Climate Science not settled

[Mugwump]

^ what you are describing as a fact is actually a risk, ie the expansion of government power at the expense of the citizen. It is one possible bad response to climate change. There are better responses, of course. It is like saying that clearing your house of fleas by burning down your house is a bad idea, so you should tolerate fleas. Carbon pricing does not have to involve a massive expansion of government spending by bureaucrats spending forcibly extracted taxes.

The statistics for the hottest year may be ropey, though I doubt it ; most scientists put science itself above their political interests. You'd need to see the numbers, the number of repeat observations, and understand the instrumental error, and Mr Daniels doesn't really make that case at all.

[Pies4shaw]

Conspiratorial piffle. Why disseminate this tripe?

[David]

PM, you forgot to include the link to that article. I dug it up for you:

http://www.infowars.com/the-truth-about-climate-change/

Infowars. Where have I heard that name before? Oh, that's right, that's the website that brought us such investigative journalistic scoops as:

The 21 Goals of the Illuminati
http://www.infowars.com/21-goals-of-the-illuminati-and-the-committee-of-300/

Fluoride: the silent killer!
http://www.infowars.com/so-why-are-we-still-drinking-fluoride-again/

Chemtrails: your government is poisoning you!
http://www.infowars.com/information-for-chemtrail-skeptics/

The Boston Marathon bombing hoax!
http://www.infowars.com/proof-boston-marathon-bombing-is-staged-terror-attack/

The Sandy Hook shootings, too...
http://www.infowars.com/fbi-says-no-one-killed-at-sandy-hook/

9/11 was an inside job! (naturally)
http://www.infowars.com/911-inside-job-ten-years-later/

The moon landings were... (can you guess?)
http://www.infowars.com/the-apollo-moon-landings-exposed-in-2014/

I think climate change denialism is in good company.

[Wokko]

I've never seen infowars and Alex Jones looked at in a positive light, even among the truther/conspiracy types. They look at him as controlled opposition meant to make them look ridiculous.

When your views and stories are so batshit that even the crazies think you're crazy (or against them) then I think, despite what I've said about source snobbery, that it's a source that can be safetly ignored.

[think positive]

Where is this $£$%^%%$ global warming? It ain't in Melbourne that's for sure

[stui magpie]

Don't worry, when the 40+ degree days hit in Feb no one will be going Yay, it's hot.

[Mugwump]

[think positive]

[Piethagoras' Theorem]

[stui magpie]

[The Night]

Interesting read, seems for some the issue isnt forever settled.

http://www.caintv.com/climate-scientist-dr.roy-spenc

Truth.

Dr. Roy Spencer is a real problem for global warmists. They can't say he's not a climate scientist, because he is. They can't accuse him of taking oil industry money, because all the funding he's ever received has come from the U.S. government - including his work with NASA, NOAA and the Department of Energy.

And they can't refute his arguments, because he knows what he's talking about and they don't. So when he comes across their latest nonsense - this time the claim that 2014 was the warmest year on record - he takes aim and destroys the claim in beautiful fashion:

"Science as a methodology for getting closer to the truth has been all but abandoned. It is now just one more tool to achieve political ends.

Reports that 2014 was the “hottest” year on record feed the insatiable appetite the public has for definitive, alarming headlines. It doesn’t matter that even in the thermometer record, 2014 wasn’t the warmest within the margin of error. Who wants to bother with “margin of error”? Journalists went into journalism so they wouldn’t have to deal with such technical mumbo-jumbo. I said this six weeks ago, as did others, but no one cares unless a mainstream news source stumbles upon it and is objective enough to report it.

In what universe does a temperature change that is too small for anyone to feel over a 50 year period become globally significant? Where we don’t know if the global average temperature is 58 or 59 or 60 deg. F, but we are sure that if it increases by 1 or 2 deg. F, that would be a catastrophe?

Where our only truly global temperature measurements, the satellites, are ignored because they don’t show a record warm year in 2014?

In what universe do the climate models built to guide energy policy are not even adjusted to reflect reality, when they over-forecast past warming by a factor of 2 or 3?

And where people have to lie about severe weather getting worse (it hasn’t)? Or where we have totally forgotten that more CO2 is actually good for life on Earth, leading to increased agricultural productivity, and global greening?

It’s the universe where political power and the desire to redistribute wealth have taken control of the public discourse. It’s a global society where people believe we can replace fossil fuels with unicorn farts and antigravity-based energy.

Feelings now trump facts.

At least engineers have to prove their ideas work. The widgets and cell phones and cars and jets and bridges they build either work or they don’t.

In climate science, whichever side is favored by politicians and journalism graduates is the side that wins.

And what about those 97% of scientists who agree? Well, what they all agree on is that if their government climate funding goes away, their careers will end."

Dr. Spencer really cuts to the heart of the matter here: The pushing of global warming orthodoxy is all about money and power, which should be clear to you - even if you don't understand the science - just by watching the behavior of politicians and activists and understanding what typically motivates them.

If global warming is going to cause catastrophe that will devastate life on Earth, then we must act, and that means governments confiscating massive amounts of money and using it to fund new controls on the methods of industry and the everyday habits of people. Whether it's the amount of carbon pumped into the air by smokestacks or the kinds of cars Americans drive, they'll seek to control it using the rationale that without the controls life on Earth is in jeopardy.

Basically, it comes down to giving liberals something to do.

You have to understand that in a liberal's mind, the most terrifying thing imaginable is for government to actually be pared down to what the framers envisioned, because that would mean most of them couldn't hide behind bureaucratic day jobs protected by a public employee union, and would actually have to fend for themselves in the private sector. So they have to make up crises that justify their place on the public payroll, and the confiscation of private-sector wealth to pay their salaries.

What better gambit than one that sees the private sector threatening life itself simply by operating normally, only to have government swoop in and save the world? It matters not that their past predictions have not come true, and that even if their current predictions did come true there is no reason to believe it would cause the kinds of catastrophes they forecast. This is about justifying their existence, and bringing in some of their friends who don't want to have to go out and get real jobs either.

They'd love if they could also use it as a political wedge but that doesn't tend to work too well because the public doesn't buy their nonsense, probably because in spite of all their bluster the public actually hears on occasion from a truth-teller like Dr. Spencer. Even with the media firmly in their corner, it's hard for them to sell utter nonsense to people who don't have an inherent stake in believing it.

[David]

I note that the author of that piece writes "Christian spiritual thrillers", and that the three most passionate climate sceptics in this thread are all self-proclaimed devout Christians. Which leads me to wonder, what on earth is it that attracts a certain kind of Christian to contrarianism on climate change? Unlike the people who get paid to publicly refute the scientific consensus, I don't believe that the average fundamentalist Christian is financially benefiting from this in any way, and there's certainly no theological reason to oppose environmentalism. So, what's the deal?

[Tannin]

Yer right .... "news" from the same loopy twit who said "It is a little known fact that the extra carbon dioxide (and methane, an especially potent greenhouse gas) emitted by joggers accounts for close to 10% of the current Global Warming problem."

He is, of course, one of the very, very, very few actual scientists who can't see the problem. Notice the disgraceful way he

(a) says how credible he is because he (almost alone amongst high profile deniers) gets his money from the US government. (Or at least he claims - he has connections with three different right-wing American climate denial organisations, including the notorious Heartland Institute -

yet

(b) claims that the 97% of climate scientists who disagree with him can't be trusted because they get their pay from the same people he does!

[Tannin]

[sixpoints]

Dr Roy Spencer is a Creationist.
He seems to let his religious/political beliefs sway his scientific judgement.
No evolution or man made climate change for this bloke.
The web is teeming with articles that point out numerous flaws in his research and statistical analyses.
Maybe he is on his own religious/climate denier gravy train. Plenty of books to sell and speaking engagements for a climate change/evolution denier.