MIT climate scientist Dr. Richard Lindzen’s talks in Prague
By Dr. Lubos Motl
Richard Lindzen’s talk in Prague
Richard Lindzen, prof emeritus at MIT, is the most famous atmospheric physicist among the climate skeptics. I know him from Greater Boston, and because he spends several months in every year in Paris, I have convinced him that Czechia (Prague but even Pilsen) is worth seeing.
Václav Klaus, whose new book about the climate was coincidentally published these days, was moderating Lindzen’s lecture in the Autoclub of the Czech Republic, which was the main “business part” of his trip to our land. He was lecturing in a relaxed atmosphere (he kindly offers the files for his presentation through his e-mail rlindzen at mit.edu) and was primarily focusing on tricks by which the alarmists are influencing the public.
Lindzen sketched events some 25-30 years ago which elevated several fringe climatologists to the focal points of a new industry and a newborn massive political movement. Natural scientists like James Hansen were able to accumulate finances for themselves and the new movement only at the point when others, like Michael Oppenheimer, had helped create an alliance of about 1100 non-governmental organizations in 120 countries along with allied lawyers and began to spread libelous books that their targets couldn’t effectively defend themselves against.
The main tool of the manipulation is the constant repetition of slogans and forcing of absurd thesis as the substitute for original propositions which are easily acceptable by the listener (the so-called bait-and-switch trick, or a trick lure-and-replacement). In the case of the climate, the bait is the seemingly obvious proposition that the climate is changing and man contributes something, but the agreement of scientists and most laymen with that is misinterpreted as their support for the statement (the substitute or switch) that there exists a serious problem linked mainly with the consumption of energy, which justifies fear, immense expenses, deep changes in the society, and also the deceleration of the progress in climatology (which Lindzen, an expert, is especially disturbed by). While the efforts to impose a full government control over the energy sector began in the 1960s, the reality is that the energy consumption is clearly positively correlated with the GDP per capita and other self-evidently desirable variables.
Lindzen showed numerous graphs implying that the global mean temperature is an artificial quantity whose changes (smaller than one degree C even after 100 years) are negligible relatively to the spatial variability …
Prof. Roger Pielke Jr.: ‘Trump pulls out of Paris, Trump wins. Trump stays in, Trump wins’
Dr. Roger Pielke Jr.
Excerpts:
Will he or won’t he? There has been much discussion of whether President Trump keeps the US in the Paris Agreement. If we are having this debate then Trump has already won.
Much of climate debate (at least in the US) is about symbols, and Trump has roundly routed his opponents on this turf
So think of the Paris Agreement not as a policy framework, but rather as a potent political symbol.
As a symbol, here is how the politics works: Trump pulls out of Paris, Trump wins. Trump stays in, Trump wins. Fun game, huh?
In a perceptive piece @jmcurtin writes: “The only White House climate debate is between those who want to use the Paris climate agreement as a branding and lobbying opportunity, and those who favour leaving it altogether.”
Similarly, President Trump has made a big deal of reversing Obama’s Clan Power Plan. This too is a symbolic action. According to EIA, the impact of the CPP is pretty marginal:
- In fact, its projected impact of the CPP is far less than market prices for fossil fuels, again according to EIA:
- Consider that the CPP would likely have been tied up in the courts during a Hilary Clinton administration and you get … symbolism.
- Advocates for more aggressive climate action should use the opportunity afforded by the Trump presidency to fundamentally rethink climate policy in a way that would be politically robust.
- Did the recent Science March help to bring people together? Early evidence says: probably not.
- After failing to get Bret Stephens fired from the New York Times, the nation’s leading climate scientist, Michael Mann (@MichaelEMann) has focused his vitriol on cartoonist Scott Adams, of Dilbert fame (@ScottAdamsSays).
- I can’t believe I just wrote that. (Seriously, if you are not yet blocked by Mann, go over and read his Twitter feed for a glimpse into the world view of the nation’s most important climate scientist.)
- Pro tip: If you don’t want to be viewed as analogous to a religious fundamentalist, don’t go after cartoonists.
…
- Here is an interesting paper on how science assessments treat minority or divergent views (not well).
- Are low-energy light bulbs now in such wide use that they are influencing total US energy use? These guys think so.
- A new paper in Science suggests that the notion of
Climate – conflict link debunked: Professor: ‘Little evidence to suggest that the conflict…is in any way correlated to climate change’
Andrew Montford (now Deputy Director of GWPF) has a report on the talk.
The talk is about 35 minutes long and is followed by questions and discussion.
Near the beginning she gives her conclusion:
“There is very little evidence to suggest that the conflict and protest patterns that we see across developing countries is in any way correlated to climate change.”
A bit later she says that there is a widespread assumption that conflict occurs naturally under adverse weather conditions, but in fact the opposite occurs – cooperation is far more likely in difficult conditions. But cooperation doesn’t make headline news, so we don’t hear about it in the media.
For similar reasons, I think it is unlikely that the Guardian or the BBC will report on Prof Raleigh’s lecture.
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‘Climate Violence?’ with Prof Clionadh Raleigh
Recent research purports that climate change is creating conflict, and leads to unchecked migration. But three distinct flaws characterize such research efforts; they often ask the wrong questions, present poor evidence, and remove references to other, more likely factors that cause conflict. It often gets translated into a perception that poor people act violently for ‘natural’ reasons, or are spurred by physical hazards. We all know that high climate vulnerability and conflict co-occur in the same general regions, but we know far less about what does shape the power and competition dynamics at the local level. Basically, who are the winners and losers of environmental change?
The reality from local research is that far more cooperation is occurring at the local level to mitigate and adapt to environmental challenges; and that a tremendous amount of development money is being directed towards adaptation and risk management. This changes the local calculus for violence. As a result, conflict, when and where it does occur, is often between the ‘winners’ from climate change, development and transitions to democracy.
Join in with twitter using hashtag #natureconflict
About the speaker
Professor Clionadh Raleigh is a Professor of Human Geography at the University of Sussex. She previously served as a Lecturer in the Department of Political Science at Trinity College, Dublin and an external researcher at the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO). She is a political geographer, and her work is focused mainly on conflict, governance, and the social consequences of climate change in sub-Saharan Africa.
Professor Raleigh directs the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data (ACLED) project,
Atmospheric Scientist Dr. Fred Singer on the ‘failure of UN IPCC to find credible evidence for anthropogenic global warming’
By S. Fred Singer
Exploring some of the intricacies of GW [Global Warming] science can lead to surprising results that have major consequences. In a recent invited talk at the Heartland Institute’s ICCC-12 [Twelfth International Conference on Climate Change], I investigated three important topics:
1. Inconsistencies in the surface temperature record.
2. Their explanation as artifacts arising from the misuse of data.
3. Thereby explaining the failure of IPCC to find credible evidence for anthropogenic global warming (AGW).
A misleading graph
Fig 1 20th century temps; top—global; bottom– US
Although these two trends look similar, they are really quite different: the initial warming is genuine, but the later warming is not. What a surprise! I wouldn’t exactly call it ‘fake,’ but it just does not exist; I try to demonstrate this difference as an artifact of the data-gathering process, by comparing with several independent data sets covering similar time intervals.
The later warming is contradicted by every available dataset, as follows:
**the surface record for the ‘lower 48’ [US] shows a much lower trend; [see fig 1, bottom]; presumably there is better control over the placement of weather-stations and their thermometers;
**the trend of global sea surface temp [SST] is much less; with 1995 temp values nearly equal to those of 1942 [according to Gouretski and Kennedy, as published in Geophysical Research Letters in 2012];
** likewise, the trend of night-time marine air-temperatures [NMAT], measured with thermometers on ship decks, according to data from J Kennedy, Hadley Centre, UK
** atmospheric temperature trends are uniformly much lower and close to zero (during 1979-1997), whether measured with balloon-borne radiosondes or with microwave sounding units [MSU] aboard weather satellites [see fig 8 in ref 2]
** compatible data on solar activity that show nothing unusual happening. Interestingly, the solar data had been assembled for a quite different purpose – namely, to disprove the connection between cosmic rays and climate change [see here fig 14 of ref 2], assuming that the late-century warming was real. In the absence of such warming, as I argue here, this attempted critique of the cosmic-ray–climate connection collapses.
** proxy data also show near-zero trends, whether from tree rings or …
Delingpole: ‘Climate Change’ Is No More Credible than Magic Says Top Physicist
…Watch: Greenpeace Co-Founder Dr. Patrick Moore 45 min. interview – ‘There is no such thing as climate science’
Published on May 1, 2017
In a very special #LwC, for one full hour, we sat down with Dr. Patrick Moore, PHD in Ecology and founder of Greenpeace, and dissected the scam that is modern “climate change”.…
MIT Climate Scientist Dr. Richard Lindzen: Believing CO2 controls the climate ‘is pretty close to believing in magic’
Richard Lindzen is the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Atmospheric Sciences, Emeritus at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
MIT atmospheric science professor Richard Lindzen suggests that many claims regarding climate change are exaggerated and unnecessarily alarmist.
Introduction:
For over 30 years, I have been giving talks on the science of climate change. When, however, I speak to a non-expert audience, and attempt to explain such matters as climate sensitivity, the relation of global mean temperature anomaly to extreme weather, that warming has decreased profoundly for the past 18 years, etc., it is obvious that the audience’s eyes are glazing over. Although I have presented evidence as to why the issue is not a catastrophe and may likely be beneficial, the response is puzzlement. I am typically asked how this is possible. After all, 97% of scientists agree, several of the hottest years on record have occurred during the past 18 years, all sorts of extremes have become more common, polar bears are disappearing, as is arctic ice, etc. In brief, there is overwhelming evidence of warming, etc. I tended to be surprised that anyone could get away with such sophistry or even downright dishonesty, but it is, unfortunately, the case that this was not evident to many of my listeners. I will try in this brief article to explain why such claims are, in fact, evidence of the dishonesty of the alarmist position.
The 97% meme:
This claim is actually a come-down from the 1988 claim on the cover of Newsweek that all scientists agree. In either case, the claim is meant to satisfy the non-expert that he or she has no need to understand the science. Mere agreement with the 97% will indicate that one is a supporter of science and superior to anyone denying disaster. This actually satisfies a psychological need for many people. The claim is made by a number of individuals and there are a number of ways in which the claim is presented. A thorough debunking has been given in the Wall Street Journal by Bast and Spencer. One of the dodges is to poll scientists as to whether they agree that CO2 levels in the atmosphere have increased, that the Earth has been warming (albeit only a little) and that man has played some part. This is, indeed, something almost all of us can agree on, but which has no …
Skeptics Attend People’s Climate March With New Report & Billboards – Denied Media Credentials
Skeptics To Attend People’s Climate March – Will Feature Billboards Rejecting Premise of March and Hand Out New Report Debunking Marchers’ Claims
Contact: Marc Morano – 202-536-5052 – [email protected]
WASHINGTON DC, April 29, 2017 – Climate skeptics from the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT) will be in attendance at the “People’s Climate March” in our nation’s capital on Saturday April 29 and will be bringing large billboards countering the premise of the march.
Images of billboards that will be at the march below:
The skeptics will also be handing out a newly released report “How to Talk Climate Change Issues 2017” offering a virtual A-Z debunking of the climate claims that will be heard at the march.
Click here for full report: “How to Talk Climate Change Issues 2017”
The “Talking Points Memo,” by veteran climate journalist Marc Morano of CFACT’s Climate Depot, is a complete skeptics’ guide for elected officials, media and the public on how to discuss global warming backed up by dozens of citations to peer-reviewed research.
“We look forward to wading into the crowds at the march and presenting the scientific facts to counter this utter nonsense, ” Morano said. “Make no mistake, climate campaigners who tout UN agreements and EPA regulations as a way to control Earth’s temperature and storminess are guilty of belief in superstition,” he added.
The need for a “Talking Points Memo,” according to Morano, became evident after several government officials fared poorly in their attempts to defend a skeptical view of climate change in recent high-profile media interviews.
“It is obvious that many in Washington badly need information on how to articulate the case against man-made climate change fears,” he said.
Many of the arguments put forth by global warming advocates either embellish or distort the scientific facts on a host of issues, ranging from rising sea levels and global temperatures to polar caps to extreme weather and polar bears, among others. The “Talking Points Memo” is designed to arm people with important facts so they can better engage in climate change debate with those advocating the UN/Al Gore position. Footnotes are provided to substantiate all the claims made in the document.
The Talking Points Memo is available at ClimateDepot.com and CFACT.org
Excerpt: “Global warming hype and hysteria have for
Academics Play the ‘Global Warming’ Card: ‘Gov’t money that supports Big Science has made scientists into politicians’
Philip Kitcher of Columbia and Evelyn Fox Keller of MIT are professors specializing in the philosophy and history of science. The philosophy and history of science is pretty boring, so people in that academic field try to write about controversial subjects so as to make their work less boring. The professors have written a book: The Seasons Alter, How to Save Our Planet in Six Acts.
The book is filled with scientific errors regarding climate science. Clearly the authors have a poor understanding of the main topic. They are apparently attracted to apocalyptic predictions of disaster that call for farsighted persons, such as themselves, to warn the world. Apparently that role is so enticing that the authors’ critical facilities have been put into hibernation.
Global warming has an establishment side and a dissenter side. The establishment receives vast amounts of government money because they claim that we face an imminent global warming disaster. Nobody would care about their field of science except for the predictions of disaster. Nor would they get much government money if they didn’t predict a looming disaster. Environmental groups are part of the establishment side. Looming disasters are stock in trade for environmental groups.
Meteorologist Joseph D’Aleo: Are Global Warming claims & the so called Consensus, a Sinister Betrayal of Science?
By Joseph D’Aleo
Excerpt:
Sir Karl Popper, an Austrian-British philosopher and professor is generally regarded as one of the greatest philosophers of science of the 20th century. Popper is known for his rejection of the classical inductivist views on the scientific method, in favor of empirical falsification: A theory in the empirical sciences can never be proven, but it can be falsified, meaning that it can and should be scrutinized by decisive experiments.
See in this chapter by James R. Fleming, Professor of Science, Technology and Society at Colby College, how the scientific method worked in climate change theories all through history.
That held until politicians with a globalist viewpoint were searching for a cause that would drive their globalization goals. The Club of Rome was an organization formed in 1968 consisting of current and former heads of state, UN bureaucrats, high-level politicians and government officials, diplomats, scientists, economists and business leaders from around the globe. It raised considerable public attention in 1972 with its report The Limits to Growth. The club states that its mission is “to act as a global catalyst for change through the identification and analysis of the crucial problems facing humanity and the communication of such problems to the most important public and private decision makers as well as to the general public.” In 1991, the club published The First Global Revolution in which they decided:
“In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming…would fit the bill…It does not matter if this common enemy is “a real one or…one invented for the purpose.”
That is when massive investment began into building a case for their cause by funding the UN, global universities, scientists and in government agencies through published work and reports ensuring an alignment around the theory that we are responsible for all bad things that happen and paint them as unprecedented. That investment has exceeded $1 trillion dollars. Meanwhile instead of engaging and supporting critical thinking and testing of hypothesis, there was concerted effort to paint anyone not supporting their theory as deniers with not so subtle attempts to liken them to holocaust deniers and those who denied the dangers of cigarettes.
Scientists practicing the scientific method were demonized, stripped where possible of their role in universities and in government agencies. Many have remained silent to keep their position. …