“Everyone is in favor of free speech… but some people's idea of it is that they are free to say what they like, but if anyone else says anything back, that is an outrage.” ― Winston Churchill
STUDY BLAMES GLOBAL WARMING FOR 75 PERCENT OF VERY HOT DAYS
But, fear not, this is balanced by the studies telling us the dreaded POLAR VORTEX is also caused by Global Warming.
Since we have not experienced any catastrophic anthropogenic global warming in almost 2 decades, it’s working out.
Summary of IPCC AR5 Summary: One man’s best estimate is that same man’s refusal to believe his own data. Emphasis mine:
No best estimate for equilibrium climate sensitivity can now be given because of a lack of agreement on values across assessed lines of evidence and studies. (page 11)
Translation: Our climate models have failed to even approximate the key element for which they were designed.
It is extremely likely that more than half of the observed increase in global average surface temperature from 1951 to 2010 was caused by the anthropogenic increase in greenhouse gas concentrations and other anthropogenic forcings together. The best estimate of the human induced contribution to warming is similar to the observed warming over this period. (page 12)
Translation: In spite of the failure of our models, our best estimate (we’re 95% confident) is that humanity is going to fry if we don’t spend trillions to stop this horrible catastrophe. Stop Keystone, destroy the coal industry, increase “green” subsidies and fund my study, or we all die.
John Horgan, @johnhorgan at the Scientific American @sciam blog, poses a moral question regarding Dr. Peter Gleick’s recent ethical lapse:
Should Global-Warming Activists Lie to Defend Their Cause?
When, if ever, is lying justified? I talked about this conundrum this week in a freshmen humanities class, in which we were reading Immanuel Kant on morality. Kant proposed that we judge the rightness or wrongness of an act, such as breaking a promise, by considering what happens if everyone does it. If you don’t want to live in a world in which everyone routinely breaks promises, then you shouldn’t do so.
That’s a fine principle, in the abstract, but my students and I agreed that in certain situations lying is excusable. Shouldn’t you lie if your girlfriend asks you if you like her new haircut? If your boss, who’s a vindictive bastard, asks your opinion of his new business plan? What about lying in order to reveal a plot that you believe imperils all of humanity?
That brings me to the latest scandal to emerge from the debate over global warming…
Let’s examine the three questions to which Mr. Horgan and his freshman humanities students agreed it was OK to lie:
1- Shouldn’t you lie if your girlfriend asks you if you like her new haircut?
No, you shouldn’t lie. She’ll keep getting it cut in ways you don’t like, making her less attractive to you. That wasn’t her objective.
2- If your boss, who’s a vindictive bastard, asks your opinion of his new business plan?
No, you shouldn’t lie. He’ll think he has a good plan (the author appears to assume it’s not). Toadyism might be his preference, but maybe he is just vindictive, not stupid. In any case, your lie will probably damage you and everyone else in the organization.
3- What about lying in order to reveal a plot that you believe imperils all of humanity?
Yes, you should lie. You and everyone else will die if you don’t. Revealing a plot that imperils all of humanity (Wink, wink. Nod, nod: What Gleick did.) assumes that you lie by telling the would-be humanicidal maniacs that “I promise never to reveal your plot to kill everyone in the world.”
But this hypothetical is not like the others: You lie to reveal, not conceal; And you lie about an existential threat. And it’s the wrong lie. In the case at hand, Gleick’s, your lie would have to be phrased, “I promise not to fabricate evidence that you have a plot to kill everybody.”
Mr. Horgan is obfuscating his way into an alternate reality where Peter Gleick lied for our sins. Woe, woe to science when this slippery conflation of ethical situations is its defense of the unethical behavior of the former Chairman of the Ethics Committee Task Force for the American Geophysical Union.
Woe to freshman humanities students who have such an instructor.
Finally, the fact that the headline can even pass editorial muster is telling. They couldn’t get to, “Are scientists still scientists when they fabricate evidence to protect a cultish mythology pet theory?”
@powerlineblog notes that an invitation to an exercise in exchanging ideas is likely what set Dr. Peter Gleick on his reputational suicide mission.
This guy was chairman of a scientific ethics committee. He was a honcho in the climate Chicken Little industry. His behavior is that of a religious cultist with an IQ of 75, except the Kool-Aid killed only his conscience. He is the True Believer writ larger, and yet even smaller, than Eric Hoffer could have imagined.
Intellectually degenerate. Morally bankrupt. Despicable, mendacious and proud. If science comes to be disrespected, it will be cretins of this sort who should be held responsible. He damages us all. And he is typical of his ilk.
While we’re on the topic, it is worth reading this reality based presentation at the Ludwig von Mises Institute. The climate models are wrong, and the modelers know it. They’ve got nothing left, except character assassination. And they aren’t good at that, either.
This has been percolating for a day, and it definitely appears as if the AGW grant industry is suffering another embarrassment at their own hands: Climategate 2.0 emails – They’re real and they’re spectacular!
If you’d like a nice cross section of the flummery and deceit, go here: http://foia2011.org/
You don’t even have to use the search feature, there are many examples already extracted for your reading disdain.
An don’t miss this one: John L. Daly’s message to Mike Mann and The Team
Canadian ice shelves halve in six years
No, what’s shrinking is not the little ledge at the back of the penalty box where they keep the Molson Stock Ale, it’s glaciers. There are some glaciers apparently melting in Canada.
Professor Steven Sherwood, Co-Director of Australia’s University of New South Wales Climate Change Research Centre, thinks it proves the Anthropogenic Global Warming theory:
The real significance of this, in my view, is that this ice has reportedly been there for thousands of years. The same is true of glaciers that have recently disappeared in the Andes. These observations should dispel in one fell swoop any notion that recent global warming could be natural.
Really? Let’s assume this study, unlike many other recent hysterical reports of glacial disappearance, is accurate. (Let’s even pass over what a scientist might mean by the odd qualifier “reportedly,” when giving such a definitive opinion.) Does Sherwood’s contention this melting proves humans caused the melting make sense?
Let’s stack the deck further in his favor before deciding. Let’s assume that when Sherwood says “thousands of years,” he is specifically aware of the state of those Canadian glaciers during the Medieval Warm Period, from about 950 to 1250 AD. And that the plural of “thousand” may have been boyish enthusiasm.
Bottom line? No matter how much latitude we grant, Sherwood’s statement that AGW is proved by melting glaciers in Canada is nonsense. When they assert that if A=B and B=X, then A=C, credentialed Co-Directors of University Climate Change Research Centres deserve no less skepticism than that guy selling Government of Greece bonds. You expect scientists to be aware of such things. Anyway, you used to.
A long line of enviro-hysterics and hucksters – from Rachel Carson to Greenpeace using Bardot in the baby seal ploy – have poisoned the well. Since they abandoned Bardot to the seals and recanted their 1970’s doomsday Global Cooling scenario, they’ve been working on predictive Global Warming models that don’t predict – even when the models are cooked to favor an AGW conclusion. These flip-flops and errors and prevarications and religiosity from the AGW grant-application industry have many of those who believe in the scientific method a tad skeptical.
Co-Director Sherwood had to have been made co-director in order that he might speak PR for the Climate Change Research Centre. His position clearly didn’t depend on his grasp of the scientific method, much less the ability to employ simple logic. He’s the “securing funding” co-director. His PhD is probably in Marketing, if that’s even possible. (After a search, I see that’s wrong. His Ph.D. is Oceanography.)
Lest you think I protest the man’s scientific acumen too much, let me paraphrase him once again:
1. Mrs. Peacock had been stable for decades.
2. Mrs. Peacock is now overly stable, room temperature-wise.
3. It is indisputable: Colonel Mustard, in the Library, with an SUV.
Pompous windbag notes oceans ceasing to rise.
Former US vice president Al Gore said an Internet revolution carrying Barack Obama to the White House should now focus its power on stopping Earth’s climate crisis.
The one-time presidential contender turned environmental champion told Web 2.0 Summit goers in San Francisco Friday that technology has provided tools to save the planet while creating jobs and stimulating the crippled economy.
What, illegal use of credit cards will save the planet? Maybe they’re “carbon credit” cards.