Australians and others who were happy to be included on Senator James Inhofe’s list (PDF, may need converting) of “scientists” whose “work” contradicts the mainstream view on anthropogenic global warming (scare quotes deliberate) may be interested to know that Inhofe has now emerged as a Birther, or at least a fellow traveller. Of course, Inhofe is also a young earth creationist, and his list includes people like creationist weathercaster Chris Allen who has no more (and no less) relevant qualifications than most of the Australians on Inhofe’s list.
It’s sad to see people with distinguished careers like those of Don Aitkin and Ian Plimer ending up supporting lunatic conspiracy theorists like Inhofe. But the whole basis of climate science delusionism is a conspiracy theory. It’s only by invoking a conspiracy among mainstream climate scientists that delusionists can argue that any attention should be paid to the views of a minority so tiny that even a list of 650 has to be padded out with economists, retired historians, weathercasters and lots of cranks: the number of active, regularly publishing climate scientists on the list is in the single digits.
John Quiggin 
@smiths
I think the plan is to substitute greenbacks for flour and corn, mash em up nice and fine, wrap it in plastic and give it a name…maybe Soylent Green ?
@Pterosaur
Pterosaur, are you saying that the IPCC report is a meta-analysis?
@rog
#43
While consensus does not offer scientific validation a for a hypothesis it is a starting point for those parts of science that are germane to the formation of public policy, for the simple and obvious reason that basing policy on things that are still the matter of serious controversy is reckless.
There’s a consensus for example, about the ways in which epidemics grow within populations and good policy aims to apply the insights of well-attested science in managing these threats. This is where we are with current policy on climate change until someone can show through rigorous collection of pertinent data and sound modelling of the known system that some other hypothesis might found better measures.
No system — not even the best science — can produce certainty or “truth”. Good science can help you avoid dealing irrationally or suboptimally with public goods however.
In fact, the IPCC report in part relies an other meta-analyses. Other scientists (or deluded cranks, depending on how you feel) have conducted meta analysis on published studies of greenhouse abatement and found that generally accepted figures are in error and under estimate the costs. Many of the published studies were found to be subject to the “scientific forum in which the study was developed.”
If you continue to use the term “delusional” you continue to affirm your bias.
Of course, consensus plays a role in science.
If you come up with a theory, you must gather evidence, test your theories and convince other scientists that your theory is better than the existing theories.
The big problem is that AGW sceptics miss all of the above steps.
Do you think that there are any cranks etc on the pro AGW side? I would feel a lot more comfortable if I saw AGWers challenging the more implausible and unsubstantiated claims from their own side. When they don’t I draw inferences about how critically they evaluate the rest of the evidence.
Of course there are cranks on the AGW side.
The truly crazy tend to be ignored. While they may have same standard of evidence as AGW sceptics, they tend to be ignored by pretty much everyone.
More frequently, statements about the effects of GW go far beyond what the science says. These are frequently criticized. Real Climate, for example, has criticized Tim Flannary on a number of occasions (and gave Weathers Makers a negative review). Climate scientists (and bloggers) James Annan and William Connolley have done a pretty good job at smacking down some rubbish. On a personal note (and I certainly don’t mean to put myself in the same category of the above people), I’ve corrected some over the top statements on LP.
PT, please try to write something coherent next time, and no more than 100 words
The AGW “debate” is characterised by half-truths & inaccurate assertions on both sides. Just to highlight one of them, the comment above “a minority so tiny that even a list of 650 has to be padded out with economists, retired historians, weathercasters and lots of cranks” is incorrect. There is a web-based petition of more than 31,000 US scientists who reject the claims that “human release of greenhouse gases is damaging our climate.” Try googling it.
JQ: What you are saying sounds like “I believe in free speech, but this is going to far…” I am not qualified to say that the sceptics are writing nonsense and, frankly, I doubt that you are. We both accept the weight of opinion from scientists who know more about the subject than you and I do.
The difference between us is that I am glad to see some who do not accept the majority view and keep challenging it. In all disciplines there is a great tradition of the ratbag who did not accept the prevailing wisdom. Many died as ratbags but we should still be glad that they were who they were. In your field, would you be happy if Marx (a noted ratbag) had never spent all that time in the British Museum?
test
What you are saying sounds like “I believe in free speech, but this is going to far…” I am not qualified to say that the sceptics are writing nonsense and, frankly, I doubt that you are. We both accept the weight of opinion from scientists who know more about the subject than you and I do.
There is absolutely nothing in JQ’s comments that support your assertion.
While you certainly aren’t qualified to make an informed judgment on the subject, there are plenty of people and organizations that are.
Here is a big list.
Indeed, the only scientific organization to make a statement opposing the scientific basis (The American Association of Petroleum Geologists) was forced to scrap it because of a revolt by their membership.
I am surprised that Frank Milne was silly enough to add his name to this list.
There is a web-based petition of more than 31,000 US scientists who reject the claims that “human release of greenhouse gases is damaging our climate.
That petition is just one more reason as too why AGW sceptics are utter jokes.
However, humor me, from those 31,000 “scientists” how many scientific publications on climate change have been produced?
Ken, there’s no free speech issue here. I’m using my free speech rights to say that the alleged sceptics are (at best) talking nonsense and (in many cases) telling lies for cash or party promotion. You don’t need to be a climate science expert to be able to determine the facts about people like Singer, Seitz, Milloy, Durkin, and so on (Google them).
NeilC, I’ve not only Googled the Oregon petition, it’s been demolished on this blog so many times as to be a standing joke. Why don’t you Google “Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine” to see the kind of loons you’re relying on. Or search this site, and you’ll find plenty. The fact that this kind of nonsense keeps on getting served up is evidence of the extent to which climate delusionism is based on wishful thinking and an unwillingess to face inconvenient truths.
@jquiggin
JQ its also evidence of how media owners have a vested interest in distorting facts (one Rupert Mudoch to be precise who keeps serving up BS).
@Ken Miles
And one may add, Ken Miles, that the reason that those favouring mitigation who make unsound claims tend not to be heard about is precisely because, unlike their counterparts opposing mitigation there is no interest group for such people to serve.
That too tells a story.
@jquiggin
Because he is a sorry sad extremist ultra conservative who looks after the interests of his business advertisers…on climate change his “news” isnt “news” – its propaganda to serve Murodchs short term business interests…and traditional news is dying, making him and his editors and his directors ever more desperate (such that they will entertain any garbage as long as its sensational).
No Kerry Packer even in Rupert Murdoch. No love for real “news” – just love for money. He aint a true media barons bootlace.
Ken, according to dear Harry Clarke ‘The denialists do like to recycle half-truths’.
Ken, dear Harry Clarke also thinks ‘Malcolm Turnbull’s statement on the proposed ETS has to be partly understood as a political act seeking to encourage anti-science fruitcakes in the Coalition to learn to live with an ETS’.
Fran Barlow @ 11 said;
Considering Carbon-12 is the most abundant of the two stable isotopes of the element carbon, accounting for 98.89% of carbon; It’s hard to believe it can even murkily distinguish one bit of the 98.89% of carbon from the other 98.89%.
And
;
Considering the age of the pre-industrial Earth is around 4.54 billion years (4.54 × 109 years ± 1%) You’d think you would be able to find that there were many periods in pre-industrial times when the temperature was (0.74degC) more than it is now. (if you cant find a pre-industrial period when the earth was hotter than it is now you are lying)
As I said, one fact will dispel the AGW conspiracy theory. We are only asking for one; one is not too much to ask for, just one fact that categorical proves that the increase in carbon IS warming the planet. If you come up with that one fact I will be converted to your faith.
@6 Sorry for sounding like Graham Byrd, I must have been reading Jennifer’s blog to much.
@Tony G
I’m not seeking your “conversion”. You can have your faith as it seems dear to you. You have all the facts you need but you push them away as offensive. Your kind a better suited to your delusion, for where ignorance is bliss, ’tis indeed folly to be wise.
Fran
JQ, The document you have linked under the name “Senator James Inhofe’s list, does not contain any signatures from any of the many names listed. Further, having skimmed through several pages, I noticed the quotes, assuming they are authentic, span a very wide range of questions and allowing many different interpretations, particularly out of context of the original.
Most of the time I very much like your headers. On this ocasion I’d like to offer an alternative: Senator James Inhofe’s efforts to rob economists of their ‘on the one hand and on the other hand’ stereotype.
I should think that nothing can be concluded from Senator James Inhofe’s list.
Ken, if I’m not mistaken Harry Clarke’s definition of a denialist is a fruitcake.
especially if you lack the proof that the increase in carbon is actually warming the planet and you want to ‘believe’ that it is.
Antithetic to the ‘Gnostic’ of AGW ideology who professed to know so much about the very things of which I was ignorant.
One does not deny the existence of Climate Change and AGW but holds that one cannot know for certain whether or not they exist. Unfortunatly for the AGW faithful my convictions are of this world and its facts; come up with some so I can share your ‘beliefs’ .
I wonder what tony G thinks of Inhofe’s claim that burning oil and gas doesn’t cause pollution?
“People complain that we are buying — importing from the Middle East — oil and gas. And then they find out that we have it all right here. We don’t have to do that. If their argument there is “Well, we don’t want to use oil and gas because we think it pollutes” — which it doesn’t — but if that’s their argument, then why are we willing to import it from Saudi Arabia and other countries in the Middle East?”
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/07/oil-gas-dont-pollute-inhofe.php
and as others have said, there’s no need to convert you Tony, you’re quite welcome to join the Flat Earthers; urine-drinkers’ creationists, tinfoil-hat wearers, Trotskyites and UFOlogists in spouting your irrelevant nonsense.
Crikey John, now we know what is the real motive behind the fruitcakes who claim ‘crazy uncle’ is intelligent. Watch your back Malcolm for the neo-conservative illywackers are on the march.
Just to highlight one of them, the comment above “a minority so tiny that even a list of 650 has to be padded out with economists, retired historians, weathercasters and lots of cranks” is incorrect. There is a web-based petition of more than 31,000 US scientists who reject the claims that “human release of greenhouse gases is damaging our climate.”
NEILC, your claim would in no way contradict john’s claim, even if your claim were true (which it isn’t).
Ian, an esoteric cult made up ‘supposedly’ of the ‘majority’ of scientists and a posse of self proclaimed ‘intelligent’ intellectuals, spruiking a ‘theory’ about AGW does not prove it exists.
Facts do.
Ian the ‘lowly’ masses who don’t feel any warmer have given up trying to get your esoteric cult to provide one, just one real world experiment that even ‘shows’ that carbon level changes correlates with temperature changes.
As the esoteric cult refuses or can’t provide evidence of causation as requested we will move on to temperature.
It has been spruiked here by the ones self deemed to be intelligent enough to form a esoteric cult on AGW, that in recent times mankind has single handily;
As stated above, Taking a handful of decades out of the last 4.54 billion years and professing to know to within an accuracy of 0.74degC how temperatures behaved over that period is a joke; can you please produce evidence that it is not a joke?
When the ‘lowly’ masses stop freezing their balls off they might start ‘believing’ your cult.
I’m not sure if it is worth stirring up the anti-science, anti-intellectual, anti-democratic, antedeluvian delusionists any more. They are beyond the reach of all rational and scientific debate. They are blind to empirical evidence. They do not understand science and scientific method. They are incapable of logical reasoning.
I suspect that about a third of them are so ill-educated and so entrenched in anti-intellectual “thinking” that they are now ineducable. Another third are probably clinically dull or clinically deranged (and it’s not their fault, it’s just sad) with limited reality checking ability in all areas of their lives. The final third are the brainwashed religious or right wing fundamentalists or those who actually brainwash them.
A sub-group of the religious and corporate brainwashers who peddle all this delusional nonsense are in fact deliberate hoaxers who do not believe their own lies but peddle them for malicious purposes or financial gain.
You can’t reason with people who can’t or won’t reason. It’s a waste of time. We have to get on with making the changes to the energy system and better educating the next generation.
On the other hand maybe we need tireless fighters for scientific investigations and conclusions, like JQ, who will deal a 100 variations and fabrications of the same nonsense by clearly pointing out 100 times why it’s nonsense. I’m afraid I just don’t have the patience for that. I’m prepared to wait for the real world evidence to swamp the delusionists (literally in some cases).
*deal with
Tony G: The definition of “esoteric” is “hidden”. Absolutely nothing, including the data, the scientific papers, the budgets, the reporting process, the personnel, etc of all the science that makes up the consensus case is hidden. I suspect you think “esoteric” means “beyond my comprehension”. I suggest you go and read some of the actual scientific literature. If you’re incapable of that, then STFU and go back to school, and try to learn something this time.
JQ, I thought it was no longer your policy to allow these useless troll debates.
Iko get of the esoterical horse.
All that is needed is simple answer to a simple question, obviously no one here can produce one.
tony g,
heres a couple of simple ones back …
what gases are released when fossil fuels are burnt?
where do they go?
what is the result?
smiths
All that is needed is simple answer to a simple question, obviously no one here can produce one.
People who are self proclaimed followers of the abovementioned esoteric cult sure do have thick skulls.
Tony G, all your questions have been answered many times before by myself and other bloggers posting very cogent arguments, links to IPCC and other science summaries, undergrad text book titles on the relevant physics underpinning climate research and gigabytes of authentic empirical data. You either can’t remember new information or you can’t absorb it in any systematic way. Have you thought about getting some cognitive function tests done mate? You may have a treatable condition.
Tony G, you persist in claiming AGW is an esoteric cult. Here’s the argument, as laid out at Deltoid blog by Barton Paul Levenson:
1. Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas (Tyndall 1859).
2. Carbon dioxide is rising (Keeling 1958, 1960, etc.).
3. Therefore (1, 2) the Earth’s temperature should be rising.
4. The Earth’s temperature is rising (NASA GISS, Hadley Centre CRU, RSS, UAH, etc., etc.).
5. Therefore (1, 2, 3) the increased temperatures should relate closely to the carbon dioxide level.
6. The correlation between NASA GISS temperature anomalies and ln CO2 is r = 0.87 for 1880-2007 (http://BartonPaulLevenson.com/Correlation.html).
7. The new carbon dioxide is primarily from fossil fuel burning (Suess 1955, Revelle and Suess 1957).
8. Therefore the global warming taking place is anthropogenic.
Which of the above points do you dispute?
Yes yes all very nice info Ico,
But, can you provide just one real world experiment that ’demonstrates’ that carbon level changes correlates with temperature changes (We don’t care how big all small the experiment is). It needs to be demonstrate that AGW is real to other people besides the converted ‘esoteric cult’.
If we can replicate that fundemental we are on our way to proving causation.
Tell me Tony G, every time you burp & phart does it increase or decrease greenhouse gases?
“It needs to be demonstrate that AGW is real to other people besides the converted ‘esoteric cult’.”
I take it by this you mean all the world’s major scientific bodies.
I encourage Tony G to comment more, because he reveals so fully the parallel-universe thinking in which scientists are cast as religious believers, while people like Inhofe who base their crackpot science on fundamentalist religion and/or ideology are treated as authorities.
Of course, if you are in the same parallel universe as Tony, it all makes sense
For those tiring of doing the same old dance, read Alex Higgins
Tony G is engaged in childish gainsaying. He is not worth responding to. His behaviour is the mental equivalent of stopping his ears and saying “I can’t hear you, I can’t hear you.” I think he’s winding us up actually. He doesn’t care one way or the other about the argument. If he cared, he’d attempt to use his brain.
By asking for “a real world experiment” on his terms, as far as I can tell Tony is basically asking for us either to a) create an entire planet that looks just the same as earth and pump its atmosphere full of carbon dioxide so we can watch it warm up or b) Continue to emit CO2 and further warm this planet to a possibly irreversible extent, just to prove to him that it can be done.
Tony, if you have some other definition of the “experiment” it would take to satisfy you, let’s hear it. As has been pointed out, the experiments showing CO2’s ability to trap heat were first published in 1859 and have been verified many times since…
An AGW Sceptic Position Which I Could Respect
For the sake of the exercise, I thought I would post an AGW sceptic position which I could at least respect. I do not hold this position by the way. This position could (possibly) be held without denying clear-cut science and the empirical data. The propositions up to five are scientifically supportable. Proposition six is an hypothesis which would need more research.
1. Currently the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere is increasing due to human activity.
2. This activity consists in the main of burning carbon based fuels and deforestation activities.
3. Global warming does indeed correlate with increased CO2 and greenhouse gas levels.
4. With respect to the entire geological record of earth, this greenhouse gas release is not unique in the sense that (approximately) equally large and rapid releases have been caused in the past, albeit through geological processes such as volcanism.
5. The earth’s atmosphere and climate has not been permanently shifted away from attaining or reattaining what we might now call the Holocene optimum.
6. This indicates the earth’s climate system and associated systems comprise a far more robust homeostatic system than the IPCC and others seem to postulate.
7. More research is required to investigate and/or test this hypothesis.
8. However, we need also to be aware that interim perturbations to climate and associated systems could be dramatic by human standards having dramatic civilizational effects and that any natural return to the Holocene climate optimum may take something in the order of hundreds of thousands to millions of years.
9. Therefore, we agree with the more orthodox climate position that we need to proceed cautiously in this matter and with a view to risk minimisation at a demonstrably affordable cost.
10. Furthermore, we agree that earth’s fossil fuels are finite in quantity (peak oil already having occurred for example) as indeed are nuclear fuels. Therefore, alternative power sources which are renewable and largely greenhouse gas neutral, should researched and implemented in a the most expeditious manner for reasons of energy security and indeed global human security.
Anything less than the above position, I simply cannot respect as it cannot arise out any defensible scientific and risk management analysis.
Tony G:
Sometimes, when I feel like some idle amusement, I go to a science denial website and write something like:
“AGW is the biggest conspiracy of all time. It was begun more than 100 years ago by the likes of Fourier, Tyndal and Arrhenius who knew that they could create opportunities for research grants more than 100 years in the future by creating a false theory.”
I don’t really need to write things like that when people like Tony G do it anyway. What a bunch of idiots.
Thanks Tony,
What a clot I’ve been: It IS a simple answer to a simple question. All we have to do is send someone out to look at the global thermometer and check the global temperature. Then check the printout and we should get the simple record of global temperature since the earth started, then, and this is good, read down the pages to the CO2 component of the temperature over time. But then, and this is the best bit, just simply flip the switch across and run the thing in reverse and we can get a read out of the future CO2 component of temperature. How easy is that?!
And haven’t those parasites in the IPCC got a lot of explaining to do. All those years endlessly collating and reviewing of papers, all from supposedly reputable journals. Reputable, my foot! Snouts in the trough, the lot of them. But, of course, the real enemy isn’t the governments and public servants who got the IPCC up, or the journals that published the papers: it’s those dirty scientists. Some of them are obviously pretty bright, with all those letters after their names, not to mention their ability to to wheedle themselves into positions of power in the best research institutions in the world with all this obtuse talk of uncertainties, complex processes, data collection methodologies, ocean-atmosphere interaction theories, modelling techniques, and the like. All of which needed lots of years and years of so-called “work” at outrageous salaries – no doubt assisted by an army of publicly-funded attractive young assistants – before they could even begin to get a handle on this problem. They’ve kept us from the simple answer to the simple problem for years and now they might now find the shoe is on the other foot. Big time. Not to mention just about every other technically educated person on the planet who has point-blank refused to acknowledge the palpable simplicity of the AGW question.
But we must reserve our purest and most toxic venom for those supreme obfusicators in this epic charade: the people who actually confessed that it was a simple answer to a simple problem, easily sorted without overpaid idiots with PhDs wasting their own and everyone else’s time in expensive research institutions. I refer, of course, to the anti-AGW mob. Having their privy knowledge, these scoundrels could have shown just a little bit of public-spiritedness by sharing what they knew, in a way we could all understand, and put this simple problem to bed for once and for all. Did they? No, they came out with cleverly-transparent junk science, whacko conspiracy theories, smarmy attacks on Al Gore, and even some unintelligible gibberish, just to keep the whole thing going for as long as possible. I still ask myself: What was possibly in it for them? Half of them weren’t even paid to do it.
Anyway, as Mum said: forgive and forget, even when it hurts! Please post the location of the global thermometer and instructions on doing the future readout bit and we’ll get down there with a highlighter, grab the printout and mark the future CO2 component bit and have this sorry mess sorted by next week. A lot of rent-seeking climate modellers and enviro-bludgers will be getting the real jobs real soon (mowing lawns, haha.) Bob’s your uncle. Simple.
The thing is, Tony G, you may be dimly aware that there is an AGW conspiracy, but you have no idea how deep the conspiracy really goes.
What dupes like you don’t get is that, not only is AGW a conspiracy, but AGW denialism is itself part of the conspiracy.
Jen Marohasy, the IPA, the Oz, Ian Plimer etc – they’re all in on it. They’re being paid by the IPCC to cook up a bogus ‘skeptic’ movement in order to bring trouble makers out of the woodwork and identify ’em so they can be dealt with later on. It’s a false flag operation.
Why do you think their comments threads are so unmoderated – they need to get commenters to express themselves in full, so they can identify they key troublemakers (we call ’em ‘drones’) through their IP numbers. C’mon, you know it’s easy to track down someone’s identity and location from an IP address – the CIA does it every day. Whothehelldyouthink the CIA works for these days, anyway? The IPCC, dummy. And you’re on the list, baby. Jen told me so herself. So did Ian.
Graeme Bird is in on it, too – I’ve discussed it with him myself at a meeting whose location and purpose I cannot reveal. Fact of the matter, Tone, is this: You. are. the. only. one. who. is not. in. on. it.
Sorry, Prof Q. Just realised I inadvertantly violated the sock puppet rule, which is probably why my last comment is in moderation. I was trying to be funny – should probably think aobut that a little more before I hit ‘submit’.
Well, if denialism is some pointless and silly and the science so settled, why would scientists fabricate the hockey-stick, cause that’s essentially what happened? I always worry about a proposition when people start telling lies about it.