Interview with the scientist whistleblower the article refers to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVi01vJ4nxM
Interesting--intriguing even--but some in-depth verification of the information she relays is needed.
And I'd suggest everyone read through this recent paper: https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4433/14/8/1244
2.5. Effects of Humans on Climate Change
The IPCC argues that carbon dioxide coming from industrial plants controls the air temperature [16,17] (see Section 3.5). Certainly, deforestation, logging, agriculture, and urbanization have altered the albedo on land, but these changes do not produce sufficiently large temperature changes to be significant when compared with the quantity of solar radiation reaching the surface of the Earth. They may, however, cause substantial changes in precipitation, as in the case of Costa Rica, where deforestation of 85% of the rain forest resulted in a reduction in precipitation of c.30%. There is a marked difference between the warming of cities by the heat island effect and the rural areas of the northern hemisphere, which have not shown marked warming during the last 10 years
Don't believe. Don't dismiss. Carefully consider. Always question.
Plus, there's all this again (previous MC thread touching on CO2, consensus, etc.):
https://moviechat.org/bd0000082/Politics/64c407284a2c9a4b43319f78/Climate-Change-Perspectives?reply=64c48cf464cc4461dc65bba0
It's worth considering the information in the various articles and videos I included throughout my replies in that thread (and no, these have not been successfully “debunked”). I'm concerned ideology and self-interest have derailed honest climate research, especially if we're headed back into a naturally occurring glacial period, plus a pole shift, for which there are indicators.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0273117721009054
I'm weary of discussing it myself because people just play games and don’t want to take the proper time and effort required for genuine science-based discourse. I’m tired of being attacked, or the source of the information dismissed, only to then be accused myself of such via dishonest projection, instead of civilly counterpointing the information itself. Especially when they don’t want to take the time to even read/listen to that information, offering inane excuses as to why it’s not worthy of their precious time, and aren’t prepared to consider that they may be incorrect. I am not a Conservative, or an ideologue of any flavor, which should be clear by now to anyone familiar with my history on this board, but that should be entirely irrelevant. It’s frustrating when people resort to childish tactics to avoid considering they may have been duped and need to course-correct. Everyone must come to their own conclusions, but we can only do that by exposing ourselves to all possible information and viewpoints.
There could be a kernel of truth buried amidst all the belief-based, politically-charged muck. It's why I adhere to the Feynman way of thinking. We should always put assertions to the test. Not only our own, but in particular those that are espoused as a prevailing authoritative narrative, and especially those involving countless predictions that have never come true, "verified" via peer-reviewed groupthink, and/or that were never validated with repeatable results produced by experimentation.
https://moviechat.org/bd0000082/Politics/62a15aa9e8e40e2cb2ce412d/If-anyone-who-disagrees-with-man-made-climate-change-wants-to-have-a-serious-conversation?reply=62a6bb358d399c712446914d
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Never believe or disbelieve. Always question. Rebuke bias, a.k.a. groupthink, a.k.a. ideology, the bane of skeptical, logical reason.
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AmeriGirl26 (12876)
a year ago
I have something else to contribute, and it's about deforestation too.
Do you remember when everyone was pushing the whole "ethanol" fuel craze? They acted like it was going to be "the car fuel of the future," "the miracle fuel," that "burns clean." Well....there's a reason nobody has heard about it since the late 2000s.
It was discovered that ethanol actually burned out car engines far faster than gasoline ever did, because it burns hotter than petroleum. It didn't pollute any less than petroleum either when burnt. I have a feeling people got mad over having to buy a new car every 3 years instead of every 5-10.
But it also contributed to local environmental changes as well. Many farmers were buying into the idea of selling corn to make money from ethanol plants, because the chief source of ethanol is ear corn. So a ton of farmers all over the Midwest were planting huge fields of corn and clearing out forests, all in the name of money and "environmentalism."
When the ethanol pipe dream went bust, the only outcomes were bad ones. You basically had a ton of useless corn that was worth far less on the market because there was so much of it, companies making ethanol-burning cars went out of business, and CO2 levels in the air in parts of the Midwest went up because of the farmers getting rid of local forests whose original job was soaking up CO2, and the trees weren't there anymore.
So no, trying to improve the environment by using alternative ways isn't always the answer, particularly when someone is trying to sell you "clean energy" snake oil.
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warrior-poet (1339)
a year ago
Wellll... not quite. It can definitely cause damage under certain conditions, but it's still very widely in use. In fact, about 98% of gasoline in use contains up to 10% ethanol. Ethanol makes up for the lead being removed decades back, helping with performance and combustion. It's formulated to prevent separation, which is where the engine damage can come into play. It's certainly not talked about anymore, but I suspect that's because it's now so commonplace that it just faded into the background. The next time you get gas, look around the pump. It most likely displays ethanol content.
https://theengineblock.com/whats-the-deal-with-ethanol-in-gasoline/
https://mnbiofuels.org/media-mba/blog/item/1511-octane-and-ethanol-for-beginners#:~:text=As%20mentioned%20above%2C%20fuels%20with,87%20octane%20most%20consumers%20use.
https://www.eesi.org/papers/view/fact-sheet-a-brief-history-of-octane#:~:text=Thanks%20to%20coordinated%20efforts%2C%20lead,renewable%20sources%20such%20as%20ethanol.
I do agree with you, however, that many well-intended but misguided attempts to manipulate perceived environmental problems have ended up causing more problems. For example, some plants and trees need regularly occurring fires (possibly naturally-produced via lightning strikes) to thrive, and there have been attempts in areas to curtail such fires that ended up devastating the very environments they were trying to "save". And yet, it turns out, the locals had been intentionally setting burns for the very reason that it greatly enhanced growth and production.
Mankind has a habit of trying to play Mother Nature without fully understanding consequences.
What I find absurd is that the Left used to stand against deforestation practices. But now many of them seem to be in favor of plowing down thousands of acres of forest, or devastating natural oceanic environments, to make way for ineffective windmills. To really veer off topic, they also used to heavily promote color-blindness, and yet now all some see is race, judging people by the color of their skin instead of the content of their character. Martin Luther King Jr. must be rolling in his grave. All that progress, and now massive social backsliding in the name of "progressivism".
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Never believe or disbelieve. Always question. Rebuke bias, a.k.a. groupthink, a.k.a. ideology, the bane of skeptical, logical reason.
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AmeriGirl26 (12876)
a year ago
I'll take a look at the pump next time I need to refuel. I usually pick the lowest grade that isn't diesel because it's the cheapest. At least that explains what fuel companies did when lead couldn't be used in their gasoline anymore. There's even a chapter in "Cosmos" about it, how the major corporations fought tooth and nail to keep lead in products back in the 60s, can you believe that?!
That's a big problem in California right now, because the state had naturally occurring wildfires long before humans showed up, and sadly, many houses and businesses were built during the nicer seasons, with the people totally unaware that they'd set up their structures in the path of the wildfires that would come in each year. It wouldn't surprise me if they're having problems with the local trees slowly dying off because the seed pods can't germinate right without some extreme heat to break them open. Muir Woods, at least, does controlled burns periodically, but those are very risky, even under the best circumstances. I read a story a local told about how they used to have lots of sawmills up in the Sierras that helped keep down wildfire danger because they could turn dead trees into mulch, and prevented bark beetles from infesting the area. But of course, greenies from the city accused the sawmills of "devastating" the forest and chopping down too many trees, so the sawmill count has been reduced over the years. Part of the reason we have more wildfires now is because of forest neglect, as well as arsonists being paid secretly by the govt. to set fires and push the idea that "climate change" is causing it.
I've heard some horror stories about windmill farms, mostly from animal enthusiasts and people living in neighborhoods nearby. They have complained about the windmills being noisy, the jet engine that never ends. Animal enthusiasts are upset because windmills have a history of killing thousands of bats and birds, depending on the time of day. Others have pointed out that the processes and resources needed to build windmills can cause pollution too, and the windmills aren't a reliable source of energy because the wind is not constant at ground level (unless you live in the mountains or the high plains).
That's the interesting thing about the "colorless society" propaganda. It appears it was only targeted towards white people, because none of the other ethnic groups got the message at all. Now the govt. is using the same tactic Mao's people did to divide the locals and pit them against each other while the communists take over behind everyone's back. And because America is so diverse and has so many historical grudges, it was easy to pit all non-whites against white people.
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Tonyharrison (175)
a year ago
Stuart A Harris' article raises an important question that peer reviewed research has been answering for decades: What causes climate change, changes in human activity or changes in solar radiation? One may assume the majority of climate scientists agree that climate change shares a causal correlation between both, but the former is a greater cause than the latter. Indeed Tom Wigley published his findings in 1988: "The potential climatic effects of cyclic, radius-related irradiance changes are evaluated giving a range of global-mean temperature fluctuations of 0.2–0.3°C over the past 300 years. For the past 10,000 years, the recent glacial chronologies of Röthlisberger (1986) are compared with the 14C anomaly curve of Stuiver et al. (1986). The agreement between times of major 14C anomaly and times of globally-advanced glaciers (i.e. cool summers) is shown to be statistically significant. The implied reduction of solar irradiance during times of maximum century-time-scale 14C anomaly such as the Maunder Minimum is shown to be around 6 Wn-2, equivalent to a net radiative forcing change of about 1 Wm-2 at the top of the troposphere. If another major 14C anomaly began early in the 21st century, the associated solar perturbation would be of considerable importance, but still insufficient to fully offset the projected warming due to future greenhouse gas concentration increases." (https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-94-009-3011-7_13)
But back to Stuart Harris' findings: 1) his article was published eight days ago (3 August 2023), 2) one would expect more than eight sources in his bold assumption, "There seems to be no connection between carbon dioxide and the temperature of the Earth", 3) he does cite evidence to support his findings such as, for example, a case study on the impact of deforestation in Costa Rica but it will be interesting to see how it stacks up against other case studies, 4) on a side note, MDPI has been accused of predatory publishing [cont]
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Tonyharrison (175)
a year ago
(but I'm happy to give Stuart Harris the benefit of doubt and assume that the peer review process was conducted properly for this article), and 5) now his article has just been published, it will be interesting to see how it will be critically evaluated in other journals over the next 12 to 24 months. Will his research establish a new theory that climate change is in fact primarily or exclusively caused by solar radiation? Or will his article join that body of literature that rejects anthropogenic climate, estimated to account for no more than three percent of climate scientists? I'm happy to revisit this thread then and see what the updates will be.
On the other hand, John Stossel's video is an absolute joke. Judith Curry hasn't published any peer reviewed research since she quit academia in the mid-2000s (https://www.desmog.com/judith-curry/). I also find it hard to believe her claim in this video that the peer reviewed journals will stonewall you if you don't accept the prevailing theory of climate change as opposed to considering your submission for its individual merits (see point 2 about Stuart Harris). It's far-fetched for her to claim that it was easier to get rich through her past career in academia when she collects $400 an hour in consultation fees from fossil fuel companies. Where John Stossel really shoots himself in the foot is how he mentions Climategate almost 14 years later when researchers were cleared of any fraudulent conduct within a matter of months (https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/climategate-scientist-cleared-in-inquiry-again/).
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warrior-poet (1339)
a year ago
I appreciate the thoughtful reply from someone with a different viewpoint for once! You do seem to put too much faith in the peer-review process, though, and I'd suggest you reevaluate that mindset. Not that it doesn't have value and isn't an important factor. Being peer reviewed can generally elevate papers above those from lone rangers forging their own path. But it should also be approached with greater scrutiny and is rendered questionable if the peers doing the reviewing are of like mind and/or are in positions of authority, as opposed to those with differing perspectives.
But producing repeatable results through experimentation is paramount. No testable, reproducible results, no science. Until that’s accomplished, all a peer-review indicates is an insubstantial, untested agreement between colleagues. And unfortunately, this is one discipline with little in the way of diverse viewpoints (at least, that aren’t shut out), which is why I tend to focus on outliers (even if questionable) that go against the grain. String theory is another area that suffers the same problem, with many researchers stuck in the trap of needing to maintain their livelihood, garner continued funding, etc., among other pressures that invariably warp research in favor of self-interest.
Having said that, I wouldn't call the Stossel video a joke, but it is lacking, the entire story needing extensive further validation, and is clearly designed to present a specific narrative. But it's a devil's advocate narrative, so I have interest in it, i.e. I would agree neither with a knee-jerk reaction of outright dismissing it, nor fully believing it.
The Harris paper holds more weight, given its source and nature, but like you suggest, it's new and time will tell how it holds up. I wish I had access to the full paper to further dissect it, and I’d really like to see testable aspects defined, along with the output of any past and future experiments (otherwise, it’s just as nebulous as any ideas it opposes), although I've seen a number of other sources that form similar conclusions espousing plausible details.
But again, if an authoritative community summarily dismisses it, or just ignores it, without honestly scrutinizing its suppositions and attempting to validate any testable elements, it should be a red flag (even if the paper itself is junk science). It's a shame that the matter has been so infested with politics, powermongers, and money-grabbers that it’s tainted, even if just in appearance, any genuine research, especially any that's broadly portrayed to the public.
My post below provides further elucidation into how I think:
https://moviechat.org/bd0000082/Politics/620678b4ac86d617c749b134/Why-cant-conservatives-accept-scientific-consensus?reply=620ac419bbc0e93442d0fa98
Feynman quotes that I live by:
https://moviechat.org/bd0000082/Politics/62a15aa9e8e40e2cb2ce412d/If-anyone-who-disagrees-with-man-made-climate-change-wants-to-have-a-serious-conversation?reply=62a6bb358d399c712446914d
Plus, a post regarding the questionable nature of the dubious “97% consensus” claim:
https://moviechat.org/bd0000082/Politics/62a427cc971324170703acc9/Poll-Who-looks-like-an-idiot-in-this-thread?reply=62a4cccd971324170703b167
And I’ll end with this link that I’ve posted in other threads:
https://stephenschneider.stanford.edu/Publications/PDF_Papers/Crichton2003.pdf
the work of science has nothing--to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world. 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.
I would remind you to notice where the claim of consensus is invoked. Consensus is invoked only in situations where the science is not solid enough. Nobody says the consensus of scientists agrees that E=mc2. Nobody says the consensus is that the sun is 93 million miles away. It would never occur to anyone to speak that way.
This fascination with computer models is something I understand very well. Richard Feynmann called it a disease. I fear he is right. Because only if you spend a lot of time looking at a computer screen can you arrive at the complex point where the global warming debate now stands.
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Never believe or disbelieve. Always question. Rebuke bias, a.k.a. groupthink, a.k.a. ideology, the bane of skeptical, logical reason.
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warrior-poet (1339)
10 months ago
Climatologist Patrick T. Brown dared to tell the truth:
https://www.thefp.com/p/i-overhyped-climate-change-to-get-published
https://www.msn.com/en-us/weather/topstories/climate-scientist-whistleblower-patrick-brown-reveals-how-the-media-s-obsession-with-global-warming-manipulates-the-truth-about-wildfires-80-are-ignited-by-humans/ar-AA1ghfMR
https://www.thecollegefix.com/scientist-says-he-left-out-full-truth-to-get-climate-change-paper-published/
https://evolutionnews.org/2023/09/why-we-cant-trust-the-science-journals-a-climate-scientist-explains/
In my paper, we didn’t bother to study the influence of these other obviously relevant factors. Did I know that including them would make for a more realistic and useful analysis? I did. But I also knew that it would detract from the clean narrative centered on the negative impact of climate change and thus decrease the odds that the paper would pass muster with Nature’s editors and reviewers.
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This type of framing, with the influence of climate change unrealistically considered in isolation, is the norm for high-profile research papers.
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To put it bluntly, climate science has become less about understanding the complexities of the world and more about serving as a kind of Cassandra, urgently warning the public about the dangers of climate change. However understandable this instinct may be, it distorts a great deal of climate science research, misinforms the public, and most importantly, makes practical solutions more difficult to achieve.
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The media, for instance, should stop accepting these papers at face value and do some digging on what’s been left out. The editors of the prominent journals need to expand beyond a narrow focus that pushes the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. And the researchers themselves need to start standing up to editors, or find other places to publish.
I’ve been arguing this for many years about the wayward direction this sector of study has veered off into. It’s no longer about science. Without repeatable output from persistent experimentation, it’s
not science.
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Never believe or disbelieve. Always question. Rebuke bias, a.k.a. groupthink, a.k.a. ideology, the bane of skeptical, logical reason.
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