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The Forum > Article Comments > How to save us from climate-change doomsayers > Comments

How to save us from climate-change doomsayers : Comments

By Crispin Hull, published 3/12/2012

The change in public opinion is evidence that the world's scientists are failing us – badly. They are being far too cautious in their evidentiary requirements.

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On Rachel Carson and Silent Spring:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/23/magazine/how-silent-spring-ignited-the-environmental-movement.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

On pesticides in India:

http://www.thehindu.com/news/states/kerala/article2339998.ece
Posted by Poirot, Tuesday, 4 December 2012 10:31:35 AM
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stevenlmeyer

So far you've scored zero in serious response.. the Economist graph you reference is meaningless without the article, and I suspect it doesn't mean much anyway.. the reason there may have been more heat events since that address by Hanson - and I'm not sure that there has, but its not important - is because it is slightly warmer than the 1980s. No one has ever doubted that.. now go and compare the first IPCC forecast (the 1990 report) with the temperature results since and you'll be disappointed to find that the actual results are below the minimum forecast, and the comparison is getting worse.

The sad fact remains that global warming theory has no track record of any kind, and therefore cannot be used to justify billions of dollars worth of expenditure, and no amount of referral to propaganda or marketing sites will change that. Such has been your response that I suspect you had no idea that the question even existed before our decision, let alone how to answer it.

It is not for me to reference sites but for you. Leave it with you.
Posted by Curmudgeon, Tuesday, 4 December 2012 12:29:52 PM
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Au contraire, Leo Lane, I was quoting the header from your link, which stated "125 plus scientists".

Regarding your latest link - an extract from a publication by "The American Council on Science and Health".

Here's some info on Elizabeth Whelan, the President and co-founder of The American Council on Science and Health.

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Elizabeth_Whelan

"These early scientific-manipulation activities of the chemical industry were part of an organised reaction to Rachel Carson's "Silent Spring", published in 1962. the Chemical Manufacturers Association (CMA) quickly realised that it must organise science and lobbying efforts..."

Same old, same old...
Posted by Poirot, Tuesday, 4 December 2012 1:22:07 PM
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My concluding remarks for this thread.

Candide, Curmudgeon

Sorry, accidentally dropped link to article that goes with the graphic. Here it is.

Bell weather
A statistical analysis shows how things really are heating up

http://www.economist.com/node/21560235

You can also find a more detailed discussion here:

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2012/08/extreme-metrics/

I hope these articles explain it Candide.

Curmudgeon

I don't have a link to Hansen's 1988 forecasts but you can find them discussed in:

The Signal and the Noise: Why Most Predictions Fail but Some Don't by Nate Silver

http://www.amazon.com/dp/159420411X

Nate Silver is also the author of the 538blog that forecast the recent US election pretty accurately.

On the whole the planet is responding pretty much as climatologists forecast though there are exceptions.

FEYNMAN

(This is for you SPQR though curmudgeon may be interested)

For some reason "sceptics" keep dragging poor old Feynman into this issue. We even had an article on OLO titled:

Exceptions that disprove the [non-existent] AGW 'rule'

http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=14179

The piece opens with a quote from Feynman,

SPQR invoked Feynman on this thread as follows:

>>“Science is ‘the organized scepticism in the reliability of expert opinion’”>>

This is the sort of advice Feynman was fond of giving to young scientists. He wanted to caution them against being intimidated by their elders.

Note - it was advice to young scientists, not to the general public.

In fact Feynman was quite scathing about scientific illiterates - especially philosophers - who pontificated on scientific matters. He felt strongly that you should not presume to comment on scientific issues until you had taken the trouble to master the topic under discussion.

So what would Feynman have said to you SPQR?

I suspect it would be along the following lines.

>>You have not taken the trouble to master the topic under discussion; therefore your opinion is as valueless as that of the NASA managers who ordered the Challenger launch to go ahead over the objections of the engineers.>>
Posted by stevenlmeyer, Tuesday, 4 December 2012 5:14:28 PM
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My concluding remarks for this thread (cont'd).

Prompete wrote:

>>The only real world evidence that I have read that shows a relationship between CO2 and global atmospheric temperature is that CO2 levels follow global average temperatures by several hundred years.

The only 'one to one' relationship I have seen regarding climate, is between solar activity and global temperature.>>

I'm not sure who, other than yourself, you can blame for your ignorance.

Bugsy, Poirot

In truth I'm a little uneasy about Rachel Carson and "Silent Spring."

I'm not saying she was wrong; but I don’t think the matter got the scrutiny it deserved. I think the DDT ban needs to be revisited.

Hasbeen

>>I'll bet there's another of those fly in global warming conferences, in some lovely resort area somewhere right now.>>

Guess what? The laws of physics don't care. This isn't about conferences. It's about what's happening to the planet. And that is depends on physics.

You wrote:

>>…tin pot academics…>>

Well, just for once a reality check.

You mean "tin pot academics" like this one?

http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/2001/nurse-lecture.html

Have you ever achieved anything remotely comparable to this "tin pot academic" Hasbeen? I know I haven't.

He has no doubts about the reality of AGW.

Or how about this "tin pot academic"?

http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1969/gell-mann-bio.html

Reckon you could have come up with the quark model Hasbeen? I couldn't.

Gell-Mann also thinks there is science backing up AGW.

Those who sincerely want to keep up with developments in the field could do worse than follow these two websites:

http://www.realclimate.org/

http://www.skepticalscience.com/

I don't always agree with what they have to say but at least it's always science based on real science.

Also google the Scientific American, NASA and NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) websites with the "site" function as follows:

climate site:scientificamerican.com

climate site:nasa.gov

climate site:noaa.gov

These are the websites the so-called "sceptics" never visit.

I wonder why ;-)
Posted by stevenlmeyer, Tuesday, 4 December 2012 5:16:58 PM
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My concluding remarks for this thread (cont'd).

There are scientists, real scientists as opposed to misguided members of the general public, who dissent from the view that AGW is a problem. One of them is the Nobel Prize-winner Ivar Giaever:

http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1973/giaever-bio.html

However the weight of scientific opinion supports the view that AGW is a real problem. Public opinion will shift from time to time but sceptics' claims that AGW is losing credibility among scientists are simply untrue.

This does not mean that all scientists agree on all aspects of AGW. There are legitimate questions about how serious a problem it is likely to be and how rapidly the planet will heat up. Latterly, however, the feeling is growing that the official forecasts have erred on the conservative side.

This from the NASA website:

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/Grace/news/grace20121129.html

>>In a landmark study published Thursday in the journal Science, 47 researchers from 26 laboratories report the combined rate of melting for the ice sheets covering Greenland and Antarctica has increased during the last 20 years. Together, these ice sheets are losing more than three times as much ice each year (equivalent to sea level rise of 0.04 inches or 0.95 millimeters) as they were in the 1990s (equivalent to 0.01 inches or 0.27 millimeters). About two-thirds of the loss is coming from Greenland, with the rest from Antarctica.

This rate of ice sheet losses falls within the range reported in 2007 by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The spread of estimates in the 2007 IPCC report was so broad, however, it was not clear whether Antarctica was growing or shrinking. The new estimates, which are more than twice as accurate because of the inclusion of more satellite data, confirm both Antarctica and Greenland are losing ice. Combined, melting of these ice sheets contributed 0.44 inches (11.1 millimeters) to global sea levels since 1992. This accounts for one-fifth of all sea level rise over the 20-year survey period. The remainder is caused by the thermal expansion of the warming ocean, melting of mountain glaciers and small Arctic ice caps, and groundwater mining.>>
Posted by stevenlmeyer, Tuesday, 4 December 2012 5:44:59 PM
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