Wednesday 12 November 2008

"The end of the climate myth"

Here's engineer Brian Leyland's piece in yesterday's Dom Post arguing that sunspots spell the end of the climate myth.  Leyland is unequivocal:

    Government policies on greenhouse gases, carbon trading and promoting renewable energy are based on the beliefs that the world is warming due to man-made greenhouse gases; that promoting renewable energy will make a substantial difference to New Zealand's greenhouse gas emissions; and that if New Zealand reduces its greenhouse gas emissions it would affect the world climate. All these beliefs are not true.
    The evidence is unequivocal. Measurable, let alone dangerous, manmade global warming is not happening, and is not likely to happen in the future.

Yet with the evidence against it and the economy already in peril, this new government is still relentlessly pursuing its own version of the Emissions Trading Scam -- a manmade response to global warming that will put a handbrake on growth as effective as anything Keith Locke could do.

Which means you, dear readers, need to send every member of the new National, ACT and United caucuses (the last now meets in a telephone booth on Molesworth St) a strongly worded message telling them not to support any ETS if they ever want your vote again.  And send them with your covering letter Christopher Monckton's 'Open Letter to John McCain' - the best, most concise, most up-to-date summary of both the peer-reviewed science on the climate myth and the economic damage that will result from responding to the myth.

Perhaps you could recommend a more rational response, one that will allay their fears that our trading partners must see us doing something, and at the same time call the bluff of warmist zealots.  Something along the lines, I'd suggest, of a carbon tax linked to real global temperatures.  You might call it a Kyoto Plan with a difference...

UPDATE: I love the way Leyland deals with the "consensus" argument:

    It is often claimed that because a "consensus" of scientists agree that manmade global warming is happening, it must be true. This is nonsense for two reasons. The first is that many distinguished scientists strongly disagree. So, by definition, there is no consensus.
   
But even if a consensus did exist, it would make no difference to the real world. For instance, it would not be hard to find a consensus of reverends who firmly believe the world was created a few thousand years ago. But the existence of this consensus would not stop evolution in its tracks.

16 comments:

Anonymous said...

One thing that I have learnt in science is not to trust the co-called consensus.

When I was at Auckland varsity doing Physics, one of the experiments that I was assigned in one of the lab sessions to do (different experiment every week) was the Millikan Oil-drop experiment. The aim was to measure the charge of the electron (the smallest unit of charge exist in matter - not quite since quark has smaller charge than that).

I was told by the supervisor (Dr. Barry Brennan) to forget about the consensus (established) value of the electronic charge e- , since its value is well established as available from the text books, etc... but to follow the experimental setup & guide and see what value that I would come up with. The accepted value for e- today is 1.602 176 487 x 10^–19 coulombs. I remembered that I got a value in the range of 1.46 x 10^-19 coulombs plus or minus 0.07 .

Me being aware of the true value for e- as a priori, I fibbed my result quoting a value of 1.58 x 10^-19 plus or minus 0.07 coulombs in my in writeups. I handed in my writeups at the end of the week.

I collected my lab book and I was shocked to find out that I was given an 8 out of a total of 20 marks. I asked Dr. Brennan why, and he told me that he went thru my whole report, reading thru the collected data (tabulated) and plottings and he found out that my final value was in fact materialize out of thin air. I told him that I thought I did something wrong with my experiment and how I conducted it, because the published value for e- was different to my result, therefore I decided to make up my result because I didn't have time to re-run the whole experiment (ie, 6 hours - 2 lab sessions). Dr. Brennan replied to me that my experimental data was indeed correct and my value for the electrical charge e- was correct within the statistical error. He said that the value that one could get by using that apparatus is 1.46 x 10^-19 +- 0.04 coulombs. If anyone that came up higher than that was definitely a fib.

Dr. Brennan also mentioned that the original Millikan experiment was incorrect, but many experimentalists who came after him and repeated his experiment found a different result from the one that Prof. Millikan had established at the time, which was the consensus. Those experimentalists also thought that there experiments were wrong, so they didn't want to challenge the Nobel laureate and great scientist at the time. I also found out that it wasn't only me that did fibbed the result in my lab-stream class mates, because there were two others who did the millikan oil drop experiment before me. They fibbed their results because they thought that their electrical charge e- was way too low with the accepted value exactly as I did.

The lesson to learn from this as Dr. Brennan told me at the time, was not to be afraid to stand up and challenge the statusquo.

It was found out later that the original Millikan (so called consensus) value for e- was wrong.

As a hero of mine , Physics Nobel laureate Richard Feynman, commented on the Millikan type consensus.

Richard Feynman Quoted:
We have learned a lot from experience about how to handle some of the ways we fool ourselves. One example: Millikan measured the charge on an electron by an experiment with falling oil drops, and got an answer which we now know not to be quite right. It's a little bit off because he had the incorrect value for the viscosity of air. It's interesting to look at the history of measurements of the charge of an electron, after Millikan. If you plot them as a function of time, you find that one is a little bit bigger than Millikan's, and the next one's a little bit bigger than that, and the next one's a little bit bigger than that, until finally they settle down to a number which is higher.

Why didn't they discover the new number was higher right away? It's a thing that scientists are ashamed of - this history - because it's apparent that people did things like this: When they got a number that was too high above Millikan's, they thought something must be wrong - and they would look for and find a reason why something might be wrong. When they got a number close to Millikan's value they didn't look so hard. And so they eliminated the numbers that were too far off, and did other things like that. We've learned those tricks nowadays, and now we don't have that kind of a disease.


We should be aware of the so-called consensus science.

Berend de Boer said...

PC: . For instance, it would not be hard to find a consensus of reverends who firmly believe the world was created a few thousand years ago.

The proper analogy would be of course that it would not be hard to find scientists who firmly believe in neo-darwinist evolution, despite that there's no single hard fact, i.e. repeatable laboratory proof, of, for starters, the mechanism: random mutations can provide us with new functionality (no, breakdown of existing functionality leading so some new effects doesn't count, it proves the opposite).

And on the reverends: I doubt you can find many reverends who do not believe in evolution (whatever the meaning).

Anonymous said...

Thank god this myth looks like it's being put to bed! I can't believe the sheer panic the people of the world have let themselves get into over this.

The so called experts tell us that 'tomorrow there might be a chance of showers'... we all know that may or may not happen, and go about our lives quite happily.

But when they tell us that in 100 years time the average temperature will increase by 3 or 4 degrees, the bulk of the population shit themselves and the hippies are ready to lynch anyone driving a car. Well, not lynch, obviously, because they're hippies and they have no balls, but they'd wave placards about and chant VERY LOUDLY INDEED.

Hopefully the history books will reflect what a shameful scam this 'weather crisis' is, and future generations can learn from today's mistakes.

Anonymous said...

FF

Fascinating. Probably the best supervisor anyone could ask for.

Feynman was another very clever guy. Did you know that not only was he a physicist but he was also a safe cracker? It's true. He had quite a reputation.

LGM

StephenR said...

FWIW, there's a rebuttal of Leyland's opinion there

Anonymous said...

Well said Berend, there are a lot of parallels between global warming and evolution. Both are held as absolute fact by many people and taught as absolute fact in school. The actual evidence for both is debatable. There are a large minority of scientists who disbelieve one or other of them. These scientists can struggle to get their work published in journals or by the media because it defies the "consensus", however good their research. Both theories can be believed, consciously or subconsciously, for ulterior reasons other than science (global warming because it provides a great distraction and excuse for socialism, evolution because it means you don't have to confront the question of whether there is a God).

So most people continue to believe both are absolute truth and ridicule anyone daring to use their brain and actually question them.

Anonymous said...

Wow. That piece by Viscount Monkton is a devastating rebuttal of the rubbish being peddled by the climate alarmists.

Anonymous said...

Stephen your link was to an article that basically just rubbished what Leyland said without really offering counter-evidence. Can you point us to anything more substantial?

StephenR said...

...article that basically just rubbished what Leyland said without really offering counter-evidence.

I think that guy is a bit jaded Richard, but he does have references for 'the world is cooling' and 'balloons and satellites' and also seems to put a bit of effort into Leyland's 'sunspots' idea, by the looks. "Rewriting the laws of physics" doesn't sound like the sort of thing one needs to explain, unless of course he's massively wrong.

Anonymous said...

Berend and acolyte

A point you should consider is this. Your weird ideas that God exists and talks to you, and that God is all good, all powerful and all knowing and that God created everything etc. etc. etc. are not demonstrated as correct merely by casting a few superficial aspersions at the Theory of Evolution. You need to do far better than that.

You need to prove that your superstitions regarding God, Angels, Lucifer, devils, ghosts, miracles, people rising from the dead, turning water into wine, walking on water, talking trees and so forth are really true and correct. Fact is, neither of you have ever achieved ANY of that. Sure, in your own minds you may deceive yourselves and PRETEND you possess truth, but in reality you have nothing of the sort.

If you want to HONESTLY continue with your god-bothering nonsense, then you need to prove your religious beliefs are true, correct and comply with reality. That is not achieved (and never will be) by substitution of another topic (in this instance Evolution). To prove your religious assertions you need to specifically prove them. Fact is, you can't. You know it. I know it. Readers know it.

LGM

PS next time try sticking to the topic and avoid trying to slime a substitution. PC's comments and analogies stand.

Anonymous said...

I forgot to add, Brian's comments and analogies stand as well.

LGM

Sean said...

Stephen,

Adding to Richard's thoughts; perhaps you could link to someone not on the climate change gravey train. That would be great! Thanks in advance. Much appreciated. Keep up the good work and all that.

StephenR said...

Sean, I was just linking to a rebuttal for anyone who was interested. There's nothing more to read into that.

Sean said...

I didn't say there was...

Berend de Boer said...

LGM, I hope you're not married or in live.

LGM's lover: "To prove your assertions of love you need to specifically prove them. Else they don't exist. You need to do better than saying I love you."

Maybe one day you wake up to the fact, that the scientific method does not work for everything.

Anonymous said...

Berend

You're at it again- subject substitution rather than facing up to an issue honestly. Still, let's humour you and swap subjects for a moment.

In order to prove whether one loves another it is indeed necessary to seek more than verbal assertion. It is necessary that certain entities, real & existant, exhibit certain real attributes, actions and behaviours. Your proof would require that those specific actions, behaviours, integrity etc. be observed in reality and be logically identified. In the absence of that, all you would possess is verbal assertion and that's not solid enough to rely on.

I suspect you are one of those who subscribes to the nonsense that some supernatural entity "makes" all the love. Hence for a person to love another you'd have us believe in a supernatural spirit-monster who supposedly doles out a quantity of magic "love" stuff for one person to love the other with. That's silliness, of course. In order to prove that something along those lines is real you'd need to start by proving your supernatural god spirit monster exists. Which brings you directly back to that which you are attempting to escape!

Berend, what you need to wake up to is that you can't substitute bullshit, arbitrary assertion, blind faith, myths and delusion for reality.

LGM