 300 generations? My belief is that the default human condition is mild dissatisfaction. We like novelty (provided it’s not too novel) and we like to fiddle with stuff to make it better. Several girlfriends of mine have found it necessary to rearrange our furniture at least once a year. We like security but yearn for change.
My mother established an emergency supply cupboard in the 1970’s because the Daily Mail told her that an ice age was imminent. She feared disaster but was fascinated by it. At least it would be different from the daily grind.
That seems to me to be the underlying driver of the base of the catastrophist movement. Add into that the abiding sense of guilt which seems to accompany relative prosperity, a dash of victimology, a Tolkienesque sense of lost innocence, and the not entirely unjustified view that powerful corporations are taking the piss. Overlay that with a plausible pseudoscientific framework and a suitably secular priesthood and there’s your mass movement.
Don’t forget that huge numbers of otherwise rational people believe in homeopathy and astrology.
LikeLike
Why are none of the ‘Doom-sayers’ relieved that the planet has stopped warming?
(One might suspect they are really hoping for Armageddon to confirm their religious beliefs)
LikeLike
This may explain their thinking.
” IPCC, me and whoever will get accused of being political, whatever we do. As you
know, I’m not political. If anything, I would like to see the climate change happen,
so the science could be proved right, regardless of the consequences. This
isn’t being political, it is being selfish.”
Phil Jones, in a Climategate email (File 1120593115.txt)
LikeLike
The low quality of alarmist sites is indeed as surprising as the low quality of the comments left by those allowed to respond. When one takes into consideration the average material in places such as WUWT, it makes the alarmist look even worse.
You are correct. It does make one wonder. The difference is truly striking.
LikeLike
Pointman,
You might enjoy participating in a survey sponsored by NASA as noted on their website-
“Researchers from George Mason University seek to survey people who visit NASA’s Global Climate Change website. The survey will take about 12 minutes. Everyone who participates – and only people who participate — will be invited to an exclusive live online “backstage tour” of NASA’s data visualization lab. For anyone interested in NASA, and in the wonders of Planet Earth, this is certain to be an exciting tour!”
http://climate.nasa.gov/
The organization is in favor of doing something about climate change as noted by their leadership-
http://www.space.com/21737-nasa-lauds-obama-climate-change-plan.html
LikeLike
Let’s not forget the 15,000 to 17,000 climate groupies that attend annual conferences in vacation spots like Durbin South Africa, Cancun Mexico, Dubai UAE, Rio de Janeiro Brazil, Copenhagen Denmark, etc..
Paid vacations, including free airfare and luxury hotels, lasting one to two weeks every year. Financed by governments, universities, and green businesses. I am tempted to be a supporter of catastrophic anthropogenic global climate disruption with that kind of corrupting goodies to be had.
LikeLike
One more question: Why do luminaries such as Al Gore and Michael Mann insist that skeptic scientists are on the payroll of ‘big coal & oil’, but they fail outright to ever offer a scintilla of physical evidence proving industry money was paid to ANY skeptic scientist in exchange for false, fabricated papers, reports or viewpoints?
LikeLike
The great irony of Gore’s sale of Current TV to Qatar government-owned Al Jazeera is that Gore was bought out and paid for not by Big Oil but by REALLY Big Oil. Here’s Wiki on Qatar’s economy: “Petroleum is the cornerstone of Qatar’s economy and accounts for more than 70% of total government revenue, more than 60% of gross domestic product, and roughly 85% of export earnings. Proved oil reserves of 15 billion barrels (588,000,000 m³) should ensure continued output at current levels for 23 years.”
The guy is a charlatan.
LikeLike
btw Pointy,
Yet another – under the veneer of a poised piece, a relentless and penetrating exposure of the scam of scams.
Well said my friend, well said indeed.
LikeLike
A great article, truly great.
Yes, those who started the scam have painted themselves into a corner. The combination of financial institutions and large multi-national companies making money from AGW is vast and carries enormous political clout. The politicians do as they are directed, and in any case are consoled by the increase in taxes that they can spend as the TV cameras fawn on them.
Lately there are signs that there is a redirection underway. Shell and BP no longer in wind or solar power, Banks not attending annual AGW conferences etc. Indeed companies supplying the ‘renewable’ energy market have been going bankrupt at a high rate. A slowing evident in the start of new projects, and the failure of the newer schemes to generate the expected profits (the Baltic off-shore wind farms in Germany etc.) indicate that the AGW scam has passed its peak and in on the downward slope. The rate of descent will increase next year, and there will be a scramble for the life boats. Our task is to push the offenders away from safety.
LikeLike
I agree with everything you’ve said, James, but just to extrapolate on your opening remarks, it is my contention that in considering what the “scientists” think about this and any so called “consensus” we should explicitly discount those that call themselves “climate scientists”. The reason for this is pretty obvious but doesn’t seem to have dawned on people. Before the AGW theory came along there was no such thing as “climate science”. “Climate science” was invented as a discipline solely for the purpose of studying (and it seems, propagating) AGW theory. Calling oneself a “climate scientist” necessarily means one believes the AGW theory. Now mo one is allowed to have an opinion on AGW unless they are a “climate scientist” and all those other scientists who didn’t jump on board and remain geologists, pealeontologists, meteorologists, astro physicists, engineers etc etc are not allowed to speak about it. The statement that 97% of climate scientists agree with AGW theory is complete dribble. In fact I’m surprised it’s not 100%. It’s about as convincing as saying 97% of Keynesian economists agree with Keynes’ General Theory or that 97% of communists agree with Karl Marx or 97% of priests believe in god.
LikeLike
Why in the decade following 1990, were the number of ground temperature stations selected to calculate global temperature reduced from the available 14,000 to a mere 4,000?
Why did they pick that particular 4000?
LikeLike
I think we know why, have a look at which stations disappeared on the North American continent – I’ll give everyone a clue – they all ‘moved’ south.
LikeLike
Hi Nospin. Find a link to a piece by Ross McKitrick. The simple graph in it tells the story.
http://www.uoguelph.ca/~rmckitri/research/nvst.html
Pointman
LikeLike
You should get into the current flap about the ADL’s insult to Dr. Roy Spencer. WUWT is on top of it. I would love to see your take on the subject.
LikeLike
Pointman said
“Why is anyone who simply questions the science being equated with a holocaust denier?”
I think the question would be better phrased as:
“Why is anyone who simply asks questions about the science being equated with a holocaust denier?”
Picking nits, sort of, but the reformulated question puts the warmists in an even worse light, if that were possible.
LikeLike
Great post, and superb points Braquish. It’s obvious why the warmist sect run a mile to avoid debate.
I would say that – on the lines some have suggested, today’s Climate ‘Scientists’ are CARBON COPIES (!) of the sort of ‘scientists’ who were expert advisers to Hitler or Stalin. What they then and now are doing is not about science (as we ought to know it) but POLITICAL.
The CO2 ‘theory’ has failed in all its predictions – it can predict nothing. It doesnt work. On the other hand on an almost weekly basis we show at WeatherAction that activity on the Sun is associated with and drives, in a largely PREDICTABLE manner, weather and climate; See http://bit.ly/15pnjFK ; http://twitpic.com/d66qnr/full If the CO2 sect really cared a jot about weather extremes affecting lives, liberty, prosperity…anything they would welcome and support what we do (at zero charge to taxpayers) but their position is the opposite. Case closed.
LikeLike
Hello and welcome Piers. Are the bookies still refusing to take your weather betting action?
Pointman
LikeLike
Pointman
An excellent list of Why’s
I counted 30 in total
Why to the power of 30 is an awful lot of Why’s
However if I may be so bold there is at least one important Why missing.
Why are All computer models so crap, and why do different results arise from different computer systems or even on any second run on the same computer ?
Jo Nova had an excellent post recently on this topic
Clearly CHAOS reigns
motm
LikeLike
Like yourself I like asking basic questions, this is where the IPCC went wrong right at the start of CAGW fiacso. There self acclaimed knowledge of radiative forcings ‘solar, clouds and water vapour’ is very low. Sums it up really!
LikeLike
Pointman: your list of questions characterizes the state of this great international debate as well as anything I’ve ever read on the subject.
I hear crickets outside my window . . .
LikeLike
I thought of another one. Why aren’t they updating their tree ring records?
LikeLike
Good points. Skeptics in general have to pay more attention. True believers and the climate obsessed already “know” the truth and just want to cheer for their guys and boo those who dare disagree.
LikeLike
For an excellent comparison, research the Michael Bellesile fraud that professional historians fell for before being exposed by non-professionals back around the year 2000.
If you show someone what they WANT to see, they tend not to look for flaws.
LikeLike
Michael Bellesiles
LikeLike
Reblogged this on leclinton and commented:
thanks this will drive my warmmy friends nuts ;>)
LikeLike
One of the most impressive eviscerations of AGW I’ve come across. Thank you.
LikeLike
Ouch. That’s gotta hurt.
LikeLike