Almost everyone who has ever commented on climate change policy issues from a skeptical perspective has experienced being attacked personally as a ‘climate denier’. The insult is intended as a way to immediately shut down discussion by portraying the skeptic as not only wrong but beneath contempt because he or she has done something that can be compared in its evil and despicability with denying the Nazi holocaust. Far too often, the insult works, even in discussions before regulatory bodies where the level of debate should be based on facts, credible arguments, and mutual respect.
Rarely does anyone stop to analyse why the insult is completely misplaced as well as misinformed.
Let’s start at the beginning. The advocates of government action to virtually eliminate human-related greenhouse gas emissions generally believe that such emissions are harmful and, unless sharply reduced, will cause catastrophic global warming sometime over the next century and beyond. They further claim that this emissions reduction can be achieved by all the countries of the world given current and likely-to-be-available technologies at a moderate cost. Within OECD countries that represent a 32% (and declining) share of global GHG emissions, a further claim is that citizens should take extraordinarily expensive measures to reduce their emissions even if the rest of the world does not.
To believe this, one would have to accept a long series of related arguments.
I will divide the arguments, posed as questions, broadly into two parts: the ‘science’ series (and sub-series) and the economics/technology series.
The Science Series
Is it true that current global trends indicate global warming and other related environmental changes?
How much have ‘average global temperatures’ changed during the period since the industrial revolution?
- Is there such a thing as ‘average global temperatures’?
- How does one measure global temperatures in history and are these accurate?
- How does one measure average global temperatures today, by surface instruments on land and sea, or by satellites, or some combination of the two?
Do the changes in global temperatures show any strong connection/causation with increased concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere?
- Have the changes in temperatures observed to date preceded or followed the changes in GHG concentrations?
- Historically, when GHG concentrations were higher than today, were temperatures higher or lower?
- Is there any clear connection in physics and chemistry between increased carbon dioxide concentrations and higher temperatures?
- Is there any way clearly to distinguish between the effects of increased GHG concentrations and other global factors including solar trends, ocean cycles, and cloud chemistry?
Do other global environmental trends show a connection/causation relationship with increased GHG concentrations?
- Are sea levels rising faster than they have over the last few centuries?
- Is the amount of polar ice declining?
- Are the glaciers melting faster than they have for several centuries?
- Is the ocean PH level (degree of acidity or baseness) changing at a level that should cause concern?
- Are extreme weather events increasing in number and intensity?
- Is there any way, with respect to any of these questions, clearly to distinguish between the effects of increased GHG concentrations and other global factors such as solar trends, ocean cycles, and retreat from the last Ice Age?
Can we predict with any confidence what will be the effect of increasing carbon dioxide concentrations over the long term?
- How good are the current Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) models that attempt to predict future climate changes?
- If we use these models, do they adequately explain even the changes that have occurred in the past?
- Do the predictions of the models since 1990 come close to replicating what has actually happened?
- Is there any evidence that the models, and the data fed into them, are being manipulated to make a more alarming case?
- Is it possible independently to replicate the results of the methodologies that some climate scientists use to show there is a problem?
The Economic/Technology Series
How large a share do fossil fuels now have of global energy use, especially as compared to non-fossil energy sources such as nuclear energy, hydro power, biomass (wood and dried animal dung), and ‘renewable’ energy sources like wind, solar and geothermal?
- How does that share differ by area, especially between the industrialized countries and the less developed countries?
What is the potential, under current economic, technological and political conditions to replace fossil fuels over the next 30 years?
- What evidence is there, based on more than 30 years of climate conferences and commitments to reduce emissions, that the countries of the world are actually reducing emissions?
- What do the most authoritative sources of projections of future global energy supply, demand and projections, say about the likely levels of GHG emissions by 2050?
- Will countries be prepared to significantly increase electricity generation by nuclear reactors?
- Will countries like China, India, those in Southeast Asia, and eventually Africa be prepared to forego using coal, the cheapest and most secure source of energy for large scale electricity generation?
- Does the history of energy transitions provide evidence that complete transitions can be accomplished within 30 years, the timeframe within which climate activists insist the changes must occur?
- Will the price of fossils fuels, and especially coal and natural gas, continue to fall because of the high supply, thus giving consumers far less incentive to switch to other fuels?
- What will be the rate of turnover in the capital stock (of buildings, factories, infrastructure, vehicles, etc.) that will determine the rate of long-term change?
- Is it likely that there will be technology breakthroughs to lower the cost of non-carbon energy sources (e.g. grid-level energy storage technologies)? If so, how long will it take to commercialize and mass market those technologies?
- As complete decarbonization of the economy of a country or of the world depends on completely electrifying every economic sector and eliminating the use of hydrocarbons in electricity generation, is this feasible in technological or economic terms?
- How willing will governments and taxpayers be to continue paying immense subsidies to non-fossil fuel energy sources to increase their rate of use?
- For each OECD country, will the costs of climate action exceed the benefits in terms of global emissions levels and temperature/climate changes?
The ‘denier’ insult effectively boils all these questions (and more) down to the single issue of whether one believes that human GHG emissions are harmful and should be reduced. In other words, it represents a gross over-simplification of an extremely important public policy issue.
It demonstrates the ignorance of the person hurling the insult and appeals to those who share this ignorance.
Finally, it represents an attempt to shut down discussion before it proceeds to cover the many issues listed above. One can only speculate as to why the advocates of complete transformation of the energy system are so unwilling to engage in rational discussion and debate. Are they fearful that the merits of their arguments will be shown through debate to be so weak as to be non-credible? Do they favour propaganda over information and analysis? If so, of which political movement does that remind us?
Robert Lyman is an economist with 35 years’ experience as an analyst, policy advisor and manager in the Canadian federal government, primarily in the areas of energy, transportation and environmental policy.
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‘Are ya wi us, or agin us.?’ The discussion style of the 21st century. Nothing inbetween. 100% right vs 100% wrong.
Divide and conquer. When will we ever learn? Seemingly never!
IPCC are still using the Mann hockey-stick graphic, which says that historically temperatures have been completely stable for millennia until a sudden increase in the 1900s.
Given what every other historical record and proxy shows about the many changes in the past, that appears to be the real climate denialism.
Jon.. I think that should be the Mann mockery-stick graphic.. its just such a blatant fabrication.. a complete lie..
$cientism. The religion of fake science + Statism + Corporatism. Brainwashing cults.
The real ‘deniers’ of reality are the religious within the $cientism cults of Rona, Weather, Plant Food, and ‘Fossil fuels’. Only an idiot believes that ‘fossil’ rocks generate the enormous quantities of abiotic hydrocarbon energy found at or near, the Earth’s surface. Only a retarded idiot believes that using such energy impacts climate.
Trouble is, there’s a hell of a lot of retards about!
Yes.. and unfortunately they seem to be increasing by the minute..
I asked Chat GPT if 26 years of by far the highest immigration in our history didn’t contradict governmental claims that there is a man-made climate crisis.
It agreed that immigration policy has resulted in UK emissions being significantly higher than they would otherwise have been, but claimed the policy might make sense because among the millions of immigrants might be some climate researchers!
I’m surprised it didn’t call you a racist. They need to tweak the settings! Or maybe it has fooled you into thinking it’s OK and reported you to the authorities.
It’s like talking to an unusually well-read lefty who doesn’t resort to insults and apologises when you point out that it has contradicted itself.
It does admit that it can only know what it is allowed to know: it can’t do any research, so when I asked it for a breakdown of who UK public debt is owed to it admitted it hadn’t been given that information.
It may be my imagination but there seems to be a noticeable delay – a fifth of a second, perhaps – between posting a non-PC question and it beginning to respond!
It’s absurd to describe it as an AI.
Steve Sailer has had some funny exchanges with it
We use it at work – software development. It’s helpful, but no substitute for skilled humans, yet.
It’s rudimentary, and I think it depends what you mean by AI, but I think the way it’s trained does set it apart from “dumb” software. It may become very powerful, eventually – after we’re long gone, hopefully.
The question of glaciers is a lot more complex than melting or not. Declining in extent is more accurate, but this is caused by factors other than simple melting – ablation and changes in precipitation at the head of the glaciers both contributing to different extents, and calving is an issue with glaciers that terminate in the sea.
Evidently they do favour propaganda over information and analysis. Incidentally, for the sake of global balance you could add Australia to your list of “countries like China, India…..”, with about two thirds of their electricity generation being from “fossil fuels”, with over half of it being coal, if you look it up on official AU sources. https://www.energy.gov.au/data/electricity-generation
If there really was a Climate Crisis you would hardly need endless propaganda. Pass this information to you friends
Ofcourse calling people “deniers” is infantile. In what other area of science does this happen? When discussing black holes, do a group of scientists with a particular point of view denigrate another group with a different point of view? Does the same thing happen in physics, medicine, chemistry etc etc? Do supporters of one particular theory or equation run around with placards and glue themselves to the road? ——The thing is that no one seeks to reorganise the global economy, take control of the worlds wealth and resources based on their view on black holes or evolution etc, but that is what proponents of global warming seek to do. They have political goals, and politics is all about undermining and ridiculing the policies of opponents. But in science you question everything or as someone once pointed out “Scepticism is the highest calling and blind faith the one unpardonable sin”. —–Climate fanatics see only one narrative. They think the issue is a black and white one. They think there are only two positions you can take on this. —-(1) There is climate change (2) There is no climate change. —-But in reality climate is a very complex issue involving science, economics, politics and social issues, and there are huge uncertainties which are mostly ignored by people who long ago decided what was true and have decided you should think the same or you are ripe for name calling. Silly people who indulge in this ad hominem have a very simplistic world view that sees scientists in white coats busying themselves all day with barely time for a cheese roll who then run to government with their findings. But the opposite is true. The politics came first, then came the science. But not the science as we know it. It is the post modern or “consensus science” where truth is decided by a show of hands from government funded data adjusters. —Or Official Science. But scientists are no different to any other type of person. They have families to feed and mortgages to pay and if government are going to employ you for years on end to look for a purple horse it is unlikely you will be in a big hurry to report back that you can’t find any. —-The desire for answers in climate change so as to provide the excuses for public policy means that governments cannot wait 50 years to see what happens and instead rely on climate modelling. These models full of assumptions, speculations and guesses are not evidence of anything and are NOT SCIENCE. So the real “deniers” are those who insist that fanciful models, which so far have all been not just wrong, but very wrong, are to be classed as “science”. —They are NOT. —– “Science” is a genuine search for truth based on a particular way of doing things called the “scientific method”. But “Official Science” is the search for excuses that can enable political agendas, and the main political agenda here is “Sustainable Development”. Progressive Politics masquerading as science.
Excellent post. Thanks
Comment of The Day Award
(I know it’s early, and there’s a lot of competition, but gonna stick my neck out here)
Brilliant summation of where we are, varmint. Science is a journey not a destination.
Very good,but I think you give to much credit to medicine. I’m a doctor and was sceptical about the pandemic from May 2020.
I changed from fear to scepticism because I volunteered for ICU nursing only to be told, after many emails about appraisal and revalidation,that I was not needed.
I also saw the harms of policies and vaccines. Many of my colleagues were unthinking, or worse, actively ignoring years of evidence.
Excellent.
To Huxley, Marcus Aurelius, Athelred, DJ and Debra—–Thanks for taking the time to read and respond to my comment.
Anyone with an ounce of common sense does not deny climate change! It’s the most natural way of the world.
So I’m not a climate denier, so they have already lost the argument!
I deny the amount of anthropogenic caused climate change that is claimed.
Well said!. Exactly my position on the subject.
“The ‘denier’ insult effectively boils all these questions (and more) down to the single issue of whether one believes that human GHG emissions are harmful and should be reduced. In other words, it represents a gross over-simplification of an extremely important public policy issue.”
Actually, this single issue (that human GHG emissions are harmful) is the one that has repeatedly failed the evidence test, and sets the agenda for the whole debate. The issues listed above are derivative of this central issue, although some could be found to be consequences of something else entirely. Unfortunately the GHG/CO2 obsession, while useful to TPTB as a motivation for global control, distracts us from other and more productive ways of protecting the planet we live on.
I for one am fine with the word denier, although I know it’s hurled around as a slur and with that holocaust connotation in mind.
Reason being that the slur and connotation have been hurled around so excessively now, like Nazi, far-right, anti-Semite, racist etc., that it and the connotation in particular has become meaningless and is not being taken serious anymore by normal people anyway.
Further, I have indeed become a denier of many of these issues raised, not just a sceptic, and so have Lindzen, Happer, Clauser, Harris&co.
The slur is lazy primarily because there is no climate change denier, let alone a climate denier. The former would already be plain stupid, the latter is actually impossible.
We are sceptical about or deny man-made climate change, in particular of or the alleged role of man-made CO2 emissions in it, and we do have excellent, very plausible reasons for that.
But while your article, questions and issues are very valid, the real issue and problem here is that ‘man-made climate change’ is a racket that has become a cult, and as we know since Lebon, one simply cannot reason with any cult member about his cult, least of all with its high priests, who invented and benefit from the racket aspect behind it.
Most of the cult members, in particular credentialed ones (I read about an example and then tested that myself), have absolutely no idea about the very basic, namely that CO2 only makes up 0.04% of the atmosphere and that only a tiny fraction of this is man-made- their answers are usually in the 30-50% area.
That basic always reminds me of the mask/mosquitos through a fence debate, with the aerosols, let alone the virus, already being smaller than the gaps in the fabric.
And like the mask cult members, the CO2 cult members just cannot bring themselves to talk critically about it or to leave it.
Because it would be an admission that they have been bamboozled-see Mark Twain- which is also the harder the more credentialed one is.
So they prefer to stick their head in the sand and live in cognitive dissonance.
As for the high priests to whom you address your questions, see above: it’s futile. They know it’s a racket, they invented it, they benefit enormously from it (power and money) and as such have zero intention, actually zero capacity to question it.
If they did and once they do, like Shellenberger or Curry, they are hunted and vilified Scientology-style, another racket/cult.
Until the cult ends, which as always can and will only be through and in a catastrophe.
Shutting people up by calling them names has been used since time immemorial. Trouble is that it’s been taken as a serious, though lazy, way of dealing with people who have conflicting views and yet it doesn’t lead anywhere. It’s a dead end. Taken literally, the ‘climate denier’ label is absolutely meaningless. No one denies there is a climate nor that it changes. To do that would be to deny air or deny clouds. The climate has been changing happily for millions and millions of years and will do for millions more. Everybody can agree on that. What we all disagree on is the infinitesimally small amount of a trace gas that apparently is sending us to hell in a handcart and because of that and all the modelling done around potential disaster scenarios, our lives have to change out of all recognition in just about every area plus we get to lose our liberties and freedoms all the for the greater good – communitarianism in other words – as yet we have to be OK with that? Pull the other one, Einstein!
Climate denier? I don’t accept the premise of your insult.
“Denier” is what Religious Fundamentalists shout at those who don’t subscribe to their particular faith.
It has nothing whatsoever to do with science. They are screaming at people for not being “true believers” in their Eco religion.
I question whether that is true – on the contrary it’s those wedded to scientism, or to politics, who accuse religious people of denialism, whether that be over the blind indifference of the universe, the slam-dunk truth of Neodarwinian theory, man’s sovereignty over the climate, the God-given truth of biological sex, etc, etc.
In 57 years as a Christian I’ve never, ever, heard a Fundamentalist shout “denier” at anybody. I’ve actually yet to hear one shout anything at anybody, in fact, other than “Make my coffee black, please.” Maybe you meet a different kind of Fundamentalist.
All we need is for Channel 4 to re-run this classic. <sarc> But seriously, can you imagine if schools and universities just played this for their students? We’re talking max de-radicalization in no time at all. It should be required viewing. I mean, I realise they’re all about sexually grooming kids and lying to them about basic human biology as opposed to presenting them with the opposing side to any current narrative but still…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYhCQv5tNsQ&ab_channel=WisdomLand
Should be compulsory viewing
Ditto “anti-vaxxer”
Climate denier (pejorative): a low intellect, uninformed, zealot who believes (in a religious sense) that climate change cannot occur unless Mankind burns fossil fuels; believes climate change never happened before the Industrial Revolution; believes climate change is uniquely driven by a molecule; believes in climate stasis – a perfect, unspecified, default climate condition; believes climate change can be controlled by Mankind and ‘stopped’.
Barking mad – like the gender benders.
Calling someone a climate denier is simply trying to employ a so-far very successful tactic in a different field. Assuming it’s conscious, that is. It’s entirely possible that it isn’t. Since 1945, people in the so-called west have been endlessly brainwashed with the need to combat something called fascism they don’t really know anything about with a certain set of tried-and-trusted methods. Is it really strange that they reflexively refer to anyone opposing them in any way as fascist, that is, (somewhat nebulously defined) enemy and try to employ these very methods against him?
There’s a saying If your only tool is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. Likewise, if your only metaphysicial frame of reference (or the most important one at least) is something called antifascism, wouldn’t every problem other people cause you look fascist to you?
On a website frequented by Real Scientists, back in 2019, I posted a comment about the David Attenborough deception on the causes of Walrus deaths (since dubbed “Walrusgate”), citing primary news sources. My aim was to show that popular science documentaries don’t necessarily reflect science.
In reply, a working scientist accused me of being a climate denier (a topic I’d not even mentioned), and asked if I at least believed that carbon dioxide in the atmosphere had increased… I suppose his aim was to take me through “deprogramming” step by tendentious step.
Since US scientists are overwhelmingly Democrat, and the present Dem party is keen on labelling everyone not on board as Fascist, he may have made that assumption in my case. But my feeling is that outside their own narrow fields, most scientists assume that what is called a “scientific consensus” actually is – whilst swallowing all the unsubstantiated talking points.
Hence, “I am only a metallurgist, and Prof Van Tam is the Deputy Chief Medical Officer. Ergo his press conferences convey the truth about COVID.”
As ‘the devil is in the details’ can I just say that the opposite of acidity is alkalinity, not “baseness”
It’s the deliberate conflation of four separate concepts that is so dishonest – pollution, global warming, climate change, and man-made climate change.
The first undoubtedly and obviously exists, and isn’t good for you. Nature takes care of its disposal, but not without human suffering. So, for example, the Clean Air Acts got rid of the green smog that killed my grandpa (a whiff of gas in WW1 hadn’t helped, of course). Sadiq Khan’s largely bogus pollution claims might have had more acceptance if he’d invested heavily in, for example, step-on, step-off electric tram services at the end of every street, thereby using the carrot rather than the stick to persuade people away from car usage.
The second, global warming, embarrasses its fanatics by constantly proving the opposite in many parts of the world – ice caps burgeoning instead of melting, English summers disappearing, polar bears increasing, Great Barrier Reef getting healthier, etc.
Climate change has always been with us. Vine Street & Grape Street in Covent Garden are thus named because they grew black grapes there on the vine in Chaucer’s time. Three centuries later, they were skating on the Thames.
Which leaves us with man-made climate change which, alongside whiteness, takes its place in the canon of original sin. To justify this claim, they point at natural disasters which have always been with us and always will be.
The saddest part of all this nonsense is the avoidance of the economic arguments for BETTER use of fossil fuels. Take the aviation industry. At its height, it burns a billion gallons a day in fuel worldwide. You can do your own math, but, for example, a single, 7-hour transatlantic flight uses 25,000 gallons, enough to provide the average house with all the energy it needs for 17 years.
Yep very good points. We always hear of the supposed risks of using fossil fuels but NEVER about the risks of not using them.——Since 90% of the worlds energy comes from those fuels that risk is enormous. As usual when you mix science and politics what you end up with is POLITICS. —–The UN Politics of Sustainable Development is what is going on here.
Science is based upon hypothesis then proving the hypothesis.
To convince me that the anthropogenic Climate Change advocates are right is for them to make a hypothesis and then prove it.
For this they would need complete knowledge of all atmospheric physics, how it works and the interrelationships.
For example, they can make a detailed forecast of the exact climate for each small region of the earth for a near future date (not a far off date like 2060), 2025 perhaps.
This would have to be an exact, detailed prediction and for each small region of the earth, not just saying the climate in Europe will be different than today.
Then in 2 years time, in 2025, we can see if they’re right or not.
That would be true science.
A problem with those who advocate that anthropogenic climate change is a major factor in the earth’s constantly changing climate is that they seem to believe that they are are infallible, cannot be wrong, that their views should not be subject to scrutiny and criticism, and therefore want to censor, ban, marginalize, demean and smear other opinions different from their opinions.