Following a recent article by David Suzuki, I wrote some comments on the website that attracted some fairly strong opposition and I think the discussion is worth recording here. As the threads get deeper it is harder for me to reproduce is sequence while cutting out the off-topic comments.
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My original comment:
I guess Suzuki would call me a denier but I am just a guy with a pretty good reasoning mind who looked harder at the research findings over a decade ago. I started out accepting what guys like Suzuki were saying because it sounded plausible and I had not studied the questions myself. Once I did, I found a significant and growing body of evidence from a range of disciplines that not only cast doubt on the global warming scare, but revealed massive violations of the scientific method among the global warming crowd. In short, the movement had been politically motivated from the 1980's and has become hysterical now. The more their ideas are proven wrong, the more cover ups are revealed, the louder they yell and the more they insist on implementing massive political controls over our activities. For goodness sake the IPCC keeps contorting its models and statements to fit the measurements instead of producing accurate predictions using models and consistently fail to acknowledge their models have failed, despite solid evidence over the last nearly thirty years. Their models have been so far from reality that any rational and attentive person would dismiss them out of hand. Don't take my word for it, just read the work of many of the world's top researchers in climate, statistical modeling, paleo-climatology, astrophysics, geology, atmospheric physics and even good old history. Make up your own mind and don't accept anyone's wild statements of catastrophe as truth - such claims have always been proven baseless in the past.
Critic 1: Go Team McGruer!
In summary DMcG = master of logic and nice guy.
Thousands of climate scientists working for decades = incompetents / liars/ political shills engaged in a decades long global fraud involving every scientist from the oldest to they youngest working independently across the world, speaking in different languages and rooted in widely divergent cultures, with no shift in the core advice regardless of shift back and forward in Government from Democrat to Republican and back in the US, from Labour to Conservative in the UK......... always the same message!
Reality = whatever DMcG says it is regardless of .....er reality.
His post is not wholly without merit: when he suggests that you 'don't take his word for it,' you might want to look at information from organizations such as NASA. The following is a really clear summary:
As for DMcG, I suspect that he knows that he is 'just a guy with a pretty good reasoning mind' because he sat down and worked it out himself but didn't check the findings with anyone else.
Critic 2; "I am just a guy with a pretty good reasoning mind."
Comment under Tom Harris ICSC video:
Dave McGruer 2 years ago
Good work Tom. I especially like your comments about the moral meaning of opposing fossil fuel use. Since human life depends on our ability to reshape the environment, opposing such actions is clearly anti-life. Modern environmentalism is out to return man to the stone age.
My response to critic 2: I am proud of every word in those statements. It is human nature to shape our environment to improve our lives. We are not lower animals surviving by instinct. Today's environmental movement is anti-human. Many of the movement's leaders have been clearly quoted to that effect, perhaps the worst being that "the best thing that could happen for the Earth is a plague that wiped out most of humanity" (approximate quote). If you are a defender of that statement, you are definitely anti-human. I am pro-human. As to taxation of property, the use of force against innocent citizens is not proper in a free society. If I buy a property then I should own it - this is the very nature of a property right. It is not moral or proper for an organized group to take my money under threat of seizure or imprisonment if I fail to pay their arbitrary demands. In a free society all transactions are voluntary and for mutual benefit and not done under coercion. Do you assert otherwise?
Critic 1: What environmentalists think or do is besides the point.
This is a scientific issue, based on a scientific case that has developed over nearly 200 years with a rapid acceleration of our understanding occurring in the last 30 years. We are now at a point where 100% of national and international level academies of science accept the reality of AGW, frankly in the face of that level of agreement what Greenpeace do or don't think is irrelevant.
You might plead your pro-human position, but if you ignore the scientific advice then you are closing your eyes to a central consideration in the preservation of human well-being in favor of short term profit.
Critic 2: Of course property is more important than life itself. Who could disagree with that?
Approximate quote? LOL.
My response to critics 1 and 2: I did not say property is more important than life. Property rights are a corollary and necessary extension of the right to life. If you do not have the right to property then you are working without owning the product of your work - you are a slave.
More quotes from environmentalist luminaries:
Patrick Watson, Greenpeace co-founder: "It doesn't matter what is true, it only matters what people believe is true."
John Holdren, advisor to President Obama for Science and Technology, in his 1977 book (paraphrased for brevity): Women could be forced to abort their pregnancies, whether they wanted to or not. The population at large could be sterilized by infertility drugs in drinking water or food. Single mothers and teen mothers should have have their babies taken away from them and given to others. A transnational 'Planetary Regime' should assume control of the global economy using an armed police force.
Prince Philip: "In the event that I am reincarnated, I would like to return as a deadly virus, in order to contribute something to solve overpopulation... We need to cull the surplus population."
Ingrid Newkirk of PETA: "Mankind is a cancer; we're the biggest blight on the face of the earth." "Phasing out the human race will solve every problem on earth, social and environmental."
Maurice Strong, architect of the IPCC ideology: "Isn't the only hope for the planet that the industrialized nations collapse? Isn't it our responsibility to bring that about?"
Director of the CRU, Phil Jones, on the subject of scientific papers he does not want to see referenced by the IPCC: "I can't see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin [Trenberth, see quote from him in earlier post above] and I will keep them out somehow - even if we have to redefine what the peer-reviewed literature is."
Stephen Schneider, prominent IPCC member: "Scientists need to get some broader-based support, to capture the public's imagination... that of course. entails getting loads of media coverage. So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we may have...each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest."
Critic 3: David, the fact that greenhouse gasses warm planets has been the undefeated scientific understanding for over a century.
Do greenhouse gasses warm planets?
"The heat-trapping nature of carbon dioxide and other gases was demonstrated in the mid-19th century"
My response to critic 3: I am absolutely not saying there is no greenhouse effect. I am saying that the dominant greenhouse gas is water vapour, which plays a crucial role in the autoregulatory mechanism of the Earth's temperature. When CO2 rises, water decreases slightly and so the net effect is minimal. This idea from the research of an atmospheric physicist.
I am saying that the science shows clearly that global warming has caused CO2 to rise for hundreds of thousands of years, not the converse.
I am saying that the greenhouse effect of CO2 diminishes as its concentration rises.
I am saying that satellite measurements for 30 years proves the alarmists theory of the troposphere warming mechanism is false, that the IPCC models are false (they keep adjusting them to back-fit).
I am saying that humanity can adapt to slight changes in temperature and has done so for a long time, even before the industrial revolution unleashed the unlimited potential of the human mind to improve our lives.
I am saying that if e are left free of the political and intellectual shackles the alarmists wish to use to throw us backwards in progress, then we will solve all the challenges posed by climate change, whether natural or human influenced.
I am saying that over history, natural cycles of climate change dwarf the tiny effect humanity has had on the climate.
I am not denying that the climate changes, I can name many sources of such change and discuss it over decades, centuries, millienia or millions or billions of years. Change is a constant in our climate, it has never been stable and never will, unless it becomes stable to to tremendous advances in technology many years ahead.
Critic 1: This is from New Scientist:
"A simplified summary is that about 50% of the greenhouse effect is due to water vapour, 25% due to clouds, 20% to CO2, with other gases accounting for the remainder."
The article goes on to say that the problem is longevity. Water vapor has a rapid atmospheric turnover typically days while CO2 can persist for anything from 100 to 800 years in the atmosphere. In basic terms, over time the CO2 levels will continue to increase.
However, as I am not a scientist, I hesitate to make definitive statements so here is the link to source.
Critic 2: Why is it so hard for people simply to understand that however great the greenhouse influence of water vapor is, we have no direct control over it. Because warm air simply holds more water vapor, water vapor will act as a feedback and amplify whatever else we do, but we can't control atmospheric water vapor directly. If we want to control water vapor, all we can do is focus on those factors that we do have control of -- which essentially means approaching the global warming problem the same way we would if water vapor was not an issue at all. Mainly it means focusing on CO2 emission levels from the burning of fossil fuels. (To bring down water vapor.)
My response: But that is precisely the point - we cannot control it. A major error of alarmists is they reverse the impact of clouds, thinking water vapour magnifies CO2 effects, when high clouds actually cause the planet to cool. This alone invalidates the entire IPCC models structure. Measurements show that as CO2 has increases, water vapour has decreased exactly enough to offset the greenhouse effect, thus no significant change takes place unless there is a change in the energy input into the system or a change in the cloud albedo level.
On a tangent here, a reader should be able to tell by now that there are large areas of climate science that are not yet certain and we are learning more all the time. The cloud effect and its causes, the land use change effect, the question of climate equilibrium, the various solar and planetary orbit cycles, the cosmic ray effect, discoveries in paleo-climatology, and the list goes on. For anyone to claim definitively that a single simple variable like CO2, present in minute, trace amounts in the atmosphere is responsible for dangerous, man-made change that we will not be able to correct or adapt to is to ignore all the principles of reason and science.
Supporter: Good points, Dave. Climate activists are convinced the ends justifies the means, no matter how unethical the means actually are.
My response: Thank you Tom. As you know, I believe the ethics of this subject are vastly distorted by the alarmists. I believe their underlying philosophy is anti-human. Otherwise, they would celebrate the vast reduction in climate deaths over the last 80 years and the rapid advance in quality and longevity of humans too, all powered by advances in fossil fuel energy.
Critic 2: What makes you think any of us are arguing that that fossil fuel technologies haven't brought any great advances? But that is an entirely different question than the one that is now front and centre, which is whether in the course of enjoying all this good fortune that oil and fossil fuels have bestowed upon us, we have overlooked a by-product of their use, belatedly found to be the destruction of our climate. Unless we take care!
My response: What makes me think it is the fact that many intellectual leaders of the environmentalist movement state clearly that they consider what I call advances to be regressive and wish to see humanity revert to the pre-industrial age. Further, since the advances made actually allow us to better deal with ANY potential problems, regardless of their cause, we are better off continuing to use the most economical source of energy. As we advance, we pollute less, get more efficient and discover new energy sources, so let's keep going on this path, which is the best one mankind has ever seen. More, since the climate is patently not being destroyed, but only slightly modified, measured in fractions of a percent, there is not even a danger on the horizon. See my other comments about the equilibrium mathematical discoveries of Miskolczi elsewhere.
Another thing is that the type of care you espouse, known as the precautionary principle, actually paralyzes man and blocks all advance. It states that if an action might cause some type of negative effect some day then you should not proceed. What is missing from this is the positive side, which is often ignored. For example, energy from fossil fuel has been the foundation of the industrial revolution, which has led in a brief couple of centuries to the greatest improvement in human life in all history - and this is despite the modest negative effects, which are normally larger at the early stage and then men learn how to reduce them as they progress.
For example, a hundred years ago men burned coal to heat their houses, causing terrific indoor and outdoor pollution, yet human life advanced at a great pace. With further advances came cleaner use of coal, then oil, then natural gas, each stage getting more efficient, cleaner, safer and more abundant. When men have sufficient wealth to be concerned about a problem then they will address it, if they are free (not prevented by government power) to do so.
To illustrate this, consider that natural gas is cleaner than coal or oil, yet environmentalists attempt to block every pipeline, every trainload, every new well, every new extraction technology that scientists and businessmen come up with. They attempt to block advance and then lobby for a reversal of existing progress, or else they want to take some type of impossible leap forward, mystically bypassing all the incremental advances needed for real progress, straight into some nirvana of pollution-free energy. Then even when a new energy source is proposed or discovered, they even oppose that! This pattern is a clear illustration of their anti-human ideology.
Critic 2: How do you measure fractions of a percent of a climate? Our industrial age has propelled atmospheric CO2 from 280 to 400 ppm, a 28% increase, the consequences of which you can't ignore if you want to make a balanced assessment of the fossil fuel age.
My response: 400ppm is 400 millionths or 0.000004%. That is what I mean by fractions of a percent. Clear?
My second comment: I find the research of Ferenc Miskolczi regarding the saturated equilibrium equation for atmospheric energy exchange with space to be fascinating. I just re-read one of his 2010 published research articles and a 2009 paper summarizing his work up to that date. Miskolczi was the first to calculate the precise global mean infrared optical depth of the Earth’s atmosphere — the exact radiative-transfer measure of the greenhouse effect. What he found was that the Earth’s atmosphere maintains a constant effective greenhouse-gas content and a constant, maximized, “saturated” greenhouse effect that cannot be increased further by CO2 emissions (or by any other emissions, for that matter). After calculating on the basis of the entire available annual global mean vertical profile of the NOAA/NCAR atmospheric reanalysis database, Miskolczi has found that the average greenhouse effect of the past 61 years (from 1948, the beginning of the archive, to 2008) is:
a) constant, not increasing;
b) equal to the unperturbed theoretical equilibrium value; and
c) equal (within 0.1 C°) to the global average value, drawn from the independent TIGR radiosonde archive.
During the 61-year period, in correspondence with the rise in CO2 concentration, the global
average absolute humidity diminished about 1 per cent. This decrease in absolute humidity
has exactly countered all of the warming effect that our CO2 emissions have had since 1948.
Similar computer simulations show that a hypothetical doubling of the carbon dioxide
concentration in the air would cause a 3% decrease in the absolute humidity, keeping the
total effective atmospheric greenhouse gas content constant, so that the greenhouse effect
would merely continue to fluctuate around its equilibrium value. Therefore, a doubling of
CO2 concentration would cause no net “global warming” at all.
Surface warming is possible only if the available energy increases. This may happen through changes in the activity of the Sun, or through variations of our planet’s orbital parameters, or through long-term fluctuations in the exchange of heat between the ocean and the atmosphere.
There are also some man-made sources. Air-pollution by aerosols (soot, black carbon, dust, smog etc.), and large-scale surface modifications according to urbanization and land-use change may—and probably do—alter the amount of absorbed and reflected shortwave
energy, and can hence lead to change in the long-term energy balance.
I note that Miskolczi's work appears entirely consistent with the work done in the fields of geology, paleo-climatology, astrophysics and cloud formation, that find a close link between cycles of the Sun and cosmic ray penetration of the atmosphere causing cycles of cloud coverage, which of course affect the net energy reaching the Earth. Logical and validated by cross-disciplinary research showing very strong strong correlations over all major time scales.
My response: Okay, so I read the link and it appears that when Miskolczi reported new findings that appeared to contradict the orthodoxy of global warming he was ostracized along with a fellow author. No surprise there. The great discoverers of history have mostly been opposed vehemently by the established interests such as the Catholic Church, or even the Church of David Suzuki.
