Welcome to Orlando, Florida, for the annual gathering of climate science sceptics. You will not hear much about the event in the mainstream press of course since taking a sceptical view of ‘settled’ climate science is akin in such quarters to denying the Holocaust. But the expertise gathered represents many hundreds of years investigating all aspect of the climate and the atmosphere. Not only will the science be placed under the microscope (where it properly belongs), but the disastrous political plunge into a Net Zero catastrophe will be a major topic of conversation. The title of the two-day event asks: “The True Crisis: Climate Change or Climate Policy?”
The conference is organised by the U.S. think tank, the Heartland Institute, which states that it takes a “data-driven realistic approach to climate science”. It argues that the scientific method must be restored and the alarmist narrative broken. It asks: “Why are we making life poorer and more miserable for most people on the planet when there is no climate crisis?”
The Daily Sceptic is covering the event and I shall be sending back news reports. Among the important U.S. politicians attending are Republican Ron Johnson, a member of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, and Rep. Lauren Boebert, a member of the House Resources Committee. Worth catching will be former Trump Administration appointee Steve Milloy. He is a man who pulls few punches and is the founder of Junk Science, an online publication that is said to defuse “faulty scientific data used to advance special and often hidden agendas”. He will give a presentation titled, “Net Zero is Unachievable and Will Kill People”.
Marc Morano is a well known speaker and broadcaster and founded the Climate Depot site. He recently wrote a book titled: The Great Reset: Global Elites and the Permanent Lockdown. He is expected to expand on his work which is described as “the antidote to the Left’s sinister push to use a worldwide crisis to infuse our lives with the values of colossal statism and dystopian self-hatred, all accelerated by the duplicitous manipulation of the recent pandemic”.
Energy realism is set to take centre stage in a session titled, “What it Takes to Power Our Modern Society”. Speakers included Ronald Stein, who recently wrote a book titled Clean Energy Exploitations: Helping Citizens Understand the Environmental and Humanity Abuses That Support Clean Energy, and Alex Epstein, author of the NYT best-selling book on the moral case for fossil fuels. Epstein’s presentation is titled, “Global Human Flourishing Requires Much More Energy”.
Always a box office draw is Dr. Patrick Moore, one of the founders of Greenpeace, who is due to speak in a session titled, “Killing Agriculture to Save the Planet”. Moore helped run Greenpeace for 15 years when it argued against the testing and proliferation of nuclear weapons, but left when it turned its attention to green political agitation. “Net Zero is Killing Whales and Betraying the Purpose of Greenpeace,” is his chosen subject.
As regular readers will recall, Moore is known for drawing attention to the dramatic fall in levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide over geological time. He argues that it is currently at dangerously low levels, and more of the gas in the atmosphere would be highly beneficial to life on Earth. Another scientist taking a similar view is Australian geologist Professor Ian Plimer, who will give a keynote science address. Again, as regular readers will note, Plimer is known for demanding to see the evidence that human-caused CO2 is responsible for all or most recent global warming. If there was a single credible science paper that proved the hypothesis, you would not hear the last of it, he says. There isn’t one, only a deafening silence, he adds. All the Gretas beware, Plimer points out that much of the climate hysteria on display in public forums from the UN to the school classroom is due to the dumbing down of the educational system over the last 50 years.
Of course, the silence over proof is filled by climate models. Energy scientist Dr. Tom Sheahen will explain the need to apply the scientific method to modelling. A complex climate model is a collection of hypotheses, based on assumptions, he notes. Physics Professor Howard Hayden will point out the “glaring numerical inconsistency” between the IPCC’s AR-6 climate models and “physical reality”. Economist Ken Haapala will discuss the impact of IPCC’s continuing errors.
Two eminent meteorologists will be “taking the temperature of global temperatures”. Anthony Watts has spent a decade examining the siting of U.S. weather stations, and recently concluded that U.S. temperatures have been “hopelessly corrupted”. Again, regular readers will recall we have covered his research in detail, along with recent work from Dr. Roy Spencer and Professor John Christy that shows massive urban heat corruptions. Joe Bastardi of WeatherBell will look at the effect of oceans on global temperatures. This subject is likely to attract interest since many scientists argue that latitudinal heat transfers, rather than any future warming by CO2 (human or otherwise), hold the key to understanding many of the complex interactions in a chaotic atmosphere.
Watch this space. Keen readers can also follow the conference live, here.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.
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Chris, glad you are there! I had given some thought to attending, but in the end didn’t.
Is it time to stop calling people who ask good questions, are professionally educated and/or learned, know a lot about climate, energy, politics, possible “solutions” and way forward, etc. as “Skeptics” (first word on your post title). A label applied by the opposition, I think. The word “skeptics” to me suggests to me a person who stands back with arms folded saying “no” with no plan to be positive, or something like that.
I know that’s the word used as focus of this website, but perhaps let’s think of and use a different word.
And again, thanks for the effort.
The DailyRealist ?
The Pragmatic ?
Not looking to change the name of the web site, just the label put on people who “realistically and knowledgebly” discuss and contribute to the so-called “problem” of “climate change” (whatever you want to call it). [That part of the problem in that we don’t even agree what the problem is nor if solved how we will know!]
I am happy to be identified as pragmatic, but inherently sceptical of anything that is proposed or supported by governments and their ilk.
The FactFinders?
The FactSearchers?
We, the people.
or just,
People
I wish I could go.
But Biden and his cronies won’t let me in.
Plimer is known for demanding to see the evidence that human-caused CO2 is responsible for all or most recent global warming. If there was a single credible science paper that proved the hypothesis, you would not hear the last of it, he says. There isn’t one, only a deafening silence, he adds
I am confused by this “no proof” argument. What is Pilmer asking for? The case that human-caused GHGs caused recent warming has many elements including (but not limited to):
There are many scientific papers addressing each element. Capturing the whole lot in one paper would be incredibly clumsy. However, we do have the IPCC WG I report which brings together a mass of evidence. Also most scientific institutions round the world have some kind of summary e.g. Royal Society. You might dispute these responses but they are hardly a deafening silence.
Why have successive UK governments spent the last 25 years importing record numbers of people, overwhelmingly from countries with lower, often very much lower, per capita emissions, if they genuinely believe that increasing amounts of CO2 caused by human activity pose a serious threat?
The answer it obviously that only the wrong kind of CO2 is a serious threat, ie CO2 emitted as side effect of industrial activities of white people (in Europe).
GHGs have increased
They are human caused
A very small percentage of one so-called greenhouse gases is generated by humans as side effect of “burning stuff”, ie, utilizing exothermic reactions turning carbon into carbondioxide (among other things).
Temperatures have increased
There is no other credible explanation for the increase
This is circular reasoning. Spelled out, it’s Human-emitted CO2 has caused temperatures to increase because temperatures have increased and only human-emitted CO2 could have caused that, ie, the conclusion of the argument is also a premise of it.
Human caused CO2 is about 5% of the CO2 entering the atmosphere each year but about 100% of the increase. See https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2018/01/the-global-co2-rise-the-facts-exxon-and-the-favorite-denial-tricks/
There is nothing circular about the argument: A can cause X, we can find no other explanation for X, therefore there is some evidence that A is the cause.
It’s circular because A caused X was supposed to be proven. But it appears both as premise and as conclusion.
NB: This doesn’t mean that A didn’t cause X, only that this is an invalid argument for it.
I’m not in the mood to work through the bullshit in the article, hence, I’ll deal with that shortly: Manfacturing atoms is beyond the technical abilities of humans at the moment. Hence, they cannot increase the amount of carbon on the planet. So-called fossil fuels are ultimatively degraded biomatter. Any carbon contained in them had thus intially been drawn from the atmosphere as well. The claim is basically equivalent to claiming that felling a tree in order to burn it is ok (that’s called carbon cycle) but not burning a tree felled hundred year ago as that’s mysteriously different.
Realclimate.org?
Wow. That’s a great source!
You’ll be quoting from the Grauniad next.
Realclimate has been telling barefaced lies for over 20 years.
If it is proven and they know so much about climate and the atmosphere that they are sure humanity is causing climate change then it should be easy to predict the weather/climate.
It’s the scientific method. Make a hypothesis and proof it.
Make an accurate detailed prediction what the climate will be for each small section of the earth in the near future (not 50 years from now), maybe 2025.
Then we can see if the hypothesis is correct or not.
And it can’t be generalties (such as the climate will change), it must be detailed, and apply to each small section of the earth.
If the humanity-caused climate change advocates actually know what they are talking about then it should be easy to make the prediction.
Perhaps you would care to explain all the record cold temperatures and record snowfall that are happening around the world. These are being largely ignored by the MSM – nothing new there. As for the IPCC, it is a political organisation designed to interpret the science in line with its political masters. The eminent Richard Lindzen et al don’t see any climate emergency or crisis. After all, climate is one of the most complex, non- linear, chaotic systems known to man. To ignore chaos is fraud. To claim that any major weather event is caused by man’s emissions of carbon dioxide is fraud. We are being had big time!
The *deafening silence” that Plimer refers to is that of empirical evidence. I would suggest you read Plimer’s books, or watch his videos, on the subject to understand the difference between this and computer modelling projections. But if you believe the Royal Society’s views then it might suggest that you have already made up your mind.
Plimer has written a lot and made a lot of videos. Perhaps you can suggest a single one that summarises his argument as you understand it?
From the various comments I have read here, it appears that key to his argument is that the only evidence for anthropogenic global climate change is models. We shouldn’t underestimate models, much of science is based on them in all sorts of fields, but they are not the only evidence. The underlying physics is well understood and observed. We can do things like measure the radiation coming from the top of the atmosphere and noting the “bite” that is taken out of it by greenhouse gases just as we would expect. We note that the changes in the atmosphere have taken roughly the shape that would be expected, for example cooling in the upper atmosphere. We note that none of the other credible forcings (e.g. change in solar radiation, change in orbit) can account for recent changes in surface temperatures.
You probably disagree with the validity of these sources of evidence. That is the beginning of a long debate. But whatever their validity they are not a deafening silence.
The earth’s climate has aways been changing, for the last few hundreds of millions of years, with varying amounts of CO2.
Correlation does not imply causation.
Basic maths tells us that CO2, a gas that makes up 0.004% of the atmosphere is increasing by 0.0002% each year. Human activity is supposedly responsible for 5% of that increase. In other words our nice, cheap energy rich lifestyle is changing the atmosphere by 0.00001% each year. Somehow, presumably thanks to Paul Daniels or David Copperfield that 0.00001% annual change has resulted in the “global average temperature” increasing by 1C / 16% over the last 150 years.
As Johnny Rotten famously said, “Ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated?”
Co2 levels have gone from about 340ppm in 1980 to about 420ppm at the moment. That’s about 0.5% per year. This is simply a measurement. Even the most hardened sceptical scientist would not deny it.
Human activity is almost certainly responsible for almost all of that increase. We contribute about 5% of CO2 that goes into the atmosphere each year but CO2 also exits the atmosphere each year e.g. dissolved in oceans. Before we started contributing CO2 was in balance – inputs equalled outputs. You can see that from the stable CO2 levels prior to the industrial revolution (measured by composition of air trapped in ice cores from Antarctic). Other evidence that we account for the increase is that the amounts add up (estimates of what we contribute roughly equal the increase) and the composition of the different isotopes of carbon in the atmosphere.
The fact that CO2 is a small proportion of the atmosphere is irrelevant. All that means is that there are a lot of other gasses up there as well. The small concentration of GHGs still amounts to over 3000 Gigatonnes of CO2. This has a large effect on our climate. After all, sceptics are quick to point out that this very low concentration is essential for plant growth (which is true). So low concentrations can have big effects.
As I mentioned in my other comment, then those who think they know so much about the earth’s atmosphere that they they can confidently believe that humanity is causing climate change, then it should be easy to make a detailed accurate prediction of the earth’s climate for each small section of the earth for a near future date (2025?).
It has be detailed (not generalties like the earth’s climate will be different), accurate, and for each small section of the earth.
Then we can see if it’s true or not.
That’s the scientific method. Make a hypothesis and then proof it.
Not at all. There are many fields where you can make confident predictions about broad trends without being able to predict the detail. For example, we can predict that if there are more vehicles on the roads and nothing else changes then there will be more traffic jams but we can’t predict exactly where and when those jams will happen.
You are saying the level of CO2 has changed, humanity has caused that change, the climate is changing and therefore humanity has caused climate change.
That is not proof. That has not proved causation.
But I also outlined the evidence. Obviously I can’t present it all here. There are hundreds of scientific papers. But I have given sources of evidence for those prepared to look.
“You can see that from the stable CO2 levels prior to the industrial revolution”.
False statement.
The CO2 levels in the earth have always been changing.
The earth’s climate has always been changing.
It is normal and natural for the earth’s climate and CO2 levels to be changing.
They have been changing for at least the last few hundreds of millions of years.
That’s true on a timescale of millions of years, and there are corresponding changes in climate, but in a timescale of hundreds of years CO2 levels were very stable until the Industrial Revolution. This is really indisputable as the ice cores capture samples of the atmosphere at those times.
You’re like a dog with a bone who doesn’t know how to use a calculator but is great at watching the BBC and reading the Guardian. Or more likely a troll. Either way, I’m not wasting any more time on this with you. Feel free to have the last word, aka shit all over the chess board.
I’m sure our impartial, “above politics” new Constitutional Monarch will be delighted to hear about this conference and will be terribly, terribly keen to hear the speeches. He takes such an avid interest in “science” afterall.
At least, the Heritage Party dismisses the present climate change policies as regressive and suppressive.
Sorry that you’re jabbed hope you’ll be okay. Enjoy the conference look forward to seeing more splendid articles. Genuinely worried for you.
If this was just down the road I would no doubt attend. I first became aware of this issue way back in 2007 with the Martin Durkin film “The Great Global Warming Swindle”, and as with other issues you often need a starting point. You need something to get you thinking. Since that time, I have come to realise that Climate Change is a smidgeon of the truth elevated into a planetary emergency for which no evidence exists. Judith Curry formerly of Georgia State Institute of Technolgy put it in a rather subtle way when she said “Sure, all things being equal, CO2 may cause a little bit of warming, but all things in Earth’s climate are NOT equal”. Once investigating this issue you start to realise that as with all things that are politicised, that truth goes out of the window. You start to realise that the facts do not fit the theory, and you begin to see that contrary views are met with spitting fury. Why would a different point of view or even the simplest question being asked be so dangerous to science? ——Because it is and never was about science in the first place. Public policy and the spending of trillions of taxpayer money is put at risk by awkward questions, and the illusion of consensus must be preserved, because if the general population get a wiff that they are being played, then they may well rise up against the scam that pretends to be about science but is really a political agenda about controlling the worlds wealth and resources with climate as the excuse. ——–Even the most basic parameter in the climate change issue is UNKNOWN. How sensitive is the climate to CO2 as a greenhouse gas? That is called ECS (Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity). If the number is large then there may be some warming, but if the number is small then climate change will not be a problem whatsoever. —-And guess what? This number is NOT KNOWN. The most basic parameter in the so-called science is unknown. This is like trying to determine how many eggs you will need for the whole year but not knowing how many you actually use each week. —–When everything that happens is a result of your theory you are not indulging in science and when what you claim cannot be falsified then it also is NOT science. Climate Change is politics not science. To understand why, you need to look into the UN and it’s “Sustainable Development” agenda.