The Sun did come out for the first morning – Monday morning. The inaugural conference of the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship was in Greenwich just a few miles downriver from Westminster in London.
I hadn’t managed to get any sleep Sunday night after arriving late on a series of flights beginning in Rockhampton (to the immediate west of the Great Barrier Reef) via Dubai (on the edge of the desert of the eastern Arabian Peninsula) arriving Heathrow over more than 24 hours with no sleep.
I nevertheless sat up into the early hours of that London morning after finally being allocated an hotel room, penning a first blog post, which has been republished at WattsUpwithThat.
Then it was time to have breakfast and meet up with John Roskam and also Bella d’Abrera – another IPA colleague, in the hotel foyer. It was Bella’s idea we catch the cable car rather than the tube. So, we arrived from Docklands by going over the Thames rather than under it. I thought it a most wonderful way to arrive.
On the other side of the river, and down a few streets, we found a long line of academic types, snaking their way very patiently to a very large black shed known as the Magazine London. Described as a purpose-built destination, the largest of its kind in London, this shed was able to accommodate the 1,500 plus delegates from over 70 countries, and an orchestra – all gathered for this inaugural conference. But everyone first needed to get through security.
This first ARC conference was going to be more than a series of lecture. We got to hear a rabbi play from the horn of a ram/shofar, Joshua Luke Smith recite poetry, and on and on it went, and that was just the first morning.
At the first morning tea I got to meet some truly brave people who had travelled almost as far as me, including the founder of Rebel News, Ezra Levant from Toronto, who does not flinch but rather provokes on the toughest of issues.
The recurring central theme on the first day, and throughout, was that we in the West are facing a civilisational crisis, driven by external and internal forces. Considering external forces, historian Niall Ferguson said we are in the most difficult strategic environment since World War II. Internally, at the level of culture, we heard about the ‘radical left’s’ capture of our institutions, the divisions in society stoked by the grievance industry, and the collapse in traditional family structures.
Jordan Peterson was a significant presence throughout the three days and promoted continually as the wisest man – with all the answers.
This was a key mistake, because, while Peterson has an important message, which mostly begins and ends with the biblical stories, he seems unable to publicly acknowledge this his Christian faith and that Western civilisation’s greatest success is science following from regard for the rational without demeaning the important roles of religion and faith. To be clear, and in the interests of getting to a core issue that the ARC conference was purportedly about, I am going to suggest that Jordon Peterson doesn’t actually understand, or have any empathy for, science beyond clinical psychology. His obsession is with biblical stories and culture and how we can best live as individuals within families. This is all so very important, but it is not central to the success of Western civilisation – it is but a part of the story. And if the West is to survive it will need to maintain its technological superiority, that I will discuss in Part 3 of this series.
Western civilisation’s success can be attributed to the innovations that followed men who became curious about the natural and physical world beyond their families and communities. Men, it was mostly men who were given the opportunity, to understand nature, natural systems extending even beyond our solar system and describing this universe mathematically and empirically.
Jordon Peterson’s genius is understanding the nature of humanity, but not necessarily what was special about even our first and most important scientists in the western tradition beginning perhaps with Johannes Kepler. Kepler’s First Law states that planets move in elliptical paths around the Sun. He also discovered that planets move proportionally faster in their orbits when they are closer to the Sun; this became Kepler’s Second Law and is critical to understanding climate change over geological time.
Rather than name, and so acknowledge, the most important of these first scientists in the Western tradition, in the conference handbook, Jordon Peterson laments as he did on stage:
Five centuries of ascendant reductionist Enlightenment rationality have revealed that this starkly objective world lacks all intrinsic meaning. A century and a half or more of corrosive cultural criticism has undermined our understanding of and faith in the traditions necessary to unite and guide us …
‘We find ourselves, in consequence, inundated by a continual onslaught of ominous, demoralising messages, most particularly in the form of environmental catastrophism ..
In Peterson’s opening address, and subsequently, the nature of this catastrophism is never discussed or assessed.
This is something that the early scientists puzzled over and described empirically and mathematically. Jordon Peterson could have explained this if he took the time to consult more widely, if he had any interest at all in the history of science that is fundamental to understanding the success of Western civilisation.
Science and its central role in the success, particularly the military success of the West, was hardly acknowledged at this inaugural ARC conference, with Peterson and other delegates preferring the comfort of biblical stories and talk about families and communities. But these can only persist if they can keep the barbarians beyond the gates, at least in part through military superiority. Such is the nature of how individuals, communities and nation-states arrange themselves.
There was no rational discussion and debate about the very issue, human-caused global warming, that is driving so much individual anxiety and causing a growing weakness in our national security across nations that have a Western tradition. In the next post in this series I will explain how concern about global warming is undermining energy security and thus national security.
There was no opportunity for any consideration of the underlying physics nor the empirical data that would enable some assessment of whether the core theory of catastrophic climate change is supported by the evidence, or not.
Jordon Peterson concerned himself in this opening address with the story of Job in the Bible, a man who suffered because of his faith rather than because of any natural catastrophe – manmade or otherwise. Peterson’s final address included the claim we have such power over nature, we can green the deserts.
There is a biblical tradition, that recognises deserts as places to wander, fast, and where one can find God. I’m not sure if that will be as easy if they all become places for easy fishing, or at least relative safety where one can escape the heat and sand and all that can make our existence seemingly unbearable.
On the first morning Somali-born activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali, in conversation with former Australian Prime Minister John Anderson and British philosopher Os Guinness said,
Western Civilisation is a cut flower, and cut flowers die… but we have the remnants, the symbols of western heritage, and their seeds. All we have to do, those of us who inherited it, is to go and see them, grow them, nurture them, water them – and when they’re attacked, fight for them.
"Western Civilisation is a cut flower, and cut flowers die… but we have the remnants, the symbols of western heritage, and their seeds. All we have to do, those of us who inherited it, is to go and see them, grow them, nurture them, water them – and when they're attacked, fight… pic.twitter.com/4BE22K5oKc
— The Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (@arc_forum) October 30, 2023
In fact, it is not nearly this simple.
There is a need for debate, but not between the ignorant, there is a need for those with expertise in both mathematics and science to be able to reconnect with the roots of Western Civilisation that means being allowed to be curious about the earth, and also the Earth, in which the seeds of the flowers might be planted.
There was hardly any mention of science at the conference, and instead of including the most imminent scientist who was at the conference, Richard Lindzen, on a most important panel session on the evening of the second day we had to suffer the ignorance of both Jordon Peterson and Alex Epstein when Dennis Prager asked an important question: Is Antarctica melting or not?
As Magatta Wade and Michael Shellenberger also on this panel ducked the question, Alex Epstein, but only after Dennis Prager pressed the point, claimed, ‘Antarctica is melting, but slowly.’
I felt a need to interject from where I was sitting at a table toward the back of the room at this ‘ARC in the Evening – Sector Dinner’ advertised as ‘Energy and Environment: Fuelling the Future and Powering Progress’.
‘Incorrect,’ I called out.
After hearing for two days about the importance of the truth, I was not going to be silent.
Jordon Peterson, also on the panel, on stage, saw and heard me clearly and took over from Alex Epstein commenting, lifting his microphone after running his hand over his face as he had a habit of doing across the three days, he said into his microphone, ‘The problem is that we don’t know when it [the melting at Antarctica] began or when it will end.’
‘Incorrect,’ I called out again.
This time Peterson, asked me directly from the stage, ‘Why? How do you know [when the melting will start and end]?’
‘The physics of the universe,’ I called back, ‘There are cycles. We can forecast when they will begin and when they will end.’
I went on to mention the ‘Milankovitch cycles’, the 100,000-year cycles, that can be described mathematically relating to the orbit of the Earth about the sun and its changing eccentricity. This can be seen empirically in the ice-core data including from Vostok at the Antarctic. I could have gone on to explain that we are only now beginning to understand the likely effect of falling sea levels and changing orbits on submarine volcanism that likely increases dramatically, precipitating the end to each of the last half dozen or so ice ages.
Peterson turned back to the panel and they wrapped up. If I had been given a microphone, I could have elaborated further about the importance of understanding scale and also phase alignment, but no one was going to give me a microphone.
Across the three days there were no roving microphones – none.
Discussion was limited to each panel, and their preordained experts.
These experts are listed across six pages of the inaugural ARC conference handbook, beginning with Agu Irukwu, a Senior Pastor of Jesus House for All Nations in London and ending with Winston Marshall, a grammy award-winning musician.
There were scientists in the audience, very few, but notably Richard Lindzen. He was at this dinner.
And so, my final act of defiance, was when Denis Prager at the suggestion of Michael Schellenberger called for Bjorn Lomborg to stand-up toward the very end of the panel session. Calling for Lomborg to stand-up because we should acknowledge him as a great advocate for the truth on this issue of ‘energy and the environment’. And so I could but call out again from the back of the room,
‘Then let’s also acknowledge the presence of Richard Lindzen’.
Denis Prager could not see me, and he asked for clarification, as to whose name had been called out. A gentleman from a table closer to the stage called back, ‘Richard Lindzen’.
And so, after political scientist Bjorn Lomborg was cheered as a campion of the truth because he is clearly Michael Shellenberger’s’ favoured wiseman, there was opportunity for atmospheric physicist Richard Lindzen to stand and also be applauded by the several hundred of us at that dinner.
Early in the panel discussion Shellenberger had specifically commented that ‘scepticism’ must be closed-down and ‘the science’ of the IPCC accepted as true. This is perhaps the intention of Bjorn Lomborg, and it would seem other intellectual drivers of this inaugural ARC conference. Though I would argue they are not really intellectual, but more political in their aspirations and motivations.
If ARC is to be truly successful in saving Western civilisation, then it is going to need to move beyond politics and reconcile itself with the very nature not only of man, but man’s place within the Universe. This is at the heart of science as it is still practiced in places like Russia and China.
If Western civilisation is to persist, it needs more than anything else to save its science, because otherwise our civilisation will be conquered and replaced. This is the reality of history: boys don’t only need to be able to set the table, a theme of Jordon Peterson’s final closing address, but they also need to be able to fight wars and win them. We thus need energy security for national security, a theme that I will discuss in part 3 of this series.
*****
Postscript
Much thanks for the note from Joeseph Bast, with the correct citation for the chart: It is by the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC), published by The Heartland Institute. NIPCC is a project of Heartland, SEPP, and the (now inactive) Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change. This figure comes from Climate Change Reconsidered II: Physical Science (2013), fourth in the (so far) five-volume series.
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
Thank you for standing up for science and calling out the politics. Peterson is way too academic for me and talks like he swallowed a thesaurus.
Getting back to basic science and the scientific method must be a priority.
Western civilisation advanced because of it.
Thanks for this overview of the ARC event which obviously had some major shortcomings. Well done for interjecting when ill-informed statements were made. I had to re-read in amazement your comment about Shellenberger saying ‘scepticism’ had to be closed down and ‘the science’ of the IPCC taken as true. Such inanity should have been challenged strongly because it was not only wrong but dangerous thinking and is a major reason why we are in such dire straits wrt our energy and self-reliance leading to weak defence of our nations.
Excellent account of what troubles me. Climate science may never succeed until we dismantle the ‘consensus’ that exists but is not science. Imagine taking Al Gore or Greta Thunberg seriously. A conference like the one you attended could have focused on a single overarching issue – Science is not consensus and consensus is not science until after the real work is done by individuals – Pasteur, Banting and Best, Mme Curie, Albert Einstein, etc. Morever the next breakthroughs will come from those few serendipitous individuals who squeeze a foot in the door to hold it open into the next logical world. Consensus is for the lazy.
Jordan Peterson should not preach about science. He is seriously overspecialised outside of how it works. I have all his books and in truth – he is restating what my mom and dad said as I was growing up. It but has great value but, to my discredit, I did not always listen.
Hear, hear!
Go Jennifer. I wish I had been there to cheer you on. You seem to be the only rational voice in the room. Disappointing that this inaugural ARC conference seems to focusing on ideology rather than science. As you say, science has been the basis of progressing western civilisation. And only scientific truth can save us. The truth about climate change lies in natural cycles. We must first save our education system from ideology if we are to progress science. Keep up your great work. And thanks to the IPA for supporting scientific dissent.
Thank you Jennifer for your summary. I found it extremely disappointing that Shellenberger was given time at all let alone to suggest ‘scepticism’ must be closed-down and ‘the science’ of the IPCC accepted as true.
It is scepticism that has kept climate alarmism at bay for decades. With the discredited IPCC Chair Pachauri reduced to writing racy novels and the IPCC’s reputation in tatters after so many failed predictions, Shellenberger and other IPCC advocates have zero credibility.
Peter Gleick’s review is telling “Bad science and bad arguments abound in ‘Apocalypse Never’ by Michael Shellenberger” and it is ‘deeply and fatally flawed.’ he wrote in a critique. “wanders from topic to topic, jumping from personal anecdote to polemical arguments to data and numbers carefully chosen to support his views, making it difficult for the reader to follow his threads.”
It would seem that Shellenberger deserved more than interjection and Richard Lindzen deserved a seat on the panel. With EV bubbles popping and Hertz rolling back its EV plans the worm appears to be turning. With Siemens Energy dropping some 70% in four months the writing may well be on the wall.
Another review suggests that “the tide is turning further with the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC) conference in London this week”
I trust the next ARC Conference will support a healthier level of climate scepticism.
How. APPALLING. Clearly, Shellenberger’s fond wishes for the demise of data-driven science were the reason for the non-scientific program. The whole thing was designed to obfuscate, to create the impression that there IS no rock-solid argument countering the conjecture of the AGWists.
Mr. Peterson’s muddying the waters with inapposite Bible cites reminded me of a George Orwell quote:
“Vague and imprecise language is no accident.
It is a conscious attempt to confuse and deceive.”
Your cries were those of “a voice in the wilderness.”
LEFT RICHARD LINDZEN OFF THE PANEL??
That says it all.
They don’t want to save Western Civilization. They want to keep the money flowing to all those who benefit from the unproven speculation that human CO2 causes meaningful shifts in the climate zones of the earth.
Cui bono.
I highlighted the Milankovitch discussion with Jordan Peterson on my Linked in Page Post, I liked that:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/frits-buningh-6233832b/recent-activity/all/
Plus the nice picture in front of the Venue.
I’m glad I read this report, Jennifer. Good on you for challenging the Wise Men. I share your critique of Peterson. It doesn’t surprise me that there was hardly any mention of science at the conference, nor that there were no roaming microphones.
Let us extend the Bible and have a book of Peterson.
“Early in the panel discussion Shellenberger had specifically commented that ‘scepticism’ must be closed-down and ‘the science’ of the IPCC accepted as true.”
He said that?! Good grief. There is no science of the IPCC. They are a propaganda outfit: global boiling!!
I like Shellenberger and Lomborg but I think they compromise. The alarmists do not accept compromise or any concession. It’s the old story: if you give them a inch they’ll take everything. Alarmism is rubbish, anti-science. That’s the message.
Three cheers for Jennifer!!!
Your reference to Kepler is noteworthy.
The ‘changing eccentricity’ of the Earth’s Solar orbit does not abrogate the Solar-induced Orbital Dry Cycles (as described by Alex S. Gaddes in his work, ‘Tomorrow’s Weather’ 1990.) His proposed ‘Ratios Principle’ exactly defines the Terrestrial Footprints of these Dry Cycles in relation to the ejection of Solar Particles to Earth and the rest of the Solar System. They are NOT Milankovitch Cycles. The key here is the Constant of a 360 degrees Orbit of the Earth in relation to the Sun.
Attention may be drawn to the ‘ratios’ described by Pythagorean Mathematics, apparent in the divisions of musical notation.
The resulting Earth/Solar Orbital Calendar – and its observed consequences – abrogates the Gregorian/Judeo-Christian Calendar – and the Calendars of all other Religious Denominations.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1TFFDXyhe5b0ZfLCiFt23W4PbubQaQfQo/view?usp=sharing
A conference! Do they attempt at consensus or do they agree vaguely about saving Western values etc. Schellenberger is a leftist who is given credibility by conservatives. A bit more rational than your ideologues that run about the place.
Thanks Jennifer I hope your efforts become a lightning rod for action for saving Science and Enlightenment. We live in dark times.
Like many great thinkers you seem to have distilled the real issues at stake here – no doubt you see them clearly.
However for me you have pointed out everything I already knew but was unable to put together into a full picture- a narrative as Jordon would say.
Thank you
Jennifer, it is disappointing that the ARC failed based on what it supposed to stand for. As for the science, no-one owns the science, the beauty of science is that things are able to be tested – this is how we learn and confirm things.
On the science, there was a good article in the
“MANHATTAN CONTRARIAN
Do we really know that human green house gas emissions cause significant climate change?
October 24, 2023
Francis Menton”
Worth a read.
Keep up the fight for critical thinking and the truth.
You are correct about Jordan Peterson being a waste of space and sadly found yourself in a political echo chamber. It is pretty obvious when you look at their advisory board.
Facts matter, so a couple of corrections:
(1) John Anderson was Deputy Prime Minister of Australia (Acting Prime Minister on a couple of occasions).
(2) NASA scientists inform us that, “But Milankovitch cycles can’t explain all climate change that’s occurred over the past 2.5 million years or so. And more importantly, they cannot account for the current period of rapid warming Earth has experienced since the pre-Industrial period (the period between 1850 and 1900), and particularly since the mid-20th century. Scientists are confident Earth’s recent warming is primarily due to human activities — specifically, the direct input of carbon dioxide into Earth’s atmosphere from burning fossil fuels.”
Point 1. is correct but point 2. relies on ‘NASA scientists’ who have been shown time and again to be both wrong and heavily biased towards anthropogenic effects on climate/global warming.
Facts matter
Scientists say man’s 3% of global emissions have increased atmospheric co2 to 420 ppm( not the natural 97% ) resulting in it being the hottest in 120,000 years .
In other words it was hotter at the peak of the last interglacial 120,000 years ago when atmospheric co2 was only 290 ppm .
The fact is man made emissions can not be the cause as in the history of the planet temperature has always increased and decreased first followed by co2 .
Jordan Peterson’s musings on Original Sin are worth listening to because Climate Science is a field of endeavour where politics and science intersect. Sure we want to understand natural systems but think about how much time it would save if everyone involved stopped virtue signalling and just told the truth.
NOAA and NASA rely on government funding to do other things on the gravy train. They both know better.
Richard Lindzen – Prof. Emeritus, MIT – “When an issue becomes a vital part of a political agenda, as is the case with climate, then the politically desired position becomes a goal rather than a consequence of scientific research.”
Fran Manns, fake scientists rely on funding from the fossil fuel industry.
85% of the world’s oil is produced by OPEC and Russia and 15% by western oil firms that follow market rules and are efficiently run. Their profit comes by undercutting the inefficient family nepotism of OPEC. None from OPEC would consider meeting ‘Net O’ to save the planet from the narrative threat from the IPCC. This is entirely political ‘science’.
The real reason there has been a slow rise of temperature is 1) there was a cold start to all the time series used because of Krakatoa and a dozen other huge eruptions from 1883 to 1932 (4.3 +/-4.8 years apart) that IPCC overlooked in all the overrought climate models. And 2), the growth of cities and location of weather stations at busy airports as those cities grew. Real scientists know the facts.
Your comment is ‘argumentum ad hominem’
Thank you, Jenn.
An informative and well-written essay.
Please get some “me” time and refresh. 🙂
– from rural Washington State
Much thanks to Anthony for republishing:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2023/11/04/in-denial-about-the-science-part-2-arc-in-london/
NASA acknowledges the ‘Milankovitch Cycles’ yet argues that the current ‘rapid’ global warming does not fit with Milankovitch time frames and rather, that the most significant factor in the global warming / climate change that is being observed in the recent past and in our present is the increased presence of carbon in our atmosphere due to our heightening use of fossil fuels.
https://climate.nasa.gov/explore/ask-nasa-climate/2949/why-milankovitch-orbital-cycles-cant-explain-earths-current-warming/
[I wasn’t seeking to directly air my evaluation of Jennifer’s post, yet I noticed (Dr. Fran Manns says … November 5, 2023 at 12:29 am) “Your comment is ‘argumentum ad hominem’.” I had had much the same reaction in reading Jennifer’s post … that it was too much about ‘who’ and too little about ‘what’.]
Is there video of any of Dr. Happer’s talks? I’d love to see one.
There has to be video, doesn’t there?
Please let me know.
Thanks from Brooklyn, NY
I asked too soon.
Video of Dr. Happer’s remarks at Brisbane a month ago. You can watch it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2nhssPW77I
Several here.
https://ca.search.yahoo.com/yhs/search?p=Happer%20on%20You%20Tube&hspart=fc&hsimp=yhs-2461&type=fc_AC934C13286_s58_g_e_d091423_n9998_c999¶m1=7¶m2=eJwti82ugjAQhV9llpoYmFIonbL1Ce7WuBhLwYZCiXKD8envmGvO5jt%2FY%2Bwv3fXnrBAri%2BZyui7iicgKfiokVVdajP%2FPheIqWBls3RDYOm4bcmQR3UCkna6Ine1V7azyrczHkGXvWfCXheb8jilx2RQIhz0ufd6fsGygsMAOJDB1By9TH4HXNYU93Ka4lY1uC23gMN23OZ0gxSnAGPyUj%2BDvjzyHUikq8CN48sCP%2BL38AfKlQic%3D
Petersen is indeed metaphysically preoccupied, but it’s shocking that no one , especially Neil Ferguson, had the presence of mind to call you out for the inanity of eliding the climate forcing time scales of the Milankovitch cycle and the Industrial Revolution.
The problem of civilization leading to population growth and with it higher rates of atmospheric change and radiative forcing can’t be solved by standing athwart the path of geophysics crying :
“Please Go Away!”
All ARC is doing is making intellectual life easy for social entrepreneurs Hell bent on making reuglation a growth industry.
Hi Jennifer
I listen to Jordan Peterson’s podcast a lot. I can’t listen to them all because, as he admits, “he’s a bit much, man.” A little while ago, he ran a series of conversations with Richard Lindzen, Steve Koonin, Alex Epstein and Bjorn Lomborg as he explored their thoughts around climate change, whether it’s a problem such as it is, and what to do about it, if anything. I think to surmise that JP has no empathy for science is wrong. What I do think is that he surmises that the path forward proposed by Lomborg and Epstein is the most logical if we don’t want to wreck the place with stupid solutions to a non problem aka Chris Bowen. I also think that fixing our cultural train wreck has to come before fixing the science for the reason that 30 years plus of pointing out the numerous flaws in the “settled science” by many eminent scientists and informed contributors has achieved nought within the framework our culture currently affords. JP’s ARC forum is a start, at least, surely?
I have a shelf of books by scientists who have used logic and science to address the issues. I have done my own research and began thinking about the alarmism after a classic paper in SCIENCE by Friss- Christensen and Lassen that showed a high degree of correlation (95%) between the solar cycle peak frequency and Northern Hemisphere temperature over the past 150 years.
It took a few years before the ‘ad hominem’ began and their paper was dismissed. However, it was a start and their laboratory has continued to perform experimental work to correlate the solar cycle with cloud abundance. That paper and my shelf of books by authoritative scientists is not part of the public mind.
Instead, we have let Al Gore and Greta Thunberg drive the band wagon, and an IPCC that ignored Krakatoa and a list of 12 major volcanic events (4.8 +/- 4.3 years) from 1883 to 1932. The only ‘evidence’ – the climate models – had a cold start to regression toward the modern conditions in 1883 – the natural greenhouse effect – and misrepresent this as a correlation with carbon dioxide which NO experimental work supports.
The current alarmist narrative has the world in its thrall but in my opinion, critical science must consolidate around the biggest lie of all – ‘consensus’. The public takes for granted that consensus is the scientific method. If you read the papers on consensus and you will see pure crude statistical drivel vulnerable to retraction – if we were really working together and focussed.
Dear Mnestheus
Let’s discuss cycles of various frequencies, including 100,000 years but also the shorter 60 years cycles.
Do you agree that Antarctica has shown a general cooling trend for the last 2,000 years at least, and also for most of the last 70 years, at least until 2016?
Let’s get into some detail, let’s unpack the science.
More cycles would be futile at this point. Let’s unpack the ‘Consensus’. It is far more relevant to the True Believers.
Thank you Jennifer for standing against the sooky clinging in ARC to Queensberry “consensus”. I did fear ARC would do just that – because it’s easier than hard, evidence-based rational viewpoints. For quite a long time now, I’ve regarded Peterson as just noisy.
>” … the most imminent scientist who was at the conference, Richard Lindzen …”< [part quote from the main article]
Eminent, surely. Lindzen is a true model for me, as is Ian Plimer (notwithstanding his quirky humour). Ian Plimer's ability to draw out great geological events in all their complexity with easy to grasp language is wonderful, as is Richard Lindzen's ability to summarise atmospheric physics with brilliantly succinct analyses in a genuinely literate style, avoiding tedious academic language density.
Shellenberger, I'm afraid, I could never believe. His Damascus "conversion" always had the taint of simple reinvention again just seeking limelight attention.
The soft spot used by alarmists is “that was then, this is now”. An even softer spot is ‘consensus’. If we really want to support science we need to attack the ‘consensus’ because it is the weak link in the public mind.
Jennifer you might want to read Dr James Tour on science and Christ. Both are necessary and the latter for our Ethics.
Jen, I agree with your point about science which really should be about engineering. However, I disagree about Richard Lindzen. On the cementafriend website, the 1st article is a copy of a post I made on your website long ago. I contacted, by email, Richard Lindzen about methane before the post. He basically replied that he did not know but suggested an article which had no information. I asked him if he ever talked to any chemical engineers at MIT one of which I had met at the International flame Research Foundation in Holland (I named him). I received no reply. I also contacted others before the article eg Dr Bob Carter & Dr Spencer who both replied they did not know. If one looks at the NASA diagram in the article Methane absorbs no radiation from the Earth Surface- it is not a greenhouse gas.
I feel Richard Lindzen does not fully understand the engineering (chemical & mechanical) subjects of Heat&Mass transfer (eg radiation, or evaporation) and Thermodynamics. The same applies to Dr Roy Spencer. Fluid Dynamics (eg jet streams, ocean currents ) is another engineering subject not understood by so-called climate scientists. I is amazing to me that so many scientists have no understanding how refrigeration works. The should question GPT chat. At every point of heat transfer the 2nd law of thermodynamics spontaneously applies. Heat only even as recently measured at the atomic scale flows from hot to cold. Energy is applied in refrigeration to allow the heat transfer. If it did not work that way it would be impossible to have refrigeration or liquid oxygen, nitrogen or hydrogen.
These are all valid points to attack, but the real issue is the term coined by Abe Lincoln, the ‘public mind’. All the science is there in fragments of essays and scientific papers neutralised by “…Ad Hominem”. Our real problem is the way the public has locked in on consensus. Consensus is not science except for the lazy.
Correct….
Heat transfers from hot to cold. If they taught Science in Kindergarten, this would be Kindergarten Science. The Planet HAS to be cooling overall.
El Nino was dramatically ‘declared’ by the BoM in mid-September, (after postponing it from the start of September,) on the strength of perceived increased Sea Surface Temperatures and a couple of hot days instigated by North-Westerlies off the desert.
Then it flooded in Victoria.
Normal precipitation conditions for Spring, have prevailed ever since.
When asked to explain The ‘disappearing’ El Nino, the loyal BoM/ AGW crew at Sky News Weather declared – ‘It is still an ‘El Nino Year,’ ‘ We are just lucky not to have experienced it yet.’
Sea Surface Temperature is NOT a definitive precursor of Drought.
ENSO has always been a bogus, fantasy concept, ever since it was ‘exported’ from the University of East Anglia in the Mid 1970s.
The next Solar-induced Orbital Dry Cycle, will arrive over Australia,(longitudinally) In early January 2026. Until then ‘Wet/Normal’ precipitation conditions will prevail – unless exacerbated by Southern Hemisphere Volcanic Activity, (mainly from Indonesia to Australia’s North.)
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1TFFDXyhe5b0ZfLCiFt23W4PbubQaQfQo/view?usp=sharing