Emeritus professor Garth Paltridge, former chief research scientist with the CSIRO Division of Atmospheric Research.
Bear in mind too that no scientist close to the problem and in his right mind, when asked the specific question, would say there is only a very small possibility (that is, less than 5 per cent) that internal ocean behaviour could be a major cause of the warming over the past half-century. He would be particularly careful not to make such a statement now that there has been no significant warming over the most recent fifteen or so years. In the mad scurry to find reasons for the pause, and to find reasons for an obvious failure of the models to simulate the pause, suddenly we are hearing that perhaps the heat of global warming is being “hidden” in the deep ocean. In other words we are being told that some internal oceanic fluctuation may have reduced the upward trend in global temperature. It is therefore more than a little strange that we are not hearing from the IPCC (or at any rate not hearing very loudly) that some natural internal fluctuation of the system may have given rise to most of the earlier upward trend.
In the light of all this, we have at least to consider the possibility that the scientific establishment behind the global warming issue has been drawn into the trap of seriously overstating the climate problem–or, what is much the same thing, of seriously understating the uncertainties associated with the climate problem–in its effort to promote the cause. It is a particularly nasty trap in the context of science, because it risks destroying, perhaps for centuries to come, the unique and hard-won reputation for honesty which is the basis of society’s respect for scientific endeavour. Trading reputational capital for short-term political gain isn’t the most sensible way of going about things.
[…]
The trap was set in the late 1970s or thereabouts when the environmental movement first realised that doing something about global warming would play to quite a number of its social agendas. At much the same time, it became accepted wisdom around the corridors of power that government-funded scientists (that is, most scientists) should be required to obtain a goodly fraction of their funds and salaries from external sources–external anyway to their own particular organisation.
The scientists in environmental research laboratories, since they are not normally linked to any particular private industry, were forced to seek funds from other government departments. In turn this forced them to accept the need for advocacy and for the manipulation of public opinion. For that sort of activity, an arm’s-length association with the environmental movement would be a union made in heaven. Among other things it would provide a means by which scientists could distance themselves from responsibility for any public overstatement of the significance of their particular research problem.
The trap was partially sprung in climate research when a number of the relevant scientists began to enjoy the advocacy business. The enjoyment was based on a considerable increase in funding and employment opportunity. The increase was not so much on the hard-science side of things but rather in the emerging fringe institutes and organisations devoted, at least in part, to selling the message of climatic doom. A new and rewarding research lifestyle emerged which involved the giving of advice to all types and levels of government, the broadcasting of unchallengeable opinion to the general public, and easy justification for attendance at international conferences–this last in some luxury by normal scientific experience, and at a frequency previously unheard of.
It’s a humdinger. Send it to every politician and media contact you know.
The damage to the scientific community is now even more imperiled by the recent calls to label voices from the other side deniers and to ban their voices from the climate change debate. Hundreds of years of scientific methods and reputation are on the line if they continue this madness.
This is a cult, and reason does not dissuade fanatics. Follow the money.
There is a form of political corruption called “regulatory capture”, where a government regulatory agency is “captured” by the very enterprises it was intended to regulate, and put in the service of those enterprises themselves rather than in the service of the alleged “public good”.
There is a form of moral and intellectual corruption where an intellectual enterprise—science, for example—with goals, procedures and standards developed over the centuries and enshrined in our very conception of the enterprise, is captured by politics, corrupted, and put to use in the pursuit of partisan political goals and the personal gain of politicians and their ilk.
This is called “progress” by those in the business the capturing the minds and souls of citizen-persons. We might call it “political capture”. Institutions may be captured in whole or in part. The signs are everywhere; in science, education, language, and politics itself.
I do not have a link, but I read a report that “groups” similar to what you mention have taken over the Davos convention.
It does appear that we have begun a new period similar to the Dark Ages in which scientific research is corrupted by a religious environmental fanaticism supported by some crony capitalism currying favour.
IMO there are more than a couple of factors in play.
The starting point for climate science is wrong. The assumption is that man is causing dangerous changes to the climate. The scientists are charged with getting out there and regardless of cost finding out exactly how many dangerous changes there are.
Politicians support the same things that the majority of the public supports. ‘Advocacy for the planet’ is a new and seemingly more compelling religion than the old religion that we in the West have set aside. Love for the Created but not the Creator.
I love science. I liked learning science, the history of science and reading about science. I enjoyed my years working in a chemistry lab, the chemistry part anyway.
I’d really like to be able to defend science and minimize the damage that has been done by scientists being advocates for social/political goals and selling out integrity in exchange for $$$…but I can’t. The whining about “no one listens to experts” (science and non-science fields) is not an effective argument because the of corruption of experts and scientists as described in the article. Experts seem to think that laymen don’t get when they are being sold a load of crap. As I said in WUWT, laymen live in the real world with the same pressures to conform and sell out for career advancement. People are rightfully cynical. Politicians, journalists, crony capitalists and activists who insist we must “Shut up and Obey” experts should be ignored. If they want to regain respect they all need to go back to being honest brokers. Expertise is admired, shilling for a cause is not.
This is just anecdotal, but I work as a consultant in R&D. I work wiht several of the largest Canadian companies employing 100’s each of engineers and scientists. I have found a direct correlation between belief in CAGW, and whether an individual scientist of engineer is working on a project related to things like renewables, infrastructure related to more severe weather etc. In the same hallway, 80% of the people working on regular projects scoff at CAGW, while the smaller number of people working on CAGW projects are 100% believers, at least to your face.
Excellent comments Nick. In your first sentence you perfectly defined what the EPA has become. The other comments in straight forward and simple terms define what is happening to Western Culture. Ken’s response that we are “entering a new Dark Age” could be a title for the whole conversation.
hmmmm. just a question. undersea volcanoes are constantly heating water, ice and cold at the poles and in northern areas cool the water, the sun in equatorial areas heat the water, the oceans are in constant motion, how can it possibly trap heat from global warming?
I think I see a spin-off study….
Climate Change vs. Happiness……
“The research needed to answer questions about lasting happiness is costly, because studies need to follow a sizable group of people over a long time.”
What an amazing industry. Able to morph itself into anything.
Paltridge is, unfortunately, somewhat past his best before date.
All research that Paltridge has done on climate would support Climate change. Yet, he denies his own life’s work for the sake of an ideological position.
He has long been in the denial camp while still producing work that makes his claims an absurdity. His book contains no science and its foreword is by no less an authority than Monckton. Monckton with his cures for AIDS and the Common Cold; for MS and ?
Monckton posing as a scientist because of his degree in Classics.
What Paltridge’s motivation is, I do not know and I do not care. He is just one more of the shrinking band of notoriety sekers who perverted the name of science as well as its substance for their fifteen minutes of fame.
There’s nothing that invalidates a dissenting scientist like a content-free rebuttal.
Or…. His position has changed because the facts have changed. The lack of warming of surface temperatures, the “pause”, for 15-17 years and the failure of all the models to predict it (except for after the fact modelling) should cause objective scientists to rethink CAGW. Especially the catastrophic part. GHGs do cause some warming but it is becoming clear that natural variability dwarfs AGW effects. The feedbacks, which are responsible for most of the warming in the models, obviously need to be rethought.
The attacks on Monkton, like all skeptics, seems to be directly proportional to how effective they are at pointing out CAGW errors. Whereas consensus science conformists, with or without a science background, get a free ride. In addition, climate scientists talking about political policy, Monkton’s area of expertise, are never told to shut up by CAGW beleivers. I’d rather have data transparency, opinions and debate by all sides considering the policy implications of CAGW.
The parallels between the last paragraph you quoted and the corruption of the Catholic Church during the Middle Ages are striking.
Environmental scientists: the priesthood of the 21st century. Buy your carbon indulgences today!
Times change, but people don’t.
You lost me at “the denial camp”.
The purpose and method of science is to DISprove the hypothesis, not smear anyone who challenges it.
Nice handle too, btw. Original.
Quite right. With the purchase of solar panels and windmills, and the pursuitt of recycling rather than energy conversion all being the modern equivalent of purchasing Indulgences.
Note the comment by Anonymous above. Utterly devoid of any factual content Paltridge must be condemned because he offers reasoned objections to an insane orthodoxy. Anonymous is no diffferent than Savonarola.
Nick, I read Richard Posner’s original essay on Capture Theory, which was published (ironically) in the Bell System of Journal of Economics back in the mid-70’s. He didn’t call it ‘corruption’; he just felt it was the natural outcome when:
One side (the supposedly regulated industry) has all of the following: a great deal of money, subject matter expertise (either in-house, hired, or both), a long term vested interest in the outcome of decisions, a continuing history with the people on the regulator’s payroll, and the ability to conceal all or some of its internal financial statements,
The other side (normally the consumer) has very little money, comparatively little expertise, a very small interest in the outcome, a transient history with the regulatory staff, and no ability to pry into the regulated firm’s financials.
In such cases, Posner felt it was inevitable that the regulator would become captured by the industry. Look at an old example – long distance rates. If Bell raised long distance rates by $.01 per minute, it would gain millions of dollars of revenue each year, but it might cost the average home consumer less than $1 per month. How are you going to motivate the millions of affected consumers to agitate the government over such piddling amounts? And when Bell trots out expert after expert, with hundreds of tables and charts and diagrams with circles and arrows on the back of each and every one, and can answer every question expertly and lucidly, versus a consumer’s group which has dubious credentials and data, it’s no wonder the regulator decides in favour of the regulated. Bell’s not doing anything against the law, but eventually it gets what it wants from the commission.
So, while I understand your overall point, I think ‘capture theory’ is not concerned with corruption, since it’s not the consequence of illegal activity on the part of the regulated industry, but rather the consequence of two vastly unequal parties appearing before a tribunal.
attack the messenger, great strategy, I’v NEVER seen that before.
Ppl like you don’t even understand what “science” is about. Science is more about questions than it is about answers, because if one does not question the answer, they are quite possibly a believer and should join a religion and stay out of scientific debates, belief has NO place in a scientific debate. Nor does “shooting the messenger”
Kate and LC answered you quite well, try and grasp their point!!
Paltridge has probably just published something he could not, prior to the Abbott government. He is emeritis from CSIRO, probably the most rabid CAGW governmental science dept on the planet.
He would probably freely admit he benefited from the largess that he now writes about – that was the way things were done when he was an active researcher. Personal ethics are not always so clear when there are bills to be paid, families to feed and raise, careers and egos to stroke.
Clarity of conscience are frequently a consequence of entering the twilight years, but even then there has to be a certain security in order to speak one’s mind. This is a watershed revelation. As has been said, don’t shoot the messenger – embrace the message and have the courtesy to thank the man for finding the courage to deliver it.
Actually scientists try to establish truth. It is the job of politicians to establish policies in the light of reality.
As for the damage which has been done to science, it is great. I bet you haven’t had your flu vaccination,
have you, Anonymous? oh thou Lysenko.
Personally I don’t give a continental d*** about climate; and I will see fools taxed to death, and freezing
hungry in the dark, with equanimity.
Mme Roland’s cry from the guillotine, O Liberté, que de crimes on commet en ton nom!
can these days be paraphrased as, “oh Climate! What crimes are committed in thy name!”
The conmen,formerly known as high priests,shaman,soothsayer, all remain part of the human condition.
The scientific method combined with the freedom to give voice to sceptical thought are the mobs best tool to avoid being stampeded to our doom, the conmans benefit.
CAGW has openly attacked both.
These bastions of civilization are an obstacle for those who lust for power over others.
We have lived through a concerted effort, to remove both the method and our freedom to dissent from public policy.
Retribution is owed and will follow, human nature has not changed, the actions,words and threats from those hyping hysteria over climate have been despicable.
Always the problem for revolutionaries, imagine a rock stuck in your tire, history seems to go in cycles.
Authoritarian wanna be leaders will always be with us,they will use any tool, method and deceit to achieve their fear driven ends.
Notice that, the people who are scared of everything,everybody, of life, of children, they are the do-gooder who just need absolute authority , so that they might “help” us.
These frightened rats,try to control everything and destroy all real life they gain power over.
A tax on all do-gooders. Required for the self defence of our communities and families.
But CAGW or climate change or whatever .. this week, was created, promoted and is currently being sheltered from investigation, by our bureaucrats.
A classic example of regulators being coopted by the forces they were created to resist.
Greg,
The advance of science depends on both a belief & passion for one’s theory. The practice of grouping like-minded believers is what results in flawed science.
The method of pitting those with conflicting opinions has been the Hallmark of Best Practices. Insight gained from legitimate critics result in better science
96% of those in any professional Organization are useful idiots that provide nothing to the advancement of Science (it is this 96% that are trained seals to AGW)
The remaining 4% are split between those that passionately agree & those that passionately disagree. It is this group, working together, that will move the bar in any Scientific endeavor.
IMHO Those with an advanced degree (PhD) are not experts in anything but the scientific process. Why they “all” don’t recognize the flawed process of AGW or GHG (ozone hole) is beyond reason
Like your response!
The facts have not changed and neither have the laws of physics.
There is no “pause” in warming as the charts and graphs in scores of studies show.
What there is, is a possible slowdown in the rate of surface temperature increase – a very temporary slowdown as is natural with natural cycles and influences. There is also a recent paper that challenges the idea that there is any slowdown.
Surface temperatures are accounted for by about 2 of the energy budget. That budget does not change with the wishes of deniers. It is a slave to the Laws of Physics and immutable. The energy is still reaching the Earth and is, for very simple and understandable reasons (such as Enso) affecting a different part of the Planet, waiting to be released to the surface as it always is.
There is also not the sloghtest support for your assertion that natural causes dwarf GHGs. In fact, it is pure nonsense. The rate and degree of warmong are precisely what those laws of Physics say they should be for the rate of increase of GHGs. Every possible natural variation is included in models and studies.
Further, natural variation varies – what a concept. Temperatures would decline with their negative flows IF they were drivers.
An interesting but misapplied comment.
Paltridge is a member of the Galileo Movement along with Monckton, Singer, Carter and a few more unprincipled deniers.
But, they have it the wrong way round; as do you.
They are the ones trying to deny and science and silence scientists.
John Peate,
When the warming actually shows up where there are thermometers, rather than being miraculously concealed in the deep sea, where there are no measurement devices while leaving the actual measurement devices undisturbed, or in the polar regions, leaving the thermometers on 90% of the globe undisturbed. Then I will agree with you that the pause never was. But now there is little heat where the models predict it, and no cooling of the stratosphere, as the models predicted would happen, for a decade and a half.
At some point this pent up “missing heat” has got to rear its head and affect actual thermometers, rather than just virtual ones. When do you suppose that will be?
And what questions do you think are being asked? To guide you, I will point out that the answer is none. Paltridge smears scientists who actually do research and publish on the matter of climate change: smears the people who are asking the questions and searching for the answers.
He has absolutely nothing to support his claims. Not one scintilla of evidence. He has only what must be an ideological or religious position as is the case with all the deniers who are not actually among the many paid to do so.
You have a strange idea of what science is about.
Do you really need a response to that. He could publish his book any time he liked. Australia is one of the most hospitable places for deniers (there are fewer of them now with the hammering from CAGW that Australia is getting).
He still has not published one scrap of research that defies clmate change.
His statements still deny his own life’s work.
So the heat wave in Australia is climate, then? But the cold winter here is just “weather.” Or is it all “climate change,” then?
I did not know that there were no thermometers in Australia. Australia that has just experienced its hottest year in the record.
How did they measure it?
Stratospheric cooling occurs when the Troposphere warms – roughly speaking. It also is, on part, caused by the ozone layer problem.
How on Earth can the Earth not be warming when the Sun still shines and the energy still is getting trapped by GHGs.
Extraordinary claims require extra ordinary evidence.
Your magic gas, CO2, is not living up to the claims made of its potency.
The lack of empirical measurements supporting the CAGW contention, after 30 years and untold squandering of public wealth, leaves people of your apparent beliefs looking rather gullible.
Where is the correlation of CO2/temps?
Or is the magic gas a warming agent in the “western world” and a cooling agent in the east?
As in compare the IPCC temperature record against atmospheric CO2 concentrations, these are the official alarmists data,notice temperature behaviour as eastern emissions become dominant.
Funny how that unprecedented warming has vanished, where did it go?
Even the IPCC acknowledges”the pause”, so now you dismiss them as deniers too?
Where do you get your temperature rise? From those charmers at Sceptical Science?”
“Every possible natural variation is included in models and studies”
You did read the IPCC 4th and 5th Assessment Reports?
You offer up extraordinary assertions of authority, what part of the scientific method do you not understand?
Probably all climate change. But, as you might know(?), scientists are cautious in attribution.
Where you are I don’t know and I don’t know how cold your weather is. But it is weather whatever it is.
However, weather is just an expression of climate: weather occurs in the way it does within a climate regime.
So, if you weather is showing a long term pattern of change, then it is a consequence of climate change.
The recent patern of extremes in winters is a stong indication of climate chamge and a natural consequence of a warming climate.
Do you not try to read the science on things like the Polar Vortex?
Your first question is purposefully obtuse. You really should consider whether you are helping or harming your cause when you get away from the prepared notes.
As for “How on Earth can the Earth not be warming when the Sun still shines and the energy still is getting trapped by GHGs.”
That is the question. Certainly. I can wait for an actual answer, rather than appeals to faith or proofs based on the very models the proofs were supposed to be verifying.
I read those reports but I don’t think that you did. If you did, then you would know what the science is about and stop posting such palpable nonsense.
When I hear from someone that there is not an exact relationship between CO2 and temperature, I know that person has not the slightest idea of what s/he is talking about and I don’t waste time on it.
I will leave it as an exercise for the readers of this thread to determine your credibility based on your comments John. As for myself, I have decided.
Faith and proofs!
Is it faith to accept what 2128 peer reviewed papers by 9136 authors have concluded in the past year alone?
Measured against one paper by a single author denying the consensus on climate chamge,
You really have a strange idea of faith. Faith accepts mythology: it is the creed of those deniers who are simply the dupes of those like that one author and of the fossil fuel industry.
I know and knew what the readers of this thread would think, tim.
Now that they have been exposed to something outside the comfortable club, perhaps they will be encouraged to engage in some real thinking and in attempting to consult the real world of science rather tha taking a few imposters as gospel.
I can’t let this pass.
“Now that they have been exposed to something outside the comfortable club”
Do you really believe that everybody here has not heard your sensational claims that ever heat wave and cold snap proves global warming?
Do you really believe that there is any significant number of people here who have not heard that there really is no pause and that the heat is hiding at the bottom of the ocean where probes can’t reach, or at the poles where there are no thermometers?
Yeesh!
When I hear from someone that there is not an exact relationship between CO2 and temperature, I know that person has not the slightest idea of what s/he is talking about and I don’t waste time on it.
Heh, apparently that relationship magically became the inverse of what it was in the past.
Well, Tim, when I read:
When I hear from someone that there is not an exact relationship between CO2 and temperature, I know that person has not the slightest idea of what s/he is talking about
hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha… er, sorry.
If there WERE an exact relationship between CO2 and temp, and someone WERE to discover it, then there’d be a true Nobel Prize waiting for them (as opposed to Gore’s and Bambam’s popularity trophies). I suspect there ISN’T, and in any case, it HASN’T been discovered, and Mr. Peate IS just the latest evidence-free troll to come shambling by.
heads up adbout this IDIOT john peate, at another time, in another place on the internet, and I was posting under a different name, said fool always took a far leftist POV in every social discussion that he participated in, and then spouted off he was apolitical. Calling john a fool is being generous!!
Now john, I have a link (that I will not post) to a wed site were a PHD “states” that CO2 is not a GHG, seeing that the temps have NOT risen while the CO2 content of the atmosphere has, invalidates the methodology, as the models did not predict this, and as noted even your much vaunted IPCC now admits this. So john, your assertions are wrong, wrong, wrong. Nice to see you are still as full of sh!t as you were 10 yrs ago!!!!
The physics says that a doubling of CO2 will produce 1.1C of warming – Mild warming under 2C is actually a net benefit. I don’t deny the physics. It’s the feedbacks in the models that make AGW into CAGW. Those models have failed miserably. In fact, even the IPCC is lowered its sensitivity (the response to a doubling of CO2) range because of the divergence between models and actual observed temps.
BTW, here is a question I as all CAGW proponents: What would falsify the CAGW hypothesis?
The answer of course is nothing – not stable temps, not lack of storms, not failed models, not new theories pointing to ocean oscillations, clouds or solar variation. Even cold weather is blamed on CAGW. Of course, if next year the winter is warm and calm not a single CAGW believer will ask “what the hell happened to the polar vortex?”. They certainly haven’t mentioned it until this winter. In the end, CAGW has the exact same fingerprint as natural variation and occam’s razor then applies: the simplest explanation is that natural variation caused the warming in the 30s&40s and 80s&90s, the cooling in the 70s and the temp stagnation in the 2000s. CO2 is a minor trace gas that produces mild warming but is not pollution.
The studies proving CAGW have actually proved essentially nothing except that which the above article so articulately states: science has been corrupted.
A question for those who support urgent government action on reducing CO2 emissions:
How much, in CENTIGRADE DEGREES do ALL of Canada’s 700 megatonnes or so of emissions contribute to global warming annually?
Why is the answer a secret known by very few?
Ad Hominem as usual from the natural climate change deniers, AKA Warmistas, AKA Watermelons.
A further question: “If the planet is too hot, how cold do you want it?”
“The physics says that a doubling of CO2 will produce 1.1C of warming – Mild warming under 2C is actually a net benefit.”
Exactly. And you don’t have to be a “climate skeptic” (which I happen to be) to think that the potential for net benefit demands policy forbearance (assuming any policies can actually be developed that benefit anyone other than the cronies of the policy-makers) until the science actually becomes quite a bit more settled than it self-evidently is. And just as an aside, wouldn’t a modest change in temperature result in an overall change in man-made carbon dioxide emissions, which surely would have a feedback effect on the degree of warming, assuming that there’s actually a causal link; has this been accounted for, or do we have to get the economists to explain that concept?
No matter: when Mr. Gore says that “the science is settled”, what he really means is that, as far as he and his ilk are concerned, “the politics, along with its attendant payoff structures, are settled.” An explanation, perhaps, of why that particular gentleman did not become president?
In this latter regard, what I took from the Paltridge piece was not a specific refutation of the CAGW thesis per se, but more a refutation of the Gore-like thinking (he didn’t name names, of course) that puts the reputation of science at risk. I see it as more of a warning than an outright indictment. I took it from Professor Paltridge that he believes that way too much certainty is being attributed on a professional basis to the predictive soundness of current climate analysis; he then went on to offer a rationale, in economic payoff terms, as to why the claims of certainty have developed. And, really, he need only point to the performance of climate models to date (which he did) as powerful evidence of his point about their predictive power/certainty, or lack thereof.
On the other hand, there are a good many of us who have witnessed first-hand, albeit on an anecdotal basis individually, persons seeking the economic payoffs associated with these very claims of predictive certainty on the part of climate analysis. For this reason, I am highly doubtful about the complaints of government scientists about Mr. Harper’s alleged “muzzling” of their research — probably has more to do with a scaling back of the “celebrity” gravy train.
It’s become obvious that those who said the science is settled put the cart before the horse. I’m not a big believer in a vast conspiracy or that communist impulses are the reasons why government have implemented Big Green. Politicians simply realized it was a solution to many different problems. 1) Reward political donors via subsidies, research dollars and new regulations 2) a new way to tax citizens. After the recession, mounting debts, huge unfounded liabilities and the aging of western democracies politicians are still desperately clinging on to the hope of a new revenue source.
I see their predicament but carbon pricing is regressive, causes energy poverty and hurts job creators. If new taxes must be found (I’d rather see smaller government) then consumption taxes are better. They already protect the poor and industry. We don’t have to create a new bureaucracy to oversee collection and compliance. And consumption is a good proxy for carbon usage (if that’s your thing). They also would have avoided situation described in the article.
If you took time to investigate thise 2000+ papers, youbwould find that most of them do not address the central question. Bringing up the myriad of academic papers is a red herring. As for how the earth cannot be warming with the increase in CO2, I believe the answer is related to the role of water vapor. Check it out.
That was a reply to D. Southam