All too many alarmist climate scientists have received millions in taxpayer grants over the years, relied on computer models that do not reflect real-world observations, attacked and refused to debate scientists who disagree with manmade climate cataclysm claims, refused to share their computer algorithms and raw data with reviewers outside their circle of fellow researchers – and then used their work to make or justify demands that the world eliminate the fossil fuels that provide 80% of our energy and have lifted billions out of nasty, brutish, life-shortening poverty and disease.
A recent US House of Representatives Science Committee hearing on assumptions, policy implications and scientific principles of climate change showcased this. Testimony by climate scientists Drs. John Christy, Judith Curry and Roger Pielke, Jr. contrasted sharply with that of Dr. Michael Mann.
Christy noted that Congress and the public have been getting biased analyses and conclusions that begin with and attempt to confirm the belief that human greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions drive climate change. He said government should “organize and fund credible ‘Red Teams’ that look at issues such as natural variability, the failure of climate models and the huge benefits to society from affordable energy, carbon-based and otherwise.” He demonstrated how average global temperatures predicted by dozens of models for 2015 are now off by a full half-degree Celsius (0.9 F) from what has actually been measured.
Curry discussed how she has been repeatedly vilified as an “anti-science” climate change “denier” and “disinformer.” But she focused on the role of the scientific method, especially as related to the complex forces involved in climate change ‚Äì and especially when used to advise on policy and law. Real science means positing and proving a hypothesis with convincing real world evidence. Models can help, but only if they accurately reflect the total climate system and their results conform to real world observations.
Pielke discussed his own mistreatment as a “denier” and showed that there is “little scientific basis” for claims that extreme weather events (tornadoes, hurricanes, floods, droughts) have increased in recent decades due to GHG emissions. In fact, IPCC and other studies reveal that the USA and world have had “remarkable good fortune” with extreme weather in recent years, compared to the past: 23 major hurricanes hit the US East Coast 1915-1964; but only 9 in 1965-2016 ‚Äì and not one since October 2005. He also offered 18 specific recommendations for improving scientific integrity in climate science.
Mann said the other three witnesses represent a “tiny minority” who stand opposed to the 97% who agree that “climate change is real, is human-caused, and is already having adverse impacts on us, our economy, and our planet.” He defended his “hockey stick” historic temperature graph, claimed climate models have been “tested vigorously and rigorously” and have “passed a number of impressive tests,” insisted that warming [of a couple hundredths of a degree] in recent years proves that manmade global warming “has continued unabated,” and accused those who contest these statements of being “anti-science” deniers.
The “97% consensus” is imaginary ‚Äì a fabrication. One source was a survey sent to 10,256 scientists, of whom 3,146 responded. But their number was arbitrarily reduced to 77 “expert” or “active” climate researchers, of which 75 agreed with two simplistic questions that many would support. (Has Earth warmed since 1800? Did humans play a significant role?) Voila! 97% consensus. But what about the other 3,069 respondents? 75 out of 3,146 is barely 0.02 percent. Purported consensus studies by Cook, Oreskes and others were just as bogus.
Moreover, governments have been spending billions of dollars annually on climate research. The vas majority went to the alarmist camp. If $25,000 or $100,000 a year from fossil fuel interests can “buy” skeptical scientists, as we are often told, how much “consensus” can billions purchase? If many scientists who contest “dangerous manmade climate change” are harassed, or threatened with RICO prosecutions, how many will have the courage to speak out and challenge the “consensus” and “settled science”?
These are timely questions. On April 12, 1633 the Catholic Church convicted astronomer Galileo Galilei of heresy, for refusing to accept its doctrine that the Sun revolves around the Earth.
But far more important, the climate battle is not merely a debate over miasma versus germ theory of disease, AC versus DC current, or geologic mechanisms behind plate tectonics. It’s far more even than disagreements over how much humans might be affecting Earth’s climate, or how bad (or beneficial) future changes might be, on a planet where climate fluctuations have occurred throughout history.
Manmade climate catastrophe claims are being used to justify demands that the United States and world eliminate the carbon-based fuels that provide 80% of the energy that makes modern industry, civilization and living standards possible – and that continue to lift billions of people out of poverty and disease.
Climate alarmists want that radical transformation to take place right now. McKinsey & Company, the UN and assorted activists say the world must spend some $93 trillion over the next 15 years to convert completely from fossil fuels to “sustainable” energy! Or it will be too late. Our planet will be doomed.
Claims and demands like those require solid, incontrovertible proof that climate alarmists are right. Not just computer models, repeated assertions, “peer review” among like-minded researchers seeking their next government grant, or a partial-degree of warming amid multiple El Ni√±os and cooling cycles. They require “Red Team” analyses and open, unfettered debate over every aspect of human and natural influences on Earth’s climate, the ways carbon dioxide improves plant growth, and the need for abundant, reliable, affordable electricity and motor fuel for every person in every nation.
We haven’t had any of that so far. Up to now, climate chaos is just one more Club of Rome supposedly looming disaster, supposedly caused by human intervention in natural processes, supposedly requiring immediate, fundamental changes in human behavior, to avoid supposed global calamities ‚Äì threats to the very survival of our wildlife, civilization and planet. It’s all assertions, devoid of persuasive evidence.
It’s true that virtually all nations have signed the Paris accords. However, only President Obama signed it for the USA; the Senate never ratified the decision. And the US reduced its CO2 emissions by 12.5% since 2007, while Europe’s carbon dioxide emissions rose 0.7% in one year, 2014-2015.
Britain is looking into rescinding some 2020 clean energy targets and using more coal and natural gas. EU nations are realizing that overpriced, unreliable wind and solar power is hammering families and killing their jobs and economies. Virtually all the developing nations that signed onto the Paris (non)treaty did so because they were promised trillions of dollars in climate “adaptation, mitigation and reparation” money.
That brings us to another April anniversary: the 1815 eruption of Indonesia’s Mt. Tambora. This monumental volcanic explosion blew an inconceivable 4,650 feet off the volcano; sent 36 cubic miles of ash, rock, sulfur and other gases into the atmosphere; triggered tsunamis that killed over 10,000 people; and caused serious climate changes and crop failures that killed 80,000 more over the following year.
We may be about to witness another volcanic explosion. Under the Paris insanity, developed nations are expected to de-carbonize, de-industrialize and curb their growth – while sending $100 billion per year to ruling elites in developing countries that are not required to trim fossil fuel use or GHG emissions.
It cannot and will not happen. In fact, industrialized nations are already reneging on their pledges, refusing to contribute to the Green Climate Fund, or recasting current foreign aid as Paris climate money. China, India, Brazil and poor countries are outraged. They want new money, more money – or else they will walk away from their commitments, and the Paris house of cards will collapse. It should collapse.
Billions of people are still energy-deprived, impoverished, diseased and starving. Millions are dying needlessly every year. Faulty, authoritarian climate and “sustainability” claims are being use to perpetuate these travesties. It’s time to help poor countries get the same energy, technologies and opportunities we have ‚Äì so that they can take their rightful places among Earth’s healthy and prosperous people.
Paul Driessen is senior policy analyst for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org) and author of Eco-Imperialism: Green power – Black death.
Leftists used to claim money and wealth as the source of all evil. …Until they learned how to essentially print money for themselves.
In its infancy, the hypothesis of man-made global warming was just fine, as far as it went as a complicated and often troubled concept. Then some clever leftist politicians discovered its potential as their new-mother-of-all-doomsday-threats that, of course, required sweeping socialist political-economic reforms to mitigate the grave new “scientific” problem.
The beauty of the scheme is that it was self-funding (meaning taxpayer funded) in the minds of leftist politicians. The scheme could also be constantly shifted and manipulated from the inside to suit any political need of the moment. With billions of dollars allocated for “research”, (AKA, outcome-assured results) climatologists went from being a handful of little known scientists in an often dodgy profession, to thousands of well paid “researchers” given celebrity status by the left-media. The gravy train left the station, and nobody aboard wanted to be a party pooper who questioned the premises of this lucrative scientific movement or the sources of its funding and direction.
As many of the core underpinnings of this “scientific” movement become exposed, research bias, poor procedures, and outright fraud are now seen as more and more common. Contrary data, opinions, and sound skepticism were not received as healthy scientific debate. Instead, scientists and others not aboard the climate gravy train were ignored, shunned, insulted, and even threatened with banishment from academia – or in some cases, imprisonment!
To anyone with a love for real science and sound scientific method, these actions stink out loud. If not for the propaganda nature of American media, the perpetrators of this grand hoax would have been discredited by their own actions years ago.
As the spigot of taxpayer cash is slowly turned off watch for these eco-socialists to scream and threaten even more boldly. Nobody is more entitled and dangerous than a leftist denied the money and adulation of others.
We need to start listening to the real scienists and not the handful of cracked urns the news media listens to like Bill Nye and the other phonie scientists looking to dip their hands into the money bin
The scenario I posted makes even more sense when we consider the political predilection of anyone working in college academia. Most of these people have been allowed to live in an artificial leftist political bubble of self-talk, never having to account for themselves outside of their narrow, publicly-funded, existence. The idea that they would allow money and political peer pressure to rule over scientific methodology and objectivity is not at all far-fetched.
It’s time we stop regarding all scientists as being objective, infallible, and disconnected from political and/or monetary influence.
Speaking of people who live in a taxpayer – funded academic bubble, public school teachers who have spent most of their life in school .They go from being a student to teaching. How many of them have a solid scientific background? Their paycheck is not dependent on efficiency or profit, to some of them it would be abhorrent, capitalism is so grubby! So we trust them with our children’s impressionable minds. They feed the kids the curriculum that comes from who knows where. That right there is the modern ” invisible hand”.
Most liberal written science text books spew nothing but lies and junk science even pushing the youths into civil or political action and thats not to mention all the crap they get from TV shows like Captian Planet or some long on emotion short on facts enviromental specials like ONE CHILD ONE VOICE or NETWORK EARTH