They were "Merchants of Doubt" when the effects of climate change were building, but now you are right, they are full of it, ignoring what they can see with their own eyes (Harvey, Katrina, Erin and so on).
Spoken like a true disinformationist. For the hypothetical naive lurker: FWIW, this is from my ten fascinating fingers, not a generative AI.
Scott is misusing "Ad hominem" and "appeal to authority" again. It's as if he didn't read the OP, and is unaware of the larger, historical context of Mr. Hoffman's comment.
The DOE report isn't a scientific document, but a manifestly political one. Arguments "to the man" (i.e. 4 men and 1 woman) are legitimate apriori assumptions. The authors are all notorious contrarians, long known to be among a tiny minority of their putative peers. Their scientific arguments are tediously recycled, having been considered on their merits and repeatedly rejected by a strong, stable peer consensus. That's not the argument "from authority", but from scientific metaliteracy, i.e. distinguishing genuinely skeptical professional scientists from otherwise-motivated denialists.
Regrettably, scientific metaliteracy requires non-experts to put some time into learning what the actual experts know via mutual review. Failing that, anyone who tells you "consensus isn't science" is either fooling themselves or trying to fool you. Two hundred years of climate science has only progressed by consensus!
BTW Mal, next time you're not feeling well, try bleeding yourself. After all, that was the scientific consensus in the 1700's and early 1800's. Yes doctors arguably bled George Washington to death, to treat his likely diphtheria.
I don't think you understand what "ad hominem" means.
Description:
- Mr. Personne is a shithead.
Ad hominem argument:
- Mr. Personne is wrong →because← he is a shithead.
Don't start throwing around Latin terms if you don't know what they mean. Throwing epithets at people is not *ad hominem* if it is not used as the basis of countering their argument.
The comparison between the tobacco industry and the dirty fossil fuel energy is perfect. These two industries kill not only people directly, but they kill anyone who lives or works with them. The oil and coal industries also are killing the planet slowly with global warming, which is moving at an accelerating pace. Russia and Saudi Arabia don’t care because their economies need the sale of dirty oil to survive. They, and Republicans, have created the lie that Global Warming is a myth, even while hurricanes and massive flooding and uncontrollable fires sweep through forests and cities. Gullible people believed the lies of the tobacco industry for decades, and very many still do. Only when someone they love dies from cancer, a fire, or a flood may they start to believe. Unfortunately, it may already be too late to save the Planet.
China also doesn’t care about limiting emissions, all while they produce 90% of the dirty green lithium batteries and solar panels that the bullshit “green” energy relies on.
China also doesn’t care about limiting emissions...
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And yet as of 2024 they are far and away the largest deployer of non-emitting solar farms (277GW), wind farms (80GW*) and nuclear reactors (well, started building them).
The problem they're dealing with is that demand due to increased heat waves and associated A/C use, plus the fairly rapid switch to EVs** is climbing almost as fast as their record-setting building of new power plants, but the RE they're adding has displaced the emissions for the coal that would have been mined and burnt in its stead (and the EVs have definitely reduced their demand for foreign oil).
Between the replacement of old, inefficient, smoggy coal plants (and factories) with modern versions, and the uptake of EVs, air quality in Chinese cities hasn't been this good in decades.
_________________
*As of May they added 46GW of wind in 2025.
**First virtual power plant up and running in Guangdong in December, 2024 can eventually take advantage of the storage capacity of the millions of EV batteries (similar to California PG&E).
"...dirty green lithium batteries and solar panels that the bullshit “green” energy relies on."
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Funny how people who never fought against mountaintop removal, fossil combustion products getting into the lungs of every creature, the dangers of lead-acid batteries, aquifer corruption and major oil spills (most of which don't get covered by mainstream media), are suddenly concerned about the relative postage stamp of extraction of reusable lithium.
(1) Later-generation large scale batteries (EVs, home storage, grid) have better architectures (safer, more efficient) and better chemistries (more sodium and iron, less cobalt), and can be profitably* reused, then recycled.
(2) Modern PV panels are sealed, durable and long-lived. Solar arrays are a positive good for soil and flora. A truck spill of PV panels on a highway requires some push-brooms, not a hazmat response team. Aquifer managers →prefer← solar arrays over the recharge zones as opposed to commercial crop farming.
You're posting on a climate blog and you don't understand the concept of either "carbon payback time" or how the production of solar panels (unlike bikes, bowls, clocks or backhoes) contribute to the displacement of FF emissions for 20-30 years after they're produced and installed. As more and more w/s/b and even nuclear are installed on China's grids, the percentage of the energy that comes from fossil fuel for any given product is going *down* over time.
In those graphs the depict total power supply by source on, say, the ERCOT grid, the area under the curve that is provided by solar or wind (or battery time-shift) represents displaced fossil fuel energy.
Ah, yet another culture warrior: whether volunteer, mercenary, or artificial is undetermined. The sneers at "true believers", who "refuse to follow their own beliefs", give his intent away. The message is clear: he's a true believer in the "free market". He doesn't want to hear about the $trillions in annual profits the fossil fuel industry stands to lose by *collective* decarbonization of the US and global economies. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain: namely Charles Koch *inter alia* (no, not just him), as abundantly documented in the public record (e.g. https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/kochland-examines-how-the-koch-brothers-made-their-fortune-and-the-influence-it-bought; good luck discrediting the New Yorker's famous fact-checking). Also see the peer-reviewed article, "Disinformation as an obstructionist strategy in climate change mitigation: a review of the scientific literature for a systemic understanding of the phenomenon" (https://open-research-europe.ec.europa.eu/articles/4-169/v2).
The tragedy of the climate commons is not a "true belief" in the insulting sense Rickgee intends, but merely a self-evident economic principle at work. It's the predictable result of the ancient "free" market's relentless tendency to externalize, i.e. socialize, all the transaction cost it can get away with. The "invisible hand" of the market currently allows both *producers and consumers* of fossil carbon to freely externalize their marginal climate change costs out of the market price of fuels. Producers gain their profits by exhuming long-buried carbon by the gigatonnes annually, charging all the traffic will bear for their product while keeping the social cost of the resulting emissions off their books; we consumers save a few bucks because nobody makes us pay for the social cost of the hitherto-sequestered carbon we emit whenever we buy goods or services produced with fossil energy. The ensuing climate change is left for random others to pay for with their homes, livelihoods and lives. Ironically, non-believers in anthropogenic global warming can find themselves paying as much as believers!
That's why Garrett Hardin said only "mutual coercion, mutually agreed upon" could mitigate common-pool resource tragedies: otherwise, the socialized costs are inevitably paid by involuntary third parties to our market transactions, often far out of proportion to their own market participation. AGW is an economic phenomenon that makes winners of fossil carbon producers and investors, but losers of everyone else, usually in inverse proportion to their individual emissions. IMHO it's plainly a justice issue, whatever else it is! Not in Rickgee's opinion, apparently. He doesn't seem to see that "the invisible hand never picks up the check" (KS Robinson).
"Mutual coercion" means collective (i.e. government) intervention in the otherwise-"free" energy market, in the form of direct carbon pricing, subsidies to build out carbon-neutral sources, or command-and-control regulation. I, for one, don't care where my energy comes from, and am quite willing to give up burning fossil carbon once the "visible hand" of collective intervention takes the profit out of selling it. I favor a US carbon price: something like carbon fee and dividend with border adjustment tariff. But Biden's "Inflation Reduction" Act of 2022, with its subsidies for renewable energy, electric vehicle development, etc. yielded a measurable increment toward decarbonizing the US economy. Too bad it's been essentially reversed since last November.
Whatever. Anyone who insists on blaming climate-change "true believers" for not sacrificing while everyone else freely socializes their own emissions, either hasn't heard of the Tragedy of the Commons, or is just looking for a fight. .
Thank you for submitting comments. While not as detailed as yours, my colleagues and I also submitted comments and pointed out the difference between the DOE report and the IPCC process, of which I was a part. Our goal in submitting comments was to add to the voices of outrage about the disgraceful politicization of science.
Yeah, the old aphorism "process is product" really applies here. A crappy process leads to a crappy product. I definitely think we all need to talk about this more.
Dr. Dessler - thanks for all you do! Regarding predictions of climate impacts if we don't drive emissions to net zero, I keep coming back to these words. “Here’s a forecast with a high degree of certainty. At some point your kids or grandkids will come to you and ask, ‘What did you know, when, and what did you do?’ Did you sit on your hands, latch on to conspiracy theories, and kick the can down the road? Or were you part of the solution?”
Excerpt from page 70, “Caring for Creation — The Evangelical’s Guide to Climate Change and a Healthy Environment”, by Mitch Hescox and Paul Douglas
Provide a link to a single climate model that has proven to forecast with a “high degree of certainty”. The truth is that it’s not possible without including geomagnetic solar forcing into the equation. Why does the “settled science” continue to be so obstinate about relying on carbon models?
I didn’t argue that the planet isn’t changing. This isn’t about “taking it serious”, but about correctly identifying the cause and realizing that we’re not going to change it any more than we can hold back to oceans. Strutting around saying that the “science is settled” only holds back our own understanding and prevents people from seeing the obvious.
Giving more money to a corrupted Government so that we can buy more batteries from the CCP is certainly not a serious solution.
Is the US National Academy of Sciences strutting around? If it endorses the specialist consensus, it's fair to say the anthropogenic causes of global warming are *settled science*. It doesn't guarantee the consensus is accurate, it just means only a few idiosyncratic, conspicuously motivated holdouts are still interested in arguing. And no one, not Freeman Dyson, not Ivar Giaever, not John Christy, Judy Curry, Steve Koonin, Ross McKitrick, or Roy Spencer, and most certainly not you, has a superior claim to know better.
Sure established science been proven wrong before. Unestablished science is assumed wrong until it's established, by default. You've been proven wrong this time. Deal.
The demand for a single “proven” climate model misunderstands how science works. Climate models aren’t crystal balls—they’re tools built on physics, tested against historical data, and refined through peer review. And they’ve consistently hindcasted past climate shifts with high accuracy—which is exactly how forecasting credibility is earned.
As for solar forcing: yes, it’s included. Modern models account for solar variability, volcanic activity, aerosols, and greenhouse gases. But studies show that climate sensitivity to CO₂ is significantly higher than to solar forcing, due to feedback mechanisms like water vapor and cloud dynamics. That’s not obstinance—it’s physics.
The science isn’t “settled” in the sense of being closed to new data. It’s settled in the sense that the evidence overwhelmingly supports anthropogenic warming. If someone wants to challenge that, they need more than slogans—they need a better model. And so far, none has outperformed the ones we’ve got.
“Regarding predictions of climate impacts if we don't drive emissions to net zero, I keep coming back to these words. “Here’s a forecast with a high degree of certainty….”
You seem confused about the difference between hindcasting and forecasting. And “net-zero” doesn’t mean squat when your net-zero solutions rely on CCP products that result in increasing global emissions at an exponential pace.
Current climate models are revealing a huge energy imbalance not explained. How much has Earths magnetic field reduced over the last 20 years and how much has that changed our climate?
Climate models are validated through hindcasting—reproducing past climate trends using known inputs. That’s not confusion, it’s methodological rigor. Forecasting builds on that foundation, and while no model is perfect, the ensemble approach has consistently predicted warming trends, sea level rise, and extreme weather patterns with increasing accuracy.
2. Net-zero and geopolitics:
Critiquing net-zero because of supply chain emissions from China is a red herring. Yes, we need cleaner manufacturing and ethical sourcing—but dismissing the entire decarbonization effort because of geopolitical entanglements is like refusing to treat a patient because the ambulance used gasoline. The solution is better policy, not paralysis.
3. Magnetic field and climate:
NASA and ESA have studied this extensively. While Earth’s magnetic field has weakened slightly over the past century, its influence on climate is negligible. The magnetosphere shields us from solar and cosmic radiation, but it doesn’t drive surface temperature trends. Claims that magnetic shifts explain the current energy imbalance are not supported by physics or data.
Bottom line:
The energy imbalance we’re seeing is driven by greenhouse gases trapping infrared radiation. That’s not speculative—it’s measurable. If you want to challenge the science, bring better data. But let’s not confuse skepticism with denial.
The best forecasts are still off by magnitudes of climate change. Almost all climate change assessments acknowledge that there are energy imbalances not defined or accounted for by current models.
All of our decarbonization efforts have been even replaced by China. You’re not treating the patient if your treatments do t work.
I don’t disagree that we need better solutions, but we also need better diagnosis of the problem.
Phil, the idea that climate forecasts are “off by magnitudes” doesn’t hold up to scrutiny. In fact, a comprehensive study published in Geophysical Research Letters found that 14 out of 17 major climate models since the 1970s accurately predicted observed warming trends once you account for real-world emissions and forcings. That’s not a miss by magnitudes—that’s a track record of remarkable consistency.
Yes, models have uncertainty. But they’re not wild guesses—they’re physics-based simulations grounded in thermodynamics, radiative transfer, and fluid dynamics. They’ve successfully forecasted key phenomena like Arctic amplification, ocean heat uptake, and the rise in extreme weather events.
As for the energy imbalance: it’s not “unexplained.” Satellite data shows Earth is now absorbing twice as much heat as it did in the early 2000s, largely due to greenhouse gases trapping infrared radiation. That imbalance is predicted by models—it’s not a mystery, it’s a warning.
As for China—let’s be honest. Global decarbonization isn’t a zero-sum game. The fact that China manufactures solar panels doesn’t negate the climate benefits of deploying them. If anything, it underscores the need for cleaner supply chains and stronger international standards, not abandonment of climate goals.
Better solutions start with better understanding. And that means engaging with the science, not dismissing it with slogans.
"But studies show that climate sensitivity to CO₂ is significantly higher than to solar forcing, due to feedback mechanisms like water vapor and cloud dynamics. "
Thank you. It's also the case that changes in solar forcing, "geomagnetic" or otherwise, show no trend over the period of observed change in GMST.
Based on what science do you determine that the amount of solar radiation reaching earth has no observable effect on temperature?
The changes to the geomagnetic conditions most certainly follow a trend, and our field has decreased by 10% over the last 100 years, at an accelerating trend.
Well, since you didn't supply evidence for your extraordinary claims, I didn't bother supplying any for the overwhelming consensus of publishing climate experts. But try the US National Academy of Sciences (https://nap.nationalacademies.org/read/13519/chapter/4#13).
Now it's your turn. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence to support them. Let's have your citations for your claims:
"The changes to the geomagnetic conditions most certainly follow a trend, and our field has decreased by 10% over the last 100 years, at an accelerating trend."
Did you even read your own article? It makes transparent acknowledgment that solar radiance (TSI) has direct affects on our climate, but they were attempting to measure whether to sun radiance is changing due to the effects of the suns 11 and 22 year cycles. Not even addressed is how changes to earths magnetic field due to its 6,000 and 12,000 year cycles are affecting how the relatively unchanged solar radiation affects our planet.
*Pielke Jr complaining that you only looked at 6 rather than 40 SRES scenarios. It is like a) he has never heard of "marker" scenarios, and b) that he didn't notice that the 2009 Endangerment TSD only showed those 6 scenarios which makes them the most relevant.
*Curry's two "ha ha" moments, claiming that your report shows that 30 days is enough and that your report suffers from the flaws identified by AMS. It is like she doesn't realize that an official government document should be held to a higher standard (standards that are documented by FACA rules and information quality guidelines).
*Curry telling Zeke that it is a-ok to reproduce a single supplementary figure to claim a conclusion contrary to the main conclusion of the sourced paper. a) this can be okay in limited circumstances, but only if presented with a caveat recognizing that the paper it came from had a different conclusion, and b) she totally ignores the fact that the graph was misrepresented, since it only had 1 SRES scenario in it.
*Picking an MDPI paper to rebut the demonstrations that yes, Virginia, there are accelerating rates of sea level rise in Newport News (and all the other east coast tide gauges) and ignoring all the actual analysis and quality paper citations presented.
*Complete inability to understand logical statements - e.g., that 1930s heat does not mean that today's heat can't be attributed to climate change - it is like someone arguing that because Joe's house burned down because of a lightning strike last week, you can't attribute Bob's house burning down to guy dousing it with gasoline and lit matches.
*Similarly, Pielke not understanding that there can be a physical change even without statistically significant detection. If I were to replace the one pip on a six-sided die with another six, would he argue that it isn't different from an unaltered die until I had rolled it the approximately 30 times to get a statistically significant difference from an unbiased die?
So, bottom line: Curry claims that the Dessler report "didn't land any strong punches" is equivalent to the Black Knight claiming that "'tis but a scratch!".
This is a crucial effort. Thank you for working on refuting this document and making it's faulty conclusions clear to the public.
It is discouraging to see the same tired anti-science and climate-denialist arguments that used to be repeated by a select few now be in government reports.
Thanks a lot for going over this. I think when you really learn more about all the different deceptive tactics they use, then their bullshit becomes as clear as the light of day. It's sad some people get caught up in this and think there could be some truth in it. At least it's not everywhere like this, in Asia they are doubling down on environmental regulation and cheap renewable prices are still driving the transition forward. The US is sadly just getting caught in the past.
My thanks to those here doggedly defending the global consensus of genuine experts against the merchants of doubt. Otherwise, TCB is in danger of becoming a metaphorical Nazi bar!
Awful - but the bright thing here is that scientists everywhere will see this as a way of continuing to take on the real science and it will only have the result of continuing the isolation of the US - putting even more pressure on the Monster. And in spite of these incompetent crazies - many states and local groups will be continuing with their work - certainly outside of the ever shrinking USA! (Like in my home country - Canada!)
My experience is that most center-right people I talk to, don't want to talk climate change issues. Why? They think that I'll get emotional (as most of my fellow environmentalists do).
And by far, most assume (silently too )@(#$*#@) that the cleaner sky in America (compared to China,India) means we're the solution and they're the problem. As we allow this misconception to dominate, the elected leaders are sure to follow.
I try to explain that the CO2 & Methane gases are transparent and the climate issue is "global" - not local like soot. I add that, YES -thru regulation and time, we in developed countries have cleaned the local air considerably since the mid 60s.
Like most liberal actors, the environmentalists only "preach to the choir." They also ignore human nature when they do this because it's what turns off center-right majorities.
Frustratingly, I'm most often met with "well, if you're right - why don't I hear it on the news?"
Good question indeed!
Why not also explain that there's really no villians per-se except human civilization itself. We've asked fossil fuels to raise our standard of living for centuries. That's a no-brainer. But we've also outgrown it due to our population increases (it's 3 times the #s since I was born) and the accompanying infrastructures. Cars, power plants etc.
Remember the expression "We've met the enemy and he is us!"
"Why not also explain that there's really no villians per-se except human civilization itself. "
Because while the economic driver of the tragedy of the climate commons is a global market's propensity to socialize every transaction cost it can get away with, it's also true that carbon capitalists, among them Charles Koch, Harold Hamm, the Hunt family, etc., have for decades funded proliferating denialist groups and independent disinformation professionals, seeking to forestall collective interference in their profit streams (https://open-research-europe.ec.europa.eu/articles/4-169/v2). They may not, strictly speaking, be "villains": since it's legal to deceive the public, they'd be fools not to hire the most expert services available. Now that they have control of all three branches of government, they'd be fools not to exploit that too. Culpability aside, America's voters are the fools, for letting them get away with it.
"...the climate issue is "global" - not local like soot."
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Funny you should mention that. One of the new climate "realities" of some people in North America (and eastern Australia and the more thinly populated Siberia) are days of choking wildfire smoke from over 1,000 km away. High-temperature crown fires are putting a greater mass of smoke (including a lot of PM2.5) into the air, unlike grass fires or short-lived forest fires we had become more familiar with.
Side notes: Watch out of denialists and minimizers comparing past estimate area of grass/brush fires with the area covered by forest fires today: What matters is the mass of burning material, not acreage. Forests are stressed by night-heat and drought, and even sequoias—once thought to be practically fireproof—are under threat.
Meanwhile, situations like the Palisades Fire, where it was a fast-moving dried brush fire, were made unstoppable by the very high winds (meaning that even dutifully clearing brush away from your house didn't help).
I love the DOE report! It's concise, complete! It's great that it took y'all 450 pages to respond to a concise report. Looks like the usual, bury the other with bs, science by the pound is how WUWT described it. Yup, it's not 2022, it's 2025, climate doom is done, buried and ended. Really 3 times the pages to respond? Were y'all scared that the DOE report didn't agree with the climate scam that you've relied on to get paid for. Looks like a lot of climate change grants are being cancelled so find a new job!
You say that, but how do you explain those dump trucks full of money backing up to your house! And you're always seen sporting $3000 bespoke suits when you dine at those Michelin star restaurants! You scientists are all alike!
"It would be reasonable to ask yourself how you can have a meaningful discussion of any topic in science if you’re ignoring nearly all of the scientific literature on that topic."
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Oh, I do it all the time! It helps for me to be unburdened by excessive background in a subject.
"John Christy and Roy Spencer, both research scientists at the University of Alabama at Huntsville, Steven E. Koonin of Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, Georgia Tech professor emeritus Judith Curry and Canadian economist Ross McKitrick."
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Judith Curry is my favorite: She testifies to order.
When Christy and Spencer were playing with models to show satellite data supported stable and even →decreasing← temperatures, she dutifully asserted, "The satellite data is the best data we have." (Apparently she never heard of direct temperature measurement by devices on the ground or on weather balloons.)
Christy has anti-scientific religious beliefs where the god in his head would not let humans destroy the planet.
Christy, McKitrick, and Spencer are all closely associated with the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation, an unholy alliance of business with theism. The latter two actually signed the 2009 Evangelical Declaration on Global Warming, publicly denying that their deity would allow "dangerous" climate change. I wonder why Christy didn't sign? Did it go too far for him?
I keep getting Heckle and Jeckle (Christy and Spencer) mixed up. It was *Spencer*, as you noted, who signed that no-evidence-can-beat-our-faith testament.
Thanks, Andrew. You quote Kerry Emanuel as saying:
"My reading of the report uncovered numerous errors of commission and omission, all of which slant toward a conclusion that human-caused climate change poses no serious risks."
At the bottom of this comment is a link to a post of mine that examines the claimed "risks" of the gradual warming of the last 300 years since the depths of the LIA around the year 1700. Please not that the first 200 years of this warming cannot be the result of CO2.
Not one climate scientist knows why it didn't continue to cool after 1700, or why it didn't just stay cold, or why it started to warm in fits and starts up to the present … but y'all are more than happy to tell us what the year 2100 will look like.
We've been subjected to your endless dire warnings of impending Thermageddon™ for fifty years now by mainstream climate scientists, none of which have come true. No sinking atolls. No disappearing polar bears. No tens of millions of climate refugees. No ice-free Arctic. No increasing hurricanes.
And in fifty years, despite endless studies and years of computer time, the uncertainty about the value of "climate sensitivity" has increased, not decreased.
In any other field of science, this would get you laughed off the stage … but this is climate science, where wildly incorrect predictions and widening uncertainties are taken as normal.
But I digress. Below is a hard look at the so-called "serious risks" posed by climate change that Kerry Emmanuel mentions above.
I invite you to QUOTE any errors that you think you've identified in my analysis below, and SHOW (not just claim) why they are wrong.
And if you can't identify any errors, I hope that you would have the honesty to return to say so.
Or, you could just shine my analysis on and not read something that disagrees with your point of view … however, if you do that, you lose the right to ever call yourself a scientist again. Scientists have the spine to read the arguments on both sides of an issue.
I think you don't have any sense of time scale. The [geologically] minor variations of temperature over the time scale of human settlement can occur through transient (e.g., caldera or supervolcano) or gradual over tens of thousands of years (e.g., mantle volcanism burning all carbon in the crust).
You keep clinging to a supposedly unexplained shallow shift in the climate of the Northern Hemisphere over a few centuries, but studiously avoid acknowledging the basic physics of the greenhouse effect.
And by the way, one important lesson to learn from the "Little Ice Age" (with its tales of rivers heavily freezing over) is that it doesn't take that much of a temperature shift to affect the lifestyle and prosperity of human settlements.
"You keep clinging to a supposedly unexplained shallow shift in the climate of the Northern Hemisphere over a few centuries, but studiously avoid acknowledging the basic physics of the greenhouse effect."
Two things. First, why we went into, didn't stay in, and warmed out of the LIA is unexplained, not "supposedly", but absolutely. And since climate scientists can't explain why we went into and then came out of the coldest period in modern history, why should we believe that they can tell us what the temperature will be like in 2100?
Second, I absolutely acknowledge the basic physics of the greenhouse effect, and have written a number of posts about that. Links to three of them are below. You really should do your homework before breaking out the accusations.
Next, you're right that cold affects human wellbeing negatively. However, the mild warming since then has been generally beneficial, erasing the problems you list.
Finally, I repeat my invitation which I posed above, viz:
"Below is a hard look at the so-called "serious risks" posed by climate change that Kerry Emmanuel mentions above.
I invite you to QUOTE any errors that you think you've identified in my analysis below, and SHOW (not just claim) why they are wrong.
And if you can't identify any errors, I hope that you would have the honesty to return to say so.
Or, you could just shine my analysis on and not read something that disagrees with your point of view … however, if you do that, you lose the right to ever call yourself a scientist again. Scientists have the spine to read the arguments on both sides of an issue."
"A planetary “greenhouse” is a curiosity, a trick of nature. It works solely because although a sphere only has one side, a shell has two sides. The trick has nothing to do with greenhouse gases. It does not require an atmosphere. In fact, a planetary greenhouse can be built entirely of steel."
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I can't deal with this sort of nonsense.
I do believe that *you* believe what you write makes sense to you, like Time Cube or the flat earthers, or the Dyson Sphere Fan Club, and anyone that disagrees with anthropogenic global warming will always be welcome on WattsUpWithThat.com even if their preferred explanations conflict with each other.
Thanks, Aurelius. The paper is entitled "The Maunder minimum and the Little Ice Age: an update from recent reconstructions and climate simulations". It says:
"While the MM occurred within the much longer LIA period, the timing of the features are not suggestive of causation and should not, in isolation, be used as evidence of significant solar forcing of climate."
It also says:
"Climate model simulations suggest multiple factors, particularly volcanic activity, were crucial for causing the cooler temperatures in the northern hemisphere during the LIA."
"Climate model simulations suggest" is not what any sane person calls "evidence".
And as to volcanic activity, see my analysis below.
They are not "merchants of doubt". Call it like it is- they are "merchants of bullshit", "merchants of lies"
They were "Merchants of Doubt" when the effects of climate change were building, but now you are right, they are full of it, ignoring what they can see with their own eyes (Harvey, Katrina, Erin and so on).
Spoken like a true alarmist.
Ad hominem and appeal to authority. That is all you have. Sad.
Spoken like a true disinformationist. For the hypothetical naive lurker: FWIW, this is from my ten fascinating fingers, not a generative AI.
Scott is misusing "Ad hominem" and "appeal to authority" again. It's as if he didn't read the OP, and is unaware of the larger, historical context of Mr. Hoffman's comment.
The DOE report isn't a scientific document, but a manifestly political one. Arguments "to the man" (i.e. 4 men and 1 woman) are legitimate apriori assumptions. The authors are all notorious contrarians, long known to be among a tiny minority of their putative peers. Their scientific arguments are tediously recycled, having been considered on their merits and repeatedly rejected by a strong, stable peer consensus. That's not the argument "from authority", but from scientific metaliteracy, i.e. distinguishing genuinely skeptical professional scientists from otherwise-motivated denialists.
Regrettably, scientific metaliteracy requires non-experts to put some time into learning what the actual experts know via mutual review. Failing that, anyone who tells you "consensus isn't science" is either fooling themselves or trying to fool you. Two hundred years of climate science has only progressed by consensus!
Hmmm.
1. Appeal to authority.
2. Ad hominem.
Repeat ad nauseaum.
BTW Mal, next time you're not feeling well, try bleeding yourself. After all, that was the scientific consensus in the 1700's and early 1800's. Yes doctors arguably bled George Washington to death, to treat his likely diphtheria.
You don't get out much, do you?
The more you comment, the more you sound like a 'bot: artificial stupidity. Nothing new to say, just the same revenant undead denialist memes.
I don't think you understand what "ad hominem" means.
Description:
- Mr. Personne is a shithead.
Ad hominem argument:
- Mr. Personne is wrong →because← he is a shithead.
Don't start throwing around Latin terms if you don't know what they mean. Throwing epithets at people is not *ad hominem* if it is not used as the basis of countering their argument.
The comparison between the tobacco industry and the dirty fossil fuel energy is perfect. These two industries kill not only people directly, but they kill anyone who lives or works with them. The oil and coal industries also are killing the planet slowly with global warming, which is moving at an accelerating pace. Russia and Saudi Arabia don’t care because their economies need the sale of dirty oil to survive. They, and Republicans, have created the lie that Global Warming is a myth, even while hurricanes and massive flooding and uncontrollable fires sweep through forests and cities. Gullible people believed the lies of the tobacco industry for decades, and very many still do. Only when someone they love dies from cancer, a fire, or a flood may they start to believe. Unfortunately, it may already be too late to save the Planet.
China also doesn’t care about limiting emissions, all while they produce 90% of the dirty green lithium batteries and solar panels that the bullshit “green” energy relies on.
Lol, "#butChina" (https://climateball.wordpress.com/but-china/).
China also doesn’t care about limiting emissions...
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And yet as of 2024 they are far and away the largest deployer of non-emitting solar farms (277GW), wind farms (80GW*) and nuclear reactors (well, started building them).
The problem they're dealing with is that demand due to increased heat waves and associated A/C use, plus the fairly rapid switch to EVs** is climbing almost as fast as their record-setting building of new power plants, but the RE they're adding has displaced the emissions for the coal that would have been mined and burnt in its stead (and the EVs have definitely reduced their demand for foreign oil).
Between the replacement of old, inefficient, smoggy coal plants (and factories) with modern versions, and the uptake of EVs, air quality in Chinese cities hasn't been this good in decades.
_________________
*As of May they added 46GW of wind in 2025.
**First virtual power plant up and running in Guangdong in December, 2024 can eventually take advantage of the storage capacity of the millions of EV batteries (similar to California PG&E).
"...dirty green lithium batteries and solar panels that the bullshit “green” energy relies on."
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Funny how people who never fought against mountaintop removal, fossil combustion products getting into the lungs of every creature, the dangers of lead-acid batteries, aquifer corruption and major oil spills (most of which don't get covered by mainstream media), are suddenly concerned about the relative postage stamp of extraction of reusable lithium.
(1) Later-generation large scale batteries (EVs, home storage, grid) have better architectures (safer, more efficient) and better chemistries (more sodium and iron, less cobalt), and can be profitably* reused, then recycled.
(2) Modern PV panels are sealed, durable and long-lived. Solar arrays are a positive good for soil and flora. A truck spill of PV panels on a highway requires some push-brooms, not a hazmat response team. Aquifer managers →prefer← solar arrays over the recharge zones as opposed to commercial crop farming.
All of the metals mined in 2021 (not shown: ~8 BILLION TONNES OF COAL mined annually): https://www.visualcapitalist.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/all-the-metals-we-mined-infographic-2021-updated.jpg
PV panels are not toxic
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4fUu2nwxC_I
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKrGF2_Z6pc
PV panels reliable, long lived
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KbmXd0WOd7g
_______________
*Button and card batteries used in e-toys tend to end up in landfills.
How much coal does China burn to make those solar panels and lithium ion batteries?
Less and less coal every day as a percentage of their manufacturing energy input: That's the fµcking point, Einstein.
More and more every day. Your head is wedged so far up your own ass that it all looks inverted.
You're posting on a climate blog and you don't understand the concept of either "carbon payback time" or how the production of solar panels (unlike bikes, bowls, clocks or backhoes) contribute to the displacement of FF emissions for 20-30 years after they're produced and installed. As more and more w/s/b and even nuclear are installed on China's grids, the percentage of the energy that comes from fossil fuel for any given product is going *down* over time.
In those graphs the depict total power supply by source on, say, the ERCOT grid, the area under the curve that is provided by solar or wind (or battery time-shift) represents displaced fossil fuel energy.
What’s really “killing the plant” is the true believers, like yourself, that refuse to follow your own beliefs and give up carbon emissions.
Ah, yet another culture warrior: whether volunteer, mercenary, or artificial is undetermined. The sneers at "true believers", who "refuse to follow their own beliefs", give his intent away. The message is clear: he's a true believer in the "free market". He doesn't want to hear about the $trillions in annual profits the fossil fuel industry stands to lose by *collective* decarbonization of the US and global economies. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain: namely Charles Koch *inter alia* (no, not just him), as abundantly documented in the public record (e.g. https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/kochland-examines-how-the-koch-brothers-made-their-fortune-and-the-influence-it-bought; good luck discrediting the New Yorker's famous fact-checking). Also see the peer-reviewed article, "Disinformation as an obstructionist strategy in climate change mitigation: a review of the scientific literature for a systemic understanding of the phenomenon" (https://open-research-europe.ec.europa.eu/articles/4-169/v2).
The tragedy of the climate commons is not a "true belief" in the insulting sense Rickgee intends, but merely a self-evident economic principle at work. It's the predictable result of the ancient "free" market's relentless tendency to externalize, i.e. socialize, all the transaction cost it can get away with. The "invisible hand" of the market currently allows both *producers and consumers* of fossil carbon to freely externalize their marginal climate change costs out of the market price of fuels. Producers gain their profits by exhuming long-buried carbon by the gigatonnes annually, charging all the traffic will bear for their product while keeping the social cost of the resulting emissions off their books; we consumers save a few bucks because nobody makes us pay for the social cost of the hitherto-sequestered carbon we emit whenever we buy goods or services produced with fossil energy. The ensuing climate change is left for random others to pay for with their homes, livelihoods and lives. Ironically, non-believers in anthropogenic global warming can find themselves paying as much as believers!
That's why Garrett Hardin said only "mutual coercion, mutually agreed upon" could mitigate common-pool resource tragedies: otherwise, the socialized costs are inevitably paid by involuntary third parties to our market transactions, often far out of proportion to their own market participation. AGW is an economic phenomenon that makes winners of fossil carbon producers and investors, but losers of everyone else, usually in inverse proportion to their individual emissions. IMHO it's plainly a justice issue, whatever else it is! Not in Rickgee's opinion, apparently. He doesn't seem to see that "the invisible hand never picks up the check" (KS Robinson).
"Mutual coercion" means collective (i.e. government) intervention in the otherwise-"free" energy market, in the form of direct carbon pricing, subsidies to build out carbon-neutral sources, or command-and-control regulation. I, for one, don't care where my energy comes from, and am quite willing to give up burning fossil carbon once the "visible hand" of collective intervention takes the profit out of selling it. I favor a US carbon price: something like carbon fee and dividend with border adjustment tariff. But Biden's "Inflation Reduction" Act of 2022, with its subsidies for renewable energy, electric vehicle development, etc. yielded a measurable increment toward decarbonizing the US economy. Too bad it's been essentially reversed since last November.
Whatever. Anyone who insists on blaming climate-change "true believers" for not sacrificing while everyone else freely socializes their own emissions, either hasn't heard of the Tragedy of the Commons, or is just looking for a fight. .
Thank you for submitting comments. While not as detailed as yours, my colleagues and I also submitted comments and pointed out the difference between the DOE report and the IPCC process, of which I was a part. Our goal in submitting comments was to add to the voices of outrage about the disgraceful politicization of science.
Yeah, the old aphorism "process is product" really applies here. A crappy process leads to a crappy product. I definitely think we all need to talk about this more.
Thank you, Prof. Jaramillo!
Dr. Dessler - thanks for all you do! Regarding predictions of climate impacts if we don't drive emissions to net zero, I keep coming back to these words. “Here’s a forecast with a high degree of certainty. At some point your kids or grandkids will come to you and ask, ‘What did you know, when, and what did you do?’ Did you sit on your hands, latch on to conspiracy theories, and kick the can down the road? Or were you part of the solution?”
Excerpt from page 70, “Caring for Creation — The Evangelical’s Guide to Climate Change and a Healthy Environment”, by Mitch Hescox and Paul Douglas
Provide a link to a single climate model that has proven to forecast with a “high degree of certainty”. The truth is that it’s not possible without including geomagnetic solar forcing into the equation. Why does the “settled science” continue to be so obstinate about relying on carbon models?
The real world - the fast warming world - is the strongest evidence that global warming is real.
Welcome to the test tube - I would have preferred to skip the big experiment and seen climate modeling taken seriously a lot earlier myself.
I didn’t argue that the planet isn’t changing. This isn’t about “taking it serious”, but about correctly identifying the cause and realizing that we’re not going to change it any more than we can hold back to oceans. Strutting around saying that the “science is settled” only holds back our own understanding and prevents people from seeing the obvious.
Giving more money to a corrupted Government so that we can buy more batteries from the CCP is certainly not a serious solution.
Scratch a denialist, find a paranoid conspiracist.
Ironically, the only person making denials is you.
Is the US National Academy of Sciences strutting around? If it endorses the specialist consensus, it's fair to say the anthropogenic causes of global warming are *settled science*. It doesn't guarantee the consensus is accurate, it just means only a few idiosyncratic, conspicuously motivated holdouts are still interested in arguing. And no one, not Freeman Dyson, not Ivar Giaever, not John Christy, Judy Curry, Steve Koonin, Ross McKitrick, or Roy Spencer, and most certainly not you, has a superior claim to know better.
Then I guess it’s a good thing that established science has never proven to be very wrong.
Sure established science been proven wrong before. Unestablished science is assumed wrong until it's established, by default. You've been proven wrong this time. Deal.
The demand for a single “proven” climate model misunderstands how science works. Climate models aren’t crystal balls—they’re tools built on physics, tested against historical data, and refined through peer review. And they’ve consistently hindcasted past climate shifts with high accuracy—which is exactly how forecasting credibility is earned.
As for solar forcing: yes, it’s included. Modern models account for solar variability, volcanic activity, aerosols, and greenhouse gases. But studies show that climate sensitivity to CO₂ is significantly higher than to solar forcing, due to feedback mechanisms like water vapor and cloud dynamics. That’s not obstinance—it’s physics.
The science isn’t “settled” in the sense of being closed to new data. It’s settled in the sense that the evidence overwhelmingly supports anthropogenic warming. If someone wants to challenge that, they need more than slogans—they need a better model. And so far, none has outperformed the ones we’ve got.
“Regarding predictions of climate impacts if we don't drive emissions to net zero, I keep coming back to these words. “Here’s a forecast with a high degree of certainty….”
You seem confused about the difference between hindcasting and forecasting. And “net-zero” doesn’t mean squat when your net-zero solutions rely on CCP products that result in increasing global emissions at an exponential pace.
Current climate models are revealing a huge energy imbalance not explained. How much has Earths magnetic field reduced over the last 20 years and how much has that changed our climate?
Dear Phil, let’s unpack this for you.
1. Hindcasting vs. forecasting:
Climate models are validated through hindcasting—reproducing past climate trends using known inputs. That’s not confusion, it’s methodological rigor. Forecasting builds on that foundation, and while no model is perfect, the ensemble approach has consistently predicted warming trends, sea level rise, and extreme weather patterns with increasing accuracy.
2. Net-zero and geopolitics:
Critiquing net-zero because of supply chain emissions from China is a red herring. Yes, we need cleaner manufacturing and ethical sourcing—but dismissing the entire decarbonization effort because of geopolitical entanglements is like refusing to treat a patient because the ambulance used gasoline. The solution is better policy, not paralysis.
3. Magnetic field and climate:
NASA and ESA have studied this extensively. While Earth’s magnetic field has weakened slightly over the past century, its influence on climate is negligible. The magnetosphere shields us from solar and cosmic radiation, but it doesn’t drive surface temperature trends. Claims that magnetic shifts explain the current energy imbalance are not supported by physics or data.
Bottom line:
The energy imbalance we’re seeing is driven by greenhouse gases trapping infrared radiation. That’s not speculative—it’s measurable. If you want to challenge the science, bring better data. But let’s not confuse skepticism with denial.
The best forecasts are still off by magnitudes of climate change. Almost all climate change assessments acknowledge that there are energy imbalances not defined or accounted for by current models.
All of our decarbonization efforts have been even replaced by China. You’re not treating the patient if your treatments do t work.
I don’t disagree that we need better solutions, but we also need better diagnosis of the problem.
Phil, the idea that climate forecasts are “off by magnitudes” doesn’t hold up to scrutiny. In fact, a comprehensive study published in Geophysical Research Letters found that 14 out of 17 major climate models since the 1970s accurately predicted observed warming trends once you account for real-world emissions and forcings. That’s not a miss by magnitudes—that’s a track record of remarkable consistency.
Yes, models have uncertainty. But they’re not wild guesses—they’re physics-based simulations grounded in thermodynamics, radiative transfer, and fluid dynamics. They’ve successfully forecasted key phenomena like Arctic amplification, ocean heat uptake, and the rise in extreme weather events.
As for the energy imbalance: it’s not “unexplained.” Satellite data shows Earth is now absorbing twice as much heat as it did in the early 2000s, largely due to greenhouse gases trapping infrared radiation. That imbalance is predicted by models—it’s not a mystery, it’s a warning.
As for China—let’s be honest. Global decarbonization isn’t a zero-sum game. The fact that China manufactures solar panels doesn’t negate the climate benefits of deploying them. If anything, it underscores the need for cleaner supply chains and stronger international standards, not abandonment of climate goals.
Better solutions start with better understanding. And that means engaging with the science, not dismissing it with slogans.
"But studies show that climate sensitivity to CO₂ is significantly higher than to solar forcing, due to feedback mechanisms like water vapor and cloud dynamics. "
Thank you. It's also the case that changes in solar forcing, "geomagnetic" or otherwise, show no trend over the period of observed change in GMST.
Based on what science do you determine that the amount of solar radiation reaching earth has no observable effect on temperature?
The changes to the geomagnetic conditions most certainly follow a trend, and our field has decreased by 10% over the last 100 years, at an accelerating trend.
Well, since you didn't supply evidence for your extraordinary claims, I didn't bother supplying any for the overwhelming consensus of publishing climate experts. But try the US National Academy of Sciences (https://nap.nationalacademies.org/read/13519/chapter/4#13).
Now it's your turn. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence to support them. Let's have your citations for your claims:
"The changes to the geomagnetic conditions most certainly follow a trend, and our field has decreased by 10% over the last 100 years, at an accelerating trend."
Did you even read your own article? It makes transparent acknowledgment that solar radiance (TSI) has direct affects on our climate, but they were attempting to measure whether to sun radiance is changing due to the effects of the suns 11 and 22 year cycles. Not even addressed is how changes to earths magnetic field due to its 6,000 and 12,000 year cycles are affecting how the relatively unchanged solar radiation affects our planet.
Would you like to try again?
https://www.esa.int/Applications/Observing_the_Earth/FutureEO/Swarm/Swarm_probes_weakening_of_Earth_s_magnetic_field
Most agencies have quit publishing data on the field measurements, but the magnetic pole continues to move at an extraordinary pace.
The immediate response from the contrarian crew are particularly weak tea: e.g., https://judithcurry.com/2025/09/02/doe-climate-assessment-report-feedback/#more-32334.
Some highlights:
*Pielke Jr complaining that you only looked at 6 rather than 40 SRES scenarios. It is like a) he has never heard of "marker" scenarios, and b) that he didn't notice that the 2009 Endangerment TSD only showed those 6 scenarios which makes them the most relevant.
*Curry's two "ha ha" moments, claiming that your report shows that 30 days is enough and that your report suffers from the flaws identified by AMS. It is like she doesn't realize that an official government document should be held to a higher standard (standards that are documented by FACA rules and information quality guidelines).
*Curry telling Zeke that it is a-ok to reproduce a single supplementary figure to claim a conclusion contrary to the main conclusion of the sourced paper. a) this can be okay in limited circumstances, but only if presented with a caveat recognizing that the paper it came from had a different conclusion, and b) she totally ignores the fact that the graph was misrepresented, since it only had 1 SRES scenario in it.
*Picking an MDPI paper to rebut the demonstrations that yes, Virginia, there are accelerating rates of sea level rise in Newport News (and all the other east coast tide gauges) and ignoring all the actual analysis and quality paper citations presented.
*Complete inability to understand logical statements - e.g., that 1930s heat does not mean that today's heat can't be attributed to climate change - it is like someone arguing that because Joe's house burned down because of a lightning strike last week, you can't attribute Bob's house burning down to guy dousing it with gasoline and lit matches.
*Similarly, Pielke not understanding that there can be a physical change even without statistically significant detection. If I were to replace the one pip on a six-sided die with another six, would he argue that it isn't different from an unaltered die until I had rolled it the approximately 30 times to get a statistically significant difference from an unbiased die?
So, bottom line: Curry claims that the Dessler report "didn't land any strong punches" is equivalent to the Black Knight claiming that "'tis but a scratch!".
This is a crucial effort. Thank you for working on refuting this document and making it's faulty conclusions clear to the public.
It is discouraging to see the same tired anti-science and climate-denialist arguments that used to be repeated by a select few now be in government reports.
Thank you Andy et al!
Thanks a lot for going over this. I think when you really learn more about all the different deceptive tactics they use, then their bullshit becomes as clear as the light of day. It's sad some people get caught up in this and think there could be some truth in it. At least it's not everywhere like this, in Asia they are doubling down on environmental regulation and cheap renewable prices are still driving the transition forward. The US is sadly just getting caught in the past.
My thanks to those here doggedly defending the global consensus of genuine experts against the merchants of doubt. Otherwise, TCB is in danger of becoming a metaphorical Nazi bar!
Thanks! And thanks to you for tirelessly arguing in the comment section. I don’t have the stomach for it so I’m glad there are people who can do it.
You’d be well served to find somebody sharper than that dullard to defend your argument. I suppose it’s difficult to defend the indefensible.
Well, it beats staring at the wall...
Awful - but the bright thing here is that scientists everywhere will see this as a way of continuing to take on the real science and it will only have the result of continuing the isolation of the US - putting even more pressure on the Monster. And in spite of these incompetent crazies - many states and local groups will be continuing with their work - certainly outside of the ever shrinking USA! (Like in my home country - Canada!)
My experience is that most center-right people I talk to, don't want to talk climate change issues. Why? They think that I'll get emotional (as most of my fellow environmentalists do).
And by far, most assume (silently too )@(#$*#@) that the cleaner sky in America (compared to China,India) means we're the solution and they're the problem. As we allow this misconception to dominate, the elected leaders are sure to follow.
I try to explain that the CO2 & Methane gases are transparent and the climate issue is "global" - not local like soot. I add that, YES -thru regulation and time, we in developed countries have cleaned the local air considerably since the mid 60s.
Like most liberal actors, the environmentalists only "preach to the choir." They also ignore human nature when they do this because it's what turns off center-right majorities.
Frustratingly, I'm most often met with "well, if you're right - why don't I hear it on the news?"
Good question indeed!
Why not also explain that there's really no villians per-se except human civilization itself. We've asked fossil fuels to raise our standard of living for centuries. That's a no-brainer. But we've also outgrown it due to our population increases (it's 3 times the #s since I was born) and the accompanying infrastructures. Cars, power plants etc.
Remember the expression "We've met the enemy and he is us!"
1
"Why not also explain that there's really no villians per-se except human civilization itself. "
Because while the economic driver of the tragedy of the climate commons is a global market's propensity to socialize every transaction cost it can get away with, it's also true that carbon capitalists, among them Charles Koch, Harold Hamm, the Hunt family, etc., have for decades funded proliferating denialist groups and independent disinformation professionals, seeking to forestall collective interference in their profit streams (https://open-research-europe.ec.europa.eu/articles/4-169/v2). They may not, strictly speaking, be "villains": since it's legal to deceive the public, they'd be fools not to hire the most expert services available. Now that they have control of all three branches of government, they'd be fools not to exploit that too. Culpability aside, America's voters are the fools, for letting them get away with it.
"...the climate issue is "global" - not local like soot."
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Funny you should mention that. One of the new climate "realities" of some people in North America (and eastern Australia and the more thinly populated Siberia) are days of choking wildfire smoke from over 1,000 km away. High-temperature crown fires are putting a greater mass of smoke (including a lot of PM2.5) into the air, unlike grass fires or short-lived forest fires we had become more familiar with.
Side notes: Watch out of denialists and minimizers comparing past estimate area of grass/brush fires with the area covered by forest fires today: What matters is the mass of burning material, not acreage. Forests are stressed by night-heat and drought, and even sequoias—once thought to be practically fireproof—are under threat.
Meanwhile, situations like the Palisades Fire, where it was a fast-moving dried brush fire, were made unstoppable by the very high winds (meaning that even dutifully clearing brush away from your house didn't help).
I love the DOE report! It's concise, complete! It's great that it took y'all 450 pages to respond to a concise report. Looks like the usual, bury the other with bs, science by the pound is how WUWT described it. Yup, it's not 2022, it's 2025, climate doom is done, buried and ended. Really 3 times the pages to respond? Were y'all scared that the DOE report didn't agree with the climate scam that you've relied on to get paid for. Looks like a lot of climate change grants are being cancelled so find a new job!
"I did not go into science to make money...."
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You say that, but how do you explain those dump trucks full of money backing up to your house! And you're always seen sporting $3000 bespoke suits when you dine at those Michelin star restaurants! You scientists are all alike!
"It would be reasonable to ask yourself how you can have a meaningful discussion of any topic in science if you’re ignoring nearly all of the scientific literature on that topic."
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Oh, I do it all the time! It helps for me to be unburdened by excessive background in a subject.
"John Christy and Roy Spencer, both research scientists at the University of Alabama at Huntsville, Steven E. Koonin of Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, Georgia Tech professor emeritus Judith Curry and Canadian economist Ross McKitrick."
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Judith Curry is my favorite: She testifies to order.
When Christy and Spencer were playing with models to show satellite data supported stable and even →decreasing← temperatures, she dutifully asserted, "The satellite data is the best data we have." (Apparently she never heard of direct temperature measurement by devices on the ground or on weather balloons.)
Christy has anti-scientific religious beliefs where the god in his head would not let humans destroy the planet.
Christy, McKitrick, and Spencer are all closely associated with the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation, an unholy alliance of business with theism. The latter two actually signed the 2009 Evangelical Declaration on Global Warming, publicly denying that their deity would allow "dangerous" climate change. I wonder why Christy didn't sign? Did it go too far for him?
I keep getting Heckle and Jeckle (Christy and Spencer) mixed up. It was *Spencer*, as you noted, who signed that no-evidence-can-beat-our-faith testament.
Thanks, Andrew. You quote Kerry Emanuel as saying:
"My reading of the report uncovered numerous errors of commission and omission, all of which slant toward a conclusion that human-caused climate change poses no serious risks."
At the bottom of this comment is a link to a post of mine that examines the claimed "risks" of the gradual warming of the last 300 years since the depths of the LIA around the year 1700. Please not that the first 200 years of this warming cannot be the result of CO2.
Not one climate scientist knows why it didn't continue to cool after 1700, or why it didn't just stay cold, or why it started to warm in fits and starts up to the present … but y'all are more than happy to tell us what the year 2100 will look like.
We've been subjected to your endless dire warnings of impending Thermageddon™ for fifty years now by mainstream climate scientists, none of which have come true. No sinking atolls. No disappearing polar bears. No tens of millions of climate refugees. No ice-free Arctic. No increasing hurricanes.
And in fifty years, despite endless studies and years of computer time, the uncertainty about the value of "climate sensitivity" has increased, not decreased.
In any other field of science, this would get you laughed off the stage … but this is climate science, where wildly incorrect predictions and widening uncertainties are taken as normal.
But I digress. Below is a hard look at the so-called "serious risks" posed by climate change that Kerry Emmanuel mentions above.
I invite you to QUOTE any errors that you think you've identified in my analysis below, and SHOW (not just claim) why they are wrong.
And if you can't identify any errors, I hope that you would have the honesty to return to say so.
Or, you could just shine my analysis on and not read something that disagrees with your point of view … however, if you do that, you lose the right to ever call yourself a scientist again. Scientists have the spine to read the arguments on both sides of an issue.
My best to everyone,
w.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2021/04/25/wheres-the-emergency/
I think you don't have any sense of time scale. The [geologically] minor variations of temperature over the time scale of human settlement can occur through transient (e.g., caldera or supervolcano) or gradual over tens of thousands of years (e.g., mantle volcanism burning all carbon in the crust).
You keep clinging to a supposedly unexplained shallow shift in the climate of the Northern Hemisphere over a few centuries, but studiously avoid acknowledging the basic physics of the greenhouse effect.
https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/earth_temperature_timeline.png
And by the way, one important lesson to learn from the "Little Ice Age" (with its tales of rivers heavily freezing over) is that it doesn't take that much of a temperature shift to affect the lifestyle and prosperity of human settlements.
Thanks, NS. You say:
"You keep clinging to a supposedly unexplained shallow shift in the climate of the Northern Hemisphere over a few centuries, but studiously avoid acknowledging the basic physics of the greenhouse effect."
Two things. First, why we went into, didn't stay in, and warmed out of the LIA is unexplained, not "supposedly", but absolutely. And since climate scientists can't explain why we went into and then came out of the coldest period in modern history, why should we believe that they can tell us what the temperature will be like in 2100?
Second, I absolutely acknowledge the basic physics of the greenhouse effect, and have written a number of posts about that. Links to three of them are below. You really should do your homework before breaking out the accusations.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/17/the-steel-greenhouse/
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/11/27/people-living-in-glass-planets/
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/02/06/the-r-w-wood-experiment/
Next, you're right that cold affects human wellbeing negatively. However, the mild warming since then has been generally beneficial, erasing the problems you list.
Finally, I repeat my invitation which I posed above, viz:
"Below is a hard look at the so-called "serious risks" posed by climate change that Kerry Emmanuel mentions above.
I invite you to QUOTE any errors that you think you've identified in my analysis below, and SHOW (not just claim) why they are wrong.
And if you can't identify any errors, I hope that you would have the honesty to return to say so.
Or, you could just shine my analysis on and not read something that disagrees with your point of view … however, if you do that, you lose the right to ever call yourself a scientist again. Scientists have the spine to read the arguments on both sides of an issue."
My best to you and yours,
w.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2021/04/25/wheres-the-emergency/
"A planetary “greenhouse” is a curiosity, a trick of nature. It works solely because although a sphere only has one side, a shell has two sides. The trick has nothing to do with greenhouse gases. It does not require an atmosphere. In fact, a planetary greenhouse can be built entirely of steel."
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I can't deal with this sort of nonsense.
I do believe that *you* believe what you write makes sense to you, like Time Cube or the flat earthers, or the Dyson Sphere Fan Club, and anyone that disagrees with anthropogenic global warming will always be welcome on WattsUpWithThat.com even if their preferred explanations conflict with each other.
So I bid you good day, sir.
LOL. "Nonsense is their product"!
Not hard to find papers that present explanations for the LIA - e.g., https://www.swsc-journal.org/articles/swsc/abs/2017/01/swsc170014/swsc170014.html.
Thanks, Aurelius. The paper is entitled "The Maunder minimum and the Little Ice Age: an update from recent reconstructions and climate simulations". It says:
"While the MM occurred within the much longer LIA period, the timing of the features are not suggestive of causation and should not, in isolation, be used as evidence of significant solar forcing of climate."
It also says:
"Climate model simulations suggest multiple factors, particularly volcanic activity, were crucial for causing the cooler temperatures in the northern hemisphere during the LIA."
"Climate model simulations suggest" is not what any sane person calls "evidence".
And as to volcanic activity, see my analysis below.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/04/13/dronning-maud-meets-the-little-ice-age/
If you disagree with any of my analysis, please quote what you disagree with and show us why it's wrong.
Best to you and yours,
w.