There’s no doubt that global warming is a load of unscientific nonsense, but it’s far from clear what that means in terms of the future, because although the climate is clearly not going to comply with this idiocy in the long run, it’s also true that people continue to believe a lot of unscientific nonsense.
From a scientific point of view the future is clear: CO2 is a relatively unimportant gas, there are extremely good candidates in sulphates and con-trails for the 1970-2000 warming which is ALL that was ever a concern, the bandwagon can be traced from its beginning and at no point was science ever in the driving street – instead it was environmentalists pushing it uphill against the science all the way, and whilst climate takes a time to reveal the truth – the climate itself will not comply with this millennium stupidity.
However … I don’t think that is enough to convince many people, indeed I can be certain that there will always be a minority who will continue to believe that CO2 must be a major problem irrespective of the lack of any evidence to support them.
And … unfortunately, just as NASA completely fabricated a new metric (which doesn’t show temperature but a fake figure which is only vaguely related to temperature) … so it does not seem beyond the bounds of belief, to think that NASA, or whoever controls the satellites that have provided the only independent and untampered with metric for (near) global temperature would find a way to change their output so as to create a fabricated warming in the satellite measurements as well.
But I know myself … that as soon as I have to start altering the data to make it fit the theory … I lose confidence in the theory. And I’ve worked in cultures where data tampering was the norm … and not only is it very obvious what is going on to anyone coming in … but the culture spreads until the whole organisation is rotten and not fit to work for. This I think … this knowledge that they cannot make the data fit … will be more poisonous to the global warming madness than anything we sceptics could ever say.
The key change is one from a culture of “the data generally agrees – even if we’re currently in an outliar period” to one of “the data does not agree – so we have to find a way to make it agree”.
To put it another way … the very fact they stopped using temperature data and started using a metric that no longer means anything (certainly not temperature) was an admission that the models had failed.
Where now?
Scenario 1
That the academics and eco-nutters suddenly embrace science, admit that they were wrong and sceptics get financial compensation for the time and effort we have spent because of their mistakes … (just having a laugh).
Scenario 2
That as those academics leading the nuttery retire, as new data continues to come in showing they’ve been stupid, that the “new guard” find a way to maintain their own status by subtly dropping the stupidity about CO2. No apologies, no compensation, but at least we move closer to real science.
Scenario 3
That the culture of data tampering remains so endemic that no one has a clue what the global temperature is doing and the scam keeps going because everyone is clueless as to one is really happening.
Scenario 4
We already know that global warming is pretty much a religion amongst its believers. But they at least pretend it has something to do with “science”. However, one strong possibility is that global warming gradually morphs into a fully fledged religion. The advantage of this approach for the believers is this is what they currently are anyway – and there is none of the inconvenience of pretending to try to justify their views from science. In other words, we see a move toward the view that if the majority of people believe something to be true, then it is true – and you’re wrong to reject it irrespective of what the (impartial) evidence says.
Addendum – The stupidity of Greens
Of course, one factor I omitted was the utter stupidity of Greens. Just as it is very likely that their zealous cleaning of the atmosphere of sulphates caused a sudden increase in temperature (1970-2000) so it’s equally possible that the Greens will jump on another bandwagon with equally unforeseeable consequences – either for the climate – or for their own credibility – or global warming may suddenly become a huge inconvenience for their next crusade (whatever that is).
For example – I’ve no doubt that even if it caused 10x as much pollution, most greens would fall for “electric planes”. And as con-trails are likely to be causing some degree of warming – a sudden change like that could see a massive and …. yes we all know “worrying change” in the climate. OK, electric planes are about as crazy as electric cars for serious journeys (not a two minute trip to the “wholefood” shop). But so are most of the schemes invented and pushed by greens.
Completely agree with you, but what do you mean by “NASA completely fabricated a new metric”?
What is this new metric?
A temperature is either a direct measurement or some form of average. What NASA have done is taken a temperature, used it not as a temperature – but implied it means “heat”, pretending what they are measuring is greater than the noise and then multiplied and massaged it before adding what is now a NON TEMPERATURE metric back to the temperatures to get a new form of metric which is neither a temperature, nor heat nor anything physical at all.
To use an analogy – it’s like measuring road traffic – not by recording the road users – but (because it’s raining) by going to a local swimming pool and recording the number of swimmers. And then multiplying the figure by some arbitrary scale that gets the kind of result you want, and then adding it back to the number of cars you first measured. It really has no meaning at all … and it certainly is no longer “number of cars” just as NASA’s metric is no longer anything to do with temperature.
Thank you for your answer, I understand now.
In fact all other organisms that produce temperature data must do the same as NASA, because they release data very similar (I think of NOAA or Hadcrut), but what do you think about satellite data (RSS and UAH)?
One of the great rules in science is that you must average like things. In simple terms you can’t take some apples and pears – average them and call them an “average apple”, because they do not share the property of being apples. Likewise you can’t take surface temperatures and then average them with ocean HEAT and then claim it is surface TEMPERATURE. That is fraudulent and it’s amazing they get away with such clear and intentional dishonesty.
Satellite data, covers far more of the globe and it does so in a way that means it is an average of temperature. It is also largely free from the repeated and manipulative “cherry picking” of stations that so distort the land based measurements particularly from the effects of urban heat and I particularly like it because the process is auditable – in the sense that a similar qualified researcher could have access to the same data would almost certainly come to a very similar figure.
That is in sharp contrast to the ground based data – where it is impossible to get hold of much of the data (so who knows what rubbish there is in it), we know much of the data is extremely poor quality and entirely unfit for purpose and we know for certain that if I or someone else equally qualified took the data we’d get a very different result because there is so much fiddling in the way it is compiled.
That does not mean that either approach ( if done honestly and e..g without the fraudulent “apple and pear” approach by NASA) is a better absolute measure of global temperature – but fortunately all we are really interested is the relative trend, and because the satellite data is so much more reproducible and is a temperature (unlike the NASA fraudulent metric) you’ve got to be stark raving bonkers or a religious zealot to use the likes of NASA.
Sea ice extent trends could be interesting in the next decade or two.
FYI – NASA is already researching hybrid electric planes.
http://www1.grc.nasa.gov/aeronautics/hep/
Don’t talk to me about sea ice – I’m currently in correspondence with someone who thinks the rocks of stonehenge slid across a vast lake. They have this idea of snow free freeze-thaw ridge free surface where the slightest breeze will send 4tonne rocks skating for hundreds of miles … and I hate to say it … but they make alarmists look scientific and open minded.
I guess you’re talking about a possible link to North Atlantic Oscillation? If so, then yes I would very much like to see that confirmed as it would be an important first step in understanding long term climate.
But I’d imagine the next big stushi, will be when the argo buoy HEAT (not temperature) they used to fiddle the temperature – goes through another random change and instead of heating they get cooling. Then having used the warming to massive upjust the temperature, the same con will create a massive downjust.
Of course like Mann – they might just invert the temperature and stick it on the same graph. But I suppose, having once taken two very different metric and metaphorically added together temperature “apples” and “pears” and then lied about them being apples – they’ll just add in bananas and grapes and oranges … grabbing at anything that will temporarily restore their warming trend.
It may be a very very very slow car crash – but it will be one of the funniest!
The solar downturn could last for 2-3 cycles i.e. into the 2030s or even later. It would be surprising if that had no noticeable climatic effects.
In the same way that it appears pollution caused cooling that depressed global temperatures up until the 1970s – where after we got a bounce back effect, I think it is very likely that solar activity has a major impact on climate. Indeed, I’d go as far as to say there’s more evidence for the impact of solar than CO2 (but only because I’ve yet to see any evidence showing a CO2 effect).
Where I’d disagree with others is on how much we know about the scale of the solar effect and exactly how it is tied to sun-spot cycles.
However, if as you suggest we do see a long deep minimum and a significant impact this will be great news for (real) climate science, but dreadful news for much of humanity.
A decade ago I’d have confidently said it would be the end of global warming and the idiot religious zealots who push the nonsense. But today I’ve realised that this environmental non-science is now all pervasive – and it may well be at the stage whereby like all religions – it doesn’t matter whether what the prophets come true or not – it’s always interpreted as fulfilling the deities will and always used to increase the power of the high priests.
And so, like the Roman religion – which just kept adopting the gods of all the countries it conquered – no matter how contradictory they may have appeared, I suspect that if solar were to show evidence of controlling the climate, then it would just be incorporated into the global warming/environ-mentalist religion in some way.
Global Climate change is going to happen,just do not see how the Warming hysterics are going to spin the next ‘Little Ice Age” that’s starting now .Here in New Zealand I’ve been seeing strange cloud formations for the last 3 months .This could be the effect of the “Grand Solar Minimum ” time will tell . Australia’s Met office have been caught @ Thredbo in real time ,& our weather people have been putting weather stations on warm bits of real estate then claiming a rise in global temperatures .Dr Nicky Nelson, Dr Kristine Grayson and Susan Keall from Victoria’s School of Biological Sciences ,hav stated that the Tuatara .A lizard like creature is endangered due to a 1 deg C rise in temperature .Its lineage dates back 2000,000,000 years encompassing massive fluctuations in temperature .
Since before the beginning of recorded history prophets of weather doom have been telling whoever would listen that they predict weather doom … and for the main part they were right … because sooner or later the weather will do strange things and there will be winds, snow, drought and people will die. And unfortunately we live in an anti-common-sense age, where our politicians are advised by ignorant journalists and extremist-political-view academics who have no more idea how to predict the climate than they have to time travel. But as soon as they call themselves a weather “high priest” (aka “climate Scientist”) the scientific ignoramuses in morons in public life bow down and sacrifice EVERYONE ELSE’S wealth to these charlatans.
I’m forever trying to point out ‘climate change drives evolution’ and that the diversity of life on earth is the wonderful result of this. Extinctions are the result of isolation of populations and habitat theft/destruction by man.
‘The day after tomorrow’ film (aired again recently) where ‘global warming’ causes a sudden ice age demonstrates the point SS makes about the popular prole belief being immutable.
Just reading ‘How to get expelled from School’ by expert prof… geologist. It’s one of the many good books by scientists and rational commentators ignored
or vilified in the mainstream. The fact that climatgate didn’t manage to bring down these criminals says it all.
1. The scam will come to an end. The weight of failed predictions will eventually take its toll. By that time, however, the IPCC will have repositioned itself be progressive reduction of its measures of Climate Sensitivity so that it can say: See, CO2 the earth’s temperature has increased by 0.2°C, exactly as we predicted.
2. Max Planck will be proved right again:
“A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.”
3. The bunch of criminal fraudsters who have destroyed economies and diverted research down dead ends will have made a fortune. Nobody will defrock, dismiss, imprison or shoot them.
4. People like me will feel like buying a gun.
The data python – as I call it, as it grows bigger and bigger, gives less and less room for stupid interpretations of the data until it is impossible to interpret the data in any other way than the data dictates.
However … what we now have is people like NASA who have got away with literally trashing the data and creating entirely new and bogus metrics. It is but a small step from there to completely ignoring what the data is saying and creating totally fictitious metrics.
And just as you say … “the truth does not triumphs … until opponents eventually die” … it is also true that the satellites which we now rely on as the only source of data that has so far proven difficult to tamper with, only have a finite lifetime before they will be replaced with satellites which … if the same people are in charge in NASA … will be designed to be tampered with from the ground.
My expectation had been that Trump would have got rid of the black heart of this beast – destroyed the NASA climate alarmists who have proven not only willing but capable of fabricating the data – and ensured we don’t continue the vicious cycle of fraud that they have embarked on with the inevitable result that we all get strangled by the “Fraud python” … as I suppose we should call it.
However, I have to say it … one of the biggest stumbling blocks to progress has been people like Anthony Watts who have created a talking shop for sceptics … but it’s all talk and no action … and indeed, because Watts is incapable of moving forward when he personally doesn’t understand a subject, he’s stuck in the past and is now also a barrier to making progress. In other words, he’s fine at attacking what the academics say … but because all he can do is attack, he lacks the ability to build, and so has done nothing to create an alternative narrative of what the climate has been doing, which is what would eventually destroy this scam.