When environmentalism was young in the mid-20th Century there was ample reason to be concerned about the the state of the environment in much of the world. In the US there was very little concern about pollution prior to about 1970. This all changed, however, in the 1970s and 1980s and strict pollution laws were enacted and environmental agencies were created to implement them at both the Federal and state levels. The country’s water and particularly its air were cleaned up greatly. In subsequent decades, however, the expectations of the environmental movement increased even more and what had been a bi-partisan effort to improve the environment gradually became a far left wing cause supported primarily by the far left of the Democratic Party.
At the same time the environmental movement gradually adopted a goal of greatly reducing emissions of carbon dioxide, a very minor atmospheric gas absolutely essential to photosynthesis in plants and thus one of the basic building blocks of life on planet Earth. In the early days of this campaign the alleged goal was to prevent alleged global warming, which had thankfully been going on since the end of the Little Ice Age in the 19th Century.
Mother nature, however, had other ideas and decided after a very strong “Super El Nino” at the end of the 1990s to hold global temperatures steady for at least 17 years so far and some say 18.5 years. For this or other reasons the leaders of the movement to reduce carbon dioxide emissions changed their objective to preventing climate change. But there was very little climate change either. So in the last few years they changed the goal still again to preventing extreme weather events. But the alleged means to achieve these goals has always remained the same–drastic reductions in CO2 emissions imposed by government fiat. It is highly unlikely, however, that US reductions in CO2 emissions would have any measurable effects on any of these three goals.
The Great Unsolved Problem of the Climate Movement
The great unsolved problem of the climate movement has been that most of the increase in CO2 emissions in recent years has not come from the US (where they have decreased) or other developed countries but rather from the less developed countries, particularly China and India. In order to achieve the economic development these countries so strongly desire, it is essential that they substitute fossil fuel energy for human effort in order to improve productivity. They are therefore opposed to reducing CO2 emissions, which would prevent them from developing as rapidly as they otherwise would.
Some developed countries (including the US) have proposed to reduce developed country opposition to CO2 emission reductions through large government payments to the less developed countries through the United Nations. Major such payments are quite unlikely given the opposition of most developed country taxpayers to paying for them, particularly at a time of a lingering Great Recession. The environmental movement and the Obama Administration claim that this underlying problem of less developed country opposition will somehow be overcome at a meeting in Paris in December, 2015 if only the US makes major reductions in CO2 emissions from power plants that will have no measurable effects on atmospheric CO2 levels. Such reductions will result in significant increases in payments by ratepayers (which would impact primarily the less wealthy) and reductions in the reliability of the electricity grid in the US, as they already have in Western Europe; taxpayers would also be on the hook for the large payments to the UN for the less developed countries. All this appears to me to be highly unlikely and counter-productive. But the economically damaging USEPA regulations to reduce CO2 emissions, particularly the proposed power plant regulations, will happen unless the Obama Administration is stopped by Congress or the courts in pursuing their climate fantasy.
This is one of many problems discussed in my new book, Environmentalism Gone Mad, which can be obtained through the book website.
Dr Carlin wrote:
“I hope that by dismissing the importance of the results of applying the scientific method Mr. Palmer realizes that this implies that it is he (and presumably other alarmists), not the skeptics, who are the anti-science group since the scientific method is literally the basis for science”
Nowhere did I dismiss that. Show me where Dr Carlin – if you can. It is indicative of the fantastic lengths that the contrarian/sceptic/denier movement go to that this “climate science does not follow the scientific method” meme is taken seriously by anyone at all. It is utterly nonsensical.
Let me save Dr Carlin time. Those who espouse this argument often quote brilliant scientist Richard Feynman. Here is what he once said about the scientific method:
‘In general, we look for a new law by the following process: First we guess it; then we compute the consequences of the guess to see what would be implied if this law that we guessed is right; then we compare the result of the computation to nature, with experiment or experience, compare it directly with observation, to see if it works. If it disagrees with experiment, it is wrong. In that simple statement is the key to science. It does not make any difference how beautiful your guess is, it does not make any difference how smart you are, who made the guess, or what his name is — if it disagrees with experiment, it is wrong’
I agree wholeheartedly, of course.
“Sceptics” often state that because, they assert, global warming has “paused” for ~18 years while CO2 levels have continued to increase, that that shows that global warming theory is wrong because observations, they believe, did not match theoretical expectations.
This idea is the basis of Dr Carlin’s assertion that climate science has been shown to be invalid science because it appears, by his perceptions, to fail the test of the scientific method. There is only one thing wrong with Dr Carlin’s conclusions. They are utterly wrong.
His assertions are based on his misperceptions, which appear to be based on a belief that climate science originally implied that the globally measured temperature signal would go up steadily in a straight line. The existence of large cyclical natural movements of existing heat energy around the climate system was acknowledged and known about right from the start. Read the peer reviewed literature!
The predictions/projections for how much the planet will warm for how much increase in greenhouse gases are (simplifying) calculated with all other things being equal which means if you don’t factor out the cyclical natural phenomena then it is harder to see the underlying global warming signal due to increasing greenhouse gases.
Thus Dr Carlin – and Monckton, Watts and all the rest of the crew etc – look at the global temperature signal (and, even more misleadingly, just the lower troposphere signal from satellites) and do not factor out events such as volcanic eruptions and El Ninos – which have large but temporary and reversible effects – to pick and choose the graphs they use which, to the scientifically naive, appear to show “no global warming for 18 years”.
If the global warming signal including all the cyclical natural variations (the wind driven waves I mentioned in my analogy above), had truly showed no significant global warming (the tide coming in, as above) for 18 years then, and only then, would Dr Carlin’s fantastic belief that the scientific method has invalidated climate science have even a shred of a possibility of being accurate. It is a rule of thumb in climate science that only over thirty years can the global warming signal be clearly shown if one has not factored out the cyclical phenomena. Thus, as we have not yet had thirty years of a temperature signal that includes El Nino’s, volcanoes etc show a pause or slowing down, Dr Carlin is dead wrong to assert that the scientific method has invalidated the hypothesis/theory.
When one digs a little deeper, one sees that the “sceptics”, when picking their graphs to show a “pause”, often graph the lower troposphere records. It is known that this purely atmospheric signal is far more influenced by El Ninos’s etc, so the sceptics usual cherry picked starting date of around 1998 (the giant El Nino) gives an even “higher” hot point to start their trend lines at. The global warming signal that climate science predicts and projects for is for the land surface plus the ocean surface to a depth of one metre – a different kettle of fish entirely.
Recent work has shown that even the slight slowdown in the rate of warming this century – that mainstream science had acknowledged was probable – now turns out to be an artefact of spotty measurement station coverage in certain areas. I do wish that climate science had addressed this issue a decade ago by setting up more stations in the sparser areas, then they could have headed off this entire sceptic meme before it got going.
Finally, just to address another couple of Dr Carlin’s highly debatable points, he states that:
“Atmospheric CO2 has been vastly higher in geologic history and is a basic input into photosynthesis and thus the health and well being of plants, on which the animal world depends for food. Studies referenced in my book argue that there are net economic benefits from increasing temperatures up to about 1.1°C ”
The first part of this ignores that, when CO2 levels were extremely high, the sun (as a young G class star) was considerably fainter. Thank God for the greenhouse effect back then from high CO2, as calculated by mainstream science, or we would have had a planet entirely covered in permanent ice. When levels were just very high there was very little temperature difference between the poles and the equator – no ice caps – the sea was a couple of hundred metres higher than it is today and the continents were in very different positions.
It’s true, as some “sceptics” say, that CO2 is “plant food”. But it’s not the only one. Just blindly increasing CO2 does not necessarily mean that plants will grow easier, faster or better. In the controlled environment of a greenhouse this can be true but that necessitates increasing other inputs simultaneously to balance out the nutrient levels. Look up “Liebig’s law of the minimum” to understand why.
In the open air this “balancing” will not happen. There are also three types of photosynthesis used by plants, C3, C4, and CAM. The majority use C3. Increased CO2 levels will alter planetary vegetation in favour of C4 and CAM plants. Very probably risky for agriculture. That comes from plant biologists, not climate scientists. If we could be 100% certain that global warming would stop at 1.1°C and go no further, then the research you reference MIGHT be useful but as Dirty Harry almost said “do you feel lucky, punks? Well, do you? We are at about 0.8°C so far and majority science opines that, even if we stopped all excess emissions tomorrow, we would still be due about 0.6°C in the pipeline. 0.8°C+0.6°C = 1.4C.
Just recently, work has been published that shows that there may be even more subtle dangers to elevated CO2 levels.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/gcb.12938/abstract
It was the increased application of nitrogen, and the breeding of plants to utilise that, that was a big part of the “green revolution” that is feeding us all at the moment. Monkey with that, Dr Carlin, at your (and everybody else’s) peril.
If you don’t see the error of your ways from all that, then I shall probably waste no more time responding.
Comments by Alan Carlin:
As pointed out in my book (including Appendix C), the 17+ year plateau is a potential added nonconformity using the scientific method, but one which is not yet definitive because it is still faintly possible that there will be a huge jump in temperatures in the next few years. Nevertheless, Mr. Palmer’s assertion that ENSO and other effects which the IPCC deliberately ignores should be taken into account in judging the IPCC’s worthless models is absurd. But the major point is that I identified four other scientific method nonconformities, which Mr. Palmer has apparently still not understood, possibly to save the cost of buying my book and appendices or possibly an inability to follow references. These four already show that CAGW is invalid even without the 17 (or more) year plateau. With the plateau, there would be five. Only one is required to show invalidity.
I do agree with his Feynman quotation, which I also cite in my book. He was one of my professors and I greatly respect his views on the scientific method. Based on his writings, his lectures, and my personal discussions with him on the scientific method, I believe he would have supported at least my four nonconformities and possibly all five. I believe Prof. Lindzen would as well. I have pointed out that the fifth nonconformity is non-definitive as yet, so why is Mr. Palmer claiming that my argument depends on the possible fifth nonconformity? I never said it did. It may soon further reinforce the conclusion from the first four, however. Until Mr. Palmer manages to understand the argument for the first four nonconformities further discussion is obviously useless, and his claims of support for the scientific method are hollow since he neither refutes my analysis nor accepts its conclusions. This is the essence of an anti-science approach, which characterizes much of the alarmist/IPCC viewpoint despite their repeated assertions that the skeptics represent a “flat earth” approach.
Hi Dr Carlin
Just a note to thank you for your book. I have read plenty of them on the subject and yours is right up there. You are a fine writer and judging by the above conversation with Mr Palmer you also possess the patience of a saint.
Dr Carlin tries to distract the audience by using the term “climate alarmists” as if the people he is referring to just made it all up to be difficult, instead of the reality that such people’s views are fully backed up by virtually all climate scientists and relevant peer reviewed literature.Those scientists who know about the subject do not support his position. Even financially threatened Big Oil has looked at the science, and the views of the likes of Dr Carlin, and made their judgement clear. Dr Carlin, who is not a climate scientist, continues to assert that mainstream climate science somehow does not adhere to the scientific method. Is is not more likely, I ask anyone reading this, that working publishing climate scientists are in a better position to assess this, than Dr Carlin who is an economist?
“Readers should carefully note Mr. Palmer’s attempt to change the subject from CAGW to AGW, which appears to be a valid but not particularly important hypothesis in this context”
Carefully note? What are you trying to make your readers think here? They can scroll up and see that I wrote “You don’t seem to have got the meaning behind why the support of Big Fossil Fuel for AGW (not CAGW – that is a deceptive term invented by the denialosphere) invalidates your preconceptions”
It is clear that Dr Carlin relies heavily on the views of the likes of Richard Lindzen, with a side order of Spencer/Christy. In essence, he seems willing to gamble our comfortable existence on this planet that the views of a handful of mavericks, who all claim that climate sensitivity is very low, are right. Perhaps, as someone who once received a BS in physics, he feels an empathy toward the pronouncements of atmospheric physicist Lindzen.
There is just one tiny problem with relying on Lindzen’s narrowly focused geographically limited work to bolster any confidence that climate sensitivity is so low that it won’t matter if we double or triple levels of CO2 – it is completely invalidated or falsified by studies from a field in which Lindzen is not an expert – paleo-climatology. This field of study clearly shows that ECS (equilibrium climate senstivity) cannot be anywhere near as low as Lindzen’s figure. If ECS is higher than Lindzen et al say, and virtually every other climate scientist in the relevant fields says it is, then doubling or tripling CO2 emissions without mitigation will cause the average planetary surface temperature to rise to a degree that any rational assessment would say was risky, probably dangerous, possibly catastrophic. I already showed above how apparently small changes can have large effects (MWP-> LIA was only 0.8°C). Even given Lindzen’s low,low,low figure, we would still get 0.8°C+ with a doubling and a half from recent levels of CO2.
I suspect Dr Carlin’s mind works like this: he sees an apparent slowdown/pause in the surface temperature. He jumps to the false conclusion that that means that the planet is not accumulating heat at the rate expected by mainsteam science, therefore, as above, he thinks that:
“the now all too familiar CAGW, which has been shown to be scientifically invalid. Since CAGW has been shown to be wrong, one or more of the assumptions made by Mr. Palmer and other alarmists must be wrong too”
As I mentioned previously, the term CAGW is an invention of the antiscience propagandists but just for argument’s sake (because Dr Carlin has an incorrect interpretation of the term AGW) I will use it here. CAGW theory has not been shown to be scientifically invalid by anyone, certainly not anyone credible. Name someone, if you can, Dr Carlin! Don’t just ignore this point, like you have ignored the many damaging points to your views that I made above.
Dr Carlin does not seem to acknowledge the obvious explanations for why the temperature does not smoothly go up in a straight line. He probably focuses on high spikes in the past and draws trend lines to low troughs nearer to the present and draws the false conclusion that global warming has stopped or reversed. He is similar to the person who looks at the marks made on a beach by successive waves and notes that the last wave came less far up the beach than the previous one, then jumps to the false conclusion that the tide is going out. Waves are influenced by temporary offshore variations in wind, tides are influenced by the slow steady alteration of gravity due to the moon orbiting us. If this man on the beach was fooled by the temporary variations in the waves and loudly proclaimed that the tide was going out, or that the moon had reversed in its orbit when the tide never stopped coming in, people would think he was mad, or at least, scientifically illiterate.
Why then are people who look at the temperature record without correcting for temporary events like La Ninas, El Ninos, volcanoes or sunspots similarly fooled that global warming has somehow stalled or stopped or reversed?
The very latest papers (e.g. Cowtan and Way 2014) show that even the apparent slight slowdown in the rate of increase of surface temperatures, that has launched a thousand denialist ships, was probably illusory too – an artefact of incomplete global coverage of measuring stations.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/qj.2297/full
For anyone who wonders, my last half sentence, whch Dr Carlin redacted above, was a reference to my honest opinion of those whose beliefs, I truly think, make them a clear and present danger to my offspring, probably the first generation, almost certainly the second.
P.S. I tried to access your article (as I believe you might not have expressed your argument well here and I wished to see the original) but it was paywalled. I would like to see it, as you are probably the most potentially smart sceptic/denier I have encountered yet and I think I should give your work more of a chance to demonstrate any merit it has.
Comments by Alan Carlin:
I would suggest that instead of speculating on what Mr. Palmer believes I might say or think that he instead concentrate on what I have said (assuming that he has finally bought my book).
There is no “clear and present danger” based on available science from modest increases in either CO2 emissions or atmospheric CO2 levels as Mr. Palmer claims. Atmospheric CO2 has been vastly higher in geologic history and is a basic input into photosynthesis and thus the health and well being of plants, on which the animal world depends for food. Studies referenced in my book argue that there are net economic benefits from increasing temperatures up to about 1.1oC. So there is a strong case that non-catastrophic increases in temperatures are good, not bad.
One of the few questions Mr. Palmer poses that is not clearly answered in my book (including Appendix C) is whether I can name anyone else who supports my scientific method case for dismissing CAGW. The answer is that although I am perhaps the current leading advocate of using the scientific method to determine the validity of the CAGW hypothesis, Prof. Richard Lindzen, one of the leading atmospheric scientists of this generation in at least the US and probably the world, clearly supports this approach and has made major contributions to its development. Mr. Palmer could have ascertained the answer to even this question by buying the book and Appendix C, and following the references, of course.
The continuing current plateau (stretching over at least 17 years) in global temperatures appears very likely to pose still another adverse test of CAGW and is approaching definitiveness as explained in the book since each additional month of the plateau adds more certainty of still another adverse outcome of a CAGW test using the scientific method. (Only one adverse test is required to reach a negative finding under the scientific method and I have already documented four.)
I hope that by dismissing the importance of the results of applying the scientific method Mr. Palmer realizes that this implies that it is he (and presumably other alarmists), not the skeptics, who are the anti-science group since the scientific method is literally the basis for science. Alarmists have routinely claimed that the opposite is the case, so Mr. Palmer may lose whatever support he may have among alarmists with this surprising stand of his against the results of using the scientific method and therefore science. Unless he and his fellow alarmists can prove their CAGW claims using the scientific method, they have only ideology or religion as a basis for wasting vast funds on uneconomic windmills and solar panels and hurting poor people and poor countries.
Mr. Palmer and his fellow alarmists have so far avoided trying to prove their CAGW hypothesis using the scientific method. The only way to do this is to challenge their own CAGW hypothesis in every possible way, and show that it can survive every attempt to disprove it. They have chosen not to try to do this, possibly because they know that would result in the total collapse of the non-scientific fantasy world they are trying to foist off on the world.
AC: “Proving that a hypothesis is scientifically valid as you and the IPCC are trying to do is much harder; the efforts to do so for CAGW to date are really not very serious attempts for reasons discussed in the book”
It’s strange, don’t you think, that the overwhelming majority of qualified, practicing, publishing-in-the-peer-reviewed-literature climate scientists don’t agree with your position?
You don’t seem to have got the meaning behind why the support of Big Fossil Fuel for AGW (not CAGW (that is a deceptive term invented by the denialosphere) invalidates your preconceptions. Let me help you by giving you an analogy?
Imagine in future that the CEO of Apple was made aware of scientific research which suggested that emissions from the new Iphone 12 were likely to cause brain tumors in 75% of young childern using them regularly for 15 years. The vast majority of scientists working in that field endorsed the research but a few didn’t and a large group of sceptics sprang up disputing that the new phones were a problem. Some even went as far as suggeting that the CICC (Catastrophic Iphone Caused Cancer) hypothesis was not scientifically valid.
The CEO of Apple, as a businessman protecting his corporation’s bottom line, would intensively investigate such “sceptic” views to see if they had any validity, to get their products off the hook. Apple has more money than God to pay the best analysts around.
If, after intense and expensive investigation, Apple still discovered that there was no significant validity in the sceptic case, if it claimed there was no case to answer against the new Iphones, and that it was virtually all based on pseudo-science promulgated for distorted political reasons, mistaken conclusions, logical fallacies, misdirection, misperception etc, then their conclusion that their product was a danger to developing kids’ brains should be an incredibly significant one. In a very real sense, it is an even more powerful argument as to the reality of the results than “just” the scientific consensus.
Exactly the same argument applies to climate science and Big Fossil Fuel.
Ordinary people, without highly biased ideologies to distort their thinking get the “Big Oil now accepts climate science” argument straight away. Why can’t you?
As far as your idea about “hypotheses not matching observations” argument – which you think invalidates climate science – goes, it just flies in the face of reality.
The threat from global warming can be stated quite easily:
No-one credible disputes that the planet has been warming.
No-one credible disputes that CO2 is a greenhouse gas and that our emissions of it have overwhelmed natural sinks and caused atmospheric concentrations of it to increase.
No-one credible disputes that increasing concentrations of a long lived greenhouse gas cause an imbalance in the ratio of incoming energy to outgoing energy at TOA until the planet warms up to a new higher equilibrium temperature. A very few scientists claim that overall cloud feedback is negative, most agree that it is weakly positive.
No one credible disputes that a warming planet will cause greater atmospheric water vapor concentrations which will act to amplify warming. A very few climate scientists claim that this effect will be countered by increased cloud albedo. Most disagree.
Alterations in radiative emissions have been measured at the exact wavelengths that increasing CO2 and water vapour would be expected to cause, based on 1950’s/60s research done for the US air force suppliers that enabled heat seeking missiles to work properly “in the wild”. These radiative alterations have been measured from satellites looking down, and ground based instruments looking up. These match with what AGW theory expects.
That theory expects that the equilibrium temperature we have committed to, at 400ppm of CO2, is +2°C.
The difference of average planetary temperature between the Mediaeval Warm Period (aka Mediaeval Climate Anomaly) and the Little Ice Age was only about 0.8°C. The difference between current conditions and past ice ages, when there were miles of ice on top of where we live now, is about -5.0°C.
If you can extrapolate from those figures, you should realise that even an increase of +1C° on top of the long term 20th century average will have very far reaching effects. If only 0.8°C is the difference between Vikings “thriving” in Greenland and ice fairs on the frozen River Thames, then you should be able to “do the math” that shows that trying to avoid a +2.0°C rise is essential for protecting our civilisation [words removed]….
Comment by Alan Carlin:
Mr. Palmer seems to believe that he knows “reality” even if his larger “reality” (catastrophic anthropogenic global warming or CAGW) has been shown to be wrong by application of the scientific method. The scientific method evolved to determine what is reality so that it would no longer be necessary to guess with all its inevitable baggage of ideology and religion. The method has proved immensely valuable wherever it has been used. It is probably one of the greatest intellectual advances made by humans in recent centuries (as discussed in my recent article in Energy and Environment). Yet Mr. Palmer makes various assertions as to what “credible” people believe, even though the overall outcome of their alleged thinking on these and related issues is the now all too familiar CAGW, which has been shown to be scientifically invalid. Since CAGW has been shown to be wrong, one or more of the assumptions made by Mr. Palmer and other alarmists must be wrong too. One would hope that Mr. Palmer and other alarmists would try to figure out which of their assumptions are wrong rather than continuing to argue that CAGW is correct regardless of the evidence.
Climate alarmists want to claim that “science” supports their alarmism, but do not want to subject their major claim (CAGW) to the scientific method. Essentially they are wasting everyone else’s time and money, hurting especially poor people and poor countries, and wasting vast resources that have much better uses.
Readers should carefully note Mr. Palmer’s attempt to change the subject from CAGW to AGW, which appears to be a valid but not particularly important hypothesis in this context. Yet he claims that the usual alleged alarmist catastrophes will occur, even though they have not after 25 years and five UN reports and will not in the way they claim unless CAGW is valid. But it is not, based on the best available valid data. His “reality” is nothing more than ideology or possibly religion dressed up to look like science. He wants me to “do the math;” I suggest that he do the science.
I have removed his last half sentence because it is grossly pejorative and insulting, which I will not tolerate on my Website.
[…] http://www.carlineconomics.com/archives/1748 […]
Dr Carlin. If you still think the ideas in your book are valid, yet are also simultaneously aware that even Big Fossil Fuel, which has the biggest financial incentive in the world to want to find some serious holes in mainstream climate science, does not accept your ideas, surely you must be able to see that somewhere you have gone badly off track, got things round your neck or whichever variation of “you’re wrong” gets through to you.
You wrote “the CAGW hypothesis is not scientifically valid, so there is no basis for spending even $1 based on it”
You must be confident that you have some rock solid arguments to bolster this outrageous assertion. I tell you what – take your best shot – nominate your very best argument that you think supports that assertion – if I can demolish it, will you recant your current position? Go on. Do your worst!
Comment by Alan Carlin: My statement is based on applying the scientific method to the CAGW hypothesis to determine its scientific validity. Since the discussion is not simple and involves a number of references to the literature, I do not propose to outline it all here since you can find references in my book (including Appendix C) to the discussion in my publications on this subject, as well as many other supporting references by other authors. As discussed in the book and elsewhere, a scientific hypothesis is often easy (as in the case of CAGW) to refute. Proving that a hypothesis is scientifically valid as you and the IPCC are trying to do is much harder; the efforts to do so for CAGW to date are really not very serious attempts for reasons discussed in the book. Science is not determined by authority figures, oil companies, long reports compiling some of the alleged supporting data favoring a hypothesis, or the Pope; rather, it is determined by comparisons of hypotheses with observations of the natural world using the scientific method. If a hypothesis is not scientifically valid it is simply religion or ideology and should be abandoned. Spending money on the basis of failed hypotheses is not wise public policy and can even lead to disasters (as also discussed in the book). Public policy should be based on valid science, good economics, and good law, not religion or ideology.
Dr. Carlin
I’m currently a few chapters into your book. You state that you believe your comments on the TSD and related emails was released by a colleague at the EPA to whom you had sent an earlier draft. But I’m curious if you think this person released them becuase they were sympathetic to the skeptical argument and wanted to break the embargo around you or if they were hostile to you and wished to embarrass you. If you don’t wish to speculate, no problem. And if this is answered later in your book, feel free to tell me to be patient and read on.
Dell
Comment by Alan Carlin: In general, the staff members that I sent the intermediate versions to were those I thought might be sympathetic. It is obvious that the release of the draft by CEI in late June had the effect of lifting the gag order since soon after the release I was allowed to speak to the press. Whether the leaker had this in mind I’m not sure.
You wrote: “You suggest Koch Industries. Outcome: Negative since they strongly oppose climate alarmism, which is surprising since government regulations to reduce CO2 emissions should improve the market for their oil and gas products (by reducing the demand for coal). Maybe their policy position is based on principle?”
I wasn’t suggesting Koch industries weren’t anti-“alarmism”! I mentioned them because I wondered why you didn’t us the most obvious and well known examples maverick fossil fuel producers.
Your hypothesis that mitigation polices would improve the market for oil and gas is rather strange. It is true that gas is sometimes portrayed as a temporary “bridging fuel” until alternative energy sources are ramped up but I don’t think you could say that about oil…
Why don’t you consider instead the majority of large fossil fuel companies and their stated positions?
Look at Exxon-Mobil, Shell, BP, Chevron, Total, Gazprom, Sinopec, CNPC, ConocoPhilips. Positive acknowledgement that increasing greenhouse gases will have adverse effects. Even such as Koch industries do not have anything positive to say about the “arguments” of the deniers which all of these companies would do like a shot if there was any real truth to them. It would be far cheaper and more business efficient for them to loudly trumpet any smoking gun holes in climate science – if there were any – rather than make long term plans for CCS technology, which would increase their cost base, to allow them to keep on selling their wares. They are silent on any major flaws. Even if they privately believe the climate sensitivity calculations of the small minority of “lukewarmer” scientists who, strangely enough, all seem to be hard line republicans with libertarian tendencies, then they surely recognise that there is a lot of evidence, particularly from paleo-climate studies which convincingly shows that climate sensitivity cannot be as low as such as Lindzen and Spencer think.
Surely their legal teams have warned them that assuming that a minority scientific position is correct, when planning policy and public relations statements, could lead them to be ultimately liable for the mother of all class action lawsuits should Lindzen et al prove wrong and the climate, and our comfortable benign environment, in due course went to hell in a hand basket. If it could be shown that Big Oil’s promotion of a dubious sceptic/contrarian viewpoint had swayed too many of the voting public to become too uncertain about whether there was a problem or not, they would get ripped apart in a gigantic law suit that would make the previous similar situation when Big Tobacco promoted minority science that downplayed or doubted the link between smoking and cancer look like small beer…
It is clear that even the lukewarmer position, let alone out and out denialism, such as Inhofe irresponsibly uses, would be too much of a gamble for all but the most psychopathically run fossil fuel companies to promote any longer. That is why they don’t do it – there is no real basis for doubting that our emissions are having, and will continue to have a warming effect. The majority of climate scientists reckon it won’t be pretty, the small minority reckon it’ll be OK. From first scientific principles we are unlikely to be able to be certain about the outcome because we have not conducted control experiments on an identical Planet B to see empirical evidence of cliomate sensitivity by varying the conditions. In essence, what we have to do is assess the probabilities of what would happen if each faction is correct or wrong. Imagine looking back from 40 years or so in future.
If Lindzen et al’s faction was correct then in 20 or 30 years the majority of climate scientists would have been shown to have egg on their faces. If they were wrong, then Lindzen et all would be laughed at by history.
However, if the public had believed Lindzen et al’s wrong science and voted for no action to be taken to mitigate greenhouse gases, and then proceeded at economically full speed ahead to emit them, then things would have got nasty soon and proceeded to carry on getting nastier yet for a long time in a way which we may not be able to reverse.
If Lindzen’s science had proved to be correct in the end, yet had not been believed by the public, who had believed the majority and that had caused the world to go full speed ahead to wean themselves off fossil fuels with the ramping up of renewables, all of the efforts to improve efficiencies that will entail, and possibly safe nukes too, then we would have got a cleaner world, more free of foreign imports and we could then start to burn fosil fuels again. Win, Win, Win.
The more I look at the situation regards the certainty of what to do, the more I am reminded of the situation at the end of “Dirty Harry” when neither Callahan nor the punk knew if there were any bullets left in the gun. The punk took a chance and died.
I see civilisation as being like that. Without a time machine to conduct repeated empirical experiments on Earth and Planet B we can never be 100.00% certain in advance of what will happen to the climate. I do not, and you do not, know for absolute certain if there are any dangerous climate change bullets left in the Magnum, or if they are blanks. We are the punk faced with a gamble. Now the punk has the right to gamble his life, if he chooses to but if we are the punk we have no right to gamble everybody else’s lives too, which is what we would do if we gamble that climate sensitivity is low and it turns out not to be.
I urge you to reconsider your position on climate science. I suggest those who spread out and out denialism are pathologically irresponsible. I suggest those who spread the ideas that lukewarmerism is a get-out-of-jail-free card are also very irresponsible – they think, like the punk did, that there are no bullets left. If they are wrong, they wound or kill themslves – and the whole world too.
Do you feel lucky punk? Well do yo?
Comment by Alan Carlin: As previously stated and as explained in considerable detail in my book, Environmentalism Gone Mad, and elsewhere, the CAGW hypothesis is not scientifically valid, so there is no basis for spending even $1 based on it. The primary argument alarmists use to waste money on reducing CO2 emissions are the results of running GCM models which are also a waste of money since climate is not determinable using such models for reasons explained in my book. The book also explains why catastrophic cooling is far more likely than catastrophic warming and would be far more damaging to both humans and the environment than catastrophic warming. Presumably you would advocate increased CO2 emissions in order to avoid catastrophic cooling if that were imminent. I do not but at least trying to increase CO2 emissions would not starve plants and hurt poor people and poor countries as your “solution” to the catastrophic warming non-problem would. CAGW is simply a fantasy and needs to be abandoned as per the scientific method. I believe in the scientific method, not what people or oil companies may fantasize the science to be.
Have found your articles rational, well-reasoned and non-alarmist. Thank-you for your contribution – especially since it caused you to be defamed by many of the current ‘climate alarmists’.
I’m old enough to remember the ‘birth’ of the environmental movement – heck, I recall the very first Earth Day. I thought the, then, goal of cleaning up our environment to be a great one. Did my small part in helping to achieve this goal.
Did not pay much attention to the current ‘climate-alarmists’ until I realized respected scientists were losing their jobs, and/or were being defamed, because they dared ask questions. The defamation caught my attention and I was shocked to discover the ‘climate alarmists’ were behaving more like religious fanatics than scientists.
It was interesting to see that, contrary to what we were told, the ‘climate alarmists’ were receiving a lot of money via funding. They don’t want anyone to state anything to the contrary to stop the funding.
Scientists *always* ask questions and the Science is *never settled*.
Anyway, thanks for your contributions. I’m a child of the 60’s and admire those who ‘speak truth to power’.
Thanks for your excellent analysis of the problem, Dr. Carlin.
Using sound, fact-based, arguments it should be possible to convince non-partisan people. Partisan people are only convinced by votes.
Lawson is not really a climate expert, judging by his frequent use of half truths and misdirection in his words. I’ll see your right wing Lawson and raise you the most far right Prime Minister Britain probably ever had in recent times – Margaret Thatcher – certainly to the right of Lawson!
Here’s her speech to the UN in 1989 in which she clearly accepts the basic tenets of climate science.
http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/107817
I am aware that towards the end of her life when she became, to be kind, confused, she pulled back somewhat but I have a friend – a professor of economic history – who privately interviewed her and he claims that her “inner scientist” had not wavered anywhere near as much towards the Lawson camp as some people have been making out to score political points.
Comment by Alan Carlin: I am aware of Mrs. Thatcher’s stated views, which are discussed in Chapters 9, 10, and 12 of my book, Environmentalism Gone Mad, together with a different possible explanation for them. My left/right distinction was intended to apply to recent times, as the book makes clear.
“I would point out that oil and natural gas companies such as Shell may believe that climate alarmists may help them against their competitors in the coal industry”
You can cherry pick Murray Energy if you want (why not the Kochs’ companies?) but I think it fair to say that internationally the vast majority are not like that. Perhaps I should have mentioned that even the American Coal Council, whilst not explicitly affirming mainstream climate science, acknowledge that CCS technology will be important to their future. There is no reason whatsoever to capture carbon apart from mitigating greenhouse gas emissions. As the ACC are planning for CCS, it is possible to infer that they do not dispute mainstream climate science (otherwise they simply wouldn’t do it). Q.E.D.
As far as political aspects go, as a very long term environmental campaigner, I must say that it is only recently that the right wing has gone the way they have. I have always found that is the hard left/communists who are the most resistant to arguments to conserve and protect the environment because they see the “needs” of the people as paramount and trumping everything else because they believe that if the State supplies all needs of the people that somehow, magically, everything else will look after itself in a socialist paradise – which is of course barking mad.
That is why I find the extreme right wing in the US (and Australia) so funny when they claim that transitioning away from fossil fuels will wreck the economy and hurt poor people (as if they cared before!) – the rhetoric is so very similar to the words I’ve heard from communists and hard left socialists over the years about other environmental problems!
Comment by Alan Carlin: Murray Energy is the third largest coal producer in the US and the largest privately held producer so is a good choice to test your hypothesis. Test outcome: Negative since they strongly oppose climate alarmism. You suggest Koch Industries. Outcome: Negative since they strongly oppose climate alarmism, which is surprising since government regulations to reduce CO2 emissions should improve the market for their oil and gas products (by reducing the demand for coal). Maybe their policy position is based on principle?
For reasons described in my book, Environmentalism Gone Mad, what the alarmists are proposing would actually harm both humans (particularly less affluent humans) and the environment on top of being a waste of money in terms of actually achieving any measurable progress towards their declared objectives of reducing temperature/climate change/extreme weather.
By the way. I would not dispute that in goverment organisations, such as the EPA and many others, there are likely to exist forces and individuals that manipulate policy for reasons of personal power and influence and suppress dissent to avoid a threat to that personal power.
It is not possible however to infer that because something is being “suppressed” by powerful forces that it is automatically right. Quite often, dissenting opinion is radically challenged because it is simply wrong and because it would tend to generate uncertainty where none should rationally be.
I am European, so I find your characterisation of the climate science arena as some sort of battle between “left and and right” to be funny, if it were not so diversionary. It might apply locally in the USA but the USA is not the world.
Comment by Alan Carlin: I agree that the left/right distinction is clearest in the US, but is also very evident in Australia. I also note the UK’s leading skeptic, Nigel Lawson, is right wing, having served in the Thatcher cabinet. I also suspect that the new Conservative government in the UK may not be as green as the last one.
Hello Dr Carlin. I thought you might have appreciated an argument based on economic forces, based on your academic history!
I agree that votes from randomly selected corporations should not indicate much to anyone but I was not talking about those. I was talking about giant fossil fuel corporations whose financial bottom line, and indeed their whole business model, is considerably threatened should mainstream climate science be valid. That economic aspect means that they have a gigantic incentive to want to find any significant holes in the AGW theory. They have an awful lot of money to pay the best analysts to investigate “alternative” or “sceptic” views to see if there is any possibility of a get-out-of-jail-free card that would mean they did not have to plan for a future where global emissions to atmosphere have to fall 80% over some decades.
It is beyond belief that their boards have not considered sceptic views, yet they do not mention them any longer in their policy so it is possible to infer that they found there is no validity in the majority of the denialist myths and that the beliefs of the so called lukewarmers (Lindzen, Christy, Spencer, Singer etc) cannot be relied upon to be proved right because of the dire consequences if they prove to be wrong.
Should Big Oil have chosen to adopt a corporate position that the lukewarmers were right, and that influenced the public debate now and in future so that more people vote for inaction and delay, and, in due course, the climate starts biting badly, then Big Oil would have lain themselves open to the mother of all class action lawsuits.
If you examine their strategy, they are making plans that assume that carbon capture and sequestration technologies will be sufficiently mature to absorb the majority of the emissions to atmosphere from their major product, thus decreasing emissions to atmosphere. Such technology will add to the cost base of using oil, gas and coal which will give a powerful economic signal to people who will, in a free market, tend to choose to adopt other methods of energy supply, much of which is reducing its cost base . If Big Oil could possibly avoid having to adopt the extra burden of the cost of CCS technology they would, yet the clear evidence is that they have found that they cannot do this because mainstream climate science is actually pretty solid.
If “sceptic” arguments, such as you raise in your book and elsewhere, were sufficiently strong to cast even a moderate amount of doubt on mainstream climate science, they would beat a path to your door and those of others saying similar things. Yet are they? They used to, in the days of the Global Climate Coalition, but no longer as the overwhelming nature of the evidence has continued to stack up – disputed almost entirely only by mavericks, eccentrics, bloggers and politically biased pundits many of whom use the equivalent of linguistic magic tricks to spread doubt amongst the voting public.
Comment by Alan Carlin: I would point out that oil and natural gas companies such as Shell may believe that climate alarmists may help them against their competitors in the coal industry. One natural gas company in the US has even funded the Sierra Club’s anti-coal campaign. But also see the Murray Energy vs. EPA case now before the DC Circuit Court of Appeals. Murray is a large coal company that is strongly opposing the proposed EPA power plant regulations. I disagree, of course, with your characterization of the strength of the evidence for CAGW, which is easily shown to be not supported by the scientific method.
This whole article is just insanely wrong. It is full of “mad” misperception and deceptive phraseology. Perhaps this confused or propagandist author, who has insultingly claimed that environmentalism has “gone mad” by caring about global warming, please explain why even Big Oil these days does not dispute mainstream climate science?
Look at their corporate websites, starting from the largest – Exxon Mobil – on down. You won’t find a trace of the confused and flat out wrong pseudo-arguments presented by Carlin in his works. Big Oil, Big Gas, even Big Coal, implicitly or explicitly accept that our greenhouse gas emissions are a growing problem that, if emissions to atmosphere continue, will prove disruptive, dangerous or catastrophic, depending on how fast and far we mitigate emissions.
This is not just US companies it’s European, Russian and Chinese etc too.
Now, Alan Carlin, you can try and bamboozle the public that it’s all some cooked up left wing plan if you want but you’re going to look just a bit “mad” when people know that those corporations who have the most humongous financial incentive to want to find any validity they can in denialist disinformation, such as you spread, have investigated it, probably using the best analysts on earth (they’ve got the money to pay the best after all) and found it’s all flim-flam and bullshit.
Delayers, deniers and misdirectors like yourself are just pathological threats to public discourse about this matter. It’s just highly irresponsible.
Comment by Alan Carlin: The argument here appears to be that because some corporations may support the global warming scare campaign that catastrophic anthropogenic global warming (CAGW) must be a valid scientific hypothesis. Science, however, is decided by applying the scientific method, not by a vote of major corporations or even the POTUS. My new book, Environmentalism Gone Mad, summarizes why CAGW is an invalid scientific hypothesis, based on numerous citations from the literature. Until either my data is proven wrong or the tests are shown to be inappropriate, I must strongly disagree with Mr. Palmer. Science should be decided by the scientific method, not votes by corporations or anyone else. In fact, my book adds a new test having to do with the lack of global warming for at least 17 years (some say 18.5 years) to the four tests I have previously used. There is still a very small chance that this new test will not further invalidate CAGW, but global temperatures would have to jump wildly higher very soon.