Bishop Hill Climate cuttings 50
Mar 13, 2011 Climate: Sceptics A few interesting bits and pieces this morning, as the Climate Cuttings series reaches its half century.
Bryan Appleyard has an article in the Sunday Times on sceptics, namechecking Piers Corbyn, Lord Monckton, Graham Stringer and Fay Kelly-Tuncay (who is campaigning to repeal the Climate Change Act here in the UK). The article can be seen at Appleyard's site or here.
Neither side is winning this fight, though the greens are on the ropes. As they slug it out, the language grows ever more vicious and the claims of both sides ever more extreme. To the sceptics the greens are lying, cheating, catastrophe-crazed group thinkers; to the warmists, the sceptics are mad, bad, neo-fascist defenders of Big Oil.
At the margins it is, admittedly, all too easy to find evidence for all these charges. But in the middle, the ground occupied by the reasonable person, there is only confusion and uncertainty. Meanwhile, the planet cycles on regardless. In time, it will make its own decisions about the viability of our troublesome species.
As if to emphasise the tottering of the global warming edifice, Ford are getting out of the electric vehicle market.
We still don’t know what the winning technology is going to be…We’re continuing to invest in hydrogen, we’re continuing to invest in biofuels.”
It's not hard to see why greens are struggling when they take desperate steps like calling for action on global warming because of the tsunami in Japan.
Jonathan Adler of everybody's favourite US law blog, the Volokh Conspiracy, looks at alternatives to regulation of carbon dioxide. Judy Curry responds.
Reader Comments (36)
"Has not the time come to demonstrate on solidarity – not least solidarity in combating and adapting to climate change and global warming? Mother Nature has again given us a sign that that is what we need to do"
I should have thought that Mother Nature has given us the clearest sign possible of the futility of man's efforts to control her.
When I was a kid, we had a state religion, the CofE. I remember as late as the '70s being told by zealots I really should give 10% of my income as a tithe otherwise I would go to Hell. Well, that religion has virtually collapsed because of its lack of self-confidence. No longer has it authority over most of the population.
But, starting with the 'Endangered Atmosphere' conference in 1975 [organised by the fag end of the eugenicists whose ideas had transferred from the US to Nazi Germany and had arguably returned under Erlich and Mead], we now have a new state religion.
It too is based upon holy writ, St Sagan's epistle to climatology, his optical physics of aerosols which works for small particles but goes wrong for cloud droplets. That’s because it ignores a second optical process you can see every day when you look at falling rain between you and the sun: large droplets backscatter a lot of energy, small droplets don't - you get at it from Mie physics but it's a linear process, different to diffuse scattering.
Because St Sagan got it wrong [to be fair, he inherited the mistake from Van de Hulst], the modellers assumed 'high feedback' and for 30 years have cajoled and threatened politicians and the public with a new version of hell and damnation, CAGW. They don't have conferences, they have convocations and argue about how many ‘climate scientists’ [they’re not taught proper science] can dance on the head of a pin.
But when about 2003, they learnt the optical physics was wrong and the cloud part of 'global dimming', supposed to nullify dangerous CO2-AGW, is imaginary and could be a heating effect, they set out to invent physics' fairy tales, basically to tell a sophisticated lie. This is the last redoubt of the true believers: if it goes, so does their whole cult.
You can see the evidence of compromise though. The greenies have at last acknowledged you can't have more than 20% wind electricity in a synchronous grid. However, there is a very dangerous legacy – the indoctrination of children by the Marxists in the education system. The next cult is likely to be a new Pol Pot. Just who will occupy that role is a moot point. Richard Curtiss' 10.10 film and threats by Greenpeace activists to kill unbelievers is the evidence.
Thanks Bish
I had a bet on with a friend as to how long it would take for an official Green organization (not some lone nut on a forum) to link Japan with Climate change.
BTW, it took the lone nuts less than a day.
Yet when I pointed out just this linkage in a Greniad comment thread yesterday I was banished.
Possibly because they knew I was taking the piss but from the wording alone it would have been awfully hard to discern......
I might possibly have been taken for a nut-job of course. That often happens.
I remain open to conversion back to the "green" cause, but whilst the scientists keep their science secret, what evidence is there?
The fact that the Guardian and the Independent have watch lists and ban people on those lists is evidence of the paranoia in the green movement.
They believe that any sensible scientific comment which criticises the dogma is 'astroturfing', i.e. organised automatic lobbying pretending to be comment. That that the author of an article claiming this uses the same tactics through the CACC isn't considered in the same league.
So, these people are truly demented. Because they don't understand the science and how it was cleverly distorted to deceive politicians and the public, they are forced to act dogmatically.
Alexander: "Because they don't understand the science and how it was cleverly distorted to deceive politicians and the public.."
I don't believe it's been cleverly distorted at all, distorted in a crude way for sure, but not cleverly. If it had been cleverly distorted they would want to put the evidence on the table. Currently in the FAQs at the Grundian the "evidence" that humans are causing CAGW is that most scientists and national associations of science believe it to be true. Clever? I don't think so.
Thanks for this and the interesting links, Bish.
This little quote, apparently from Prof Scruton - a philosopher - just makes my blood boil:
"We must come up with incentives for people not to consume energy."
Never mind incentives (who will be paying for them? Us the taxpayers, right?) - how is one supposed not to consume energy? Even if we all have to sit by candle-light - isn't that also consuming energy?
Do these people actually think through what it means for the economy if there are no more fridges and washing machines allowed, never mind TVs, and all our electronic toys? Have they ever washed their clothes, bedclothes included, by hand? Thought not ...
Have they ever tried to live without a fridge? Would they be prepared to go grocery shopping every day, together with the rest of the neighbourhood, in the neighbourhood? Oh, forgot - no shops - so walk a couple of miles there and back ...
And Mr Appleyard gets it utterly wrong here:
"But in the middle, the ground occupied by the reasonable person, there is only confusion and uncertainty."
No - us reasonable persons occupying the middle ground are neither confused, nor uncertain.
We're getting more and more exasperated by the ludicrous appeals and proposals coming from those Mr Appleyard quoted, because, as the following sentences illustrate:
"Meanwhile, the planet cycles on regardless. In time, it will make its own decisions about the viability of our troublesome species."
it is obviously not about sensible attitudes to a possible but still debatable and unproven problem. It is about a religion, revering 'Mother Nature', and about religious guilt and punishment for the blasphemers.
Just replace 'the planet' above with God - wouldn't any self-respecting atheist laugh scornfully? So why should we not laugh this new religion out of court?
As for that statement from the EU - why don't they give us an example of their concern by giving one year's salary to those island nations, instead of flying forst class to Oz and spout piffle?
That EESC link is interesting... a look under the carpet at how the EU works... they are not lobbyists though... no... no way... absolutely not... they are the opposite of lobbyists ("The Committee is in many ways the opposite of a lobby")... so they sit on their arse at home watching Eastenders and eating Pizza?
The only programs they seem to follow relate to CAGW...
You have to serious wonder about an organisation that has a motto..."a bridge between Europe and an organised civil society". So Europe is not a civil organised society? Obviously not...
I recommend reading Willis Eschenbach's comment (and follow-up exchange) on the Judith Curry post. It's an excellent example of clear, critical reasoning.
At one point he says: "I don’t know what needs to be “proven”. I rarely use that word since things in science can’t be proven, only falsified."
This fundamental reality of scientific investigation seems to be absent from most climate 'science' thinking.
"As they slug it out, the language grows ever more vicious and the claims of both sides ever more extreme.2
This is not what I see. After following for some time I think the sceptical side of the discussion is becoming more broadly based and more consistently presented in a generally reasonable and confident tone. The alarmist side of the discussion continues to present thin and inconsistent arguments often supported by little more than handwaving. Ad homs do come in and these, IMO, are more consistently from the alarmist side. The alarmist side also seem to confuse ad hom with any criticism - for example when clear evidence of subterfuge and malpractice on the part of "climate scientists" is presented, the alarmist side try to spin this into persecution of diligent and honest scientists instead of declaiming it and refocusing on the "merits" of their case.
Geronimo: 10.23. I use the term 'cleverly distorted' in a particular way. There is crude stuff like 'hiding the decline' but you must realise this is Marxist ‘post normal science’, how CRU was set up. It’s why Lysenkoism took root in the USSR.
The subtlety is how ‘the team’ maintained control when the science had failed. By 2003 physicists had proved the cloud part of ‘global dimming’ didn’t exist. This is predicted by the ‘two-stream approximations’ to the optical physics of aerosols. Sagan warned it was hiding CAGW hence the modellers assumed high feedback: without it, there's no evidence for high feedback but it made AR4.
The way this was apparently achieved was a classical ‘bait and switch’. There is evidence of the effect for thin clouds but the researcher, Twomey, warned you couldn’t extrapolate scattering theory to thick clouds which is what the other physics does as it tries to explain hemispherical albedos >>0.5
Twomey was given a prize then his physics was swapped for a similarly worded but false surface reflection explanation: geo.arc.nasa.gov/sgg/singh/winners4.html . This appears in other NASA literature; many in climate science believe it. This is quite subtle stuff because you have to know obscure physics to pick up on it. It was either bad science or deliberate deceit: I suspect the latter.
I agree, nby. New voices are always skeptical; often with testimonials about ClimateGate Awakenings. Alarmists are sclerosing before our eyes. I'll feel sorry for them eventually; many are just the goodhearted who've been a bit too credulous. A way bit.
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kim - I agree re: the "good hearted", I know people working in practical, tangible ways on environmental and social issues and IMO they have been badly failed by the alarmists who hijack any issue which alarmists (think they can) use to strengthen their case. It was only following an unrelated issue some time ago that I thought I better try and bottom out the AGW arguments to my own satisfaction. Still trying, three or four years later...
However, my comment was motivated by Mr Appleyard's assertion that the language on both sides is becoming "ever more vicious" and "the claims of both sides ever more extreme". I just don't see this - maybe I'm looking in the wrong places, but on the blogs I follow (generally technical), as a wide and qualified audience engages, the argument is more focussed on the science and actually seems to be less heated. As objections to the alarmist arguments are more widely understood, the lack of substantial counter responses are leaving the discussions more stalled than screamed. IMO.
"But in the middle, the ground occupied by the reasonable person, "
This is very shoddy logic. It seems to imply that if I say Elvis is alive and living on the far side of the Moon then our 'reasonable person' would take a middle ground by assuming Elvis was alive but not living on the Moon.
Indeed is there a middle ground between a truth and a lie?
nby, we seem to be much in agreement and our slightly different experiences flavored by the blogs we frequent. Nicely, your monicker helps illustrate that; you spend more time than I do at technical sites with real scientists and are feeling the tectonics of ClimateGate. I get banned or deleted at the alarmist advocacy sites and have seen the shrill rather than the stall. But you're right, polloi, in this instance, has been hoily tortured by the advocates.
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Kim: "many are just the goodhearted who've been a bit too credulous"
More concisely: 'useful idiots'. And being a useful idiot is no defence to manslaughter charges -- e.g., in relation to fuel poverty related deaths in developed countries and food poverty related deaths in undeveloped countries.
I concur: we're probably dealing with a revival of the eugenics' movement of a Century ago, except this time it's the poor AND non-believers in the new religion who're being targeted.
The religion is a the EU mantra of sustainability, in reality deindustrialisation as the prelude to imposition of an autocratic state.
The more I hear exaggerated strident calls from the warmists, the better I believe the reallists case to be.
The more I hear exaggerated strident calls from the warmists, the better I believe the reallists case to be.
Jane Coles
You are correct. And I sense the time is coming when aggressive (trolling) catastrophists and greens are going to have to be made to account for the policy consequences they apparently endorse.
Starting with the breakdown of energy policy in the face of the renewables fantasy, and including biofuels and world hunger.
My observation is that the corporate, carbon trading side is more or less 100% bought and paid for, including the so called scientists.
FYI -
"Pell row with climate scientist heats up"
Leesha McKenny
March 14, 2011
"CARDINAL GEORGE PELL has rebuffed the head of the Bureau of Meteorology, who had said Australia's highest-ranking Catholic was ''misled'' in his views on global warming.
"Dr Greg Ayers told a Senate estimates hearing last month that the Archbishop of Sydney's argument against human-induced climate change..."
http://www.smh.com.au/environment/pell-row-with-climate-scientist-heats-up-20110313-1bsx6.html
Jane, you are right. A year and a half ago I told my friend Peter Bocking that I hoped this whole mess would end in ridicule rather than in anger and he responded that too many had died already.
And yet, what about the 'useful idiots', the good hearted who've been fooled? Well, eventually there will come a time when they realize they've been misinformed, their goodheartedness has been taken advantage of, and they've been callously used. That's the anger that I'm worried about, because it is that of the scorned and discarded and it will be inchoate.
The very small band that has conspired will escape, the masses will murder the victims and perpetrators alike, and, as usual, the poor will suffer the most.
Far better we get a sense of humour about it and appreciate the joke played on the ability of we poor bits of clay to assume guilt, but as Peter might add, all the laughing's done with this joke and the tears are freezing to sleet.
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@ E Smith
The thing is, the corporates involved in carbon trading are simply betting on whether the price of an indulgence will be £10 or £12 in a year's time. In other words, they're going to collect a few per cent of the value of the indulgence according to how well they call its future price.
This is chicken feed compared to the cash take being reaped by those who actually print the indulgences in the first place. They - that is, governments - get to collect the entire value. They don't collect a 10 or 20% margin on trading it successfully, they get 100%.
It's simply a tax levied on air. It is visited on industry, which will pay it by increasing its prices - if this is possible. In such cases it will simply look like a price rise that the public will blame on the industry rather than the government. This is largely how petrol tax plays out now. Many people see petrol at £1.35 a litre and assume it all goes to the oil company, when in fact it costs about £0.50 to buy or make it and the tax is £0.82.
If passing the tax on to customers is impossible, because for example of international competition from countries that don't believe in all this nonsense and thus have a price advantage, then some industries face an existential threat of being taxed out of existence. This will of course require the tax to be levied at a higher rate on the survivors.
It's already possible to say what the arguments against abolition will be once it is entrenched - what hospitals will close, etc. They're all well-rehearsed.
It's a consequence unfortunately of the fact that it is not just possible, but essential these days to be a career politician, and nothing else. None of them has ever run anything and none has any inkling of the potential consequences.
It speaks volumes that local council bosses think collecting £1 billion of central government grants and compulsory council taxes, and then spending it, is a challenge equal to running a company with £1 billion of sales. This is the reason usually advanced for their enormous salaries: they think they're as skilled as FTSE100 CEOs. I would be surprised if many council bosses were capable of running a business that turned over even as much as their own salary.
To quote "to the warmists, the sceptics are mad, bad, neo-fascist defenders of Big Oil", perhaps this is true, but then the "warmists" are glossing over the fact that the real godfathers of modern Global warming fad and some other modern and recent eco-fads almost all came from the out of "paleo-fascist" ( or national socialist) parties of of last century, and some of the big bad oil/energy players like f.ex Enron.
Justice4Rinka
The employment market is a free market so managers will apply for the highest paid jobs whether they are in the private or public sector. That's why life long socialists like David Cameron, Tony Blair and Peter Mandelsson have allowed education and council managers salaries to balloon out of control. Education is now a (disastrous) free market and so are council services. The loyalty of these managers is to money, not their stakeholders.
It's the Big Society at work.
Justice4Rinka
Companies will have to buy carbon credits on the free market, not from the government. This is the reality of the initial issuance of credits from the state. It's why every corporation on earth supports AGW/carbon trading.
Carbon credits bring Lakshmi Mittal £1bn bonanza
LAKSHMI MITTAL, Britain’s richest man, stands to benefit from a £1 billion windfall from a European scheme to curb global warming. His company ArcelorMittal, the steel business where he is chairman and chief executive, will make the gain on “carbon credits” given to it under the European emissions trading scheme (ETS).
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/industrials/article6945991.ece
The modern state is nothing more than a conduit to take money from private individuals and give it to billionaire oligarchs and corporations. We all know that, it's not a secret that politcians are owned by big business. Obama is the biggest tool Wall Street has ever owned.
More EU socialism. Poor wee capitalists.
Industries hoarding greenhouse gas emission permits
Companies across Europe are hoarding permits to produce greenhouse gas emissions worth hundreds of millions of pounds, the Guardian can reveal.
The surplus credits have been amassed from over-allocation of permits to pollute from the European emissions trading scheme, and by buying cheap credits from carbon-cutting projects in developing countries and holding on to their more expensive official EU allowances.
The saved permits can be used to meet future targets to cut the greenhouse gas emissions blamed for global warming and climate change without actually reducing pollution, or sold for a profit in the future.
Campaigners for tougher emissions reductions said the saved-up allowances discredited the argument of some industries that much deeper cuts in future would be "fatal" because they could no longer afford to compete against rivals outside the EU.
However, companies involved said the banked credits would help them pay to develop new emission-cutting technology, and to meet emissions targets until that became widely available.
Industry also warned it faced "death by a thousand cuts" as a result of the next phase of the scheme, from 2013 and 2020, and other costly environmental legislation planned by government. Business leaders accused the government of being prepared to sacrifice industry to enable other sectors such as aviation to keep polluting and meet the UK's carbon budgets.
One steelmaker told the Guardian: "Officials see us as acceptable collateral in the fight against climate change. If we don't make anything in this country any more, it means people could still fly to Tenerife once a year and the UK will keep within the carbon budget."
He said meeting targets would require vast amounts of steel to build windfarms, nuclear reactors and electric cars. This would have to be imported from more-polluting steelmakers outside Europe if the industry disappeared in the UK.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/mar/11/industries-greenhouse-gas-emission-permits
Now, it's the Trotskyite World Bank. Lord Monckton isn't insane after all. A Marxist world government is just round the corner.
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In a story today in ClimateWire, the story of the Eskom coal plant went from an illustration of the political realities of energy access to an illustration of the farcical nature of international climate policy:
A South African utility company that recently won a $3.75 billion World Bank loan to build the world's fourth-largest coal-fired power plant now is seeking international carbon credits for making the plant more efficient.
If successful in qualifying for carbon credits -- and there is little reason to expect otherwise -- then Eskom is going to be paid for reducing emissions by building the world's fourth largest coal plant. This is of course a sort of magical solution that I have written about before. Of course a new coal plant, even if built with the best available technology is going to dramatically increase emissions, regardless of the accounting tricks of offsets and emissions trading. This alone is farcical, but it gets even better.
The Environmental Defense Fund, an environmental lobbying group, appears to understand the basic problem:
If Eskom ultimately wins CDM approval -- and potentially millions of dollars -- for avoiding greenhouse gas emissions by using more efficient technology, it won't be the first company to do so. But the move is provoking fury from environmentalists who have fought the plant. They insist Eskom should not be allowed to receive both World Bank aid and carbon credits to build a plant that will emit 25 million tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere annually.
"If there were a World Cup for chutzpah, Eskom would be the bettors' choice to win," said Jennifer Haverkamp, managing director for international climate policy at the Environmental Defense Fund. "First they go after scarce international public funds, now CDM credits. The Medupi Plant is becoming a poster child for how far we are from the road to a sustainable, climate-stable path for development."
But it is not just Eskom that is high up on the leagues tables for chutzpah; EDF is right up there as well. EDF is one of the main advocacy groups calling for passage of the American Power Act, the so-called Kerry-Lieberman bill in the Senate, which along with Waxman-Markey which passed the House, would create the ability for US companies to get emissions offset credits for doing things exactly like investing in the Eskom plant.
So EDF vigorously supports the use of international offsets as a mechanism of "emissions reductions," but at the same time doesn't want those mechanisms applied exactly as they are designed. The World Cup for chutzpah has some fierce competition.
http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com/2010/06/edf-to-win-world-cup-for-chutzpah.html#comment-form
Here is George Monbiot, BEFORE he was paid to lie about carbon trading / AGW for the Guardian.
***
Before Kyoto, the other negotiators flatly rejected Gore’s proposals for emissions trading. So his team threatened to sink the talks. The other nations capitulated, but the US still held out on technicalities until the very last moment, when it suddenly appeared to concede. In 1997 and in 2007 it got the best of both worlds: it wrecked the treaty and was praised for saving it.
Hilary Benn is an idiot. Our diplomats are suckers. United States negotiators have pulled the same trick twice and for the second time our governments have fallen for it.
There are still two years to go, but so far the new agreement is even worse than the Kyoto Protocol. It contains no targets and no dates. A new set of guidelines also agreed at Bali extend and strengthen the worst of Al Gore’s trading scams, the clean development mechanism(6). Benn and the other dupes are cheering and waving their hats as the train leaves the station at last, having failed to notice that it is travelling in the wrong direction.
http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2007/12/17/hurray-were-going-backwards/
Here is the world's leading climate technician James Hansen eventually waking up to the fact he is an idiot who has been taken for a ride.
***
Governments today, instead, talk of "cap-and-trade with offsets", a system rigged by big banks and fossil fuel interests. Cap-and-trade invites corruption. Worse, it is ineffectual, assuring continued fossil fuel addiction to the last drop and environmental catastrophe.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/cif-green/2010/aug/26/james-hansen-climate-change?showallcomments=true#end-of-comments
Bishop Hill,
"It's not hard to see why greens are struggling when they take desperate steps like calling for action on global warming because of the tsunami in Japan."
It seems that they have noticed how ridiculous the last paragraph of EESC president's statement is/was. The statement has now been amended, however without any note that the statement has been updated.
http://www.eesc.europa.eu/?i=portal.en.staffan-nilsson-speeches.15361
E. Smith,
Now I'm not a full bottle on the carbon trading market.
Can somebody please help me join the many, many dots?
Dot 1 - I do know that carbon trading appears to have died in the USA.
I also know that it is going strong in Europe.
As well, there are billions or even trillions of dollars tied up in renewable funds in Europe.
Dot 2 - On a completely different matter, the "Great Financial Crisis" started in the USA.
But it is Europe, rather than the USA which seems to be in the most debt and is most in disarray.
Europe and in particularly the EU, are in a very fragile financial condition.
Dot 3 - On another quite unrelated situation,
I see that the Lords and Ladies of the UK and Europe are heavily invested into renewables and other greeeeeen funds.
Its good to see them being soooooooooooooo progressive and forward looking.
Dot 4 - It is the establishment that is strongly defending the AGW dreamtime machine.
Dot 5 - Enquiries have come and gone and eveybody has been given a clean certificate of health.
And no embarrasing questions were asked whatsoever, thank goodness.
I am frantically trying to join all these dots together to make some sense of it all.
Can anybody help me understand all this?
Surely these completely unrelated matters cannot, surely, be connected in some manner?
No! - I thought not!
/sarc definitely can come off now.
AusieDan
This is the exact same train of thought I had a few days ago but I didn't want to create an international incident on BH. I can blame you now.
1. It's strange that Gore and Enron put carbon trading into article 17 of the Kyoto Protocol, blackmailing the rest of the world, yet the USA did not ratify the treaty. Now the same thing is happening again. The GOP is the only political party on earth to oppose carbon trading.The USA looks like it will never put itself at an economic disadvantage to save the poor old planet.
2. My former school and university classmate Dougie Ferrans was in charge of the $150 billion HBOS investment fund. He told me (by email) the people who stole all the money were smarter than him. Strong words. The very same American ratings agencies that created AAA junk mortgage backed securities are loosening the screws that hold the Euro together, namely confidence in individual economies. They see the weakness in widely diverse economies with same monetary policy.
It has to be admitted that much of the giant Ponzi Scheme and insurance fraud called Lehman Brothers and its related AIG credit default swap operations were run out of London offices thanks to virtually zero regulation of American companies there. That's what caused the global financial meltdown.
3. Investment in green funds and those wonderfully green Indian and Chinese economies are very popular amongst our investment banks.
4. Every corporation and government on earth support AGW. Not many socialists amongst those
It is the exact same people who created the financial crisis who are promoting AGW/carbon trading. Soros, Summers, Goldman Sachs JP Morgan Chase and so on. More than that, it's the same game in a slightly different form.
5. Climate technicians are first and foremost employees. They go to work, do what they are told, then they go home. They do not publicly criticise their bosses. Their employers, the British and US governments and government funded acadamic institutions found they had done no wrong. I was shocked.