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Location: Arlington, Virginia, United States

Wednesday, May 16, 2007

What "Consensus?" And Who Exactly Are The Scientific "Whores?"

(Bold by Republicus)

Climate Momentum Shifting: Prominent Scientists Reverse Belief in Man-made Global Warming - Now Skeptics

May 15, 2007

Posted by Marc Morano – Marc_Morano@EPW.Senate.Gov - 9:14 PM ET

Growing Number of Scientists Convert to Skeptics After Reviewing New Research

Following the U.S. Senate's vote today on a global warming measure (see today's AP article: Senate Defeats Climate Change Measure,) it is an opportune time to examine the recent and quite remarkable momentum shift taking place in climate science.

Many former believers in catastrophic man-made global warming have recently reversed themselves and are now climate skeptics. The names included below are just a sampling of the prominent scientists who have spoken out recently to oppose former Vice President Al Gore, the United Nations, and the media driven “consensus” on man-made global warming.

The list below is just the tip of the iceberg. A more detailed and comprehensive sampling of scientists who have only recently spoken out against climate hysteria will be forthcoming in a soon to be released U.S. Senate report. Please stay tuned to this website, as this new government report is set to redefine the current climate debate.

In the meantime, please review the list of scientists below and ask yourself why the media is missing one of the biggest stories in climate of 2007. Feel free to distribute the partial list of scientists who recently converted to skeptics to your local schools and universities. The voices of rank and file scientists opposing climate doomsayers can serve as a counter to the alarmism that children are being exposed to on a daily basis. (See Washington Post April 16, 2007 article about kids fearing of a “climactic Armageddon” )

The media's climate fear factor seemingly grows louder even as the latest science grows less and less alarming by the day. (See Der Spiegel May 7, 2007 article: Not the End of the World as We Know It ) It is also worth noting that the proponents of climate fears are increasingly attempting to suppress dissent by skeptics. (See UPI May 10, 2007 article: U.N. official says it's 'completely immoral' to doubt global warming fears )

Geophysicist Dr. Claude Allegre, a top geophysicist and French Socialist who has authored more than 100 scientific articles and written 11 books and received numerous scientific awards including the Goldschmidt Medal from the Geochemical Society of the United States, converted from climate alarmist to skeptic in 2006.

Allegre, who was one of the first scientists to sound global warming fears 20 years ago, now says the cause of climate change is "unknown" and accused the “prophets of doom of global warming” of being motivated by money, noting that "the ecology of helpless protesting has become a very lucrative business for some people!"


(note by Republicus: They've been projecting their own whoredom when accusing the skeptics of being "paid off by Big Oil!")

“Glaciers’ chronicles or historical archives point to the fact that climate is a capricious phenomena. This fact is confirmed by mathematical meteorological theories. So, let us be cautious,” Allegre explained in a September 21, 2006 article in the French newspaper L'EXPRESS. The National Post in Canada also profiled Allegre on March 2, 2007, noting “Allegre has the highest environmental credentials. The author of early environmental books, he fought successful battles to protect the ozone layer from CFCs and public health from lead pollution.”

Allegre now calls fears of a climate disaster "simplistic and obscuring the true dangers” mocks "the greenhouse-gas fanatics whose proclamations consist in denouncing man's role on the climate without doing anything about it except organizing conferences and preparing protocols that become dead letters."

Allegre, a member of both the French and U.S. Academy of Sciences, had previously expressed concern about manmade global warming. "By burning fossil fuels, man enhanced the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere which has raised the global mean temperature by half a degree in the last century," Allegre wrote 20 years ago. In addition, Allegre was one of 1500 scientists who signed a November 18, 1992 letter titled “World Scientists' Warning to Humanity” in which the scientists warned that global warming’s “potential risks are very great.”

Geologist Bruno Wiskel of the University of Alberta recently reversed his view of man-made climate change and instead became a global warming skeptic.

Wiskel was once such a big believer in man-made global warming that he set out to build a “Kyoto house” in honor of the UN sanctioned Kyoto Protocol which was signed in 1997. Wiskel wanted to prove that the Kyoto Protocol’s goals were achievable by people making small changes in their lives. But after further examining the science behind Kyoto, Wiskel reversed his scientific views completely and became such a strong skeptic, that he recently wrote a book titled “The Emperor's New Climate: Debunking the Myth of Global Warming.” A November 15, 2006 Edmonton Sun article explains Wiskel’s conversion while building his “Kyoto house”: “Instead, he said he realized global warming theory was full of holes and ‘red flags,’ and became convinced that humans are not responsible for rising temperatures.” Wiskel now says “the truth has to start somewhere.” Noting that the Earth has been warming for 18,000 years, Wiskel told the Canadian newspaper, “If this happened once and we were the cause of it, that would be cause for concern. But glaciers have been coming and going for billions of years."

Wiskel also said that global warming has gone "from a science to a religion” and noted that research money is being funneled into promoting climate alarmism instead of funding areas he considers more worthy. "If you funnel money into things that can't be changed, the money is not going into the places that it is needed,” he said.

Astrophysicist Dr. Nir Shaviv, one of Israel's top young award winning scientists, recanted his belief that manmade emissions were driving climate change. ""Like many others, I was personally sure that CO2 is the bad culprit in the story of global warming. But after carefully digging into the evidence, I realized that things are far more complicated than the story sold to us by many climate scientists or the stories regurgitated by the media. In fact, there is much more than meets the eye,” Shaviv said in February 2, 2007 Canadian National Post article.

According to Shaviv, the C02 temperature link is only “incriminating circumstantial evidence.” "Solar activity can explain a large part of the 20th-century global warming" and "it is unlikely that [the solar climate link] does not exist,” Shaviv noted pointing to the impact cosmic- rays have on the atmosphere. According to the National Post, Shaviv believes that even a doubling of CO2 in the atmosphere by 2100 "will not dramatically increase the global temperature." “Even if we halved the CO2 output, and the CO2 increase by 2100 would be, say, a 50% increase relative to today instead of a doubled amount, the expected reduction in the rise of global temperature would be less than 0.5C. This is not significant,” Shaviv explained.

Shaviv also wrote on August 18, 2006 that a colleague of his believed that “CO2 should have a large effect on climate” so “he set out to reconstruct the phanerozoic temperature. He wanted to find the CO2 signature in the data, but since there was none, he slowly had to change his views.” Shaviv believes there will be more scientists converting to man-made global warming skepticism as they discover the dearth of evidence. “I think this is common to many of the scientists who think like us (that is, that CO2 is a secondary climate driver). Each one of us was working in his or her own niche. While working there, each one of us realized that things just don't add up to support the AGW (Anthropogenic Global Warming) picture. So many had to change their views,” he wrote.

Mathematician & engineer Dr. David Evans, who did carbon accounting for the Australian Government, recently detailed his conversion to a skeptic. “I devoted six years to carbon accounting, building models for the Australian government to estimate carbon emissions from land use change and forestry. When I started that job in 1999 the evidence that carbon emissions caused global warming seemed pretty conclusive, but since then new evidence has weakened the case that carbon emissions are the main cause. I am now skeptical,” Evans wrote in an April 30, 2007 blog.

“But after 2000 the evidence for carbon emissions gradually got weaker -- better temperature data for the last century, more detailed ice core data, then laboratory evidence that cosmic rays precipitate low clouds,” Evans wrote. “As Lord Keynes famously said, ‘When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?’” he added. Evans noted how he benefited from climate fears as a scientist. “And the political realm in turn fed money back into the scientific community.

By the late 1990's, lots of jobs depended on the idea that carbon emissions caused global warming. Many of them were bureaucratic, but there were a lot of science jobs created too. I was on that gravy train, making a high wage in a science job that would not have existed if we didn't believe carbon emissions caused global warming. And so were lots of people around me; and there were international conferences full of such people. And we had political support, the ear of government, big budgets, and we felt fairly important and useful (well, I did anyway). It was great. We were working to save the planet! But starting in about 2000, the last three of the four pieces of evidence outlined above fell away or reversed,” Evans wrote.

“The pre-2000 ice core data was the central evidence for believing that atmospheric carbon caused temperature increases. The new ice core data shows that past warmings were *not* initially caused by rises in atmospheric carbon, and says nothing about the strength of any amplification. This piece of evidence casts reasonable doubt that atmospheric carbon had any role in past warmings, while still allowing the possibility that it had a supporting role,” he added. “Unfortunately politics and science have become even more entangled. The science of global warming has become a partisan political issue, so positions become more entrenched. Politicians and the public prefer simple and less-nuanced messages. At the moment the political climate strongly supports carbon emissions as the cause of global warming, to the point of sometimes rubbishing or silencing critics,” he concluded.

Climate researcher Dr. Tad Murty, former Senior Research Scientist for Fisheries and Oceans in Canada, also reversed himself from believer in man-made climate change to a skeptic. “I stated with a firm belief about global warming, until I started working on it myself,” Murty explained on August 17, 2006. “I switched to the other side in the early 1990's when Fisheries and Oceans Canada asked me to prepare a position paper and I started to look into the problem seriously,” Murty explained.

Murty was one of the 60 scientists who wrote an April 6, 2006 letter urging withdrawal of Kyoto to Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper which stated in part, "If, back in the mid-1990s, we knew what we know today about climate, Kyoto would almost certainly not exist, because we would have concluded it was not necessary.”

Botanist Dr. David Bellamy, a famed UK environmental campaigner, former lecturer at Durham University and host of a popular UK TV series on wildlife, recently converted into a skeptic after reviewing the science and now calls global warming fears "poppycock."

According to a May 15, 2005 article in the UK Sunday Times, Bellamy said “global warming is largely a natural phenomenon. The world is wasting stupendous amounts of money on trying to fix something that can’t be fixed.” “The climate-change people have no proof for their claims. They have computer models which do not prove anything,” Bellamy added.

Bellamy’s conversion on global warming did not come without a sacrifice as several environmental groups have ended their association with him because of his views on climate change. The severing of relations came despite Bellamy’s long activism for green campaigns. The UK Times reported Bellamy “won respect from hardline environmentalists with his campaigns to save Britain’s peat bogs and other endangered habitats. In Tasmania he was arrested when he tried to prevent loggers cutting down a rainforest.”

Climate scientist Dr. Chris de Freitas of The University of Auckland, N.Z., also converted from a believer in man-made global warming to a skeptic. “At first I accepted that increases in human caused additions of carbon dioxide and methane in the atmosphere would trigger changes in water vapor etc. and lead to dangerous ‘global warming,’ But with time and with the results of research, I formed the view that, although it makes for a good story, it is unlikely that the man-made changes are drivers of significant climate variation.” de Freitas wrote on August 17, 2006.

“I accept there may be small changes. But I see the risk of anything serious to be minute,” he added. “One could reasonably argue that lack of evidence is not a good reason for complacency. But I believe the billions of dollars committed to GW research and lobbying for GW and for Kyoto treaties etc could be better spent on uncontroversial and very real environmental problems (such as air pollution, poor sanitation, provision of clean water and improved health services) that we know affect tens of millions of people,” de Freitas concluded.

de Freitas was one of the 60 scientists who wrote an April 6, 2006 letter urging withdrawal of Kyoto to Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper which stated in part, “Significant [scientific] advances have been made since the [Kyoto] protocol was created, many of which are taking us away from a concern about increasing greenhouse gases.”

Meteorologist Dr. Reid Bryson, the founding chairman of the Department of Meteorology at University of Wisconsin (now the Department of Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences, was pivotal in promoting the coming ice age scare of the 1970’s ( See Time Magazine’s 1974 article “Another Ice Age” citing Bryson: & see Newsweek’s 1975 article “The Cooling World” citing Bryson) has now converted into a leading global warming skeptic.

In February 8, 2007 Bryson dismissed what he terms "sky is falling" man-made global warming fears. Bryson, was on the United Nations Global 500 Roll of Honor and was identified by the British Institute of Geographers as the most frequently cited climatologist in the world. “Before there were enough people to make any difference at all, two million years ago, nobody was changing the climate, yet the climate was changing, okay?” Bryson told the May 2007 issue of Energy Cooperative News. “All this argument is the temperature going up or not, it’s absurd. Of course it’s going up. It has gone up since the early 1800s, before the Industrial Revolution, because we’re coming out of the Little Ice Age, not because we’re putting more carbon dioxide into the air,” Bryson said. “You can go outside and spit and have the same effect as doubling carbon dioxide,” he added.

“We cannot say what part of that warming was due to mankind's addition of ‘greenhouse gases’ until we consider the other possible factors, such as aerosols. The aerosol content of the atmosphere was measured during the past century, but to my knowledge this data was never used. We can say that the question of anthropogenic modification of the climate is an important question -- too important to ignore. However, it has now become a media free-for-all and a political issue more than a scientific problem,” Bryson explained in 2005.

Global warming author and economist Hans H.J. Labohm started out as a man-made global warming believer but he later switched his view after conducting climate research. Labohm wrote on August 19, 2006, “I started as a anthropogenic global warming believer, then I read the [UN’s IPCC] Summary for Policymakers and the research of prominent skeptics.” “After that, I changed my mind,” Labohn explained.

Labohn co-authored the 2004 book “Man-Made Global Warming: Unraveling a Dogma,” with chemical engineer Dick Thoenes who was the former chairman of the Royal Netherlands Chemical Society. Labohm was one of the 60 scientists who wrote an April 6, 2006 letter urging withdrawal of Kyoto to Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper which stated in part, “’Climate change is real’ is a meaningless phrase used repeatedly by activists to convince the public that a climate catastrophe is looming and humanity is the cause. Neither of these fears is justified. Global climate changes all the time due to natural causes and the human impact still remains impossible to distinguish from this natural ‘noise.’”


Paleoclimatologist Tim Patterson, of Carlton University in Ottawa converted from believer in C02 driving the climate change to a skeptic. “I taught my students that CO2 was the prime driver of climate change,” Patterson wrote on April 30, 2007. Patterson said his “conversion” happened following his research on “the nature of paleo-commercial fish populations in the NE Pacific.”

“[My conversion from believer to climate skeptic] came about approximately 5-6 years ago when results began to come in from a major NSERC (Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada) Strategic Project Grant where I was PI (principle investigator),” Patterson explained. “Over the course of about a year, I switched allegiances,” he wrote.

“As the proxy results began to come in, we were astounded to find that paleoclimatic and paleoproductivity records were full of cycles that corresponded to various sun-spot cycles. About that time, [geochemist] Jan Veizer and others began to publish reasonable hypotheses as to how solar signals could be amplified and control climate,” Patterson noted. Patterson says his conversion “probably cost me a lot of grant money. However, as a scientist I go where the science takes me and not were activists want me to go.” Patterson now asserts that more and more scientists are converting to climate skeptics. "When I go to a scientific meeting, there's lots of opinion out there, there's lots of discussion (about climate change). I was at the Geological Society of America meeting in Philadelphia in the fall and I would say that people with my opinion were probably in the majority,” Patterson told the Winnipeg Sun on February 13, 2007. Patterson, who believes the sun is responsible for the recent warm up of the Earth, ridiculed the environmentalists and the media for not reporting the truth.

"But if you listen to [Canadian environmental activist David] Suzuki and the media, it's like a tiger chasing its tail. They try to outdo each other and all the while proclaiming that the debate is over but it isn't -- come out to a scientific meeting sometime,” Patterson said. In a separate interview on April 26, 2007 with a Canadian newspaper, Patterson explained that the scientific proof favors skeptics.

“I think the proof in the pudding, based on what (media and governments) are saying, (is) we're about three quarters of the way (to disaster) with the doubling of CO2 in the atmosphere," he said. “The world should be heating up like crazy by now, and it's not. The temperatures match very closely with the solar cycles."

Physicist Dr. Zbigniew Jaworowski, chairman of the Central Laboratory for the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Radiological Protection in Warsaw, took a scientific journey from a believer of man-made climate change in the form of global cooling in the 1970’s all the way to converting to a skeptic of current predictions of catastrophic man-made global warming.

“At the beginning of the 1970s I believed in man-made climate cooling, and therefore I started a study on the effects of industrial pollution on the global atmosphere, using glaciers as a history book on this pollution,” Dr. Jaworowski, wrote on August 17, 2006. “With the advent of man-made warming political correctness in the beginning of 1980s, I already had a lot of experience with polar and high altitude ice, and I have serious problems in accepting the reliability of ice core CO2 studies,” Jaworowski added.

Jaworowski, who has published many papers on climate with a focus on CO2 measurements in ice cores, also dismissed the UN IPCC summary and questioned what the actual level of C02 was in the atmosphere in a March 16, 2007 report in EIR science entitled “CO2: The Greatest Scientific Scandal of Our Time.”

“We thus find ourselves in the situation that the entire theory of man-made global warming—with its repercussions in science, and its important consequences for politics and the global economy—is based on ice core studies that provided a false picture of the atmospheric CO2 levels,” Jaworowski wrote.

“For the past three decades, these well-known direct CO2 measurements, recently compiled and analyzed by Ernst-Georg Beck (Beck 2006a, Beck 2006b, Beck 2007), were completely ignored by climatologists—and not because they were wrong. Indeed, these measurements were made by several Nobel Prize winners, using the techniques that are standard textbook procedures in chemistry, biochemistry, botany, hygiene, medicine, nutrition, and ecology. The only reason for rejection was that these measurements did not fit the hypothesis of anthropogenic climatic warming. I regard this as perhaps the greatest scientific scandal of our time,” Jaworowski wrote.

“The hypothesis, in vogue in the 1970s, stating that emissions of industrial dust will soon induce the new Ice Age, seem now to be a conceited anthropocentric exaggeration, bringing into discredit the science of that time. The same fate awaits the present,” he added.

Jaworowski believes that cosmic rays and solar activity are major drivers of the Earth’s climate. Jaworowski was one of the 60 scientists who wrote an April 6, 2006 letter urging withdrawal of Kyoto to Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper which stated in part: "It may be many years yet before we properly understand the Earth's climate system. Nevertheless, significant advances have been made since the protocol was created, many of which are taking us away from a concern about increasing greenhouse gases."

Paleoclimatologist Dr. Ian D. Clark, professor of the Department of Earth Sciences at University of Ottawa, reversed his views on man-made climate change after further examining the evidence.

“I used to agree with these dramatic warnings of climate disaster. I taught my students that most of the increase in temperature of the past century was due to human contribution of C02. The association seemed so clear and simple. Increases of greenhouse gases were driving us towards a climate catastrophe,” Clark said in a 2005 documentary "Climate Catastrophe Cancelled: What You're Not Being Told About the Science of Climate Change.”

“However, a few years ago, I decided to look more closely at the science and it astonished me. In fact there is no evidence of humans being the cause. There is, however, overwhelming evidence of natural causes such as changes in the output of the sun.

This has completely reversed my views on the Kyoto protocol,” Clark explained. “Actually, many other leading climate researchers also have serious concerns about the science underlying the [Kyoto] Protocol,” he added.

Environmental geochemist Dr. Jan Veizer, professor emeritus of University of Ottawa, converted from believer to skeptic after conducting scientific studies of climate history.

“I simply accepted the (global warming) theory as given,” Veizer wrote on April 30, 2007 about predictions that increasing C02 in the atmosphere was leading to a climate catastrophe. “The final conversion came when I realized that the solar/cosmic ray connection gave far more consistent picture with climate, over many time scales, than did the CO2 scenario,” Veizer wrote.

“It was the results of my work on past records, on geological time scales, that led me to realize the discrepancies with empirical observations. Trying to understand the background issues of modeling led to realization of the assumptions and uncertainties involved,” Veizer explained. “The past record strongly favors the solar/cosmic alternative as the principal climate driver,” he added.

Veizer acknowledgez the Earth has been warming and he believes in the scientific value of climate modeling. “The major point where I diverge from the IPCC scenario is my belief that it underestimates the role of natural variability by proclaiming CO2 to be the only reasonable source of additional energy in the planetary balance. Such additional energy is needed to drive the climate. The point is that most of the temperature, in both nature and models, arises from the greenhouse of water vapor (model language ‘positive water vapor feedback’,) Veizer wrote. “Thus to get more temperature, more water vapor is needed. This is achieved by speeding up the water cycle by inputting more energy into the system,” he continued. “Note that it is not CO2 that is in the models but its presumed energy equivalent (model language ‘prescribed CO2’). Yet, the models (and climate) would generate a more or less similar outcome regardless where this additional energy is coming from. This is why the solar/cosmic connection is so strongly opposed, because it can influence the global energy budget which, in turn, diminishes the need for an energy input from the CO2 greenhouse,” he wrote.

33 Comments:

Blogger Steve Harkonnen said...

THIS is eerie. Practically the same post I made but yours is one day before mine and I've never been to this blog before. Good blog and I wish you all the best and will come back now and then.

8:53 AM  
Blogger John said...

Thank you Steve. I'll be sure to drop by.

10:06 AM  
Blogger Kelly said...

This just goes to show that great minds think alike. :)

9:30 AM  
Blogger Phelonius said...

Anybody that wants to work with "consensus" as a fact-determiner needs to think about what they are doing. The Academy Awards are based on a consensus, and look at what a catastrophe that is. The Grammy Awards are based on consensus and the results continually have people scratching their heads and wondering what the so-called experts are thinking.

It is not so much that people voting for what they think is the best candidate, the best music, the best scientific theory or who has the fastest horse is necessarily evil, or based in some diabolical scheme to fool the less 'informed', it is just that it is seldom intelligent.

Scientists are also people, regardless of what you may have read about Carl Sagan, for example. When they are asked to throw out an opinion, many times they will, but they do so based on their own prejudices and who is paying for their salaries. It does not mean they are right or that they are wrong. That is the beauty of an opinion. Opinion and fact are two different beasts altogether. A person in science hates to use the words "I don't know," because it makes them look stupid or indecisive. In popular culture, a scientist is the one that knows things, and they base their career on that notion. Again, it does not make them evil, or conspirators, but the pressures are immense.

The true evil has been the pressure to politicize what should be a purely scientific enterprise of determining what is happening on this planet and the others around us that we have actual data for study. The oil companies and others have scientists on their payrolls, and the 'Greenies' have scientists on theirs. Neither side can make true scientific opinions that count as long as that political pressure is being applied. That is sad, but oh, so very human.

6:12 PM  
Blogger John said...

"Scientists are also people, regardless of what you may have read about Carl Sagan."

Hee hee. Well, I think certified (no pun intended) scientists would beg your pardon on comparing their consensual conclusions--supposedly based on the objectivity of the scientific method-- with the artistic tastes of the salon crowd, which are subjective.

Nevertheless, your profile rings true: they are, after all, human beings (except for Sagan), and accordingly flawed (especially the lefty ones; you can usually tell which ones they are by their neurotic lack of unflappability and their grinning, self-evident vanity, which is evidence that they have been compromised by emotion).

Even when following the procedures of the scientific method with due diligence, they have often enough--even in good faith-- arrived at bunk because they were using flawed data (as they did with Kyoto) and indeed are subject to many of their own biases, personal connections, and ambitions, however insistent they are on their objectivity.

Your assessments, however (e.g. the politicization of the science, the interference of objectivity by issues of ego, etc.) have been heard, addressed, and denied by the well-funded parliament of Global Grilling scientists.

They insist that Global Warming is an irrefutable fact (agreed) but--ever since they got burned (pun intended) by their over-the-top alarmism with Kyoto, are careful to use words like "very probably" and "highly likely" and "98.7% certain" that human industry is the *causus causata* of the phenomenon (which I think is pretty funny).

In any case, it doesn't help their credibility any when they have to resort to rock stars and celebrities to strengthen their scientific argument.

BTW, These last few days have been some of the most beautiful May days I can remember south of the Mason- Dixon line: Cool and balmy.

8:59 PM  
Blogger Phelonius said...

"I think certified (no pun intended) scientists would beg your pardon on comparing their consensual conclusions--supposedly based on the objectivity of the scientific method-- with the artistic tastes of the salon crowd, which are subjective."

I know they would object, but that is exactly my beef with them. I had a lot of scientific training in college, and one thing has to be remembered about real science; namely, that true objectivity can only be arrived at through empirical data derived from repeatable observations.

Is the planet on a warming trend? Objective fact.

Is the warming due to human activity?
Not objective fact, and therefore an opinion, also known as a hypothesis.

Is Paris Hilton a moron?
Objective fact.

Is Paris Hilton a moron on purpose for media attention?
Hypothesis.

Is global warming caused by the Sun?
Hypothesis.

I had a particular gripe with Sagan in his production of Cosmos. He looked out into space and saw that it was really, really really huge, and he did not see God sitting on a throne out there anywhere. "Ah" he thought, "Therefore there is no God."
That is a hypothesis based on evidence that really has nothing to do with the question at hand.

So, yes, I am accusing the media and political types of wresting opinions from scientists that ought to know better than to posit a hypothesis as being an objective fact. That makes them little better than a salon type throwing out opinions about styles.

2:36 PM  
Blogger Kelly said...

"So, yes, I am accusing the media and political types of wresting opinions from scientists that ought to know better than to posit a hypothesis as being an objective fact. "

That is the issue here...that they are putting out hypothesis as objective fact.

The other part of this is the idea of "consensus". There are places where consensus is a good thing. But not where science is concerned.

A consensus is good when a group needs to come up with a common direction.

Truth is never derived from consensus.

1:24 PM  
Blogger John said...

Well, if four of us--who learned elementary mathematics-agree that 2 + 2 = 4, and another takes a novel approach to traditional mathematics (or was uneducated in it entirely) and proposes that 2 + 2 = 5, the four-against-one consensus should win the day.

That's how the Global Grilling "consensus" is presented.

But the ratio isn't like that, the math isn't so straightforward, the majority of the "experts" aren't necessarily in greater command of "the facts" (no less The Truth) than the minority is by consensus alone, and, indeed, the stench of politics and an agenda hovers over the "science" of the Global Grillers.

10:18 PM  
Blogger Kelly said...

These same Global "grillers" will also argue that truth is relative. It's all a matter of the part of the elephant that you are 'looking at' with your hands.

The blind will always see truth as relative.

11:29 AM  
Blogger John said...

Except their own.

12:49 PM  
Blogger Kelly said...

Quite right you are, John!!

12:51 PM  
Blogger Kelly said...

I am just here to check a pulse to see if you are still alive.

1:38 PM  
Blogger Phelonius said...

Kelly, you know that John comes and goes now with the wind.

2:30 PM  
Blogger Kelly said...

I know...

I miss the good ole' days.

8:14 AM  
Blogger nanc said...

where you is?

8:58 PM  
Blogger John said...

This is a lame-duck blog...

10:27 AM  
Blogger Kelly said...

It is only a lame-duck blog because its owner...ahem...does't do much with it...ahem.

John, you are always welcome to visit one of our blogs and comment now and then...ahem.

6:04 PM  
Blogger nanc said...

lighten up, john. jeff bargholz went into retirement long about the same time you quit posting - i want my bargholz back! now, start posting and as kelly says - you could at least visit us.

i'm in comment mod because of a slight troll infestation.

11:00 PM  
Blogger John said...

Where did Bargholz go, anyway?

That guy had a hammer like Thor's.

6:43 AM  
Blogger nanc said...

he was talking about going to iraq in a civilian job and i miss him until my heart hurts!

i am confident he will contact me soon.

he's awesome. there are quite a few of us who miss him immensely.

7:18 AM  
Blogger Kelly said...

It seems as if several people dropped off at about that time. Even Amy just quit blogging. I miss Amy's "Librarian by day, Super-hero by night" blog. She was a lot of fun in here and I think brought a lot of energy.

11:05 AM  
Blogger John said...

Bargholz in Iraq? There's your "surge." ;)

1:55 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Lets see....

First person on this "climate scientist" list is a french politician

the second is an executive at a mineral development operation

the third studies deep space supernova for a living

etc etc

LOL- If this is the best if the "skeptics" you are really scraping the bottom of the barrel

4:04 PM  
Blogger John said...

The award-winning scientist and member of both the French and U.S. Academy of Sciences who was one of the first to sound the alarm about Global Warming is now just "A French Politician"?

And a geologist and avid supporter of the Kyoto Treaty is now dismissed as "an executive at a mineral development operation?"

An elite astrophysicist is dismissed as ignorant of "The True Science" behind the Global Warming Agenda?

Are you saying that you, yourself, Neo, are more qualified, more knowledgeable, than they, or are you, in fact, emgaging in the knee-jerk tendency of the Left to ridicule and/or demonize anyone who strays from the party lines?

Furthermore, isn't the very behavior you're demonstrating precisely what you all have been insistently accusing the Bush Administration of engaging in earlier in their dealings with critics of the Iraq Campaign and indeed supporters of Kyoto and stem cell research, that they were "attacking science" for their own agenda?

Yes. Your crowd was projecting precisely how you yourselves operate.

"Just a French politician," you sneer.

The "LOL," Neo, is mine.

2:03 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

A politician, mineral company executive and supernova research are the current occupations of the first three people of the dozen or so “skeptic” list, that is a fact.

Speaking of dismissals you will take that motley short “Skeptic” list at face value but laugh of the following??

1)
Nation academy of sciences of
USA
France
Brazil
Canada
Germany
Italy
Japan
Russia
UK
India
China

http://nationalacademies.org/onpi/06072005.pdf

2)
110 Nobel laureates and 60 U.S. National Medal of Science winners.


3)
American Geophysical Union (or AGU) with 41,000 members from 130 countries involved in four fundamental areas: atmospheric and ocean sciences; solid-Earth sciences; hydrologic sciences; and space sciences.


You obviously have a lot of kidding yourself to do. By the time your done the icecaps probably will have ong melted away
-Neo

2:33 PM  
Blogger John said...

Such awards as the Nobel don't impress me, as the committee has obviously been contaminated by leftwing politicos.

For example, am I supposed to remember Yasser Arafat as a man of peace because the committee said so?

Also, you try to impress me with the creds of the AGU by (1) citing membership numbers (41,000 members from 130 countries).

I'm not impressed by those numbers for reasons diverse and sundry.

A similar case can be made for the United Nations.

(2) You say the AGU is involved in four fundamental areas: atmospheric and ocean sciences; solid-Earth sciences; hydrologic sciences; and space sciences.

But you just ridiculed a scientist
turned skeptic on "consensual" Global Warming theories because he specialized in space sciences!

So why then try to impress me with a union comprised of astronomers, geologists, oceanologists,and hydrologists and their take on a politically-charged issue in the field of climatology?

You folks are always contradicting yourselves.

10:14 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

LOL
You're impressed by an over-the- hill former scientist french politician and his 11 friends though???

Do you always take politicians at their word or do you just like the french better? -talk about contradictions

10:27 AM  
Blogger John said...

Again, he is an award-winning scientist and member of both the French and U.S. Academy of Sciences who was one of the first to sound the alarm for Global Warming.

Now he's just "a French politician" because he's on the other side of the political ideology that is most certainly driving the "science" of Global Warming.

Al Gore, meanwhile, a life-long American politician, is an "expert climatologist" because he's on your side of the political ideology behind the Global Warming agenda.

And you're just a brainwashed, devotee of the apocalyptic cult who's holding up a sign saying "The Earth Is Burning" in the middle of a snowstorm.

10:55 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I don't listen to politicians doesn't matter if they are french or american (or named Al Gore). I listen to the scientists and the vast body of them say man is causing climate change.

That's me

let's review you

1) won't listen to a polician (Al Gore)
2) won't listen to scienists (100 nobels and 1000s who study climate for a living)

3)BUT you will listen to one former scientist who's now a politician (and french of all nationalities)

can you explain the logic there ...
-neo

1:04 PM  
Blogger John said...

No, Neo, it's much more like:

1) I listened to a politician named Al Gore and realized he's a knucklehead.

2) I listened to scientists who say one thing, and to scientists who say another, and use my own sense from education and experience to decide who are the scientists, and who the liberals.

That's me.

And if you've been paying attention, one liberal (especially a committee of them) giving another--or Yasser Arafat, for that matter-- a Nobel counts for jack.

Furthermore, if you've been paying attention, studying climate for a living--especially among a politically-charged group of peers--doesn't do the objective integrity of Science any favors.

But you haven't been paying attention. You don't listen to the other side (or are incapable of comprehending one).

You folks have been repeatedly burned--not by the climate, but by your own "predictions" and admittedly flawed data--so often now that you resemble Chicken Littles running around with your heads cut off (and there your heads are, in the sand--I mean snow)...

...If not deranged prophets holding Doomsday signs at street corners (multi-million dollar galas feting keynote speakers like a tuxedoed Al Gore fresh off his private jet notwithstanding).

That's you.

Enjoy the beautiful, temperate climate. :)

9:44 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

You will dismiss 100 nobel winners, 60 presidential science medal winners 1000s of active researchers who have been presenting data and studies on the warming of the globe for over twenty years now?


But listen to an old french socialist politician?

LOL

9:05 PM  
Blogger John said...

I already addressed that. Do you even pay attention to the stages of argument?

3:03 AM  
Blogger John said...

Well, it seems I'm guilty of not paying attention to your arguments and the stages of this one (heh).

You addressed my recently repeated opinion that deforestation is a bigger CO2 emmiter than the burning of fossil fuels, here:

(from Neo)

"1) current deforestation is putting about 1/5 the amount of CO2 into the atmosphere compared to fossil fuels. Deforestation has acutually stablized in 1st world and is primarly occuring 3rd world countries.

2) Plant matter can't possibly compensate for current CO2 increase. First you would have to recover deforestation just to get back to baseline. Second the halflife of CO2 (counting cycling) is on the order of 100+ years..."

But those arguments must have been countered by the skeptical scientists, and I would need to hear their side before making a decision (specifically about how the measurements were taken and the figures arrived at. Such a measurement would be quite an undertaking, and I would wager that the margin of errors are greater than the percentile fluctuations in temperature readings).

You also addressed the post-war dip in temperatures concurring with the boom in CO2 output. You say there was a lagtime.

But that must be a hypothetical supposition, not a demonstrable scientific fact.

8:16 PM  

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