The global warming debate in a nutshell

Christopher Monckton (whose integrity, by the way, I don't have any particular reason to bet my life on) writes a paper examining the IPCC's earlier conclusions on global warming. It includes such paragraphs as the following:

Such solecisms throughout the IPCC’s assessment reports (including the insertion, after the scientists had completed their final draft, of a table in which four decimal points had been right-shifted so as to multiply tenfold the observed contribution of ice-sheets and glaciers to sea-level rise), combined with a heavy reliance upon computer models unskilled even in short-term projection, with initial values of key variables unmeasurable and unknown, with advancement of multiple, untestable, non-Popper-falsifiable theories, with a quantitative assignment of unduly high statistical confidence levels to non-quantitative statements that are ineluctably subject to very large uncertainties, and, above all, with the now-prolonged failure of TS to rise as predicted (Figures 1, 2), raise questions about the reliability and hence policy-relevance of the IPCC’s central projections.

And it goes on from there with a great many detailed arguments, all eminently suitable for refutation, which refutation I would peruse eagerly. But wait a minute -- he's not falling in line with emerging truth! So the organization that invited him to write the paper puts a label in red above the paper on their website:

The following article has not undergone any scientific peer review. [This, I presume, depends on one's definition of "scientific peer review."] Its conclusions are in disagreement with the overwhelming opinion of the world scientific community. [I've written about this before: real scientists who have evidence to hand point out flaws in the logic; dishonest pseudoscientists who can't refute arguments but have political games to play, appeal to "scientific consensus" in hopes that people will skip the whole logic part -- in which they would almost certainly get their asses kicked, which is why they're appealing to "overwhelming opinion of the community" rather than to logic.] >The Council of the American Physical Society disagrees with this article's conclusions. [Then write your own damn paper and refute his logic -- which, since Monckton's paper is one of a series of a papers in a formal debate, somebody else is presumably already doing.]

Guess what? Monckton is steamed. So he's written a formal letter in which my favorite sentence is a dry, "This seems discourteous." Here's the meat of the letter:

This seems discourteous. I had been invited to submit the paper; I had submitted it; an eminent Professor of Physics had then scientifically reviewed it in meticulous detail; I had revised it at all points requested, and in the manner requested; the editors had accepted and published the reviewed and revised draft (some 3000 words longer than the original) and I had expended considerable labor, without having been offered or having requested any honorarium.

Please either remove the offending red-flag text at once or let me have the name and qualifications of the member of the Council or advisor to it who considered my paper before the Council ordered the offending text to be posted above my paper; a copy of this rapporteur's findings and ratio decidendi; the date of the Council meeting at which the findings were presented; a copy of the minutes of the discussion; and a copy of the text of the Council's decision, together with the names of those present at the meeting. If the Council has not scientifically evaluated or formally considered my paper, may I ask with what credible scientific justification, and on whose authority, the offending text asserts primo, that the paper had not been scientifically reviewed when it had; secundo, that its conclusions disagree with what is said (on no evidence) to be the "overwhelming opinion of the world scientific community"; and, tertio, that "The Council of the American Physical Society disagrees with this article's conclusions"? Which of my conclusions does the Council disagree with, and on what scientific grounds (if any)?

The last sentence in particular is the language of a man who is not afraid of debate. The red lettering is the language of a (currently anonymous) gentleman who desperately wishes to avoid debate.

I'll be interested to see the follow-up pieces in the debate. In the meantime, that red warning perfectly encapsulates the global warming "debate" as it stands today: in response to a paper rich with detailed arguments that lend themselves (if inaccurate) to ready and devastating refutation, the global-warming alarmists' response is a typographically-enriched appeal to "scientific consensus."

If you are not yourself a scientist, and you believe, on the authority of the "scientific consensus," that mankind is on the brink of causing a global climate Armageddon, then, no offense, but you are three hundred and seventy-two different kinds of stupid. As I've said before, I don't know whether CO₂ is contributing to global warming or not. But I know when I'm being lied to by people who don't give a damn what's true or not and will just say whatever they have to say in order to get you to along with what they want. And if the global warming alarmists aren't utterly dishonest shills playing the credulous public for suckers, then Paul Ehrlich was right all along and "hundreds of millions of people" starved to death during my childhood while I wasn't watching.

By the way, I am not blind to the fact that Monckton has his own political ax to grind, and, as I say, I would be interested in refutation. Here is the conclusion of Monckton's paper, in which he draws explicitly political conclusions from his scientific reasoning:

Even if temperature had risen above natural variability, the recent solar Grand Maximum may have been chiefly responsible. Even if the sun were not chiefly to blame for the past half-century’s warming, the IPCC has not demonstrated that, since CO2 occupies only one-ten-thousandth part more of the atmosphere that it did in 1750, it has contributed more than a small fraction of the warming. Even if carbon dioxide were chiefly responsible for the warming that ceased in 1998 and may not resume until 2015, the distinctive, projected fingerprint of anthropogenic “greenhouse-gas” warming is entirely absent from the observed record. Even if the fingerprint were present, computer models are long proven to be inherently incapable of providing projections of the future state of the climate that are sound enough for policymaking. Even if per impossibile the models could ever become reliable, the present paper demonstrates that it is not at all likely that the world will warm as much as the IPCC imagines. Even if the world were to warm that much, the overwhelming majority of the scientific, peer-reviewed literature does not predict that catastrophe would ensue. [That's an interesting assertion, by the way. Monckton has defended it at some length here, but it's a separate topic. -- Peril] Even if catastrophe might ensue, even the most drastic proposals to mitigate future climate change by reducing emissions of carbon dioxide would make very little difference to the climate. Even if mitigation were likely to be effective, it would do more harm than good: already millions face starvation as the dash for biofuels takes agricultural land out of essential food production: a warning that taking precautions, “just in case”, can do untold harm unless there is a sound, scientific basis for them. Finally, even if mitigation might do more good than harm, adaptation as (and if) necessary would be far more cost-effective and less likely to be harmful.

In short, we must get the science right, or we shall get the policy wrong. If the concluding equation in this analysis (Eqn. 30) is correct, the IPCC’s estimates of climate sensitivity must have been very much exaggerated. There may, therefore, be a good reason why, contrary to the projections of the models on which the IPCC relies, temperatures have not risen for a decade and have been falling since the phase-transition in global temperature trends that occurred in late 2001. Perhaps real-world climate sensitivity is very much below the IPCC’s estimates. Perhaps, therefore, there is no “climate crisis” at all. At present, then, in policy terms there is no case for doing anything. The correct policy approach to a non-problem is to have the courage to do nothing.

I don't know whether global warming is really a problem or not, though the more I see the less reason I can imagine to be worried about it. So farming becomes feasible in Greenland again...this is a disaster why, exactly? (Yes, I know some low-lying areas could conceivably be flooded. I have two words for you: "moving van.") But if Monckton gets nothing else right, he gets one fundamental political principle right:

"The correct policy approach to a non-problem is to have the courage to do nothing."

Amen, and amen. (But then Democratic politicians would have to get real jobs...)

A vile slander against liberals

Whoever it was that started the whole business about referring to Gore Vidal as "the voice of liberalism," must really hate liberals. Is there anybody on the planet who is more of a jerk? Not more evil, or more brutal, or anything else, just more of an asshat?

I don't appreciate it when people assume that, merely because I am an evangelical Christian, I am therefore represented by Jimmy Swaggart's voice. By the same token, I hold strongly that nobody but Gore Vidal should be held responsible for that sneering, please-punch-me-in-the-nose-as-soon-and-as-hard-as-possible "voice of..." himself, and of not a single other person in the whole wide world.

INTERVIEWER: Well, it was a great pleasure talking to you.
VIDAL: I doubt that.

If he's never been right about anything else in his life, he was right about that last bit. And that's how he treats a friendly interviewer.

I know a lot of liberals and not a single one of my liberal acquaintances would be able to work themselves up to that pitch of completely unnecessary, unreasonable rudeness even if they took mood-altering drugs to rile themselves up.

"The voice of liberalism," my Gore Vidal.

A high-five to the Daily Kos

It's a rare day when you find the Kos and I on the same side. All such occasions are greatly to be celebrated, say I.

So, a big thumbs up to Woodward's Friend.

And to the CIC and Canada's hate-speech bureaucrats:

Just how freakin' insane and out of control and just flat-out lost to reason and common humanity do you have to be to get both the Daily Kos and the Redneck Peril mad at you for exactly the same reason?

I'm not, generally speaking, a fan of eugenics. But I can't help but hope to God you freak-show losers haven't bred.

Of course, this being the Daily Kos, there are commenters who can't wait to rush in and say that the CIC is on the right side because of course the article is racist (despite the fact that the article has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with race, a point that would register on a moderately intelligent puppy but is beyond the grasp of the typical Kos commenter) and racists should be silenced by government force (though those same commenters, not having the irony gene, will no doubt hop over to the next post and complain that the Right are a bunch of Nazis). But that is NOT Woodward's Friend's fault, and I refuse (unlike the CIC) to hold anybody responsible for what nutjobs say in his comments section.

So, once again: Kudos to Woodward's Friend of the Daily Kos, with whose point I am 100% in agreement, with the volume cranked to 11.

On global warming

Listen, I don't want to insult the intelligence of my loyal readers, but I could use a good rant to blow off some steam, and that is, after all, one of the reasons I have a blog. So, if you think global warming is a Serious Threat to Humanity, then you probably don't want to read what follows. Just givin' ya fair warning, that's all.

For those of you who don't know, the whole global warming thing...well, I absolutely defy you to find any issue on which all the signs shriek more loudly "FRAUD! FRAUD! 100% TOTAL BS!"

That doesn't mean that global warming isn't happening (though the more evidence rolls in the more it looks like that dog's huntin' days are rapidly coming to an end). But the only way you can believe that "science" has established that global warming (a) is happening, (b) is happening because of us, and (c) bespeaks looming cataclysm, is if you (a) don't know much about history, (b) don't know much about science, and (c) have never been taught how to tell when somebody's lying to you.

I mean, nothing personal if you've bought the hype, but the tactics are and have long been unmistakable.

I really do mean this, by the way: the thing that grabs my attention about the whole global warming controversy, is the fact that all the signs that you would expect educated people to have been trained to look for, are there in great big flashing neon...but it's like the public is functionally illiterate. Dorothy Sayers complained a long time ago that in teaching everybody to read, but not teaching people the rules of logic and rhetoric, universal education made it far easier for people to be deceived and manipulated, rather than making it harder.

But so much time and embarrassment can be saved once you know the tactics liars use to bamboozle you.

To take just one example on the global warming thing: if you have just been taught even the basic principles of scientific method and the scientific mindset, you know that real scientists hate declaring debate over...because the one thing consistent about scientific "consensus," is how consistently it is proved wrong. But on the other hand, if you know anything about con artists, you know that they hate honest and open debate and prefer silencing their critics to refuting them. You know that the stronger an honest man's case is, the more eager he is to get his opponent's arguments out into the open so that he can address them; but that the weaker a liar's case is, the more zealously he tries to ensure that his opponents remain unheard.

But one of the most striking characteristics of the whole global warming campaign is the desperation with which global warming alarmists insist that the debate is over and only vile and evil persons express doubts on the subject. At the very suggestion that a news agency might allow a "climate change skeptic" to present his case on television, the lobbying groups swing into action:

"The consensus about global warming in the science community is now overwhelming, so accusing the BBC of campaigning on such an undisputed threat is like suggesting it should be even-handed between criminals and their victims."

How's that for rhetoric? Or check out this e-mail exchange between the BBC and a global-warming activist who is incensed that the BBC has dared to report that there are scientists who say the whole thing is bunk and that evidence for their viewpoint is beginning to accumulate. (To be fair, the BBC is after all a notorious shill for right-wing extremists; so we have to cut her a little bit of slack, I suppose.) My favorite part comes about four or five e-mails into the exchange, when the frustrated activist starts to resort to threats, and also with a classic resort to obfuscatory language that no serious scientist would be caught dead using (the whole "emerging truth" thing):

Your word "debate". This is not an issue of "debate". This is an issue of emerging truth. I don't think you should worry about whether people feel they are countering some kind of conspiracy, or suspicious that the full extent of the truth is being withheld from them...

...It would be better if you did not quote the sceptics. Their voice is heard everywhere, on every channel. They are deliberately obstructing the emergence of the truth.

I would ask : please reserve the main BBC Online channel for emerging truth...

...I am about to send your comments to others for their contribution, unless you request I do not. They are likely to want to post your comments on forums/fora, so please indicate if you do not want this to happen. You may appear in an unfavourable light because it could be said that you have had your head turned by the sceptics.

Now when you see this sort of thing going on, or the posturing and profiteering of Al Gore, that doesn't mean that global warming is not happening. But it does most certainly mean that what is fueling the engine of the global-warming movement is something that is not science but pretends to be -- and that will use the global-warming scare for its own ends with a complete disregard for whether or not there is actually any reason to think global warming is happening. If it is, great, we were right. If it isn't, no problem, as long as we can keep you from figuring it out long enough to get what we want.

In other words, you're being played.

But you would only know that if you've been taught how liars operate, and you've been taught how by contrast scientists operate. Which is to say, you would have had to have been taught logic and rhetoric -- or, to put it another way, somebody would have had to equip you with common sense and a realistically skeptical knowledge of human nature.

If you had to get that from your public school education...well, then you're probably terrified that global warming will kill us all.

I don't want to wish death on anybody...

...but I'm genuinely having trouble coming up with any other solution to the Jimmy Carter problem. As far as I can tell only death will stop the man in whose honor we might as well retire humanity's trophy for All-Time Biggest Gap Between Self-Estimation and Actual Worth. Perhaps a long prison sentence for betrayal of state secrets? Permanent committal to an institution for the criminally insane? (I like the last option because it brings the word "lobotomy" into play, and any measure that would increase that pitiable gentleman's intelligence is something I think a charitable regard for the man's well-being requires us to consider.)

Oh, as far as what has triggered this rant: I thought the world of potentiality had run out of new depths to which Jimmy Carter could sink.

I thought wrong.

Not that it's surprising that Jimmy "I Was Yasser Arafat's Homeboy" Carter wants us to be friends with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. A man is known, after all, by the company he keeps. And by now we all know Jimmy Carter.

HT: Gateway Pundit, who also provides us with a link to this helpful Jimmy Carter Threat Level Advisory System.

Hey, I thought The Onion was supposed to be a parody site

When did they start doing straight news?

Yet Another Educational Experience Dept

First, it was the "300 plus members of the crew of the television show Ugly Betty" who were discovering to their astonishment that when a state raises taxes too high its revenues actually drop. Now the professors at Harvard are suddenly cluing into the fact that when you deliberately target the exceptionally wealthy, you are -- quelle horreur -- in fact punishing success! My God, what will these rapacious politicians think of next?

Wow, brains like that, I guess that explains how they got into Harvard, eh? (My favorite line, though to be fair I don't think Richard J. Doherty is from Harvard: "It's like Florida taxing oranges." Um...Richard...something you should know about that...oh, never mind.)

I am so grateful that I know one particular remarkable and bright Harvard-educated college professor (who probably doesn't want to be the subject of a blog post), because if it weren't for her and my deep admiration for her, I probably would be saying something really silly right about now, like, say, "There's nobody on earth more useless than a Harvard professor..." Which would be a very stupid thing indeed to say in any world that possesses Congressmen. ;-)

I would hat tip Ace except that I can't link to his post because the title of that particular post has a very naughty word in it.