Climate Change: Over the past few decades, we have heard a lot about Global Warming and Climate Change The graph below tells us just how Planet Earth has been warming …… and cooling over the past million years.
Figure 17. The Temperature Fluctuations Over the Past Million Years clearly indicate the temperature fluctuations. Note the last peak was in 2008 and the earth has been cooling since.
While reviewing the above graph, we should remind ourselves of two very critical aspects of understanding graphs. One: trend lines on graphs show past and current gradient. Two: Trend lines do not project or forecast. We should be cognizant of where we are on the graph line. Let’s have a closer look at trend lines on a graph.
Figure 18. The above two graphs clearly illustrates the dilemma of interpreting a graph segment as a potential forecast of what is to come.
It seems that all too many times when people talk Global Warming and Climate Change they forget this fundamental aspect of reading graphs. This is what happened in leading up to the later years of the 1990 decade. Many alarmists thought the world’s temperatures would continue to increases (as in the last box segment pictured above) when in fact, the world’s temperatures began to cool. The temperature graph turned and started a downward decline (as in the center box in the above graph).
So, one could say, the planet is warming and another person could say, it is cooling. It all depends on which warming or cooling cycle you are in and how you interpret the graph
Substitute of Repetition vs Scientific Reality.
Unable to address Texas senator Ted Cruz’s questions about “the Pause” — the apparent global-warming standstill, now almost 19 years long — at a meeting of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Oversight, Sierra Club president Aaron Mair, after an uncomfortable pause of his own, appealed to authority: “Ninety-seven percent of scientists concur and agree that there is global warming and anthropogenic impact,” he stated multiple times. Remember, “anthropogenic” just means, “people.” Or as they say, man-made reasons for climate change.
The myth of an almost-unanimous climate-change consensus is pervasive.
The consensus comments, so often made, are classic examples of “substitution of repetition for truth.” Just think about the people who have repeated this “ninety seven percent of the scientist concur line.” Here are two noted examples:
In May of 2016, the White House tweeted: “Ninety-seven percent of scientists agree: #climate change is real, man-made and dangerous.” A few days later, then Secretary of State John Kerry announced, “Ninety-seven percent of the world’s scientists tell us this is urgent.”
“Ninety-seven percent of the world’s scientists” say no such thing.”
The “97 percent” statistic first appeared prominently in a 2009 study by University of Illinois master’s student Kendall Zimmerman and her adviser, Peter Doran. Based on a two-question online survey, Zimmerman and Doran concluded that “the debate on the authenticity of global warming and the role played by human activity is largely nonexistent among those who understand the nuances and scientific bases of long-term climate processes” — even though only 5 percent of respondents, or about 160 scientists, were climate scientists. In fact, the “97 percent” statistic was drawn from an even smaller subset: the 79 respondents who were both self-reported climate scientists and had “published more than 50% of their recent peer-reviewed papers on the subject of climate change.” These 77 scientists agreed that global temperatures had generally risen since 1800, and that human activity is a “significant contributing factor.”
“A year later, William R. Love Anderegg, a student at Stanford University, used Google Scholar to determine that “97–98% of the climate researchers most actively publishing in the field surveyed supported the tenets of ACC [anthropogenic climate change] outlined by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.” The sample size didn’t improve on Zimmerman and Doran’s: Anderegg surveyed about 200 scientists.’
Surely the most suspicious “97 percent” study was conducted in 2013 by Australian scientist John Cook — author of the 2011 book Climate Change Denial: Heads in the Sand and creator of the blog Skeptical Science (subtitle: “Getting skeptical about global warming skepticism.”) In an analysis of 12,000 abstracts, he found “a 97% consensus among papers taking a position on the cause of global warming in the peer-reviewed literature that humans are responsible.” “Among papers taking a position” is a significant qualifier:
Only 34 percent of the papers Cook examined expressed any opinion about anthropogenic climate change at all. Since 33 percent appeared to endorse anthropogenic climate change, he divided 33 by 34 and — voilà — 97 percent!
When David Legates, a University of Delaware professor who formerly headed the university’s Center for Climatic Research, recreated Cook’s study, he found that “only 41 papers — 0.3 percent of all 11,944 abstracts or 1.0 percent of the 4,014 expressing an opinion, and not 97.1 percent,” endorsed what Cook claimed. Several scientists whose papers were included in Cook’s initial sample also protested that they had been misinterpreted. “Significant questions about anthropogenic influences on climate remain,” Legates concluded.
Figure 18. Scientific Reality vs. Substitute of Repetition
Or Propaganda vs. Science
National Review and other serious publications have expressed the real scientific reality of Climate Variability.
Before we leave “substitution of repetition for truth” or “consensus vs. scientific thought,” let’s review what some others have said about this topic.
The late Michael Crichton, MD, author, film producer, put it this way: “I want to pause here and talk about this notion of consensus, and the rise of what has been called consensus science. “I regard consensus science as an extremely pernicious development that ought to be stopped cold in its tracks. Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled. Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you’re being had.”
“Let’s be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world. In science consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus.”
“There is no such thing as consensus science. If it’s consensus, it isn’t science. If it’s science, it isn’t consensus. Period. In addition, let me remind you that the track record of the consensus is nothing to be proud of”
(From a talk at the California Institute of Technology on January 17, 2003, printed in Three Speeches by Michael Crichton, SPPI Commentary & Essay Series, 2009.)
And, another comment about the consensus topic:
Max Planck, one of the fathers, with Albert Einstein, of modern physics, put it this way: “New scientific ideas never spring from a communal body, however organized, but rather from the head of an individually inspired researcher who struggles with his problems in lonely thought and unites all his thought on one single point which is his whole world for the moment.”
Address on the 25thanniversary of the Kaiser-Wilhelm Gesellschaft, January 1936, as quoted in “Surviving the Swastika”: Scientific Research in Nazi Germany. 1993
What have some renowned scantiest said about consensus: “In the question of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual” Galileo Galilel
It is not because of the sheer number of scientists. After all, science is not conducted by poll. As Albert Einstein said in response to a 1931 book skeptical of relativity theory entitled 100 Authors against Einstein, “Why 100? If I were wrong, one would have been enough.”
Freeman Dyson, one of the signatories of a letter to the United Nations criticizing the International Panel on Climate Change has also argued against ostracizing scientists whose views depart from the acknowledged mainstream of scientific opinion on climate change stating that “heretics” have historically been an important force in driving scientific progress. “Heretics who question the dogmas are needed … I am proud to be a heretic. The world always needs heretics to challenge the prevailing orthodoxies.”
What did the late great scientist Carl Sagan say about Consensus vs. Scientific Reality? “Contributions to scientific knowledge is best established and taught by evidence and experiment rather than through authority, as authority has no place in the scientific method.
Carl Sagan wrote of arguments from authority: One of the great commandments of science is, “Mistrust arguments from authority.” … Too many such arguments have proved too painfully wrong. Authorities must prove their contentions like everybody else.
Most scientists would suggest and even agree that the offered authorities on Climate Change is or perhaps thought to be is United Nations International Panel on Climate Change. Many scientists are indeed beginning to doubt the wisdom of this organization.
As we close this section, perhaps we should review what a knowledgeable investigative journalist has to say on the subject of Consensus vs. Scientific Reality and that is Donna Laframboise. Donna is an investigative journalist based in Port Dover, Canada. She is the author of two books about the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
Described by Germany’s Der Spiegel as the IPCC’s “sharpest critic” and by a UK commentator as “blond, glamorous, and highly-educated.” Donna has testified before a committee of the British House of Commons, and addressed audiences in Berlin, Brisbane, Calgary, Edinburgh, Erice (Sicily), London, Mannheim, Melbourne, Munich, Oslo, Paris, Perth, Sydney, Toronto, and Warsaw.
In a speech she gave at a meeting of the World Federation of Scientist in Erice Italy, she explained some of the troubling attributes of UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. She identifies and explains the problem with IPCC. Check out her blog at BigPicNews.com
- IPCC is a political entity
- Scientists are not in charge.
- The IPCC is a United Nations template
IPCC and the United Nations are political entities. Furthermore, United Nations see Climate Change a cause celebre. It promotes their drive for Global Jurisdiction
Scientists are indeed not in charge. There are no doubt a good many scientists involved who are dedicated to doing their work in a professional manner. Scientists do not write the final IPCC reports. They are written by a group of politicians from various countries that in “give and take” write what they want in the final IPCC Reports.
The IPCC is a template. The United Nations uses IPCC as a template and a proving ground to advance their global agenda through other United Nations efforts such as International Assessment of Agriculture Science and Technology, an IPCC like body on soil degradation.
You might find Donna’s latest book, Into the Dustbin, very interesting. It focuses on Rajendra Pachauri, who chaired the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) for 13 years prior to his 2015 resignation.
Donna has an attribute that everyone should always retain. Donna explains it this way: “In the words of Australian commentator Joanne Nova, ‘the opposite of skeptical is gullible.’ Journalists are supposed to be skeptical – of everyone and everything. Those who don’t approach the world in this manner end up being mouthpieces for other people’s agendas.”
One more comment about IPCC, apparently even they have doubts in their work. They have stated the science isn’t settled. It changes all the time.
Take the latest report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Unlike its previous report in 2001, which foresaw a possible rise in sea levels over the next century of around 3 feet, the new report cuts that figure in half, to about 17 inches. Why the revision? “Mainly because of improved information,” IPCC notes in the fine print. It goes on to state that even its latest estimate involves some guesswork: “Understanding of these effects is too limited to assess their likelihood.” The science is getting better, but it’s far from settled.
Even NASA is not above corrections. They now agree that 1934, not 1998, was the hottest year the continental United States since record keeping began in 1880. NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies quietly changed its ranking after a Canadian statistician discovered an error in the official calculations.
Under the new data, five of the 10 hottest US years on record occurred before 1940; just three were in the past decade. Many people already knew the dust bowl years were the hottest, however, NASA had to be reminded.
Now that we have covered Natural Variability and Scientific Reality vs. Substitute of Repetition, lets have a look at what IPCC and their supporters fear about another perception of Climate Change.
So, we ask; what is it in the Climate Change equation that has some them claiming that we, the people of planet earth, have put our planet in dangerous times?
We will review another misunderstood issue, Carbon Dioxide (CO2), in Chapter 6.
Jantzen Chronicles 
Another thoughtful look at actual data vs. hyperbole.
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