Friends…these are comments received in response to the last email I shared from Alastair Gordon, who himself a scientist, does not believe that climate change is primarily or materially induced by mankind. His reasons were set out in that email and are persuasive. One of the responses I share below is from Jules Diamond who asks Alastair a number of pointed questions in order to broaden the conversation. Alastairs answers are clear and again, persuasive.
The investments being made in renewable energy, the shutting down of the fossil fuel industry, combined with the lack of investment in any form of planning for the inevitability of climate change (whether its manmade or not) is perhaps the greatest overall calamity of our time. Stating the situation in basic terms: we are investing literally trillions of dollars to move away from a fossil fuel environment, into renewables, which to date cannot come close to satisfying the need for energy; we have hurt our fossil fuel industry in North America thereby reducing supply and enriching other countries, many of which are unsavoury…such as Russia, Iran etc. We are doing all this in pursuit of an outcome which is likely not necessary if you agree with the comments of Alastair Gordon and others; moreover, even if Alastair is wrong and climate change is significantly impacted by mankind, there is slim to no hope that we can make the necessary adjustments to make a difference. In other words, the world, or that portion of it which is focused on this endeavour, is on a very expensive, mind numbing fools errand….
Comments follow:
He is bang on. The statement that there is a 98% consensus amongst scientists was always a lie and a distortion. The science is not and never was 'settled'. In fact, there is a great deal of evidence that many climate scientists question the 'consensus', but are intimidated from speaking publicly.
Many serious students of the global warming data (most notably Ross McKettrick from Waterloo, Mark Steyn, Barbara Currie and numerous other scientists, share Mr. Gordon's views.
His summary of the evidence is excellent. This article should be widely distributed. Unfortunately the commitment to carbon reduction has become a religion and its adherents are often immune to reason.
These are some good thoughts. But global warming must be true because Greta Thunberg says it is, after all she did pass her high school science course.
Another thought that as recently as the 1970's global cooling was all the rage. By now we should have been in another ice age.
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I have always favored the adaptation model. Mostly because humans can’t go back to living in caves or maybe under the conditions that existed in Feudal Europe. Renewables can’t power our sophisticated societies. Electric cars which the left is pushing cause almost as much carbon emissions as saved by having the car over the car’s life. In any case the US is expecting brown outs this year and if everyone had an electric car there is not enough electricity production and distribution to power the cars let alone the economy.
I am not a scientist but as an observer I have been saying to man made climate change ideologues that the earth has gone through several warming and cooling periods before humans existed: earning derision for my efforts.
It is refreshing to have a scientist explain his facts in a coherent and understandable manner. However, in my opinion there must be a cross examination of his facts and those that propose climate apocalypse. Because I am not a scientist and have not studied any of the relevant arguments it needs to be argued in court with a large audience. It is so important since politicians are destroying the most effective economies in the world on the alter of climate alarmism.
Statements such as these have to be put up to full scrutiny by well-meaning knowledgeable peers: NOTE- THE RED WORDS ARE THE QUESTIONS THAT NEED ANSWERING… THE BLACK lower case words ARE THE RESPONSES FROM ALASTAIR GORDON.
- In fact, those ice cores are the only real scientific evidence in this debate, evidence that is untainted by selection bias or changes in the location, distribution, and accuracy of measurement technology since humans began to track temperature.
The Antarctic and Siberian ice core samples are a record of global temperature, atmospheric carbon dioxide content, and precipitation (snow) for every winter over the past nearly million years. That hard, empirical evidence is untainted by advances in human measurment technology or revisionist history. There is a lot of additional compelling evidence regarding climate, but none are as "hard" or as resistant to interpretation as the historical record provided by the ice core samples. I guess that's what I meant by "only real hard scientific evidence". More below. - CO2 affects temperature on this complex planet shows that CO2 is irrelevant to temperature See your point 3.
- Since cause must always come BEFORE effect, then the evidence shows that temperature change is the CAUSE and CO2 level is the EFFECT. When Al Gore presented his version of the ice core samples, he showed the graph lines of CO2 and temperature over around 600,000 years, and sure enough they rose and fell together. Hence, he decalred, CO2 drives global warming. However, if you looked at every warming or cooling cycle within that 600,000 years on a scale that the lines were not visually on top of each other, you would see that every global warming period temperature started 400-1000 years BEFORE CO2 rose, and fell 400-1000 years AFTER global temperature entered a cooling period. Since cause must always come before effect, saying that CO2 is the cause and warming the effect defies every principle of science and logic.
The explanation is obvious. The warming period started as a result of the sun heating up. The sun is not a furnace that always runs at the same temperature, and it doesn't give a damn about life on any of its planets. When water warms up, it cannot dissolve as much CO2 (think about your Coke going flat in a glass as it warms up, identical to the oceans slowly warming and releasing its dissolved CO2 into the atmosphere). In other words, the CAUSE is warming, and the EFFECT is increased CO2 in the atmosphere. - If CO2 were an amplifier of global warming, then a warming planet (caused by solar variations) would drive more CO2 from the oceans into the atmosphere, and we would see a positive feedback loop with runaway warming. Yet that has never happened Yes, the ice core samples forced many alarmists gave up on blaming CO2 for warming, but they then fell back on an equally bogus notion that CO2 would amplify any solar-driven warming, and make it worse. If this were true, then every time the sun warmed up a little (or our orbit took us a little closer to the sun), the oceans would warm and release more dissolved CO2 into the atmosphere, thereby further driving up the temperature until we reach a runaway positive feedback loop and we all cook. But once again, the ice core samples show every warming period giving birth to a cooling period, and every cooling period giving birth to a warming period. There is clearly no catastrophic positive feedback loop in either direction. And that is why CO2 is NOT a greenhouse on this complex planet
Hope this helps! You have properly identified that challenging the party line and conventional wisdom is intolerable for many so-called friends, associates and even family members. However, if we look over the past century, it is clear that "go along to get along" has led to the most horrific outcomes imaginable, and that there is no honor in unquestioning conformity. After a while, the truth may prevail.
Thanks for sending. Makes the most sense to me under the circumstances of not being scientifically knowledgeable.
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Awful tough for us non-scientists to know the facts/truth. Like with everything else, facts/truth are whatever you need them to be to support your conclusions. Beyond frustrating – it’s very dangerous.
I am inclined to agree with him, especially as the Global Warming pundits have not been able to link Cause and Effect other than by circumstantial evidence. A linkage which is so common that we are prepared to kill based on circumstantial evidence aka coincidence.
However it does also mean that whatever the reason, its happening and possibly Flin Flon or Black Lake will become a Winter sun resorts in the next decade.
A few comments:
- The climate model. If I came to you with a model for investing in the stock market, would you not be interested in the model’s pro forma performance with the past? Would you not ask about its accuracy in the decades since the model was developed? Might you be astounded if I told you the model did well as long as I adjusted the historic data to conform to the model and as for the time since I developed the model, it was a failure? Alastair’s comment that “Not one of their predictions based on absurd climate modeling [sic] has come to pass” is something we all know, if we had been paying attention, yet most have chosen to ignore.
- The threat of apocalyptic global cooling. Yes, there was such a concern back in the sixties. Newsweek and Time had articles on the coming ice age. There had been some years of cold winters and since back in the sixties everyone knew that the climate changed and that there had been previous ice ages (anyone living in southern Ontario could see the effects of the ice age), some scientists wondered if ice ages were cyclical and we were already late for the next one. What Alastair doesn’t say is that a few years of hot summers in the seventies led some who apparently forgot how complex the earth’s climate was and that it was forever changing to believe the any climate change must be the fault of humans. So you see who the climate change deniers really are.
- The 97% agreement about so-called climate change. This number had been cooked up just as the climate models had been. Sadly, those scientists who stood up to the propaganda were cancelled and too many others got the message and did not wish to jeopardize their own livelihoods. That some scientists would not tolerate any discussion or criticism should tell us all we need to know about the trust we should place in their models.
Like you, I am astounded at how effective the propaganda has been and how many much smarter than I have accepted it. The explanation for this is a broader one than merely trying to understand something as difficult as climate.
Joseph Shier