What the climate change people say need not be taken as 'truth', but we want to be able to find out where their models are weak and their assumptions are ones we would not make. So I had hoped that the anti-climate-change people would reveal some of these. Unfortunately, they don't. I have yet to find anti-climate change person who provides good quality critique that helps me truly evaluate models and assumptions. Instead, most of what they do is sneer at 'warmists', and try smear their arguments especially by unwarranted associations. This page shows the following examples:
The opposers sound plausible and even convincing, but if you analyse what they say, it does not stack up. They use smear and sneer a lot, and very little actual argument. See what you think.
Would the climate change opposition be convinced if some absolutely massive piece of evidence for climate change came up? I doubt it. As the evidence mounts for climate change, for humanity's responsibility for it, and for the urgency of changing our lifestyles and aspirations, they do not become convinced. Instead, they work even harder to undermine each piece of evidence.
That, at least, is what I observe. It seems to me a spiritual issue, not a logical or scientific one. To the extent that this is so, then these people are working against God and his will. Some of them at least are doing so for the 'kicks' of pulling people down. It has often been the case down through the ages that people who take God and good seriously are made fun of and pulled down by those who refuse to take their God-given role.
So most anti-climate-change people should not be accorded serious attention, however plausible their arguments seem. Do we not have a responsibility to work with the best knowledge that we have? The greenhouse effect, that an increase in 'climate change' gases traps more of the sun's heat, is from a basic law of physics; those who deny it would have to offer other laws of physics to overcome it; they don't.
| The text | Sounds plausible | But ... | |
|---|---|---|---|
| A number of readers wrote in to express surprise at the recent letter from the US scientist Dr Michael Mann claiming that his famous "hockey stick" graph, showing temperatures having suddenly soared at the end of the 20th century to unprecedented levels, had been endorsed by the US National Academy of Sciences. Neither of the two Congressional inquiries involving the NAS did anything of the kind. | Sounds damning, as though Mann has made an error of fact or even a lie. | But it's not: Congress is not the same body as the NAS. Both could be correct - but Booker makes it sound as though the correctness of one makes the other a lie. | |
| Both found that the computer model used to create Dr Mann's "hockey stick", completely rewriting climate history, was fundamentally flawed. | This "fundamental flaw" seems to undermine the whole argument for climate change. | All models are flawed, by virtue of being models. Is this flaw 'fundamental' enough to mean that we need to nothing at all about climate change? So I wait to hear from Booker what the flaw was, so I, the reader, can make up my own mind. He doesn't tell us. He merely claims 'fundamentally flawed'. Why should I believe him? | |
| This is one reason why, despite all the efforts made to defend Dr Mann's graph by his academic colleagues (describing themselves as the Hockey Team), I have described it as "one of the most comprehensively discredited artefacts in the history of science". | So the curve is not just slightly wrong, but a comprehensive lie, it would seem. | But wait! All we have hear is what Booker himself described it as. | |
| Now the Hockey Team have done it again. As part of the general drive to hype up panic over global warming in the run-up to December's Copenhagen conference, several of them are among the authors of a paper, published in the September 4 issue of the US journal Science, which claims to rewrite the climate history of the Arctic. As in the original version, the new hockey stick-shaped graph produced by their computer model shows temperatures gently declining for 900 years, then suddenly shooting up in recent years to record levels. | (simply preparing for the punchline below) | ||
| As usual, there are several odd features of their model, which is largely based on data from Professor Philip Jones's Climate Research Unit in Norwich - the data he refuses to publish because it is a state secret. | Suggestion that Jones is hiding something? | Insidious smear, rather than actual facts. | |
| But perhaps the oddest aspect of all is the contrast between this new study and the comprehensive record of Arctic temperatures compiled by the Danish Meteorological Institute from 1959 to the present day. Anthony Watts's Watts Up With That blog (see the blog posting on September 4) created an animated graphic showing the DMI's temperature changes over the past 50 years. Far from confirming the hypothetical upward spurt claimed by the Hockey Team's computer, the most remarkable feature of the actual record is that it shows no significant change whatever. | The punchline! The warmists seem just plain wrong. |
But if you look at the Danish Meteological Institute's page on this, you find it's not quite that simple. Their data is actually a 'reanalysis' using a computer model, in fact two different models, one for 1959-2006 and one since 2006. The actual data used by the model is a highly complex dataset from the ECMWF, which measures a host of things like 'high cloud cover', precipitation, soil parameters, and many different temperatures - and only goes up to 2002.
So, what we have here is not 'facts' discrediting a 'mddel', but two different models operating on different data. Why should we believe the model that Booker happens to prefer over the other one? He does not give a reason - because he does not dig deep enough. | |
| The unshakeable faith in computer models shown by the scientists who programme them would be the envy of any religious sect in the world. | Seems the final nail in coffin: the CC scientists are put across as merely a religious sect. | But Booker himself shows "unshakeable faith in computer models". Worse: he does so without admitting he is using a model. At least the CC scientists admit they are using models, recognise they have flaws, and try to refine them. Booker doesn't. Would the word 'hypocrite' (pretending to be something we are not) be appropriate? |
Most of Christopher Booker's writings seem like this: citing what appear to be facts, but are not relevant, making unwarranted comparisons, sneering, trying to smear by association, being cavalier with data and sources, and being hypocritical.
I know some of the people in the climate change camp, such as Sir John Houghton, and find him a good, cautious scientist, willing to admit where he is wrong, and a serious follower of the Lord Jesus Christ. I trust him rather than Booker.
Copyright (c) Andrew Basden 2009, but you may use this material subject to certain conditions.
Written on the Amiga with Protext. Number of visitors to these pages: .
Created: 1 November 2009. Last updated: