Joseph D’Aleo, CCM
My colleagues and I have given many lectures about the myths, misconceptions and outright lies in the global warming arena the last few decades. After an hour of graphs, charts and pictures detailing how a tiny trace gas, carbon dioxide, has no relationship to whatever warming and cooling or weather extremes has occurred we get the inevitable statement from someone in the audience.
“How can you deny that man made global warming and its effects are real when 97 percent of climate scientists agree that it is true?”
At that point we have to explain that the 97 percent figure is not what it appears to be. It is a convenient fiction to imply a consensus.
It is now the rule in the schools. Our students are not being taught the scientific method. In the classroom they are taught what to think and not how to think.
THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD AND THE PHONEY CONSENSUS
The scientific method does not involve a poll or vote by scientists (that is in the realm of politics where you vote on a law or candidate), but validation of a theory with facts.
Michael Crichton, PhD, MD, famous author, producer, screenwriter and lecturer often talked about claims of a consensus.
“Historically the claim of consensus is the first refuge of scoundrel; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming the matter is already settled”. “Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you’re being had. Let’s be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. In science, consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus… Let’s be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics.”
The fact that a VP and a failed presidential candidate who had a D in the only science class he ever took produced the movie An Inconvenient Truth seen by our children numerous times in schools even in gym class should raise eyebrows. It did in the UK where the courts ruled in order for the film to be shown that teachers must make clear that the film is a political work and promotes only one side of the argument, and if teachers present the film without making this plain they may be in breach of the 1996 Education Act and guilty of political indoctrination. They required the eleven most egregious inaccuracies had to be specifically drawn to the attention of school children.
WHAT DO SCIENTISTS REALLY THINK?
There have been many polls and declarations that demonstrate a large percentage of real scientists believe in climate change BUT that natural factors are the primary driver.
Climatology wasn’t a recognized specialty or profession even at colleges when I first taught weather and climate in the 1970s into the early 1980s. It was mostly a small part of introductory classes on weather or in geography or geology courses. When climate change became part of an anti fossil fuel agenda and big money suddenly appeared, teachers never trained in climate suddenly became ‘climate scientists’. Environmental sciences emerged as a career path.
The UN, politicians, industry and the mainstream and on-line media would want you to believe that all scientists have now seen the light, that there is a consensus. That is not the case. Most honest scientist know so. Many are forced into silence or if they vocalize their dissent, find their careers endangered or even destroyed. Still many when past the stage of their career where they can speak the truth or when they can do so anonymously, will do so.
A Global Warming Petition was signed by 31,487 scientists including 9,029 with PHDs in their fields. The petition states that: “There is no convincing scientific evidence that the human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate. Moreover, there is substantial scientific evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the Earth”.
1100 Climate Realists signed ‘’The Manhattan Declaration on Climate Change” from 40 countries demanding an end to climate hysteria. 1000+ International Scientists Dissent Over Man-Made Global Warming Claims to the U.S. Senate, 300+ Eminent Scientists Reject U.N. Climate Change Treaty (Paris Accord). A recent survey found 1350 peer review papers questioning global warming and 1000 papers believing cooling has begun. See my team’s effort to fact-check popular alarmist claims here. We have many other peer review papers disprove the theory.
Scientists are aware of the failures too and now have proposed 54 excuses and counting as to why their models have failed. See this interesting series on the Great Scientific Fraud here.
IGNORED OPINION POLLS
There are many well-educated people who do not agree with the survey and its 97% figure. In a 2011 Scientific American opinion poll on the state of climate science provided the eye-opening results cast by their “scientifically literate” readership. With a total of 5190 respondents, a consensus of 81.3% think the IPCC is “a corrupt organization, prone to group-think, with a political agenda” and 75% think climate change is caused by solar variation or natural processes vs. 21% who think it is due to greenhouse gases from human activity. 65% think we should do nothing about climate change since “we are powerless to stop it,” and the same percentage think science should stay out of politics. When asked, “How much would you be willing to pay to forestall the risk of catastrophic climate change?”.76.7% said “nothing.” Scientific American removed the poll when pressured by environmental groups.
In a 2013 Forbes article, it was reported only 36 percent of earth scientists and engineers believe that humans are creating a global warming crisis, according to a survey reported in the peer-reviewed Organization Studies. By contrast, a strong majority of the 1,077 respondents believe that nature is the primary cause of recent global warming and/or that future global warming will not be a very serious problem. The survey results show earth scientists and engineers hold similar views as meteorologists.
Even a global UN survey of the public, received over 9.7 million votes and found in prioritizing what should be focused on, action on climate change finished last.
2020 Gallup Poll shows a similar result:
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SO WHERE DID 97% COME FROM?
The first quoted source was an online survey that was published in 2009 by Peter Doran and Maggie Kendall Zimmerman from the University of Illinois. The survey was sent to 10,257 scientists to, which 3,146 scientists responded to.
There were two primary questions in the survey. The first “When compared to pre-1800 levels, do you think mean global temperatures have generally risen, fallen, or remained relatively constant? ”
History has recorded a prolonged global cold era know as “The Little Ice Age” that lasted from about 1400 to 1850 AD. Since that time the global average temperature has risen. I know of no meteorologist, climatologist or anyone involved in the study of the earth’s temperature, who would argue this point.
Question number two asked “Do you think human activity is a significant contributing factor in changing mean global temperatures?”
BUT what constitutes “human activity”? The burning of fossil fuels to make energy is one. The changing of land surfaces to make cities, farmland and deforestation is “human activity” that can change temperature as well. Changing mean temperature can be accomplished by changing the environment around a climate recording station. This is also “human activity”. As rural stations are increasingly surrounded by urban sprawl, roads and buildings, the temperature of the site will warm due to the “Urban Heat Island (UHI)” effect. This has nothing to due with fossil fuel. The results from the survey do not address just what constitutes “human activity”. A “yes” response to question two implies the responder is referring to fossil fuels but that is not necessarily the case. It is however, what the survey likely wanted to convey.
Question number two also does not address what the word “significant” means to each individual respondent. What constitutes significant can be very different from person to person.
The 97% figure from the on-line survey comes from a whittling down of the accepted number of responses from 3,146 to 79. The 79 scientists are those that said they have recently published 50% of their papers in the area of climate change. Of these, 76 of 79 answered “risen” to questions one (96.2%). How this number is not 100% was a surprise. As to question two, 75 of 77 answered ‘yes” (97.4%).
An attempt at a more rigorous approach to confirm the 97% number followed and failed. Cook et al. (2013) attempted to categorize 11,944 abstracts [brief summaries] of papers (not entire papers) to their level of endorsement of AGW. They found 7930 (66%) held no position on AGW, while only 64 papers (0.5% of the total) explicitly endorsed humans are the primary (50%+) as the cause. This was 97% of those who explicitly identified a cause. A later analysis by Legates et al. (2013) found there to be only 41 papers (0.3%) that supported this definition.
Cook et al. (2013) was published in the journal Environmental Research Letters (ERL) which conveniently has multiple outspoken alarmist scientists on its editorial board (e.g. Peter Gleick and Stefan Rahmstorf) where the paper likely received substandard “pal-review” instead of the more rigorous peer-review. The paper has since been refuted five times in the scholarly literature by Legates et al. (2013), Tol (2014a), Tol (2014b), Dean (2015) and Tol (2016).
All the other “97% consensus” studies: e.g. Doran & Zimmerman (2009), Anderegg et al. (2010) and Oreskes (2004) have been refuted by peer-review.
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AN UPHILL BATTLE
Alarmists have the advantage of virtually all the massive funding for climate change research ($1.65Byear) and they have a huge ‘social support’ group of
(1) Agenda driven or ratings driven journalists, environmentalists and corporations that have realized green is their favorite color and see this as a way to keep green paper flowing into their coffers and pockets
(2) Traders and major market firms licking their chops at the prospects of big time money from alternative energy companies that have realized this is the vector to bigger profits and
(3) Politicians and political activists who see it as a way to accomplish ulterior goals about changing society and increasing their powerbase.
Some Saw This Coming
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed - and hence clamorous to be led to safety - by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.” And, “he urge to save humanity is almost always only a false face for the urge to rule it.” H.L. Mencken
Well before the climate change scare started, we were warned in 1961:
“… [In] the technological revolution during recent decades...research has become central ... complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government ... the solitary inventor ... has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields ... the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded.”
- President Eisenhower in his Farewell address
His words have been proven remarkably prophetic. Look at the real motivations in their own words.
“The common enemy of humanity is man. In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill.”
- The Club of Rome Premier environmental think-tank and consultants to the United Nations.
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“We’ve got to ride this global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing in terms of economic and environmental policy.”
- Timothy Wirth, President of the UN Foundation
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“No matter if the science of global warming is all phony...climate change provides the greatest opportunity to bring about justice and equality in the world.”
- Christine Stewart, former Canadian Minister of the Environment
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“It doesn’t matter what is true, it only matters what people believe is true.”
- Paul Watson, co-founder of Greenpeace
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“The only way to get our society to truly change is to frighten people with the possibility of a catastrophe.”
- Emeritus professor Daniel Botkin
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“The future is to be [One] World Government with central planning by the United Nations. Fear of environmental crises - whether real or not - is expected to lead to compliance.”
- Former Washington State Democratic governor Dixy Lee Ray
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“Urgent and unprecedented environmental and social changes challenge scientists to define a new social contract...a commitment on the part of all scientists to devote their energies and talents to the most pressing problems of the day, in proportion to their importance, in exchange for public funding.”
NOAA’s Administrator Jane Lubchenko, when she was president of AAAS in 1999
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“Our aim is not to save the world from ecological calamity but to change the global economic system… This is probably the most difficult task we have ever given ourselves, which is to intentionally transform the economic development model, for the first time in human history.” In simpler terms, replace free enterprise, entrepreneurial capitalism with UN-controlled centralized, One World government and economic control.
- UN Climate Chief Christiana Figueres
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“One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. “It is not. It is actually about how “we redistribute de facto the world’s wealth.”
-IPCC official Ottmar Edenhofer
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“We must make this an insecure and inhospitable place for capitalists and their projects. We must reclaim the roads and plowed land, halt dam construction, tear down existing dams, free shackled rivers and return to wilderness millions of acres of presently settled land.”
- David Foreman, co-founder of Earth First
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“Giving society cheap, abundant energy would be the equivalent of giving an idiot child a machine gun.”
- Prof Paul Ehrlich, Stanford University
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The Green New Deal was not conceived as an effort to deal with climate change, but instead a “how-do-you-change-the-entire economy thing” (nothing more than a thinly veiled socialist takeover of the U.S. economy) “The interesting thing about the Green New Deal is it wasn’t originally a climate thing at all,”
-Saikat Chakrabarti, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s chief of staff.
The universities, professional societies and even congress has taken serious and alarming steps to eliminate (punish) doubters and public opinion. They attack any of their own, who speak out. That includes formerly outspoken environmentalists like Dr. Patrick Moore, co founder of Greenpeace and Michael Shellenberger formerly Time Magazine’s ‘Hero of the Environment’ whose apology for the false scare which was published by Forbes but then forced to be removed. They even have threatened to use RICO against any vocal doubters that remain. See why attention to this is important for our future here.