“An open letter to the U.N from climate skeptics” (2012-11-29). Take that, U.N.! You’ve been sent a letter from Anthony Watts and other scientists! It’s in a newspaper! No talking about weather and climate in the same sentence!
The Financial Post is a reliably partisan Canadian right-wing newspaper and a tightly connected part of the climate denial circle-jerk. They’ve published an opinion piece/”letter” from 125 (or is it 129?) scientists informing the U.N. that they know all about climate and Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon doesn’t.
We the undersigned, qualified in climate-related matters, wish to state that current scientific knowledge does not substantiate your assertions. – OPEN CLIMATE LETTER TO UN SECRETARY-GENERAL: Current scientific knowledge does not substantiate Ban Ki-Moon assertions on weather and climate, say 125 scientists.
“no statistically significant global warming for almost 16 years”! “variations in solar output”! “Climate changes naturally all the time”! Now that is one rigorous evidence-based smack-down. Well, more like a rehash of various vague, debunked, denialist talking points.
Who are these 125 129 scientists? Well Anthony’s one (except not). So is Lord Monckton (except not). Plenty of engineers, geologists and physicists too, as well as the usual think tank flunkies. Do I have to go any further?
Didn’t think so. This is just axe-grinders engaged in empty political posturing because the UN Climate Change Conference is underway in Doha this week. Distract, delay, assert, confuse.
Thanks for Phil Clarke’s comment drawing my attention to this amusing bunk.
Updates:
I notice that the Financial Post has adjusted their article title to correct their inability to count to 129. It’s now amended to “125+”.
Astronomer Phil Plait has also covered the dumbnitude in Doubling Down on Climate Change Denial:
The letter itself is based on a single claim. So let’s be clear: If that claim is wrong, so is the rest of the letter.
Guess what? That claim is wrong. So blatantly wrong, in fact, it’s hard to imagine anyone could write it with a straight face. It says:
“The U.K. Met Office recently released data showing that there has been no statistically significant global warming for almost 16 years.”
This is simply, completely, and utterly false. The Met Office is the national weather service for the United Kingdom. In October 2012, they updated their database of global surface temperature measurements, a compendium of temperatures taken over time by weather stations around the planet. David Rose, a climate change denier who can charitably be said to have trouble with facts, cherry-picked this dataset and published a horrendously misleading graph in that bastion of scientific thought, the Daily Mail, saying the measurements show there’s been no global warming for the past 16 years.
But he did this by choosing a starting point on his graph that gave the result he wanted, a graph that looks like there’s been no warming since 1997. But if you show the data properly, you see there has been warming:
Wott's Up With That? 
The signatories include Oliver K. Manuel who believes the sun is not made of hydrogen and helium, Nils-Axel Mörner who believes in dowsing, Monckton who believes he can cure AIDS, and a whole host of other cranks. Surely I can’t imagine why anyone wouldn’t take them all terribly seriously.
[Indeed. But you know that denialist foot soldiers will use this ad nauseum to solemnly declare in newspaper letters and on blogs that “129 climate scientists” say the UN is acting politically. – Ben]
I looked at the letter and scratched my head. “since the climate hasn’t warmed in 16 years, it is not possible that extreme weather events have been caused by climate change.” Attribution is not easy nor certain, but to claim that “it is not possible that extreme weather has been caused by climate change, seems to me to be a radical and illogical conclusion. Did these people actually read the letter? Everyone knows or should know that the most recent decade is the warmest in recorded history and that measuring warming by the warmest year in a particular data base 16 years ago is a decidedly unscientific approach. I did not read all of the signitures, but I hope that the few climate scientists who are often described as skeptics declined to sign this one.
[Denialists grant themselves the exclusive right to make sweeping statements. – Ben]
Isn’t that a sweeping statement in itself? If you have (and use) that right, why shouldn’t a “denialist”?
[Sorry for the delay in approving this, I needed to see the comment in context before approving and WP didn’t make that easy. My appended remark is based on the consistently observed behavior of denialists. True it doesn’t apply to every single denialist, but I think it would pass the 95% confidence threshold! – Ben]
Can you match the scientist to the ‘scientist’?
Which scientist insisted that a ‘paper’ of his on climate sensitivity that appeared on a discussion forum of the American Physical Society was ‘peer-reviewed’, despite the ‘reviewer’ insisting otherwise, and despite 125 errors of fact and logic?
Which scientist believes the sun has an iron core?
Which scientist who signs himself PHD, despite never having attained a qualification higher than Dip Phil, is a spokesperson for the British Association of Colliery Management?
Which scientist was described during a libel action as ‘The Plantiff (Dr. B*ll) is viewed as a paid promoter of the agenda of the oil and gas industry rather than as a practicing scientist.’, but then strangely withdrew the suit rather than defend his integrity and good name?
Which sea level expert, when the trend in sea level shows an inconvenient increase, eliminates it by the simple expedient of rotating the graph? (Fig 5)?
With friends like these, Anthony ……
[Are you kidding? Anthony was in there like a dirty shirt! – Ben]
I really like how you falsify a graph, because of cherry picking dates, with your own graph of cherry picked dates. I cant believe people are dumb enough to fall for crap like that. You know very well they are more inclined to belive your side, but please tell me how your way is “properly”?
You show unscientific practice and clear bias, your word is garbage
[So you’re pretending that David Rose didn’t try to hide the longer term, more statistically meaningful, rising temperature trend and that showing more data is somehow “unscientific” and “clear bias”? Good luck with that. – Ben]
Looking at the graphs above, the top one is correct,the bottom one shows a different time span.
[The top one “correctly” hides the real temperature trend, the bottom one reveals David Rose’s lie by adding factual context. – Ben]
the top one is one of the most blatantly cherry-picked graphs ever. You can download the HADCRUT 4 data yourself, and make trendlines for every single month in the past to the present. Guess which month in 1997 you have to choose to get the lowest possible trend? Guess which month is shown in that graph?
Well Ben ,I noticed you deleted my Reply,shit Blog, shit you.
[You didn’t notice anything, much like your insights into David Rose’s chart lies. All comments here must be approved by me and I very rarely delete them. WordPress surely told you that your comment was waiting to be approved. – Ben]
I can confirm that Ben has never deleted any of my comments even though he really doesn’t seem to like them.
As far as the plots go, the fact that it is possible to cherry pick a 16 year interval during which the end point is the same as the start point does indicate that any trend, if there is one, is currently extremely weak and the best the alarmists can hope for is to argue for a non-stationary process (which is not implausible given the complexity of the climate system). It is certainly weaker than was claimed by the alarmists 16 years ago and as recently as yesterday where they claim that there are recent extreme weather events occurring this year compared to 16 years ago which are due to AGW. This is clearly untrue because over the last 16 years there has been no trend. If anything you need to compare the weather in 1900 to present, since that is where the temperature is different (albeit by a tiny amount which is hidden by the extreme y-axis scaling of the graph).
But the fact is that both plots and conclusions are correct. Over a longer period, there is definitely a tiny trend upwards (tiny in comparison to the diurnal and annual cycles and geographical variations and certainly nothing to wet your pants about). Over the last 16 years, there is no trend, I don’t think that anybody disputes that. It is obvious from the data that over the last 16 years there has not been a trend. The question is, what physical processes can cause a hiatus in the trend given that CO2 levels rose over that period? The alarmists would probably say it is ENSO. The Scientists would probably say that the trend observed over the larger timescale and the lack thereof over the shorter timescale is natural variability and would have occurred without the extra CO2 from humans.
[Rose’s plot was based on no scientific premise, it was motivated simply by an intention to deceive. Scientists support the longer period plot because it aligns with known natural and man-made trends as well as climate simulations. This isn’t eeny, meeny, miny, moe. – Ben]
It does not really matter what motivated the plot. The fact that it is possible to select a 16 year period where the start point is the same as the end point does tell you that there was no trend over those 16 years. Do you agree with that?
[Um, no. It’s called statistics, not drawing lines. – Ben]
The statistics of linear regression is very much about “drawing lines”. It is correct to say that there has been a rise in that data since 1900. But it is also correct to say that there has not been any rise for the last 16 years.
Since there has not been a rise between 16 years ago and now, then you cannot go around attributing different weather patterns today (extreme weather events, if indeed they are different, which they do not appear to be) to then as being caused by a rise in temperature. For the simple reason that the temperature has not risen.
It really is as simple as that. Repeat after me: There is no trend in the 16 year data points.
[Drawing lines ≠ understanding lines. – Ben]
If you ask someone to pick out a lone mountain on the horizon and they point to the mountain – that ain’t cherry picking. It the the case of RSS, for example, its just identifying a portion of the chart that is flat, on average.
[Your self-serving analogy has no relation to climate science. Or honest, objective analysis. “Look over there!” doesn’t cut it. – Ben]
Oh, come on, Ben, It’s as plain as the nose on your face. (Wait! I apologize if you are noseless!)
[It sounds like you’d rather change the subject. – Ben]
The subject is that the flat area is plain to see. No “cherry picking” is needed.
1. Look at the chart.
2. Identify the flat runs of the data.
One of those will be the last 16 years.
Simple, no?
[You’re really quite boring. And yes, what you are doing us classic ignorant (or deceitful) cherry-picking. – Ben]
“The fact that it is possible to select a 16 year period where the start point is the same as the end point does tell you that there was no trend over those 16 years”
Such a statement can only be made by someone who does not understand statistics. I wish I could understand why people like you feel that you are offering any value to a conversation by noisily trumpeting your ignorance. Do you understand that 16 years contain 192 months? And can you grasp the notion that drawing a straight line between two data points out of 192 might not be telling you the whole story?
@RW
It is clear from the discussions involving Marco (below) that there is no disagreement with the empirical fact that the data for those particular, and I would like to stress, THOSE PARTICULAR, 16 years do not show a statistically significant temperature rise.
Let’s look at it another way. Let’s ask the question, can we find a 16 year interval where there is no temperature rise? Everybody agrees that we can do that. So let’s not argue about whether or not that particular 16 years is flat or not. Because it is clear that those 16 years are.
That does not mean that there is not some underlying process which is generally rising which has gone through a statistically likely hiatus of flatness. It does not mean that there is no AGW overall. It simply means that during those 16 years there was no rise in the temperature of that data set. OK? Can we at least agree on that empirical fact?
Clearly you do not know what statistically significance is. It does not mean that there was “no rise”. We can agree that it is very easy to find periods of time during which the temperature trend you derive from a simple linear fit is not statistically distinguishable from flat, because that’s true. On your misinterpretations of the last 16 years of data, no, we cannot agree on that.
Chris Smith. You are confused about what you are looking at rather like someone on the shore, as the tide comes in, who looks at the height of the waves breaking and retreating on the beach and decides to analyse whether the tide is coming in by noting two data points – the first when a particularly big wave (such as an El Nino) goes a long way up the beach and the second when a wave recedes down the beach. Drawing a trend line between the two, our naive/marine mechanics denialist/sceptical beach visitor decides that the tide is going out or stationary so is happily confident enough in their judgement to go to sleep on the beach. “Unfortunately,” they drown because they were to thick to realise the difference between waves and tides…
Yeah, and an Emissions Trading Scheme run by Bankers is the answer to cool the planet? Geesh, not too smart at all.
[Is this one of those crypto-anti-Semite references? Or do you think it should be run by, say, carpenters? – Ben]
So long as they are not Jewish carpenters! [/sarc]
Thanks again, Ben, for providing a counterpoint to the antics of the bullshitters.
Can’t put my hand on the reference, but I recently read a NOAA funded paper from the mid-1990’s evaluating climate models. In the paper they observed that a 15 year flat or falling period would invalidate the climate models tested. Given that the current climate models have improved, but still do provide consistent results, a flat no-trend does not bode well. Something appears to be missing in the models.
[So which “flat or falling period” is the one you hold as definitive? I’ll take a guess and infer that you’re claiming that “climate” completely defined by air temperature. Do other climate trends follow the same pattern? Or is this just a denialist talking point that you happened across. – Ben]
Well, I have a paper from August 2009 (“State of the climate in 2008”), which has the same message on p. 23 and 24. Two excerpts:
“Near-zero and even negative trends are common for intervals of a decade or less in the simulations, due to the model’s internal climate variability. The simulations rule out (at the 95% level) zero trends for intervals of 15 yr or more, suggesting that an observed absence of warming of this duration is needed to create a discrepancy with the expected present-day warming rate.”
And a little later:
“Given the likelihood that internal variability contributed to the slowing of global temperature rise in the last decade, we expect that warming will resume in the next few years, consistent with predictions from near-term climate forecasts”
As you can read in the first sentences on p. 23, a trend from the HadCRUT3 dataset was calculated as an example, so for the sake of the argument it is ok to use this dataset. Now, open the trend calculator on Skeptical Science (http://www.skepticalscience.com/trend.php), select HADCRUT3v, enter Start date 1997 and End date 2013, which gives a trend over almost 16 years of 0.012 degrees per decade (of course the data of the end of 2012 are not included).
Given the fact that 1) the trend over the past 16 years was zero and 2) warming didn’t resume in the last few years, what does this tell us about the models?
[This tells us that you've latched on to one momentarily useful metric and are ignoring everything else. – Ben]
Sorry, forgot to link the NOAA-report. Here it is: State of the Climate in 2008.
Ben, just for the record, can you at least confirm that the trend over the last 16 years of HADCRUT3 was flat?
Secondly, why is it not appropriate to use HADCRUT3 as a metric? It is the same dataset used on page 23 in the NOAA-paper (see http://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/cmb/bams-sotc/climate-assessment-2008-lo-rez.pdf).
Thirdly, what is this ‘everything else’ I’m ignoring?
a) the trend is not necessarily zero. First of all, selecting HADCRUT3v when an updated version is available is questionable to say the least. But even when we take that, we get a slope of 0.012 +/- 0.131. Now, note that 95% confidence interval: it means that there is a reasonable chance that the slope is quite positive!
Add to that that the slope quadruples when you go one year back (1996). This suggests something special happened there. Hmmm…what might it be?
b) None of the models have freak El Nino’s like the one we had in 1998, nor medium-strong double La Nina’s. The poor modeling of ENSO is well known (it’s getting better, though), but the discussion on the models in NOAA’s is, for lack of a better word, flawed because it does not take this into account.
Why would it be questionable to use the same dataset as mentioned in the NOAA-paper? According to Met Office, the HADCRUT4 dataset shows a trend of about 0.03 degrees per decade (source: http://metofficenews.wordpress.com/2012/10/14/met-office-in-the-media-14-october-2012/) over the last 15 years, which is also a near-zero trend to say the least.
About this 95% confidence interval of the HADCRUT3v dataset: it indicates that there is a 95% chance that the real trend lies between -0.12 and +0.14. You are right in pointing out that the trend may have been positive, but the lower boundary of the 95% CI (-0.12) indicates that the trend may have been negative as well. The uncertainty in the trend goes in both directions, doesn’t it?
As for your reasoning that a higher trend is obtained if one starts in 1996: of course this is true, but the statement in the NOAA-report basically says that 15 years of a zero trend are ruled out by the models. Period. No disclaimers. So my question again: what does all this tell us about the models?
It is questionable because there is a new data set. Also of particular cherry-picking interest: the September 1997 to September 2012 trendline is the lowest trend you can find in HADCRUT4. Go two months in either direction from September 1997, and your trendline goes significantly up.
And I note you ignore my comment on ENSO and starting in a freakish year. How unsurprising! Heck, as William Connolley also pointed out (see Ian’s link), NOAA also pointed out the ENSO issue. Notably in the same paragraph as your quote. Gee, how even more unsurprising to see quote-mining.
@marco
It is not really cherry picking because the gauntlet was already thrown down. The hypothesis was that (basically) if there is AGW then it ought to be very unlikely that you would be able to find any contiguous block of 16 years where the temperature is flat. So scientists looked for a 16 year block of no rise, and then they said, “hey, hold on a minute, you said that this ought not be very likely under the conditions of AGW. What’s going on?”
You can’t call it cherry picking in this instance because the challenge was to find such a period. Personally I do not think that a 16 year hiatus in a process as complex as global temperature tells you very much (other than there was no warming during that particular time period), but it is a fact that the gauntlet was laid down and it is also a fact that those 16 years are flat and to point that out is not “cherry-picking”, it is a necessary response to / test of the claims of AGW theory.
Let me ask you a question: How many years of flat temperatures, and in which data set(s) should it be observed, would be enough to satisfy you that Global Warming is not occurring? If you can’t give a number for this question then you do not really have a scientific proposition.
You could also pose the opposite question to the other side of the debate. But I would leave it to you to construct the question. It would be very interesting to read their responses. Basically, what kind of temperature record would it take to convince them that they are wrong.
Chris, May I ask you where you got your degree? Last time I checked, the period used in David Rose’s article was NOT 16 years. I can understand that journalists are mathematically challenged, but you seem to claim some higher order understanding, so I wonder where that bad math is coming from.
Second, you should by now have noticed the “ENSO adjusted” comment in the NOAA quote so nicely abused by Willem. If not, I’ll give you a few moments to ponder about that. If you have, could you please tell me why you ignored it? In that case you clearly have no intention to pick up any gauntlet I may throw down, so I need to know before I make any effort.
Willem, this denier nonsense is discussed and explained here: American Drinker Climate Forecaster of The Year 2010
People like you should take courses in elementary statistics and reading comprehension then you wouldn’t look so foolish when you make gross errors. Or are you deliberately distributing lies and misinformation, it is always hard to tell with you deniers?
Ian, first of all, thanks for the link to the interesting article. Secondly, I know the climate debate has become heavily polarized, but I couldn’t appreciate the disrespectful and aggressive tone of the rest of your comment. Please ask yourself: would you tell me this face-to-face in the same way? I honestly don’t think so.
I am fully aware of the fact that there are plenty of deniers around, but I explicitly reject your suggestion that I belong to this group. Believe it or not, my intention is absolutely not to distribute lies and misinformation. In contrast, I posted my first comment to educate myself. Indeed, as Phil Clarke suggested below, I found this NOAA-paper and the citations in a comment on WUWT. It won’t be a surprise to you that I couldn’t find any critique on these citations on WUWT, so when I found out that somebody on this site was referring to an older NOAA-paper which basically stated the same, I decided to post it here. Not to spread misinformation, but to see what the answers would be. I found the answers from Ben and Marco, for which I thank them, not very compelling, but the link you provided and the explanation from Phil Clarke suggest that I have overlooked an important thing. I fully acknowledge that I am far from a climate expert, nor am I a native English speaker (as you probably noticed). Any or both of these facts may explain why I wasn’t paying attention to the apparently critical sentence I didn’t quote.
I am just interested in the climate debate and absolutely willing to change my point of view. I will therefore study the link you provided and the paper from Foster and Rahmstorf to which Phil Clarke referred and seriously reconsider my view. Now, how does that sound from a “denier”?
If it looks like a duck, if it quacks like a duck then it probably is a duck. Don’t pretend that you are not an AGW denier it is so obvious. The term for people like you is “concern troll”.
Willem, oddly enough you DID provide the link to the NOAA report. So, why did you not read it? And if you did, what made you so confident to cite those few sentences, but leave out the quite clear caveat “ENSO-adjusted”?
And a bit related: why do you frequent a disinformation site like WUWT?
Inquiring minds like to know.
If you were able to read, you would know that there are almost 140 signatories. So, Watts isn’t counted in the total number of scientists. Of course, bringing out that fact would help with your half-truth, half-lie propaganda, now would it?
[Ok, I’ll bite. How many signers are credible, active, climate scientists? Still pleased with yourself? – Ben]
OK, but for clarity, would you count a MPhil in geology and geophysics as a climate scientist?
[So coy! Unless they have a relevant background and publication record, no. – Ben]
OK, that leaves out Micheal Mann, I guess.
[Nope. Assuming you mean “Michael” Mann. – Ben]
Well, gotta run now. You are a good sport and kudos to you for allowing comments from the evil deniers.
[Had your fun? – Ben]
Er-hem … ENSO-adjusted warming in the three surface temperature datasets over the last 2–25 yr continually lies within the 90% range of all similar-length ENSO-adjusted temperature changes in these simulations (Fig. 2.8b). Near-zero and even negative trends are common for intervals of a decade or less in the simulations, due to the model’s internal climate variability. The simulations rule out (at the 95% level) zero trends for intervals of 15 yr or more, suggesting that an observed absence of warming of this duration is needed to create a discrepancy with the expected present-day warming rate…
I very much doubt that you ‘happened across’ the quote from page 24 of the 2008 NOAA State of the Climate report – more likely you’ve copied and pasted it from some denier website. Without understanding it. The part of the quote you carefully removed makes it clear that NOAA were talking about a 15 year trend in the temperature series after it had been adjusted for the effects of ENSO. Given that the 16 years have the most powerful El Nino of last temperature at the start of the period, and as Foster and Rahmstorf, showed its certain that the models have in fact not falsified.
Here’s a hint: not everything you read at WUWT is true, far from it.
Thanks very much for your explanation Phil, that was very helpful. See also my reply to Ian above.
You seem to be getting more popular (or is that less popular?) with the deniers. Anyway, you know what I mean – there seems to be more of them. And those deniers don’t seem to be getting any smarter. Where I am, in Perth, Western Australia, pretty much every year I can find a day in October that is hotter than one in January, or any month for that matter. And so, in denier fashion, I hereby conclude that spring is hotter than summer. This year we had a 36°C day in mid-October.
[Pick the right two points and you can “prove” that the Earth will be in the grip of a new ice age within a month! – Ben]
@Marco, I couldn’t find the ‘reply’-button on the bottom of your comment, but I hope you read this anyway:
“Willem, oddly enough you DID provide the link to the NOAA report. So, why did you not read it?”
In fact I did, but I failed to fully understand it, as has become clear to me now.
“And if you did, what made you so confident to cite those few sentences, but leave out the quite clear caveat “ENSO-adjusted”?”
Again, because I misunderstood it and I copied it from a reaction on WUWT (see http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/12/06/a-problem-nearly-one-third-of-co2-emissions-occured-since-1998-and-it-hasnt-warmed/#comment-1166809), in which the ENSO-adjusted sentence also wasn’t present.
“And a bit related: why do you frequent a disinformation site like WUWT?
Inquiring minds like to know.”
I occasionally visit the site, just as much as I visit sites like SkepticalScience. Why? Because I’m interested in the climate debate and would like to learn more about it, from a range of views. You will probably say that I shouldn’t visit WUWT then, but then I suggest you leave that choice to me.
Look, I think I have made it clear in my reaction to Ian that I failed. Let me repeat that: I FAILED. I think that should be enough.
Let me see if I have this right; Peter Geick impersonating a member of the Heartland Board to obtain internal documents, that’s a crime worthy of countless posts, one attracting 71 updates.
Alec Rawls impersonating a climate scientist and tearing up his confidentiality agreement to obtain a draft of IPCC AR5. That’s fine.
Viscount Monckton impersonating a delegate to disrupt UN climate talks, no problem.
Moderator DBStealey also logging on as posters Smokey and Boehm to peddle the site party line, yep, we’re cool with that.
Richard Courtney signing himself PhD on open letters, when he’s never actually studied for a Doctorate. Shhhh!
The moral bankruptcy doesn’t seem to be getting any less over there…. LOL!
[Seems straight-forward to me! – Ben]
So Willard and his very odd small number of assorted non-science based ersatz experts, of questionable competence, want me to believe there has been no global warming for the past decade?
Meanwhile back in the real world, NOAA’s reliable record keeping database shows that November 2012, globally was the fifth highest on record since temperature keeping began in 1880.
Source:- http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/global/2012/11
Oops! I guess I know who and whom to consult, should I require reliable climate data!
As usual, looks like Willard and his tiny band of paid for comment ersatz experts, have literally and figuratively, been caught dealing from the bottom of the deck of 52 joker cards, yet again!
[Epic face palm]
“If you once forfeit the confidence of your fellow citizens, you can never regain their respect and esteem. It is true that you may fool all of the people some of the time; you can even fool some of the people all of the time; but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time.” ― Abraham Lincoln. Speech at Clinton, Illinois, September 8, 1854.
Just posted this, but it won’t get published…
A Hockey stick from a Yamal tree.
Except the canonical 1998 and 99 Hockey Stick studies do not include the Yamal reconstruction. How could they when is was not published until two years later?
You just revealed the depth of your ignorance and the shallowness of your case. Even your cartoons are wrong! For that Christmas Gift, many thanks!
Henchmen tend to be nameless, working behind the scenes as a means to an end, so don’t feel bad that you don’t recognize them. Essentially they are a metaphor for people who do some unsavory things in support of the cause. Peter Gleick is a good example of someone who created a “nameless” identity and worked behind the scenes.
Merry Christmas to the Holy Trinity of Dave Stealey, Smokey and D Boehm… LOL!
I fail to understand why climate change activists cannot except anyone who casts doubt or advances criticism of climate science as they see it. Climate science from what I’ve read is exceedingly complex and hardly subject to tolerable levels of precision or projection of outcomes. causes or effects. Many of the proponents of climate change or global warming are not qualified but view themselves as experts. Activists such as yourself have tried hard to discredit scientific authorities who do not share your deep and perhaps ill-founded fears of catastrophy for planet earth.
[Intelligent, open-minded people welcome scientific investigation of any subject. The problem is “climate skeptic” arguments wither in that environment. I’d love to see your list of “scientific authorities” that reject global warming! There are none. By the way planet earth will be just fine regardless, it’s homo sapiens that I’m concerned about and the self-inflicted changes to the environment that has allowed us to thrive. – Ben]
Ben: Which homo sapiens are you concerned for? The ones who freeze to death due to high energy prices or the ones who starve to death due to the high food prices which are now linked to energy?
[Yes, even denialist straw men deserve our sympathy. – Ben]
The one species I’ll have the least concern/sympathy for is Homo sapiens denierstupidensis; a sly creature which is very selfish, dishonest and can’t be trusted. It also always fouls its environment.
[But… it might be trainable! – Ben]