BraveNewClimate

Sceptics

15 Responses

1. 

   Spot the recycled denial VI – Chris Kenny « BraveNewClimate.com, on 2 January 2009 at 7.00 Said:

   [...] Spot the Recycled Denial series [...]
2. 

   Last March of the Global Warming Denialists « Stephen Leahy International Environmental Journalist, on 6 January 2009 at 2.54 Said:

   [...] Great blog by Aussie scientist on the endless denial claims: Spot the Recycled Denial series [...]
3. 

   Frank, on 29 April 2009 at 7.46 Said:

   Some of my colleagues disparage the IPCC warnings about global warming because they say the models do not use a sufficient range of economic assumptions.

   Please would you tell me where can I find a table (not a figure) of the lowest tropospheric CO2 concentration (presumably derived from the emission scenarios) for each year or decade used as an input for the 23 (?) different IPCC models in the 2007 report. I have spent hours searching the web and the IPCC reports without success.
4. 

   Admiral visions of a future now past « BraveNewClimate.com, on 3 May 2009 at 20.08 Said:

   [...] Spot the Recycled Denial series [...]
5. 

   A necessary interlude « BraveNewClimate.com, on 24 September 2009 at 0.03 Said:

   [...] Spot Recycled Denial [...]
6. 

   jim rogers, on 1 January 2010 at 8.03 Said:

   Open letter to Ian Plimer.

   Dear Ian,

   I enjoyed your book Heaven + Earth, and your considered discussion of the possible causes of climate variability of the age of the earth, even though it was at times a much repeated list of facts and message, but why dissipate your scientific facts and scholarly quotes from the literature with so much religious preaching? Your religious proselytizing does you no credit. You often mention caustically in name or in general those who zealously preach with hidden agendas and twisted use of the truth. Unfortunately I’m left wondering why you watered down your science with religious, pious, inappropriate innuendo and non-scientific pronouncements involving religious beliefs. As you don’t say why you do this, I’m left to speculate. Maybe you want to ingratiate yourself to some hierarchy of true believers, or be a papal knight, or feel guilty and in debt to your God for previous sins, or have some other agenda. How could I or anyone know what lead you to mix your religious faith with the hard science you base your major arguments upon? It was a weird thing to do.

   You have succeeded at the moment in making me a climate change fence-sitter yet to make up my mind, but I’m not just sceptical of the other side of the debate, for I’m also now skeptical of your agenda as well. The many criticisms of your book’s accuracy which several have addresed in print are concerning, and makes me wary of your data. It leads me to not have faith in your dogmatism. Your religious advocacy makes me very wary as well. You may not care if readers find your message mixed. Maybe you feel superior and vindicated already, though you seem to despise others who think themselves superior, so hopefully not. I think it was a very big mistake to dilute the science you so heartily believe in with your religious views. Having accused your opponents of allowing non-scientists too much say and power in the debate you talk about God and the spiritual life, and lie down in bed with non-scientists like a cardinal and a pope. Dumb, dumb, dumb.

   “…pagan emptiness and fears about nature have lead to hysteria and extreme claims about global warming…….Today they [pagans] demand a reduction in carbon dioxide emissions.” [George Pell]. So are those opposing you are all pagans, or only some of them? Pathetic type-casting, isn’t it.

   “It is important for assessments in this regard to be carried out prudently, in dialogue with experts and people of wisdom, uninhibited by ideological pressure……” [Benedict XVI]. Pity he doesn’t use the same impartial rules of thought in coming to so many other absurd proclamations, edicts and dogmas! By his own definition and yours he is a hypocrite in thousands of ways. Why quote a pope (a religious fanatic by definition) as a final arbiter at the end of your science book?

   You quote two men who do all they can to perpetuate many things that many abhor, including vocal and powerful efforts to stop all contraception, including condoms in AIDS-rife parts of the world, thereby helping condemn a countless number of gullible, guileless people to a horrible death, their families to suffer without parents, or the children themselves to die painfully. Do you find this admirable? No-one of course can be assumed to also hold all the beliefs of those they quote once or twice in other contexts, but, how is a reader to know when you choose to quote religious figures from the Catholic hierarchy in a science debate? Pell has previously talked of evidence that shows contraception doesn’t stop HIV infection, using the type of poorly conducted “science” you claim to abhor. Have you aggressively corrected Pell on this, or do you agree with him? How is a reader to know?

   “The global warming movement has a collective of prejudices with a perceived moral ground.” I agree about much you say on this. However, by association you lump all who fear global warming in with those who are “environmental romantics” who “hate industry, love Nature, idealise peasant life, believe capitalism is wicked, think people in modern society lead depraved shallow lives and have forgotten the true meaning of things, don’t like cars or supermarkets and hate the average person taking cheap long hauled flights to warm areas on holidays.” etc, etc, etc. The vitriol is palpably vivid. I don’t believe the majority of concerned people are in this mould you describe. You are as guilty of collective generalizations as any of your opponents. You also accuse opponents of being spiritually shallow. How woefully judgmental and shallow of you, accusing from your own moral plateau on high.

   “Mother Nature does not build gardens of Eden..” you say, though of Australian Christians 38 per cent support Genesis according to the recent Nielsen poll (so it isn’t just nutty Americans) and another 47 per cent favour the God of Design; only 12 per cent of Australian Christians believe in Darwin’s theory of natural selection. Australian Christians may believe the bible is all literally true (25 per cent), 52 per cent put their faith in telepathy, clairvoyance, psychic healing, etc., 41 per cent believe in telepathy, 32% in UFOs, 35% believe in witches, and the list goes on in the poll! And you accuse atheist environmentalists of shabby thinking!! You should keep atheists on side, as so many scientists you hope to convert to your anti-global warming side are also atheist. Remember creationist Christians here in Australia and elsewhere won’t believe your facts and dates, so won’t support you, unless very confused in their beliefs. Mock atheists spiritual worth and depth if it makes you feel superior, but don’t be surprised if some or many take exception to your pathetic moralising in this regard.

   You talk of “the urban atheistic religion of Environmentalism.” Environmentalism from the dictionary means: “advocacy of the preservation, restoration, or improvement of the natural environment; especially: the movement to control pollution”. No mention of all your add-ons. Perhaps your vitriol here is as much against atheism as environmentalists! You seem to be running a not so subtle background agenda here, advertising and pushing some of your religious views on your readers, which is bizarre, irrelevant to your scientific message and an absurd distraction from your data against the global warming movement. You may feel “Religion is not about pie in the sky when we die, it is about the present” but many feel it is ultimately based upon pie in the sky ideas, created by human minds for human societies, and has no factual basis. Religion is many things including a tool used to create moral codes, but if the basis is myth and is still mistakenly being espoused and perpetuated as true then it should be exposed as being based upon falsehoods, or at least recognised as probably or possibly being so. But then, that would be too open-minded for a religious zealot to admit. At these times you sound like the pot calling the kettle black.

   You say “Some pseudoscience, such as creation “science” is the fruit of an unsound mind.” Many would also say all or much religious belief is the fruit of unsound minds. It isn’t relevant to this scientific debate however, unless thrown into the debate, yet you have thrown religion into your book with gusto for unknown reasons. Why ruin your direct scientific message with religious claims that can’t be scientifically proved?

   You quote “It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he never reasoned into” [Jonathan Swift], but this also aptly describes most religious belief which rests on faith not reason. You speak glowingly that “Carl Sagan argued that science is the candle in the darkness..” Sagan also said of religion “You can’t convince a believer of anything; for their belief is not based on evidence, it’s based on a deep-seated need to believe. Life is but a momentary glimpse of the wonder of the astonishing universe, and it is sad to see so many dreaming it away on spiritual fantasy.” And you accuse others of selective quoting! Why not quote Sagan on religion if you want to make the end of your book a religious discussion.

   You blithely choose to end your book stating “Human stupidity is only exceeded by God’s mercy, which is infinite” yet you spend your book continually lampooning those who make statement with religious zeal and fervor. How hypocritical is that! Surely you should qualify this, and admit that God may not exist let alone be infinite in anything, or may not be this supposed wondrous, personalised deity. Many who see suffering throughout the world and over history or experience suffering personally think any such Being could not exist due to all the contradictions it would involve. God as many construct him may not be possible. Many think any such Being would surely be either an imbecile or uncaring or malevolently evil. Where is your scientific qualifier? Perhaps you should mention Occam’s Razor could apply to religious beliefs including all or most of the extraordinary and impossible claims within Christianity.

   I’m mystified as to why you as a scientist personally believe in religion which involves so much “mystery, magic and miracles”, without any proof or scientific evidence. You presumably also believe in a second coming (though are modest enough I presume to not know the date, unlike religious believers you quote from the past). All the prophesies of the end of the world that you quote I’d guess are from religious believers. The Inquisition and other dogmatic societies and courts, which you mention as being similar to the dogmatic approach of the horde of current climate change believers, were misguided religious institutions and groups. Religion has a lot to answer for along with any of its good points. Maybe you should be fair and point out all the flaws of religion while you are so busy proselytising. But then, that would be balanced, and religious zealots invariably decry such an approach.

   Interesting science, but pathetic preaching better left to The Catholic Weekly than in your (mostly scientific) book. Your religious beliefs fail Michael Schirmer’s list of fallacies that lead people to believe weird things, or are you too blinkered to see that?

   Yours sincerely,

   Jim Rogers
   25 Albany St.,
   Point Frederick.
   2250
7. 

   Smokey, on 21 February 2010 at 0.55 Said:

   I object to being labeled a “denier,” or a “denialist,” or any other word that uses a root word reference to “Holocaust denier” to demonize their opponents.

   That those individuals believe they must use a hate label like “denialist” shows that they lack the facts necessary to prevail in the AGW debate; they have lost the argument before they started.

   It is no different whatever than someone labeling their opponent with the n-word, when debating an African-American regarding race relations. “Denier” is equally objectionable. Actually more so, since the numbers of jews, gypsies and others tortured, robbed and murdered in the Holocause far exceeds the number of African Americans subjected to the same treatment.

   The proper term is scientific skeptics; shortened to skeptics if you like.

   The scientific method, which has provided enormous benefits to humanity, has its entire basis in scientific skepticism. It is the reason we don’t go to witch doctors to treat diseases.

   Skeptics deny nothing. Skeptics simply say, prove it. Or at least, provide solid, testable, falsifiable evidence showing that a rise in CO2 will cause runaway global warming and climate catastrophe.

   No such evidence has been provided. None. The CO2=CAGW conjecture is based on always-inaccurate computer models, which are incapable of predicting chaotic systems [and have failed in every real life test]; and on the thoroughly corrupt climate peer review system, whose putatively anonymous referees airily hand-wave pro-AGW submissions through to publication, while endlessly delaying or refusing publication outright to papers skeptical of AGW. See:

   http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2008/8/11/caspar-and-the-jesus-paper.html

   Ever since the leaking of the Climategate emails, including the Harry_read_me.txt exposé showing the rampant corruption of the AGW purveyors, including the outright fabrication of temperature data sets, [including one invented temperature data set spanning 13 years], the CO2=Catastrophic AGW hypothesis has been on the ropes.

   Phil Jones is not out of a job for no reason, and Copenhagen [COP-15] didn’t fail for no reason. Those are the direct results of the release of the damning evidence of the rampant corruption within the climate sciences.

   Their weak response: labeling scientific skeptics – who are simply requesting, per the scientific method, the sharing of data and methodologies used to come up with the catastrophic AGW hypothesis – as “denialists.” Name-calling is not an argument. In this instance, it is desperation.

   That is not just a thoroughly objectionable label by venomous believers in a repeatedly debunked conjecture. It demonstrates the failure by the promoters of the preposterous belief that a harmless and beneficial trace gas, comprising only 0.00038 of the atmosphere – one molecule out of every 2,600 – will cause catastrophic climate change. Past CO2 levels have been twenty times higher than current levels, for hundreds of millions of years at a time, without causing runaway global warming. In fact, during those times Ice Ages have regularly occurred.

   The debate over AGW will begin to sound credible when and if the believers in their hypothesis stop the objectionable “denier” name calling. That would substantially limit the emotional content of the debate, and allow the facts to be discussed dispassionately.

   But perhaps the AGW purveyors don’t want to discuss the facts, for the obvious reason that they have been unable to show any empirical evidence whatever that a quantifiable increase in CO2 leads to a measurable increase in global temperature. They are left with the comfortable alternative of scurrilous name calling – a sure sign that they have lost the scientific debate.
8. 

   Matt Buckels, on 21 February 2010 at 1.15 Said:

   You do understand, surely, Smokey that Climate Change Denialism refers to denial of climate change, whereas Holocaust Denialism refers to the Holocaust?
9. 

   Peter Lalor, on 21 February 2010 at 2.29 Said:

   @Matt:

   there is an inner logic to AGW denialists and Ayn Rand anarcho-liberals such as Smokey (see his effusions on another BNC thread) objecting to the term denier, Matt.

   The CONUS import figures show ever-growing CONUS dependency on Muslim oil, which is why thoughtful US persons eg Robert McFarlane (ex security advisor to Ronald Reagan) have wanted to reduce it.

   The terrestrial US aircraft carrier near Cyprus on 24/7 watch is the USS Israel. Its legitimacy as a colonial settler state hosting US sweatshops and riding herd on those Muslims has been promoted ever since the first Likud govt. in the 70s by equating any criticism with anti-semitism (compare the situation before 1977, when Israelis were in fact ashamed of the Holocaust and disparaged its victims, cf. historian Tom Segev).

   So anarcho-liberals are justified from their standpoint in trying to reserve denialism for the political interests of their favourite piece of hardware, anchored in the Med.

   That Smokey has no clue about palaeoclimate C02 evidence and prattles on, like all AGW deniers, about “inaccurate computer models” is as boring as these people always are.

   That he poses as a good friend to blacks (current PC term this season: African-Americans) and other minorities and uses the New Right term “hate label” merely shows how flexible Capital can be: like a snake, it sheds the skin of its previous pre-1990 racism and misogyny, etc.
10. 

    Finrod, on 21 February 2010 at 7.02 Said:

    @Smokey:

    If you look up at the top of the right hand sidebar, you’ll see a link to the blog owner’s Audio/slides for Climate Change Q&A. If you would like to have your position heard sympathetically, perhaps you should go through a couple of the podcasts and related slideshows to find demonstration points for your case. After all, if the scientific case is so flimsy, you should be able to find something questionable without much difficulty.
11. 

    Smokey, on 21 February 2010 at 11.29 Said:

    OK, by the numbers:

    Matt Buckels:
    

    You do understand, surely, Smokey that Climate Change Denialism refers to denial of climate change, whereas Holocaust Denialism refers to the Holocaust?

    So now ‘denialism’ is capitalized?? My feelings are hurt… NOT.

    I understand that you, like your kissin’ cousins above and below, deliberately use a word that is rooted in the WWII Holocaust. Yet, when called on it, you refuse to man up and admit what everyone can see. Such bravery.

    The Big Bang, for example, is not proven cosmology. Yet those who don’t believe in it are never labeled “denialists.” And the majority who disputed plate tectonics never labeled those who thought the hypothesis was valid as “deniers.” Ignaz Semmelweis was never called a “denialist” for advocating hand washing. Pasteur was never called a “denier” for disputing the belief that life sprang from dead earth. Einstein was never called a “denialist” for disputing Hubble. I could cite dozens of similar instances. The insult “denier” and its permutations is an invention of climate alarmists, who use it in place of verifiable evidence.

    As a matter of fact, the use of the pejorative “deniers” is deliberately used to equate those who refute CAGW [catastrophic AGW caused by CO2] with Holocaust deniers. To deny that plain fact is mendacious and cowardly. Or possibly ignorant… surely, you can not be that stupid? Can you? Deliberate name calling is the sad refuge of unscientific laymen, steeped in the soft humanities and ‘social sciences’; lockstep gorebots programmed by the media, who can not understand how decisively climate sensitivity falsifies their CAGW belief system. Nor can they understand the fact that as harmless CO2 continues to rise, the planet continues to cool: click. When the planet itself laughs at your hubris, you are on the losing side of the debate: who are you gonna believe? Al Gore? Or planet Earth?

    Next, after Peter Lalor gets done with his wild-eyed, spittle-flecked, crazed world view, and before his ranting about long outdated 60′s era racial politics [he must really be a fun date], and after the obligatory “denialism” name-calling, he shows conclusively that I have forgotten more climatology than he will ever learn: I spent my entire education and career working in the science of weather and climate instruments, in design and calibration. I received all the peer reviewed literature, courtesy of instrument manufacturers, from a time well before the words ‘global warming’ were ever seen in the mainstream press.

    I’ve watched first hand as the AGW scam morphed into a monumental tax grab, guided by rent-seeking scientists, bought and paid for by ever escalating government grants – which were never given to scientists skeptical of the effect of human activity on the climate. Purveyors of global warming catastrophe received enormous government grants [totaling over $50 billion during the past decade alone!], while skeptical scientists had an extremely difficult time even getting their well researched papers published. The climate grant system has been gamed.

    And of course, Mr Lalor is wrong. Anyone who cannot spell paleoclimate, and who uses C-zero-2 for the carbon dioxide molecule CO2, is simply a poseur; a pretend scientist. So I’ll move on to someone who might have a clue. But first, to verify my charge that computer models are inaccurate, and to easily refute the helpless Mr Lalor, who is clearly out of his depth and suffering from Festinger’s cognitive dissonance, let me point to the abject failure of computer climate models to predict anything of substance: click. Note the truly pathetic accuracy scores. A series of coin flips would be much more accurate.

    Finally, Mr Finrod, at least, tries to have a substantive conversation. I applaud him for that, although I must decline his offer to view this blog’s climate alarmist propaganda. If I want to be spoon-fed climate propaganda, there is always the thinly trafficked realclimate. But my thanks to Mr Finrod for the kind offer, and for his refusal to use the d-word.

    And how do I know it’s propaganda? Because what started out as “global warming” then morphed into “anthropogenic global warming.” Then the goal posts were moved once again, and AGW became “climate change,” in order to blame the evil human race for CO2 emissions – which are actually more than 95% natural, according to the IPCC: click.

    Note that for every 34 CO2 molecules emitted in total annually, 33 are emitted by completely natural processes, for every one emitted by human activity. In fact, the planet’s natural year over year variation in CO2 emissions is significantly greater than the puny amount emitted by all human activity.

    When facts like these are presented, it is no wonder that the climate alarmist contingent falls back on name-calling; that’s all they have. They have no credible facts, so they use impotent invective, signifying their scientific illiteracy and lack of verifiable facts. Thus, calling someone a “denialist” is a tacit admission of defeat. But calling someone with a different opinion a “denialist” probably feels good, so that’s at least something. But it still loses the debate, which is won by empirical evidence. Note that neither peer reviewed papers nor computer models are evidence. They are only opinions, and tools. Evidence is raw measurement, which shows the climate warming at the same rate, neither more nor less, on the same trend line going back to the LIA and before that, to the last great Ice Age. There is no need to panic: click

    Scientific skeptics understand that over the past 4.6 billion years the climate has constantly changed. Despite Michael Mann’s repeatedly debunked claim that the climate remained essentially flat over the past 1,400 years, with no LIA and no MWP, scientific skeptics understand that the climate always changes and always will. That is why Mann’s Hokey Stick chart was so thoroughly debunked by McIntyre and McKittrick, whose conclusions were then verified by Wegman, et al., in their report to Congress, and why Mann’s hokey stick chart is no longer used in the IPCC’s Assessment Reports: it is fraudulent, based on selectively chosen, thousand year old “treemometers” that he claims can show one-tenth of a degree temperature changes from year to year. As if. Still, I suspect a few here would believe such incredible globaloney.

    Rather than look at propaganda posted on this obscure blog, I suggest that those with a real interest in hearing both sides of the climate debate should go to the hugely popular site [36 million hits in only 3 years; 25 thousand unique daily readers] that won the most recent Weblog Awards for “Best Science” site, and which also came in second among all sites in the Wikio Awards:

    http://wattsupwiththat.com

    You will learn more about honest climate science there than you will almost anywhere else. That is, of course, if you want to learn about climate science. Internationally esteemed climatologists from both sides of the AGW debate write articles for Mr Watts’ site, and no one is censored [unlike the heavily censorship prone realclimate, tamino, deltoid, etc.]

    And that does it for my educational attempts here, folks. I don’t wish to waste more time on a blog that is a name-calling echo chamber for folks still living in their mom’s basements. You may all have the last word, and continue to call me a “denialist,” or whatever name takes the place of rigorous thinking regarding the repeatedly falsified CO2=CAGW conjecture.

    Have at it, and good day.
12. 

    David B. Benson, on 21 February 2010 at 12.55 Said:

    Smokey, on February 21st, 2010 at 11.29 — The actual scientific “debate”, if that is waht it should be called, was settled decades ago. You can read the history in “The Discovery of Global Warming” by Spencer Weart:
    http://www.aip.org/history/climate/index.html
13. 

    Finrod, on 21 February 2010 at 13.13 Said:

    @Smokey:
    Note that for every 34 CO2 molecules emitted in total annually, 33 are emitted by completely natural processes, for every one emitted by human activity. In fact, the planet’s natural year over year variation in CO2 emissions is significantly greater than the puny amount emitted by all human activity.

    How should we interpret your comment, Smokey? Are you saying that there is a natural rise in the CO2 level which is not having the effect claimed, or are you saying that fossil fuel combustion is not causing sufficient CO2 emissions to result in any rise in atmospheric CO2 levels? If the latter, you may be on shakey ground (to put it mildly).
14. 

    Ms.Perps, on 21 February 2010 at 15.44 Said:

    Smokey – why don’t you come up with something original instead of re-hashed comments from other pseudo-sceptics (do you like that description better)?
    You are so boring that I might have to give in and have a Sunday afternoon snooze. Yawwwwwwwwwwn!
15. 

    Do climate sceptics and anti-nukes matter? or: How I learned to stop worrying and love energy economics « BraveNewClimate, on 21 February 2010 at 16.38 Said:

    [...] Sceptics [...]