John, your video on the end of alarmism has left out one important point, and that is the effect of money on paradigms. Whereas the replacement of the geocentric concept of the universe by the heliocentric concept 500 years ago did not affect most people, the downfall of the anthropogenic climate change paradigm could involve huge amounts of money and possible financial ruin for many. If terms such as global warming and climate change had never come into common use, I doubt that industries such as wind/solar energy and electric vehicles would exist today. Considering that these industries must be worth trillions of dollars worldwide by now, anyone attempting to change the paradigm justifying them is going to be met with the equivalent of "nice little paradigm you've got here, pity if something happened to it, know what I mean?"
The climate change paradigm is probably going to be propped up by politicians for many years yet. After all, if you were a nation's leader, how would you like to have to say "you know all those trillions we spent on renewable energy? Well, is was all a mistake. Sorry about that,"
That point occurred to me, too. Since the politicians and corporate media don't pay much attention to the scientists anyway - just think of the constant claims in the press and advertising about how much worst 'extreme weather' has become - I think the subsidies for wind farms, solar panels, and EV's might well continue even without papers from academia. So even if government funding for climate change research declined, there are still lots of activist non-profits to keep giving hacks money to write absurd papers. Finally, academia still believes in Marxism, which has a remarkably consistent record of failure, so I think we can expect it to continue to support AGW even no reputable scientist writes papers about it.
In other words, I think the AGW industrial complex will continue on merrily even without scientists.
From Joseph Goebbels diary, “The essence of propaganda consists of winning people over to an idea so sincerely, so vitally, that in the end they succumb to it utterly and can never again escape from it”
One thing I think about with Mann’s graph is the huge size of the error bars, why they become narrower toward the right in more modern times and then why temperature date is used instead of tree ring data in current times. There are other issues I’ve seen discussed as well but no need to go into that here. I spent a career working with geoscientists and everyday I saw discussions and differences of opinion between scientists regarding the same data sets. Interpretation is very personal and very much subject to the eyes, experience and mindset of the beholder and in some cases, motivation. I’ve also seen the same thing in the medical field, interpretations of data sets, in my case CT scans. Some scientists and practitioners are more in tune with the data they see than others. Remote sensing requiring interpretation of data is not an exact science, neither is hubris.
John, intriguing video, as it offers a new perspective on the whole climate alarm issue. It offers a charitable view of at least some scientists / informed observers who honestly believe that too much human produced CO2 is a danger to be combatted. I'd offer Roger Pielke Jr as an example. He would be an interesting subject for you to interview, or perhaps debate.
Other commenters rightly point out the huge amounts of money, reputation and power at stake that will make it slow and painful to change course. We need to remember that global warming is mainly a Western country concern. There is a massive compelling counterforce to hasten a return to reality in the form primarily of the West's biggest enemies, Islam and China, who blithely ignore climate alarmism and harness cheap abundant reliable energy sources to further their ambitions of dominance.
I recall Dr Tim Ball remarking “ Mann’s thesis was first offered to the University of Virginia, who rejected it”
That note restored my faith in American academia. Sadly Tim is no longer here to elaborate, although I think he finally prevailed against Mann in that contentious legal action. Science in court is ludicrous.
"What historians will definitely wonder about in future centuries is how deeply flawed logic, obscured by shrewd and unrelenting propaganda, actually enabled a coalition of powerful special interests to convince nearly everyone in the world that CO2 from human industry was a dangerous, planet-destroying toxin. It will be remembered as the greatest mass delusion in the history of the world - that CO2, the life of plants, was considered for a time to be a deadly poison." ~ Richard Lindzen
Richard Siegmund Lindzen is an American atmospheric physicist known for his work in the dynamics of the middle atmosphere, atmospheric tides, and ozone photochemistry. He has published more than 200 scientific papers and books. From 1983 until his retirement in 2013, he was
Professor of Meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He was a lead author of Chapter 7, "Physical Climate Processes and Feedbacks," of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's Third Assessment Report on climate change. He has criticized the scientific consensus about climate change and what he has called "climate alarmism."
The reason that science in courty is ludicrous is that the Legal Profession regards what an expert says as being evidence, whereas the Engineering Profession regards what an expert says as being merely opinion – otherwise known as testimony – unless it is based on verifiable physical evidence. The Shell v. Milieudefensie et al. case is a good illustration of this, as there never has been any physical evidence that rising atmospheric concentrations of CO2, or of methane, cause any significant global warming – let alone “dangerous global warming”. Many other Court judgements have been flawed because of the Legal Profession’s, including the Judiciary’s, failure to grasp these important facts. Many people also don’t know that correlation is never evidence of causation. Secondary school statistics students most certainly should know.
I have written a critical review of the UN IPCC report 'What is Climate Change'. It exposes their intense bias and propaganda. Please confirm that it is OK to upload my report as a PDF here in these comments. I need to distribute the report to as many as possible.
How right you are. I have written a critical review (50+ pages) on the UN IPCC document 'What is 'Climate Change'. I just had to spend the time and energy to do so since I was angered by the bias and propaganda which is so obvious in their document. I will attempt to upload my report here within the next day or so. Watch this space.
True enough the global warming scare began with Hansen, up until then the issue was global cooling! To say that from there normal science took its logical course is over the top. Look at Hansen's graph, one version was published in the NY time I think, and as far as a know never published in a peer reviewed scientific journal. That graph is a joke, as it plots temperature over a very short time interval of a few years. Any student of mine that would show me such a graph purporting to show a trend in whatever phenomenon is being dealt with, would get an F- ! So no, it was not normal science taking its normal course. Furthermore, the many data fabrications made by supporters of global warming is inexcusable and highly irresponsible. There are so many real problems in the world, never ending wars being one, that it is time to wake up and start tackling them.
With approximately 14% of the world's population living in the Western sphere, there may be some hope. Remember that China has advanced thinkers in physics on par with those in the West, and they are aware that CO2 gas is not a significant warmer of the planet Earth over a specific concentration. Carbon dioxide causes warming by absorbing infrared (IR) radiation in the atmosphere. Although there is a relatively poor correlation between global temperature and past carbon dioxide levels, it has been shown that CO2 absorption of IR is nearly saturated, and further increases in CO2 will have little effect on temperature. Surely the scientific community cannot keep their head in the sand for much longer, although I doubt the political class will give up their alarmism for a while yet.
JOE LED THE WAY!
Climate - a textbook example
Propaganda Is a method to immerse people completely in ideas without their awareness, making them accept those ideas deeply and irreversibly.
“This is the secret of propaganda: Those who are to be persuaded by it should be completely immersed in the ideas of the propaganda, without ever noticing that they are being immersed in it.”
Propaganda must appeal emotionally, be simple, repetitive, and bypass intellectual resistance, so that people adopt the ideas deeply:
• Arguments should be crude, clear and forcible and target emotions and instincts, not intellect.
• Truth is unimportant and subordinate to tactics and psychology.
• “If you repeat a lie often enough, people will believe it, and you will even come to believe it yourself.”
• “Propaganda works best when those who are being manipulated are confident they are acting on their own free will.”
---Joseph Goebbels
MODERN PROPAGANDA
Modern propaganda, like Goebbels’ work, prioritizes emotional appeals over rational arguments. Messages are engineered to evoke fear, hope, anger, or belonging, bypassing critical thinking so that individuals accept ideas on an instinctive level. Techniques such as:
• Fear appeals: Presenting threats or dangers to prompt compliance.
• Glittering generalities: Using vague, emotionally charged language to inspire and manipulate.
• Name-calling and demonization: Framing opponents as threats to group identity or safety.
These methods leverage the same psychological principles Goebbels saw as essential to “winning people over”.
Two recent, excellent examples repeated endlessly:
1. Extreme weather is caused by humans.
2. Vaccines are safe and effective.
Dr Mann sued Dr Ball and lost; so he appealed and lost again. He appealed again, but Dr Ball died of old age. Dr Mann never paid his court costs and penalties, but if he ever visits Canada please tell the police so he can be forced to pay Dr Ball's expenses.
I'm not a Chemical engineer, but had a look at my Periodic Table and discovered that a CO2 molecule is three or more times heavier than a water (H2O) molecule. That must be why H2O can form a cloud floating in the atmosphere, but CO2 can't. So CO2 must remain transparent, but H2O can form a white cloud and reflect solar energy away from Earth. I think someone said that the IPCC has never included H2O molecules in their computer models because water and clouds are far too complex to try to model. Perhaps that also explains why the IPCC computer models cannot emulate either past or current weather or climate. I tremble to suggest that we all put this expensive climate thing to bed and forget about spending any more scarce taxpayer money on it.
John, your video on the end of alarmism has left out one important point, and that is the effect of money on paradigms. Whereas the replacement of the geocentric concept of the universe by the heliocentric concept 500 years ago did not affect most people, the downfall of the anthropogenic climate change paradigm could involve huge amounts of money and possible financial ruin for many. If terms such as global warming and climate change had never come into common use, I doubt that industries such as wind/solar energy and electric vehicles would exist today. Considering that these industries must be worth trillions of dollars worldwide by now, anyone attempting to change the paradigm justifying them is going to be met with the equivalent of "nice little paradigm you've got here, pity if something happened to it, know what I mean?"
The climate change paradigm is probably going to be propped up by politicians for many years yet. After all, if you were a nation's leader, how would you like to have to say "you know all those trillions we spent on renewable energy? Well, is was all a mistake. Sorry about that,"
That point occurred to me, too. Since the politicians and corporate media don't pay much attention to the scientists anyway - just think of the constant claims in the press and advertising about how much worst 'extreme weather' has become - I think the subsidies for wind farms, solar panels, and EV's might well continue even without papers from academia. So even if government funding for climate change research declined, there are still lots of activist non-profits to keep giving hacks money to write absurd papers. Finally, academia still believes in Marxism, which has a remarkably consistent record of failure, so I think we can expect it to continue to support AGW even no reputable scientist writes papers about it.
In other words, I think the AGW industrial complex will continue on merrily even without scientists.
From Joseph Goebbels diary, “The essence of propaganda consists of winning people over to an idea so sincerely, so vitally, that in the end they succumb to it utterly and can never again escape from it”
One thing I think about with Mann’s graph is the huge size of the error bars, why they become narrower toward the right in more modern times and then why temperature date is used instead of tree ring data in current times. There are other issues I’ve seen discussed as well but no need to go into that here. I spent a career working with geoscientists and everyday I saw discussions and differences of opinion between scientists regarding the same data sets. Interpretation is very personal and very much subject to the eyes, experience and mindset of the beholder and in some cases, motivation. I’ve also seen the same thing in the medical field, interpretations of data sets, in my case CT scans. Some scientists and practitioners are more in tune with the data they see than others. Remote sensing requiring interpretation of data is not an exact science, neither is hubris.
John, intriguing video, as it offers a new perspective on the whole climate alarm issue. It offers a charitable view of at least some scientists / informed observers who honestly believe that too much human produced CO2 is a danger to be combatted. I'd offer Roger Pielke Jr as an example. He would be an interesting subject for you to interview, or perhaps debate.
Other commenters rightly point out the huge amounts of money, reputation and power at stake that will make it slow and painful to change course. We need to remember that global warming is mainly a Western country concern. There is a massive compelling counterforce to hasten a return to reality in the form primarily of the West's biggest enemies, Islam and China, who blithely ignore climate alarmism and harness cheap abundant reliable energy sources to further their ambitions of dominance.
I recall Dr Tim Ball remarking “ Mann’s thesis was first offered to the University of Virginia, who rejected it”
That note restored my faith in American academia. Sadly Tim is no longer here to elaborate, although I think he finally prevailed against Mann in that contentious legal action. Science in court is ludicrous.
"What historians will definitely wonder about in future centuries is how deeply flawed logic, obscured by shrewd and unrelenting propaganda, actually enabled a coalition of powerful special interests to convince nearly everyone in the world that CO2 from human industry was a dangerous, planet-destroying toxin. It will be remembered as the greatest mass delusion in the history of the world - that CO2, the life of plants, was considered for a time to be a deadly poison." ~ Richard Lindzen
Richard Siegmund Lindzen is an American atmospheric physicist known for his work in the dynamics of the middle atmosphere, atmospheric tides, and ozone photochemistry. He has published more than 200 scientific papers and books. From 1983 until his retirement in 2013, he was
Professor of Meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He was a lead author of Chapter 7, "Physical Climate Processes and Feedbacks," of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's Third Assessment Report on climate change. He has criticized the scientific consensus about climate change and what he has called "climate alarmism."
The reason that science in courty is ludicrous is that the Legal Profession regards what an expert says as being evidence, whereas the Engineering Profession regards what an expert says as being merely opinion – otherwise known as testimony – unless it is based on verifiable physical evidence. The Shell v. Milieudefensie et al. case is a good illustration of this, as there never has been any physical evidence that rising atmospheric concentrations of CO2, or of methane, cause any significant global warming – let alone “dangerous global warming”. Many other Court judgements have been flawed because of the Legal Profession’s, including the Judiciary’s, failure to grasp these important facts. Many people also don’t know that correlation is never evidence of causation. Secondary school statistics students most certainly should know.
A superb summation by Peter J. Morgan.
I have written a critical review of the UN IPCC report 'What is Climate Change'. It exposes their intense bias and propaganda. Please confirm that it is OK to upload my report as a PDF here in these comments. I need to distribute the report to as many as possible.
How right you are. I have written a critical review (50+ pages) on the UN IPCC document 'What is 'Climate Change'. I just had to spend the time and energy to do so since I was angered by the bias and propaganda which is so obvious in their document. I will attempt to upload my report here within the next day or so. Watch this space.
True enough the global warming scare began with Hansen, up until then the issue was global cooling! To say that from there normal science took its logical course is over the top. Look at Hansen's graph, one version was published in the NY time I think, and as far as a know never published in a peer reviewed scientific journal. That graph is a joke, as it plots temperature over a very short time interval of a few years. Any student of mine that would show me such a graph purporting to show a trend in whatever phenomenon is being dealt with, would get an F- ! So no, it was not normal science taking its normal course. Furthermore, the many data fabrications made by supporters of global warming is inexcusable and highly irresponsible. There are so many real problems in the world, never ending wars being one, that it is time to wake up and start tackling them.
With approximately 14% of the world's population living in the Western sphere, there may be some hope. Remember that China has advanced thinkers in physics on par with those in the West, and they are aware that CO2 gas is not a significant warmer of the planet Earth over a specific concentration. Carbon dioxide causes warming by absorbing infrared (IR) radiation in the atmosphere. Although there is a relatively poor correlation between global temperature and past carbon dioxide levels, it has been shown that CO2 absorption of IR is nearly saturated, and further increases in CO2 will have little effect on temperature. Surely the scientific community cannot keep their head in the sand for much longer, although I doubt the political class will give up their alarmism for a while yet.
JOE LED THE WAY!
Climate - a textbook example
Propaganda Is a method to immerse people completely in ideas without their awareness, making them accept those ideas deeply and irreversibly.
“This is the secret of propaganda: Those who are to be persuaded by it should be completely immersed in the ideas of the propaganda, without ever noticing that they are being immersed in it.”
Propaganda must appeal emotionally, be simple, repetitive, and bypass intellectual resistance, so that people adopt the ideas deeply:
• Arguments should be crude, clear and forcible and target emotions and instincts, not intellect.
• Truth is unimportant and subordinate to tactics and psychology.
• “If you repeat a lie often enough, people will believe it, and you will even come to believe it yourself.”
• “Propaganda works best when those who are being manipulated are confident they are acting on their own free will.”
---Joseph Goebbels
MODERN PROPAGANDA
Modern propaganda, like Goebbels’ work, prioritizes emotional appeals over rational arguments. Messages are engineered to evoke fear, hope, anger, or belonging, bypassing critical thinking so that individuals accept ideas on an instinctive level. Techniques such as:
• Fear appeals: Presenting threats or dangers to prompt compliance.
• Glittering generalities: Using vague, emotionally charged language to inspire and manipulate.
• Name-calling and demonization: Framing opponents as threats to group identity or safety.
These methods leverage the same psychological principles Goebbels saw as essential to “winning people over”.
Two recent, excellent examples repeated endlessly:
1. Extreme weather is caused by humans.
2. Vaccines are safe and effective.
Dr Mann sued Dr Ball and lost; so he appealed and lost again. He appealed again, but Dr Ball died of old age. Dr Mann never paid his court costs and penalties, but if he ever visits Canada please tell the police so he can be forced to pay Dr Ball's expenses.
I'm not a Chemical engineer, but had a look at my Periodic Table and discovered that a CO2 molecule is three or more times heavier than a water (H2O) molecule. That must be why H2O can form a cloud floating in the atmosphere, but CO2 can't. So CO2 must remain transparent, but H2O can form a white cloud and reflect solar energy away from Earth. I think someone said that the IPCC has never included H2O molecules in their computer models because water and clouds are far too complex to try to model. Perhaps that also explains why the IPCC computer models cannot emulate either past or current weather or climate. I tremble to suggest that we all put this expensive climate thing to bed and forget about spending any more scarce taxpayer money on it.