Prominent Scientist Claim Climate Claims Irrational

[katytrader]

These articles almost write themselves. Parade these same three old guys out in a different venue to tell their tales of foe and once again out pops an article about a panel of scientists stating AGW is a hoax. Carbon phobia leading to world panic? Is that the evidence leading to one's scientific finding? Forgetfulness of the results from three separate, independent scientific agencies based on a global network of land, sea and sky temperature sensors? And the 'we make it ourselves so it must be ok guy'. Evidently a candidate for incontinence training.

I rarely get into these climate discussions...but....when one cites sea sensors my hackles rise.  A long time ago....a few decades?..... I read an article in a science-oriented publication which was on research in the area of the South Pole.  The part that stays with me was the description of how sensors, both on ice and in the sea, tended to be moved around or lost due to the harsh weather.  The article blithely said that the absence of those badly-located and lost data sets meant that the researchers had to estimate what they thought the data would be.  Shades of undergraduate science labs!!

This habit seems to have been alive if not robust years later as revealed in the emails of the personnel at the East Anglia center.  In this case it seems to have been cherry-picking data.....and/or dropping data in order to favor the "model."

With these sorts of underpinnings of "scientific" opinion, a healthy skepticism is in order.   Especially so when politicians of all stripes take up a similar call.

Pre-Kyoto, the "cui bono?" question  revealed the over-arching intent of such treaties would be to transfer substantial wealth from developed countries to poor countries so that these struggling economies could afford to abandon their polluting ways. Clinton probably signed on to Kyoto for the feel-good factor because he knew the Senate would never ratify the treaty.   Fast-forward to present and we have politicians favoring "accords" because they and the climate industry have figured out how to raid national treasuries and some corporate treasuries under the climate rubric.   I think a ready analog is Eisenhower's perception of a "military-industrial complex"  in the U.S. being a self-perpetuating force in the economy and in political issues around the world.   An important difference in the US with the climate business, however, is the destruction of domestic industry without adequate substitution.  But this hasn't dampened the enthusiasm of the many feeding off the "science" which has become self-perpetuating with the help of politicians and now traders who seem to be prime beneficiaries.

fwiw

katytrader

[MartiniStocks9756]

Nobody wins climate discussions. Ya pick your side and highly unlikely you can convince anyone to go in a different direction.

[admin]

Nobody wins climate discussions. Ya pick your side and highly unlikely you can convince anyone to go in a different direction.

True but one can at least expose the strengths of some arguments. I mean it has been asserted that we should not use cap and trade schemes because "wealthy traders will make money" (and then, God forbid, it is asserted they "make political donations with it..")

Apart from the fact that there will also be traders making losses, and that it is a market based solution for a market problem, do we have to close all markets where wealthy traders make money? Or use the proceeds for political donations?

There will be few markets left..

I've always learned that one of the reasons markets are usually efficient is because people want to make money, silly me..

[Putncalls]

Nobody wins climate discussions. Ya pick your side and highly unlikely you can convince anyone to go in a different direction.

True but one can at least expose the strengths of some arguments. I mean it has been asserted that we should not use cap and trade schemes because "wealthy traders will make money" (and then, God forbid, it is asserted they "make political donations with it.."

Apart from the fact that there will also be traders making losses, and that it is a market based solution for a market problem, do we have to close all markets where wealthy traders make money? Or use the proceeds for political donations?

There will be few markets left..

I've always learned that one of the reasons markets are usually efficient is because people want to make money, silly me..

Just to be fair and reasonable. I said the US utility users would pay for it and they would get nothing.

[admin]

["Just to be fair and reasonable. I said the US utility users would pay for it and they would get nothing."]

I understand that, but they will in fact get something, the right to pollute an X amount. Before, they could just pollute at no cost to themselves, that is, spread the cost on all of us. Cap and trade is simply an efficient mechanism for letting the polluter pay, and if an efficient market in these permits can be established, it's highly efficient at the margin. That is, those that can't reduce pollution without incurring great cost have to buy permits, those that can reduce pollution fairly easily will do so as long as it's cheaper than buying permits. It's automatically picking the low hanging fruit, by market mechanism.

[Putncalls]

The Co2 is pollution argument hasn't been settled as we can see from JFT's post here.
They still get nothing because this law has virtually no effect on the rest of the world AND
The US has been moving from coal to NG for many other reasons and will continue to do so.

I also pointed out that there is corruption involved in the effort to protect us.

[kommonsents]

It's interesting when uninformed belief systems clash. In the case of climate, the debate rages on without a discussion of facts. Instead of facts, we substitute belief systems, propaganda held out as facts and insults of those that believe differently.

And then there are all the PC phrases and words like pollution, CO2 is a pollutant, green house gases (negative connotation....on whose authority?), rising temperatures (based upon what reliable data), rising sea waters, efficient markets (is there such a thing?), man-caused climate change (used to be global warming, then climate chaos, now back to global warming although the actual temperatures don't support this...kinda arrogant to believe man can actually have more effect on Earth than the sun), deniers, polluters, obvious industry propaganda (haven't heard obvious government propaganda here yet though), pollution is free, (resolving climate) is a market based solution, denigrate the 3 scientists that present their opinions (because they are not the same as one's opinion), and on and on and on.....

I'd hate to try to guess what the various posters' political leanings are but I bet I can with a high degree of accuracy.

[admin]

It's interesting when uninformed belief systems clash. In the case of climate, the debate rages on without a discussion of facts. Instead of facts, we substitute belief systems, propaganda held out as facts and insults of those that believe differently. And then there are all the PC phrases and words like pollution, CO2 is a pollutant, green house gases (negative connotation....on whose authority?), rising temperatures (based upon what reliable data), rising sea waters, efficient markets (is there such a thing?), man-caused climate change (used to be global warming, then climate chaos, now back to global warming although the actual temperatures don't support this...kinda arrogant to believe man can actually have more effect on Earth than the sun), deniers, polluters, obvious industry propaganda (haven't heard obvious government propaganda here yet though), pollution is free, (resolving climate) is a market based solution, denigrate the 3 scientists that present their opinions (because they are not the same as one's opinion), and on and on and on..... I'd hate to try to guess what the various posters' political leanings are but I bet I can with a high degree of accuracy.

But you have all the answers, right?

I simply refer to simple facts.

1) CO2 being a greenhouse gas

2) The levels of CO2 in the atmosphere having gone up tremendously from the industrial revolution onwards

3) The vast  majority of climate scientists attributing this to our behaviour putting millions of tons of CO2 (and other greenhouse gasses, like methane) in the air

4) Any other explanation falls way short (see here) 

It is curious that people who would normally accept standard science in other fields suddenly think they know better here.

I have a simple question for you:

You expoused a giant conspiracy theory here a couple of weeks ago, arguing it's all politicians in bed with scientists in order to hoist the hoax on climate change upon us in order to maintain their funding.

First off, if true, this must be a conspiracy on a truly epic scale, involving most governments and most climate scientists, the IMF, the World Bank, the UN, almost all universities, etc. etc.

My question is simply this: can you point out any such conspiracy on anywhere near similar scale? Thanks.

[Putncalls]

The Spanish American war
WWI
The Vietnam war
The war on drugs
The antifracking whatever it is
Just to name a few.

[admin]

The Spanish American war WWI The Vietnam war The war on drugs The antifracking whatever it is Just to name a few.

Where is the giant conspiracy between an overwhelming majority of scientist and governments in any of this?