Nine lies about climate change


Pay attention. Take notes. But be sure you read it.  By a guy handled “Taavi,” at a LiveJournal site.

Pat Frank: When is your paper due out?

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 30th, 2008 at 6:16 pm and is filed under Accuracy, Climate change, Global warming, Science. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

5 Responses to Nine lies about climate change

  1. Pat Frank says:
    April 1, 2008 at 9:08 pm

    “Slightly less rant to fact ratio . . .”

    Funny; I’d have said greater. Taavi dismissed William Gray as senile. This, itself, is unforgiveable.

    Ed, your comment that I am “the only warming skeptic who starts from a premise of looking at the science” is wrong. Richard Lindzen looks at the science. So do Tim Ball, Ross McKitrick, Chris Essex, Bob Carter, Roger Pielke Sr., Sally Baliunas, and many others; physical scientists all, except McKitrick who is an expert on statistics. They all have the same general view I do.

    About numbers, remember Einstein’s rejoinder about the 100 German scientists who supposedly refuted Relativity Theory: ‘100? If I’m wrong, it will take only 1.’

    My article and SI have by now been through many hands; many of physicists. So far, no one has come up with a fatal error. If that stands, it will remain true that the IPCC is talking through its hat as regards a human cause for global warming. My own opinion is that the through-hat talking is conscious and deliberate.

    About Al Gore, Lindzen commented that back around 1990 then Sentaor Gore bullied him to change his mind about human-caused warming. No one came to Lindzen’s defense then, when Gore was trying to use his political clout to influence scientific judgment. And in 1990 the science, lacking as it is now, was even worse. So, as regards climate, Gore has a history of intemperance and unjustified aggression.

    Gore’s record on scientific or technical issues is only as good as his advisors, because Gore himself clearly knows nothing about science. His unsupported opinion on any scientific or technical issue is worthless.

    Removing CO2 will do nothing to make the air cleaner. Reducing coal burning will make the air cleaner, though. So will removing the soot from the exhaust of large trucks. We should figure out how to do that. Modern cars are extremely clean.

    Plus, ends don’t justify means. I don’t think lying about a human cause for global warming is justified by cleaner air. If air needs cleaning up, the case can be made by telling the truth about it, and without lies. Lies are always justified by subjective insistence. If it’s about CO2 this time, what will it be next time? About abortion, maybe, or the need to round up certain sorts of people? Who has the moral purity to decide about lies, and stop before the habit becomes pernicious?

    We’re either aim to be reliable truth tellers or we’re not worthy of any trust at all. I detest the righteous lie.

    I liked the tongue-in-cheekiness of the Starbuck’s cup. But the global warming hysteria, if it manages to force Kyoto-like CO2 reductions, will transfer large amounts of money from the middle class to futures-traders, will make the poor desperate, and will impoverish industrial societies so that they can no longer aid poor nations. No more food aid to the famine-ridden, no more medical aid to the plague-ridden, no more educational aid to the ignorance-ridden. That is Kyoto-world.

    We can invest in cleaner energy without foolish and destructive measures that merely service a pathological need for personal expiation.

    Good luck with the alligators, Ed. Be careful though, because they probably think you taste like chicken. :-)

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  2. Ed Darrell says:
    April 1, 2008 at 5:14 pm

    Slightly less rant to fact ratio . . .

    Pat, you’re about the only warming skeptic who starts from a premise of looking at the science, rather than from a premise that anything Al Gore says can’t be right. As you know, I trust Gore’s political judgment on the politics of environmental protection and other technical issues. His record of being right about things technical is long and good, including toxic site cleanup, organ transplant pharmaceuticals and registries, orphan drugs, and federal funding to birth the internet.

    Plus, to me the entire warming thing is additional justification for clean air efforts, not the only or best justification.

    I wish I were as rational as you give me credit for, or scientifically erudite enough to stay atop these issues.

    Which is why I wondered about your stuff.

    As I told you some months ago, I think the bottom line is we must move against air pollution, with greater aggressiveness since China and India have joined the major non-point-source emissions ranks.

    Stick around and put us on the straight and narrow, will you? I’m up to my neck in alligators at the moment, but I hope to do a better post in the next few days, at least, better for Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub.

    Have you seen my favorite Starbucks cup? Here:
    https://timpanogos.wordpress.com/2007/09/17/starbucks-controversy-the-way-i-see-it-289-global-warming/

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  3. Pat Frank says:
    April 1, 2008 at 5:01 pm

    Ed, Taavi’s assessmant of Ray Evans’ “Nine Facts” is a rant full of ad hominem dismissals, and is no better than what he claims is the case for Evans. I’m surprised that a rational guy like you would link to it as a credible rebuttal.

    Taavi says that he is a “physics graduate,” but it’s clear he’s never evaluated the physical uncertainty of climate models for himself. If he had done, he’d be far less certain of assigning human causality to global warming.

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  4. Pat Frank says:
    March 30, 2008 at 9:39 pm

    Hi Ed — I didn’t realize this was your own personal blog. :-) Congrats and best wishes.

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  5. Pat Frank says:
    March 30, 2008 at 9:38 pm

    Skeptic has it on the web here:
    http://www.environmentalwars.org/articles_climate_of_belief.php

    The Supplemental Information, which contains all the analytical inputs supporting the article, is in a PDF file linked to the on-line article.

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