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Pushing Back the Climate Hoax

By: Daniel Horowitz (Diary)  |  October 6th, 2009 at 06:18 PM  | 

RESIZE: AAA

I am taking a meteorology course in college this semester and inevitably the professor has interjected with global warming a number of times.  He requested that we answer the following question:

There seem to be two schools of thought on Global Warming. One says we can control it through better use of fossil fuels, etc. The other says that it is here to stay and that we should begin preparations for living in a world that will result from these changes. Which school do you belong to?

The glaring point of his question is that it is predicated on the fact that global warming is a fact and we are causing it. The only question to discuss is whether we should legislate our behavior or face calamity.

From past experience I have been pretty successful by fully challenging all liberalism in the classroom with unapologetic and well formulated arguments. I could tell that other guys in the room had some doubts about global warming but were too embarrassed to challenge it in public. The only way to stop the indoctrination in the classroom is to push back against it with full force.

I prepared the following report as a response. It is quite lengthy so I am posting it as a link on a website that I once published several years ago. I wanted to see what all you redstaters think. Is there anything that I should omit or add?

Note: I am not one hundred percent sure if this is a proper use of the diary section. This report has a lot of thought provoking questions and observations on the global warming movement. I think it would be useful for discussion. If not, feel free to delete it and I will know for next time.

COMMENTS

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  • JadedByPolitics

    “What bothers me is why they are so vociferous about their theory to the extent that they are willing to take it on faith?”

    They are so INVESTED in this “theory” that they will NEVER allow us “little” people to utilize our common sense to change their beliefs. In my many years I have seen these idiots go from an Ice Age to a complete burnout of the planet and upon investigation one can view this insanity for well over 100 years.

    This time though there is BIG MONEY to be made on this particular “theory” and the rest of us be damned because these moneymen ie: the Rev Al Gore will have their pound of flesh at our expense.

    I do believe the greatest comment I ever heard on this issue was George Carlin where he said when the earth is done with us it will shake us off like fleas. His point was that we are so minuscule that there is NOTHING that we human’s will do and at anytime Mother Nature will have her way!

    • JadedByPolitics
      • http://www.examiner.com/x-1597-Charlotte-Law--Politics-Examiner Mike gamecock DeVine

        That is why the cap and trade bill is stalled in the Senate due to blue dawgs. The only way the poor and middle class and our economy overall get attacked with vast increases in energy to move, stay warm and keep food cheaper is via Executive fiat by Obama alone. He could do it too, but politically, the whole idea of feeling better about recycling ended with the feeling from $4/gallon gasoline.

        • Xasteius

          Let’s make him sleep under a bridge first – then let’s see if he enjoys it.

          • http://www.examiner.com/x-1597-Charlotte-Law--Politics-Examiner Mike gamecock DeVine
          • DavidS1787

            that wanted to put a tax on farm animals I am going to try to put this politely emit gas..

  • Whitesands

    Great piece I am glade to see someone keep this junk science hoax in view.

  • mschmitt

    You and I just disagree on what they will be investigating.

    • randy streu

      it lists what they’ll be investigating.

      If they were investigating how other countries (like the G20) were using climate change to cripple our economic and military prowess, I’d agree. But that’s not the case.

      • mschmitt

        n/t

  • mschmitt

    A while back I set about trying to come up with a derivation of variables important for climate change — grounded in physics — from first principles…

    Then, I found this paper:
    http://arxiv.org/abs/0707.1161v4

    The authors mostly nailed it (although, to be fair, as of v3 it still had some movie citations and other wackiness; I haven’t yet read v4)…

  • Vladimir

    Deming is at the University of Oklahoma College of Geosciences.

  • http://hillbillypolitics.com Steph C

    With the simple answer of: Neither.

    Otherwise, very good.

  • dhorowitz3

    Thanks for the correction. Have you heard of Deming before?

  • Next93

    Second paragraph, “know where” should read “nowhere”

    Third paragraph, “these observations itself” should read “these observations in themselves”. Actually, that whole sentence doesn’t seem to make sense.

    Fourth paragraph: “What bothers me is why they” would read better as “What bothers me is why these alarmists”.

    Same paragraph: ‘In thier mind” should read “In thier minds”.

    Same paragraph, “how these people are taken serious” should read “how these people can be taken seriously” – you might wantto change that to “how any climate change claims can be taken seriously”

    Fifth paragraph, I’d recommend that you remove the leading “Also”.

    Same paragraph, possibly change the closing sentences to something along the lines of: “In addition to costing every American households thousands of dollars each year, this piece of legislationwould limit our rights like no other bill in American history.”

    Sixth paragraph, I’d recommend that you remove the leading “Furthermore”

    The last sentence of paragraph 7 (“If there is a consensus…”) seems to be the thesis of paragraphs 6 and 7. You might want move it to the start of paragraph 6, and then combining the two paragraphs.

    A thought about the concept expressed in paragraph 8: I’ve never had a problem with the fact that the analysis 20 years ago led to a different result; science is based on replacing earlier mistakes when more sophisticated analyes and additional data becomes available. But it bothers me that no one will state what’s changed since then; was that previous analysis completely incorrect (and if so, in what way), or is all of this current angst based on just that 20 years worth of data? I find that questionable, particularly since the “hockey stick” only covers 200 years and 40 years of that goes in the wrong direction.

    Paragraph 9: I’d recommend you not start the paragaph with “Also”.

    Same paragraph, precede the word “especially” with a coma, and follow “nuclear power” with a coma. You might want to repolace the phrase “that are true to thier beleifs and are” with “that are intellectually honest enough to”. It would help if you had a citation here.

    Paragraph 10: At this point you seem to change your style from academic to op-ed. It’s not that I disagee with your opinion, but you might want to state explicitly that what follows is your opinion. I’d also suggest that you not overtly accuse the alarmists of being “socialists”. Simply state that they have an agenda, and many stand to make fortunes by the implementation of government regulation. You’d probably do well to avoid saying that “all” of the alarmists are socialists.

    Same paragraph: it would be great if you could find a citation to support your position that the UN is essentially anti-American and anti-Israel (again, not that I’m disagreeing, but you KNOW someone’s going to ask for a citation there

    Same paragraph: need a citation for the lack of southern hemishpere warming.

    Paragraph 11: You might want to replace the phrase “these people” with “the green movement”. It sounds less like an ad-homenim attack.

    Same paragraph, minor nit – “pursuit of happiness” isn’t a clause in the Declaration.

    Paragraph 12: I’d recommend moving the first sentence to the end of the paragraph. The phrase “you have to follow the money trail” might be better as “there is a money trail to be followed”. Also, the fact that Soros is heavily invested in Petrobas is hardly “amazing”, so you might want to actually say “Not surprisingly”. One last thing on this paragaph, rather than “caterpillar research”, you might want to point out that there’s not much grant money available for contesting the global climate change orthodoxy (which means that the whole scientific process has broken down).

    Paragraph 13: no recommendations

    Paragraph 14, I’d recommend that you remove the clause about “climate facists” (even though I love it, it’s a bit over-the-top). Just put a coma between “decade” and “noted”, and remove the word “just”.

    Same paragraph, you might want to replace “They always have perfect timing. The real irony is that they are” with “In a neatly ironic bit of timing, ”

    Same paragraph, you might want to replace “productivity of” with “access to”, and “because of” with “in the name of”

    Paragraph 15: no recommendations

    Paragraph 16: I recently heard a great statement you might want to use regarding the questionable source data: “GIGO used to mean ‘Garbage In, Garbage Out’, but with AGW theory, it apparently means ‘Garbage In, Gospel Out’”

    Paragraph 17: I’d recommend replacing “extremists” with “theory”. Also, change”anywhere” to “everywhere”. You might also change the last sentence to read “Or could it be, as Harvard University physicist Lubos Motl theorized, ”

    Paragraph 18: I beleive the increases in planetary CO2 on Mars correspond to a reduction in the size of the polar ice caps (which are mostly CO2 ice), which was apparently caused by a temperature rise during the same period. I don’t know if that’s clear from this paragraph. I LOVE the last two sentences.

    Paragraph 19: The reason is that methane, like water vapor, is a far more efficient greenhouse gas than CO2; a little goes a long way. However, given the fact that the population of cows in the northern hemisphere probably doesn’t come close to the number of bison in North America at the start of the industrial revolution, I agree that this is a pretty silly concern.

    Paragraph 20: I think you meant “vile” where you wrote “vial”.

    Same paragraph: you might want to rewrite that last sentence along the lines of how the AGW community is using this cause to lay a claim to the moral authority over life and death.

    Sorry to cut off here, but I have to proof a paper for one of my kids. Maybe someone else can pick it up from here.

    One last thing you might want to tie in – the Nuclear Winter hoax of the 1980s/90s was startlingly similar to the AGW scam of today; the key difference between that scam (which was basically an attempt to get America to commit military suicide) and this scam (which is an attempt to get America to commit economic suicide) was that the Nuclear Winter scam didn’t provide mechanism for crony capitalism. Looks like someone took to heart Lenin’s prediction that the capitalists would sell the ropes they were to be hung with.

    Oh, and I think this is an EXCELLENT use of the diary.

  • The_Gadfly

    I wouldn’t submit it for a science class. Go ahead and hit him on the assumption that AGCC (anthropomorphic Global Climate Change) has been established as a fact, but leave the politics out. The politics is fine over a beer at the local bar, but not a science paper. What’s worse, is that if you stick to the science, when he attacks your politics you counter with “I thought this was a science debate, not a political debate. Science establishes facts, politics only establishes temporary opinions.” He’ll hate that.

  • Achance

    The argument he offers is a false alternative, a fallacy. It is the equivalent of a syllogism like:
    God is love,
    Love is blind.
    Stevie Wonder is Blind,
    Therefore, Stevie Wonder is God.

    Well, there are a lot of alternative explanations left out of that.

    I’m only good enoug with logic to call BS; there are some good logicians on this site. But, logic is the way to take on “experts” without having to be an expert yourself. Usually, political arguments are merely subjectivist fallacies and you don’t have to know the facts; you just have to point out the fallacy.

  • mschmitt

    Having now read the whole thing; the report is very nice (there are some grammatical issues, but I noticed that Next93 caught many or all of them). Keep in mind that, statistically speaking, your professor is probably a socialist him/herself; so purely political arguments may fall on deaf ears unless you explicitly and directly challenge a scientific work with intentional bias.

    The paper I cited above also adds a neat little counter argument regarding the premise of the green house effect: they note that the peak incident wavelength from the sun is in the infrared band.

    If you apply the exact physical principle that the global warming alarmists use to promote the GH effect (for the layperson: GH effect means that incident light is absorbed by the earth and re-emitted as IR, but IR is reflected by GH gas, hence trapping the energy in the atmosphere and causing warming) to the incident light from the sun, you find that a GH gas layer may actually shield the planet from more energy (solar IR) than it traps (earth IR).

  • yaktan

    As a physics student I found the paper you link to quite a good read. Version four does not seem to have most of the wackiness, though they do refer to dihydrogen monoxide at one point.

    I do find it interesting that the main focus of the paper is basically saying that with our current knowledge we cannot know how the climate works. As a scientist I am happy when I see stuff like this that treats science honestly.

  • dhorowitz3

    for spending the time to read the paper. These corrections are very helpful.

  • Vladimir

    He’s a prominent critic of AGW dogma. Apparently he has tenure at OU but the school treats him as an academic embarrassment because of his positions on Global Warming.

    You’ll find support for Global Warming among physicists, chemists and meteorologists, but little among earth scientists who have the perspective on scope & time scale. You hit on these points in your paper. Until & unless AGW advocates can explain what ended the last Ice Age 12,000 years ago, apparently without the help of coal fired power plants, I’m suspect of the whole notion.

  • dhorowitz3

    that the crowd there at the University originally misinterpreted one of Deming’s writings and believed that he agreed with the greenies. They let him in on a lot of their agenda before they caught on.

  • dhorowitz3

    climate change. There is no boundary to this madness.

  • larueladue

    The article (which is quite good, by the way) reads as a blog post, not as a scientific paper. Format is wrong, tone is wrong, point-of-view is wrong, etc. I believe it needs to be formatted and written like a submittal to a scientific journal.

    Back in the day (geology major/anthropology minor), we had to write all our papers and reports as if we were submitting them to one of several leading journals, following all their submittal guidelines. We were graded (separately from content) on how well this was done. I would suggest rewriting and reformatting to follow similar guidelines and style, prior to submitting it for grade.

  • mschmitt

    I think they are acting appropriately. They are right to investigate.

  • randy streu

    in what way is the Central Intelligence Agency within their charer to investigate water levels, temperature changes, etc.?

  • mschmitt

    That’s awesome… :)

    … and you share my feelings exactly regarding why I like the paper. It probably has errors in it (and that’s why we do peer review), but they are taking the appropriate approach: first try writing down on a napkin whether the hypothesis is even *conceivably* physical, then try to decide if it’s possibly a leading order effect, and THEN make a model…

    And guess what? If you find that your theory can only work for a flat earth with a glass atmosphere, then it probably isn’t plausible enough to merit a simulation study.

  • The_Gadfly

    then it certainly is within the purview of the CIA to investigate what impacts AGW/AGCC will have on the stability of nations and the military actions nations might take as a result of them.

    The problem is that AGW/AGCC is built on premises that wouldn’t be acceptable in a 50′s hard science SF novel, and its projections of what will happen are held together by Treknology.

  • mschmitt

    … our intelligence services; and recognize that there are times when the stated goals of an operation can not completely align with the true goals. The last thing our friends need is a bunch of public scrutiny by guys like us and Barrasso.

  • The_Gadfly

    The CIA is being forced to divert valuable resources to a political boondoggle. It’s not that it isn’t within their purview, it would be if it were real. The problem is that a green earth religious fanatic is forcing them to further their domestic political agenda. That is an improper use of the CIA. Sometimes supporting the CIA means we have to call BS on their boss.