The public might not understand the science, but they do understand cheating
Dr. David Evans
19 October 2010
[A series of articles reviewing the western climate establishment and the media. The first and second discussed air temperatures, the third was on ocean temperatures, and fourth discussed past temperatures, the fifth compared the alleged cause (human CO2 emissions) with the alleged effect (temperatures), the sixth canvassed the infamous attempt to “fix” that disconnect, the hockey stick, and the seventh pointed out that the Chinese, Russian, and Indian climate establishments (which are financially independent of the western climate establishment) disagree with the western climate establishment about the cause of recent global warming and the eighth showed how government institutional and funding pressures created the consensus among western climate scientists. The ninth showed the evidence that the amplifying feedbacks, responsible for two-thirds of the model warming projections, are not present in reality—and that the lame response of the establishment was to miscolour a graph to mislead us into thinking those feedbacks were observed when they were not.]
Click to download a pdf file containing the whole series
Why is the Official Language so Orwellian?
It used to be called “global warming”, then when warming paused it became “climate change”. And as of September 2010, it appears they are switching to “global climate disruption”.
Illustration: The government and media have stepped into an Orwellian twilight zone with global warming. Source.
It keeps getting less specific and less falsifiable. If the world hasn’t warmed by several degrees by the end of the century then man-made “global warming” was dead wrong, ok. But “climate change”? The climate changes all the time, like the weather, just give it a decade or two (see Figure 20).
And now “climate disruption”? So they are going to blame our carbon emissions for large storms, droughts, and floods? In biblical times they blamed the Gods, to whom only certain members of the establishment had a hotline—hmmm, better do what the establishment guys tell us to do or there’ll be a climatic disruption headed our way! How times change.
Evidence of warming is conflated with evidence for man-made warming. Any sign of warming (and it has been warming now for over 300 years, see Figure 17) is taken by the governments and media as evidence of global warming, and while the audience is shocked at the implications (or just numb from the repetition or sheer boredom), they simply assert that it is due to carbon emissions. Repetition, over and over…
They say that people who don’t believe in the theory of man-made global warming (and there are a lot of us nowadays) “don’t believe in climate change”. Taken literally, that is a stupendously stupid thing to say—everyone I know believes climate changes. It happens all the time: just in the last two thousand years we have had a medieval warm period and a little ice age, and 20,000 years ago New York was under thousands of feet of ice because there was an ice age going on. But of course the climate establishment and their believer-supporters are just using it as a propaganda term to isolate and mock those who disagree with them. George Orwell would have admired their flair for propaganda.
They say that someone skeptical of the theory of man-made global warming is a “denier”. That’s hate speech. It deliberately equates critics of their global warming theory with anti-Semitic apologists for the holocaust in WWII. Spin, spin, spin, and intimidation.
“The debate is over.” Could someone please show me when and where there was ever a debate? The establishment would only say this to avoid debate. We’ll get a debate with the climate establishment only when the bulk of the population see through them and are demanding that politicians … (gasp) … cut their funding. Then, suddenly, they will want to debate.
They frame the debate as whether one believes that CO2 causes any warming or not. That misrepresents and demonizes opponents of their theory as ignorant fools. The issue in dispute is quite different, namely how much warming will our CO2 emissions cause? If only 0.5 – 1.0°C of extra warming by 2100, as most skeptics suspect, then it is not a problem worth doing much about; if it will cause 2.5 – 8.0°C of extra warming as the climate establishment say, then we have a serious problem.
Every molecule of CO2 we emit causes some warming—something serious skeptics have always agreed with, and a straightforward question of radiative physics. The media willingly go along with mis-framing the issue like this, refusing to correct even the most blatant propaganda from the establishment. Which of course strengthens the climate of intimidation, silencing many who doubt the establishment’s theory. After all, who wants to have their doubts publicly misrepresented so they appear a fool?
If the case for man-made global warming is so strong, why the Orwellian language?
Gore’s Convenient Lie
Al Gore’s movie An Inconvenient Truth convinced large portions of the population that CO2 levels and temperature are highly correlated and therefore raising CO2 levels will raise temperatures.
Figure 29: Atmospheric CO2 levels and global temperature move in lockstep on a timescale of thousands of years, as illustrated by Al Gore in his move An Inconvenient Truth. The trouble is, Al deliberately left out a crucial point about timing, thereby lying by omission.
Not so fast Al. Obviously on a time scale of thousands of years CO2 levels and temperature are closely linked, so one is causing the other. (On shorter time scales of tens of years they are not well correlated, nor on longer time scales of millions of years.)
What Gore omitted to say was that the changes in temperature occur 800 years on average before the corresponding changes in CO2 levels.
[The explanation is obvious to any chemist. The oceans contain dissolved CO2, so as the oceans warm/cool they release/pull-in CO2. So if the planet warms for some reason, air temperatures go up first (because it takes much less heat to warm the atmosphere than the oceans), then after a few hundred years the oceans have warmed enough to release significant amounts of CO2, thereby raising the CO2 level in the atmosphere.
Some claim that the CO2 released by the oceans then amplifies the initial warming. Theoretically it does, but the effect is so small we can find no evidence for it in the ice core records. Some claim to have found such evidence, but they have mistaken aliasing artifacts in the data for evidence of amplification (process their data using different sampling and their “evidence” disappears, which wouldn’t be the case if the evidence was real).]
So it was the temperature causing the CO2 levels, not the other way around. Gee Al, forgot to mention that little detail? The 800 year lag of CO2 had been firmly established by 2003 to everyone’s satisfaction, and Gore’s movie was made in 2005. So Gore was lying, by omission.
Mr Gore has become very wealthy by owning and running companies involved in curbing our carbon emissions, his net worth zooming from under $2 million after the 2000 presidential election to approaching $1,000 million in 2009.
Why didn’t the climate establishment or the media publicly correct Gore’s lie?
Doesn’t this show that the climate establishment and media are playing politics rather than disinterestedly searching for and publishing the truth?
Take a bow George Orwell, for correctly foreseeing aspects of the future.
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Summary | PART I | PART 2 | PART 3 | PART 4 | PART 5 | PART 6 | PART 7 | PART 8 | PART 9 | PART 10 | PART 11
Full PDF versions for printing and emailing are available from the summary page.
Image Orwell 1984: Source.
