Motus Mentis

10 Comments

1. TheBigHenry says

   “As the Pope unwisely prepares to abandon forever the political neutrality that his office enjoins upon him, and to put his signature to a climate-Communist encyclical largely drafted by the radical Prefect of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, Mgr. Marcelo Sanchez Sorondo, the Almighty continues to display a sense of humor.”

   Big Al said, “The Lord is subtle but not malicious” (Bohr responded, “Einstein, stop telling God what to do”). But Big Al did not say that the Lord does not have a sense of humor!

   I always take Big Al and gives the points.

   Posted January 6, 2015 at 11:47 am | Permalink
2. TheBigHenry says

   give

   Posted January 6, 2015 at 11:49 am | Permalink
3. the one eyed man says

   Noted crank and charlatan Christopher Monckton writes on a site funded by energy companies. Although neither man has a background in science, their easily refuted fabrications are accepted as gospel truth by those who should know better.

   The mendacious and misleading mountebank Monckton has spent his life making outlandish claims (his purported cure for AIDS), falsely claiming to be a member of Parliament, routinely misrepresenting the scientific reports he cites, fabricating data, and generally behaving in a bizarre manner. He has as much credibility as Doc Humes pontificating about thumpers, and as much integrity as Joe Isuzu. You can find a lengthy – but probably not exhaustive – summary of his outrageous offenses against fact, evidence, and human decency here:

   https://bbickmore.wordpress.com/lord-moncktons-rap-sheet/

   There is no Great Pause. In fact, there is no pause at all. Nine of the ten hottest years on record have occurred this century, and the twelve hottest years on record have all occurred since 1998. 2014 is the hottest year on record. Ocean temperatures have been warming every year for over fifteen years. Ocean levels continue to rise. Plant and animal species are reacting to earlier springs. Arctic sea ice has been declining since it was first measured in 1979. The snow cover in the Northern Hemisphere is at a record low. Etc., etc.

   There are plenty of sites with actual data and actual facts. A good one is http://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/ .

   You can find refutations of the misinformation promulgated by Monckton, Watts, and like-minded fabulists at http://www.skepticalscience.com.

   The credulous followers of Watts and Monckton have no interest in facts or evidence. If they did, they would defer to the expert opinion of actual scientists, who are rigorously trained and publish quantifiable data in peer reviewed journals. Instead, their worldview starts with the a priori belief that anything governments do is wrong-headed and ineffective, so the existence of any problem which can only be solved by governments must therefore be denied. They ridicule climate science as global warmism, as though mockery is a substitute for empiricism. They conjure up a crackpot conspiracy of thousands of scientists around the world deliberately falsifying information, doing so in concert, and then lying about it. Theirs is a world untethered to reality, but in perfect sync with ignorant right wing dogma.

   The facts are known, and can be found by anyone with twenty seconds and an Internet connection. However, Monckton’s appeal is not to those who value facts. It is for those whose standard of veracity is this: if it’s on the Internet, it must be true.

   Posted January 6, 2015 at 4:24 pm | Permalink
4. TheBigHenry says

   “The facts are known … by anyone with … an Internet connection. …

   Monckton’s appeal is … for those whose standard of veracity is … if it’s on the Internet, it must be true.”

   A distinction without a difference.

   Posted January 6, 2015 at 5:18 pm | Permalink
5. Malcolm says

   Hogwash. The pause is real, and even the staunchest warmists admit it. Even if there is slight warming by some measures (and not by others, such as the arguably more accurate RSS data), it is far less than what was expected. Despite a new cottage industry devoted to finding the “missing” heat, the fact is that none of the models we were told to trust our lives (and livelihoods) to predicted this. Snow cover is up, not down. Polar ice is rebounding nicely. Etc.

   Did you even read the article? It was enormously detailed, and addressed, with ample data and analysis, a great deal of past “refutation”. (Refutations go both ways.) No, your argument is simply more of the same ad hominem slander we’ve come to expect, and the usual denial of the very existence of informed dissent. (Next you’ll be telling us about that “97% consensus”.)

   But such is the way of the “secular” Left: all dissent must be crushed, ridiculed, silenced. Heretics must be shunned not only as mistaken, but evil. It has, as I remarked just recently, all the hallmarks of the religious impulse.

   None of this, of course, should be understood to mean that the Earth mightn’t have happened to be warming just now; after all, it has warmed and cooled throughout its long history. It did indeed do some warming in the 20th century (albeit to a lesser extent than it did back in the Medieval Warm Period, long before we struck oil, when there was farming in Greenland). But right now the inconvenient truth is that the massive warming we were told would definitely happen — with an ice-free Arctic, catastrophic sea-level rise, and snow “a thing of the past” in Britain — hasn’t.

   What seems preposterous to me, and to many others — including, yes, a great many competent scientists as well — is the idea that our simple models can accurately predict the long-term behavior of this chaotic system, or that the climate ever stays the same for long, or that we have the power to control it, or that we must immediately make attempting to do so our most desperate priority. (Apropos of this, I’ll take this opportunity to recommend, to readers interested in a detailed and thorough examination of a major weakness of the prevailing orthodoxy, a new book called The Neglected Sun.)

   But we’ve been over this too many times already, and I’ve already made clear our editorial stance.

   Readers may form their own conclusions.

   Posted January 6, 2015 at 8:03 pm | Permalink
6. Malcolm says

   “..noted crank and charlatan…”

   “…mendacious and misleading mountebank…”

   “…credulous followers…”

   “…ignorant right-wing dogma…”

   And … wait for it —

   “…as though mockery is a substitute for empiricism.”

   We’re done here, I think.

   Posted January 6, 2015 at 8:40 pm | Permalink
7. the one eyed man says

   1) There is no pause. Climate denialists routinely cherry pick data to use the outlier year of 1998 as a starting point. When you eliminate the statistical noise of a single year and look at long term temperature trends, the line goes up and to the right. If you choose 1999 as your starting point, or 1989, or 1979, you would get a far more accurate picture. However accuracy is not the goal of climate denialists — their goal is to distort data to justify a pre-determined outcome.

   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temperature_record#mediaviewer/File:Satellite_Temperatures.png

   Now that we’ve just completed the hottest year on record, following a long string of disproportionately hot years, I am eager to see how long the denialists cling to 1998 as having any meaning whatsoever.

   2) The link you cite does not show an increase in snow cover. It refers only to the Northern hemisphere and then shows that in some areas and seasons snow cover has increased, in others it has decreased, and others are flat. The following article looks at the data from Rutgers which you cite and explains why it is misleading, concluding that snow cover has been averaging below normal since the 1980’s, albeit with a flattish trend since then.

   http://www.accuweather.com/en/weather-blogs/climatechange/northern-hemispheric-snow-cove/6475924

   3) Polar ice is not “rebounding nicely.” It is decreasing. You can see that not only in the link you cite (“Arctic sea ice extent for December was the ninth lowest in the satellite record. Through 2014, the linear rate of decline for December extent over the satellite record is 3.4% per decade”) but here as well:

   http://nsidc.org/news/newsroom/glimsbook

   And, of course, sea levels continue to rise, plant and animal species are reacting to earlier springs, ocean temperatures ten meters below the surface continue to increase, and so forth.

   4) As for Monckton: anyone who is caught repeatedly lying about himself, fabricating data, mischaracterizing scientific research to make it appear to state the exact opposite of what it actually states, cherry picking data, impersonating others, and citing scientific research which actually refute his points simply has no credibility. He is a publicity hound and a crank, and is as deserving of mockery as anyone on Earth. He is a buffoon.

   5) As for “crushing dissent:” show me an actual climate scientist publishing data in peer reviewed research which contradicts the scientific consensus on global warming and I’ll pay attention. The writings of non-scientists, which have been repeatedly refuted, are not “informed dissent” any more than the proclamations of those who think that the Earth was created 6,000 years ago because that is what the Bible tells them.

   6) As for the reliability of predictions regarding global warming: this is a different question than its existence. Any system as complex as the ecosystem will be inherently difficult to predict. The point which Monckton, Watts, and the other denialists try to make is a different one: that there has been no global warming. The overwhelming amount of evidence which proves that the planet has been warming considerably over the past few decades is inarguable, so the denialists cherry pick and fabricate data instead of acknowledging that which has been quantified and demonstrated.

   There is plenty of ground for debate about what, if anything, should be done regarding global warming. Pretending it doesn’t exist, or hiding behind the skirts of those whose arguments have repeatedly been shown to be groundless, is neither helpful nor informed.

   Posted January 11, 2015 at 3:44 pm | Permalink
8. Malcolm says

   Peter, the “cherry-picking” charge is bunk; all you’ve done is make it even plainer that you haven’t read the WUWT article. If you had, you’d have noticed that in it the author explains that 1998 is not a “cherry-picked” starting point for the temperature trendline, but is in fact the point to which, if you start at the present and work backwards, the level trend extends. Was there warming prior to that? Yes, there was, and nobody disputes it. This means that if you start your trendline back in the 70’s, and extend it all the way to the present, you will of course see a rising trend. (Now that’s cherrypicking.)

   Also, if you had actually read the article, you’d have noticed that the author cited liberally from peer-reviewed papers. (In the article I linked to in my comment above, the BBC began by referring to “the hiatus in the rise in global temperatures”. Do you consider the BBC also to have been hoodwinked by ‘deniers’ into believing that the pause is real?)

   Finally, even you admit that “Any system as complex as the ecosystem will be inherently difficult to predict.” But that’s precisely the point: the predictions have failed badly already, and yet we’re being asked — nay, commanded — to believe that their dire auguries are “settled” scientific gospel, and that therefore we must make enormous, disruptive changes to our way of life and the organization of our societies. All this on the basis of simplistic computer models that even you acknowledge are almost certain to be inaccurate, as they have already shown themselves to be.

   And again: nobody in his right mind would deny that the world might be getting warmer over time. Forgive me for hammering on this simple point again and again, but it never seems to sink in: the world has been warming and cooling throughout its history. It will surely get warmer and colder again. There once was ice a mile high where my house now stands. A thousand years ago there was farming in Greenland, and once upon a time there was lush foliage in Antarctica. So it is obvious — OBVIOUS — that there are mechanisms at work in the Earth-Sun system, mechanisms of enormous, climate-warping power, that have absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with human activity.

   Might we be influencing the climate? Of course. But to listen to the global-warming industry’s spin machine, you’d think that not only we are the only game in town, but also that we actually have it within our power to lock down the Earth’s climate, provided we bow before Gaia and atone for our sins. Given the self-evident inadequacy of our computer models, this isn’t science, it’s religion — and some of us refuse to submit to forcible conversion. We already have quite enough to deal with from Islam in that department, thank you very much.

   Posted January 12, 2015 at 12:19 am | Permalink
9. Malcolm says

   Oh my. A quick scan of the day’s academic news turned up even more climate data being called into question. Who could ever have imagined that anything like this could be possible? (And from a prestigious, peer-reviewed publication and everything…)

   Observations from the main mountain climate station network in the western United States (US) suggest that higher elevations are warming faster than lower elevations. This has led to the assumption that elevation-dependent warming is prevalent throughout the region with impacts to water resources and ecosystem services. Here, we critically evaluate this network’s temperature observations and show that extreme warming observed at higher elevations is the result of systematic artifacts and not climatic conditions. With artifacts removed, the network’s 1991—2012 minimum temperature trend decreases from +1.16″‰°C decade−1 to +0.106″‰°C decade−1 and is statistically indistinguishable from lower elevation trends. Moreover, longer-term widely used gridded climate products propagate the spurious temperature trend, thereby amplifying 1981—2012 western US elevation-dependent warming by +217 to +562%. In the context of a warming climate, this artificial amplification of mountain climate trends has likely compromised our ability to accurately attribute climate change impacts across the mountainous western US.

   Systematic artifacts! Amplifying warming estimates from +217 to +562%!! Why, just think if this were to be the case elsewhere… it’s just too awful to contemplate.

   Posted January 12, 2015 at 5:20 pm | Permalink
10. Malcolm says

    Oh, and polar ice is, as I said, rebounding nicely.

    Posted January 13, 2015 at 6:57 pm | Permalink