On the TV show In Search Of…The Coming Ice Age, Steven Schneider wonders whether mankind should intervene in staving off a coming ice age. Watch the old footage on YouTube here.
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Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
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Stephen H. Schneider, Professor of Environmental Biology and Global Change, at Stanford University, is an opinion leader in the Global Warming Alarmist camp. His earlier research conclusions suggested that human activities may contribute to an Ice Age in the near future. Some Global Warming indifferentists have jumped on Schneider’s about-face. I don’t see anything wrong with changing one’s opinion, in the light of new evidence.
However I do take issue with Schneider’s infamous quote from 20 years ago.
“On the one hand, as scientists we are ethically bound to the scientific method, in effect promising to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but – which means that we must include all the doubts, the caveats, the ifs, ands, and buts. On the other hand, we are not just scientists but human beings as well. And like most people we’d like to see the world a better place, which in this context translates into our working to reduce the risk of potentially disastrous climatic change. To do that we need to get some broadbased support, to capture the public’s imagination. That, of course, entails getting loads of media coverage. So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have. This ‘double ethical bind’ we frequently find ourselves in cannot be solved by any formula. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest. I hope that means being both.”
(Discover magazine pp. 45-48, Oct. 1989)
Yes, Schneider is saying that it’s OK to dumb down for the benefit of the Great Unwashed. But he’s also saying that it’s OK to be dishonest, in the sense of sexing up the data. Sexing up science news is nothing new; it happens all the time, with or without Schneider. This is one of several reasons why so much popularized science reporting is garbage. I do have a problem with this kind of scientific dishonesty, and with Schneider’s endorsement of it.
The politicized ‘science’ advocated by Schneider is a prime example of what Nobel Laureate Richard Feynman called Cargo Cult Science back in 1974.
http://www.lhup.edu/~DSIMANEK/cargocul.htm
The trick AGW promoters have done so well with is confusing greenhouse theory with AGW.
Fear is the currency they use to do this.
They have done really well.
They have polluted the public square so that people are remarkably immune from critical thinking or the close scrutiny wild claims normally receive.
Historically these things fall apart, but the promoters of AGW have done a very good job, to date.
Hunter, could you let Louis and the rest know that greenhouse theory is valid. I don’t know how many hours we have wasted debating G&T here.
SJT,
If you are trying to get me to agree with the popular fallacy, that the greenhouse theory = AGW, no thanks. You do a great job of confusing those, deliberately it seems, quite well.
The greatest swindle of all is the precautionary principle [playing on the average person’s fears and ignorance] and scientists such as Schneider and other AGW advocates use it in spades.
Witness the govt election outcomes in recent years even though the majority are sceptical.
Because of the “great unknown”, Scepticism = Denial whereas AGW Beliefism = Caring.
And we all know it requires less courage to die caring than to die sceptical.
Hey, where are all of the usual suspects? In my limited experience, True Believers of all religious stripes regard pious fraud as a good thing. That’s true even when there’s inversion of belief at the top of the pyramid, the ‘prophets’ are laughing all the way to the bank, and the individuals in the priesthood don’t need to get their hands dirty doing real jobs.
My question for the Luke Collective: Do you think that it’s OK to tell lies in order to advance your holy Crusade against the Flying CO2 Monster?
Larry,
The fact that the Luke ensemble was hidden from us, and represented as just one snarky poster, answers your question in the affirmative: They do believe in, and do practice, pious lying.
SJT,
If you are trying to get me to agree with the popular fallacy, that the greenhouse theory = AGW, no thanks. You do a great job of confusing those, deliberately it seems, quite well.
No, I’m just asking you to tell them the greenhouse effect is real. Many of the visitors to this site still don’t accept it.
SJT wrote:
“No, I’m just asking you to tell them the greenhouse effect is real. Many of the visitors to this site still don’t accept it.”
Yes, atmospheric CO2 absorbs a little IR, and then re-emits IR in all directions–including downwards. BFD. You can call that the Greenhouse Effect if you like. But Louis doesn’t fancy the term, because the warming mechanism is not exactly the same as the one that keeps tomatoes alive during the Winter in a glass greenhouse. Being a modest person, I suggest a compromise: Let’s call the former phenomenon the Larry Effect!
The problem is that the Larry Effect on the Earth’s atmosphere is immeasurably small. To the best of my knowledge, there’s *zero physical evidence* that the Larry Effect contributed *significantly* to the piddling round of global warming of the 80s and 90s. Since the predictions made by the IPCC computer models are all garbage, the theory–in a *quantitative* sense–is also garbage. Why? In the theoretical sciences, prediction is the coin of the realm. Real scientists have a put-up-or-shut-up attitude.
I don’t doubt that talented computer jockeys worked very hard on the IPCC models. So what? GIGO does not qualify as real physical evidence. Real scientists do not confuse science with the trappings of science.
Schneider flips again!
http://www.climatedepot.com/a/3212/Inconvenient-Questions-Stanford-U-Bans-Climate-Film-from-Airing-Interview-with-Cooling-turned-Warming-Prof-Stephen-Schneider–You-are-prohibited
It took ten years of sporatic fluctuation to get from Schneider on In Search Of… The Coming Ice Age to Hansen testifying before Congress about The Coming Global Warming.
Ten years.
Ten years.
Ten years.
Ten. One Zero. 10.
Today, in the UK Guardian, the climate hucksters of Real Climate wrote:
So let me review. Ten years turned into nine. Nine years of sporatic, ambiguous, up one year down the next, mean average world temp, from the declaration of a coming ice age to the declaration of global warming. A world fever that immediately entered a ten year remission. Fine fit an proper science as far as Jimmy Hansen and Steven Schnieder are concerned.
Eleven years of cooling from 1998? Too short a time span to draw any conclusion – probably just natural variability.
If you are going to look at trends, then any school kid doing stats will tell you that picking 1998 as your starting point is stupid, you have to look at the long term trend and see what is happening compared to that.
It took ten years of sporatic fluctuation to get from Schneider on In Search Of… The Coming Ice Age to Hansen testifying before Congress about The Coming Global Warming.
Ten years.
Ten years.
Ten years.
Ten. One Zero. 10.
Don’t recall there ever being an IPCC on global cooling. Is that because the idea of the next ice age coming was just the usual scientific speculation that happens all the time? That’s what scientists do. That’s why science happens. It was looked at, and there was nothing of substance to it.
SJT: “It was looked at, and there was nothing of substance to it”.
Probably the computing power then could only model a model T-Ford towing the skin off a large custard tart, otherwise they would have proven it in the Lyellian fashion.
More random twaddle. Lyell was just another scientist, a good one, who moved science forward. He got some things right, and some things wrong. Pretty much the history of science. Incremental steps forward. I have no idea what he has to do with AGW.
SJT,
Lyell was a lawyer, and had much to do with the mindset behind AGW – or how to conceive of theories not supported in physical reality.
The only link is in your mind, Louis.
The IPCC report presents evidence based on physical reality. Once again, the idea that it doesn’t exists only in your mind.
The IPCC science is so convincing that this sort of truth is needed to support it.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/10/09/uk-television-ad-for-action-on-co2-is-beyond-bad-taste/
It also helps if you make all the promoters Nobel Prize winners.
SJT
A physical reality based on Holdren’s recent statement that global warming will produce global cooling which will produce an ice age that will kill 1 billion humans.
Yup, that’s the IPCC physical reality.
SJT,
I answered your question about the Larry Effect. (Some people call it the Greenhouse Effect.) Why don’t you have the cojones to answer the question that I posed to the Luke Collective–and indirectly to you and to the other Green trolls–earlier in this thread?
“Do you think that it’s OK to tell lies in order to advance your holy Crusade against the Flying CO2 Monster?”
Or do you disagree with Ayatollah Schneider on this one specific point?
Larry
I have feeling that SJT and the rest don’t have a moral compass – hence what you and I call lies they recognise as a different narrative. I’ve come across it often with the lefties – but when they are caught out with an inconvenient fact, they suddenly go silent – maybe on the premise that if you don’t talk or think about it, it then does not exist, and if it doesn’t exist then there is no point in dealing with it.
And the bigger the ego, the more pious the silence.
What I have difficulty with is that they actually believe all this stuff – and they are sincere about it. It’s not a scam they are inflicting on us, but a totally misplaced belief.
This mob also believes in econometric modelling – that economic outcomes are predictable. Economic activity is essentially reduced to trying to quantify human activity in order to predict it – and that, in an economic sense, is not possible – but aggregating it is? Much like the logic behind AGW theory – and the common factor between the two theories is that the same mindset produced both.
What is of real concern is that this mindset, basically the Platonic one, is recognised for what it is by comparison to its opposite – the Aristotellian one.
Good is recognised because it is contrasted with evil. Cold is contrasted with hot is another necessary duality.
Does this mean we have to put up with this duality forever? Afraid so – it’s the human condition.
I was once severely admonished by a leftie for remarking that some people are stupid. “There are no stupid people” was the argument put to me. Well, my reply was to point out how then does one identify the intelligent people. I was confronted with incomprehending silence.
That’s what we are dealing with and asking SJT whether it’s ok to lie for the greater cause will not excite any neurons in his fossilised intellect, and thus probably a waste of effort on our part.
Hello, peeps!
I’ve been really enjoying the lively debate here. May I float some of my ideas to you?
a. Mankind has a profound need to believe in apocalypse. When one threat disappears, we conjure up a new one. Bring back the devil, or flying saucers, or barbarians at the gates and this AGW poppycock will soon be forgotten about.
b. The public debate has much more in common with religion than it does with science, the difference being that the latter hold positions in the light of evidence, and the former despite. Just taking part in this discussion puts us at risk of being declared HERETICS.
c. Just like kids believing in Santa, I reckon that the public don’t truly believe a word of this great hoax. I have yet to meet a single person who changes his job so he can walk to work and get rid of the car, or a Watermelon who terminates her contract with the electricity company.
d. A lorra funding is reaching a lorra scientists whose livelihood depends on joining in with the Great Hoax. To paraphrase Churchill, never in the field of science has so much been paid to so many bent scientists for so much drivel. (Whoops, nearly wrote BOLLIX there.)
e. Have you seen Holzhauser’s graph of the Aletsch Glacier in the Alps since 1500BC? He might’ve sutitled it: “It comes and goes. Since 1860 it’s been going. So what?”
Child of Galileo wrote:
“a. Mankind has a profound need to believe in apocalypse. When one threat disappears, we conjure up a new one. Bring back the devil, or flying saucers, or barbarians at the gates and this AGW poppycock will soon be forgotten about.”
Interesting point. A related idea is that corrupt governments need to fabricate apocalyptic scenarios in order to stay in power. Here’s the first paragraph of an article in Wikipedia about a book (that I haven’t read), The Report From Iron Mountain.
“The Report From Iron Mountain is a book, published in 1967 (during the Johnson Administration) by Dial Press, that states that it is the report of a government panel. The book includes the claim that it was authored by a Special Study Group of fifteen men whose identities were to remain secret, and that it was not intended to be made public. The best selling book purportedly details the analyses and conclusions of a government panel that states that war, or a credible substitute for war, is necessary for governments to maintain power. Report from Iron Mountain was on the New York Times bestseller list and was translated into fifteen different languages. Controversy exists concerning whether the book is the result of a hoax authored by Leonard Lewin or the real result of a secret government panel.”
Was the secret government panel a hoax concocted by Mr Lewin? Although that question is interesting, it’s almost beside the point. The central idea has the ring of truth. And it’s a good follow-up to a similar theme from Orwell’s 1984. Recent history suggests that in the Voice-of-Authority-worshipping countries of Western Europe, Climate Alarmism can have the same distracting and unifying functions as perpetual war.
Someone mentioned a pitifull bit of warming between the mid 1970’s and the late 1990’s – never so much been made of such little.
Once the dynamic climate shifts of the mid 70’s and late 90’s are excluded – the warming trend between 1979 and 1997 that might be attributed to greenhouse gases is less than half of the 0.2C/decade quoted by the IPCC.
As for 1998 – the prospect exists of no global warming from 1998 to to mid 2020’s. This is not a prediction but a hypothesis based on the science of ocean/climate shifts. It is significant in climate science as the start of the latest ocean/climate shift.
How is the hypothesis doing thus far?
http://www.drroyspencer.com/
http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/OC5/3M_HEAT_CONTENT/
Judge for youself.
As for the other CO2 problem – ocean acidification is not measureable in the field. The 2 studies I have found with a great deal of diligence were both located in upwelling regions in the eastern Pacific. With the inevitable headlines that ocean acidification is 10 times worse than calculated. An expression of arrogance and bullshit claims to certainty in science that is very unfortunate.
I am happy for Jennifer and look forward to her novel. Fantastic post global warming therapy. I started working this week on a screen treatment of a series of 1960 sci-fi medical novels by James White called Hospital Station. I am so over global warming.