NASA Vs Climate Denialists
Climate Denialists In Congress Acting As NASA’s Kryptonite, NPR
“But even with the broader effort, the emphasis on NASA seems particularly pointed. How many people even know what the NSF stands for or what the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) does all day? But NASA is different. Every kid knows NASA. Every parent knows NASA. NASA is cool. NASA is Superman. So, when NASA tells us that Earth’s climate is changing because of human activity, it carries a lot of weight. It’s a weight climate denialists have a hard time bearing up under. Honestly, when it comes to getting the science of climate change right, who are you going to believe? A radio talk show host or NASA? The angry denialists in the comments section of this blog or NASA? The politician who says, “Well, I am not a scientist” or the scientists at NASA? The answer is pretty clear.”
Republicans Vs NASA Earth Science, earlier post
Folks whom deny climate change, change that is driven by man made pollution, green house gases, etc. are either 1 of 2 things…
1. Ignorant
2. Greedy
It’s that simple.
Unfortunately, many of the human caused climate change predictions haven’t come true. It would seem that accurately predicting those changes would help their case.
Which predictions?
Alarmist are always exagerating. As Dr Dyson says the problem is the poor. How are we going to raise their standard of living without wrecking the world. It is not clear to me buying more Electric Cars helps.
Not mention the early James Hansen GISS Carbon models that are significantly in error or predictions of feet’s of water in NYC
A few alarmist quotes for
Within a few years “children just aren’t going to know what snow is.” Snowfall will be “a very rare and exciting event.” Dr. David Viner, senior research scientist at the climatic research unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia, interviewed by the UK Independent, March 20, 2000. or
“Using computer models, researchers concluded that global warming would raise average annual temperatures nationwide two degrees by 2010.”Associated Press, May 15, 1989. more like 0.5 or
Study co-author Dr. Roy Spencer, a principal research scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville and U.S. Science Team Leader for the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer flying on NASA’s Aqua satellite, reports that real-world data from NASA’s Terra satellite contradict multiple assumptions fed into alarmist computer models.
“The satellite observations suggest there is much more energy lost to space during and after warming than the climate models show,” Spencer said in a July 26 University of Alabama press release. “There is a huge discrepancy between the data and the forecasts that is especially big over the oceans.” Forbes July 2011
Are you saying scientists are wrong about global warming because poor people need to burn fuel?
Quoting inaccurate predictions by news articles or single scientists is wrong. IPCC reports are a better representation of the scientific consensus, preferably the latest ones.
The price of a solar power plant in equatorial regions has now dipped below the price of coal. The world’s poor tend to live near the equator, so this problem is already solved. Once we add mass production of liquid-fueled thorium reactors, wind turbines and batteries, solving global warming isn’t hard in the north either.
Example predictions (could go on for pages):
#1) Within a few years “children just aren’t going to know what snow is.” Snowfall will be “a very rare and exciting event.” Dr. David Viner, senior research scientist at the climatic research unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia, interviewed by the UK Independent, March 20, 2000.
#2) “[By] 1995, the greenhouse effect would be desolating the heartlands of North America and Eurasia with horrific drought, causing crop failures and food riots…[By 1996] The Platte River of Nebraska would be dry, while a continent-wide black blizzard of prairie topsoil will stop traffic on interstates, strip paint from houses and shut down computers.” Michael Oppenheimer, published in “Dead Heat,” St. Martin’s Press, 1990.
#3) “Arctic specialist Bernt Balchen says a general warming trend over the North Pole is melting the polar ice cap and may produce an ice-free Arctic Ocean by the year 2000.” Christian Science Monitor, June 8, 1972.
#4) “Using computer models, researchers concluded that global warming would raise average annual temperatures nationwide two degrees by 2010.” Associated Press, May 15, 1989.
#5) “By 1985, air pollution will have reduced the amount of sunlight reaching earth by one half.” Life magazine, January 1970.
#6) “If present trends continue, the world will be … eleven degrees colder by the year 2000. This is about twice what it would take to put us in an ice age.” Kenneth E.F. Watt, in “Earth Day,” 1970.
#7) “By the year 2000 the United Kingdom will be simply a small group of impoverished islands, inhabited by some 70 million hungry people … If I were a gambler, I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000.” Ehrlich, Speech at British Institute For Biology, September 1971.
#8) “In ten years all important animal life in the sea will be extinct. Large areas of coastline will have to be evacuated because of the stench of dead fish.” Ehrlich, speech during Earth Day, 1970
#9) Over 4.5 Billion people could die from Global Warming-related causes by 2012. Runaway Global Warming promises to literally burn-up agricultural areas into dust worldwide by 2012, causing global famine, anarchy, diseases, and war on a global scale as military powers including the U.S., Russia, and China, fight for control of the Earth’s remaining resources.
The Canadian, 8 Jan 2007
#10) A senior environmental official at the United Nations, Noel Brown, says entire nations could be wiped off the face of the earth by rising sea levels if global warming is not reversed by the year 2000.
San Jose Mercury News 30 Jun 1989
Arctic Sea Ice Decline:
Click to expand
http://nsidc.org/arcticseai…
I will ignore (maybe just for now) any “predictions” before (somewhat arbitrarily) yr 2000 because they were made lacking today’s almost but not quite sufficient data and computer power and modeling. They were generally correct in the trajectory of problems, but could not be accurate as to targeted years.
UPDATE:
I have gone back and given some basic background to those pre-2000 predictions.
Part 1
#1 (snowfall in UK) is discussed below
#2 The 2010s have been parched with global droughts with a severe one just ending in TX/OK, but others still rolling along out west. The building El Nino may help. Are they “natural” or forced by global warming? It will take a number of years to get a trend.
“The Platte River of Nebraska would be dry,”
Drought dries up stretch of Platte River, slows barges on lower Mississippi
http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_…
Heavy spring rains have since refilled it.
while a continent-wide black blizzard of prairie topsoil will stop traffic on interstates, strip paint from houses and shut down computers
http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/j…
http://eoimages.gsfc.nasa.g…
NASA: “Parched by months of drought and searing heat, the Great Plains of the United States endured a widespread dust storm in mid-October 2012. Severe winds blew soil and sediment across hundreds of miles, closing highways and reminding longtime residents of the Dust Bowl years of the 1930s and the severe dust storms of the 1950s.
…
Authorities in several states reported near-blackout conditions in some places and wind gusts powerful enough to tip trucks driving along open highways. Portions of Interstate 35 in Kansas and Oklahoma, as well as Interstate 80 in Wyoming, had to be shut down due to accidents and poor visibility.”
#3 Arctic Sea Ice. Covered below
#4
http://www.epa.gov/climatec…
http://www.epa.gov/climatec…
Part 2
#5 Air pollution 50% sun blockage.
In 1970 there was essentially zero pollution controls on anything from cars to factories to power plants. If we had not stopped that, it would most certainly be true. It IS true in China. https://www.youtube.com/wat…
#6 Cooling trend.
There was a cooling starting in 1940s. Because little was known about climatic dynamics and data was sparse, some (including the CIA) were concerned that a potentially bad chill was coming. Because the models were simple, just following the trend line led to the 11 degree cooling.
#7 UK Starving population.
In 1970 population was skyrocketing. Based on trends the UK was to soar from 56 million to 70 mill people in 2000. Food supplies could not grow fast enough with the current technologies.
Well, birth control became universal and the population only reached 59 million in 2K. More importantly, the mis-named Green Revolution rolled out. This at core was massive factory farming using synthetic fertilizers. Agriculture became the conversion of natural gas into fertilizer. The quantity of syn-fertilizer increased 20 times in that period, producing massive quantities of food. Unfortunately, the farming practices and ammonia are destroying the soil, we are shrinking varieties to a genetic handful of at-risk plants and animals, and we are going to deplete natural gas. He was wrong in time-span, not in possibilities.
#8 dead seas.
I don’t know the context (i haven’t a text) but he may have been referring to the catastrophic effects of the uncontrolled destruction of estuary and tidal zones (where much of the worlds sea life is spawned), ocean acidification, uncontrolled discharge of tox and thermal wastes into the seas, overfishing, etc.
At this moment enormous “dead zones” exist due to fertilizer discharges:
Dead Zones: http://www.smithsonianmag.c…
Overfishing: http://ocean.nationalgeogra…
Estuary destruction:
http://oceanservice.noaa.go…
Toxic Ocean Pollution:
http://wwf.panda.org/about_…
Ocean Acidification:
http://discovermagazine.com…
Part 3
#9 “Over 4.5 Billion people could die from Global Warming-related causes by 2012.”
That article in the The Canadian” was discussing a POTENTIAL (as they made clear) very specific risk. It was the possibility of a runaway methane hydrate release. It is one of the potential tipping points that the trend lines don’t capture.
http://thinkprogress.org/cl…
#10)”entire nations could be wiped off the face of the earth by rising sea levels if global warming is not reversed by the year 2000.”
Its happening:
http://www.theguardian.com/…
The 2005 UNEP predictions claimed that, by 2010, some 50 million “climate refugees” would be frantically fleeing from those regions of the globe.
In March 2000 climate researcher David Viner said that within “a few years,” snowfall would become “a very rare and exciting event” in Britain.
In 2007, 2008, and 2009, Al Gore publicly warned that the North Pole would be “ice-free” in the summer by around 2013 because of
alleged “man-made global warming.”
The IPCC has slashed its global-warming predictions, implicitly rejecting the models on which it once so heavily and imprudently relied.
Why are they now calling it Climate Change and not Global Warming? http://wattsupwiththat.com/…
What predictions have come true?
“… Al Gore publicly warned that the North Pole would be “ice-free” in the summer by around 2013 because of
alleged “man-made global warming.”
Looks about right considering crudeness of estimating dynamic global events: Current thinking leans towards somewhere between now and 2040..
http://nsidc.org/arcticseai…
Click Image to expand
When did Al Gore become a climate scientist?
Climate scientist or not, as the chart shows, he is correct in seeing a time of no arctic sea ice, and soon.
“Why are they now calling it Climate Change and not Global Warming?“
Both terms have been used interchangeably since at least the 1950’s:
There have long been claims that some unspecified “they” has “changed the name from ‘global warming’ to ‘climate change'”. In reality, the two terms mean different things, have both been used for decades, and the only individual to have specifically advocated changing the name in this fashion is a global warming ‘skeptic’.
https://www.skepticalscienc…
That being said, I see the 2 terms as distinguishable. I see “global warming” causing “climate change”. For example, ice buildup in Antarctica is a result of global warming.
” 50 million “climate refugees”
Climate Refugees – the numbers vary by 2 orders of magnitude between estimates.
The problem is that 10s of millions of people are displaced annually both temporarily and permanently due to an environmental change such as flooding, desertification, deforestation, drought, etc. Which are “normal” weather events and which are a product of climate change?
As sea levels rise due to ocean heating expansion, coastal flooding, salt poisoning of soil and water, etc grows, or deserts expand, there are waves of displaced people. The detailed numbers are hard to agree upon, but it is a large qualitative problem, even if the quantification is hard.
…about half the population of Bangladesh lives less than 5 meters (16.5 feet) above sea level. In 1995, Bangladesh’s Bhola Island was half-submerged by rising sea levels, leaving 500,000 people homeless. Scientists predict Bangladesh will lose 17 percent of its land by 2050 due to flooding caused by climate change. The loss of land could lead to as many as 20 million climate refugees from Bangladesh.
(Due to increasing drought and desertification) thousands of Somalis and Ethiopians, threatened by starvation and poverty, have already fled to refugee camps in Kenya. Camps that were designed to provide temporary shelter for 90,000 people are now home to twice that number.
“snowfall would become “a very rare and exciting event” in Britain. That is certainly a likely long-term possibility, but perversely, it now appears that global warming may actually cause short-term increase in UK snowfall due to Arctic Sea Ice disappearance (which Viner would not have known).
“Impact of declining Arctic sea ice on winter snowfall” (national academies of science)
http://www.pnas.org/content…
No, its the opposite. Modern companies welcome governments mandating people buy their products, regulate their competitors out of existence, shield them from liability, while telling everyone what a great, caring company they are in exchange for toeing the government line. Crony capitalism (formerly known as fascism) is the engine of the green energy and climate change movements.
Billions of dollars are flowing to corporations and scientists willing to fudge the data to push the agenda. Career suicide, slurs, and attacks flow to people who don’t produce the “right” data useful to the agenda. Climate and “clean energy” is huge slush fund with low accountability where government sources distribute money to those who advance their agenda. Solyndra is the tiny tip of a massive iceberg of corruption and waste.
A study in Nature (2005) found 15.5% of scientists admitted altering design, methodology, or results due to pressure from a funding source. That’s the number willing to admit to it in a survey. Call it a lower bound.
Climate has been changing for billions of years. The recent tiny oscillations up and down are minor compared to what has happened in the past with no involvement of humans.. This obviates the claim changes can be attributed to humans.
To claim humans are now responsible is anti-science and anti-reason and anti-human.
For most people who go along, its just a cheap way of feeling self-righteous.
For the instigators, what Greenpeace founder Dr.Patrick Moore refers to as the neo-Marxists who have taken over the movement, it is about advancing their agenda of global control over the means of production and other people’s wealth.
At best climate research provides a glimpse of a few frames of a long movie, seen through a couple different filters. Extrapolating to other full-color frames is not really science. Newspaper horoscopes do better than climate science as far as prediction.
Patrick Moore is a paid lobbyest for the forestry , mining, chemical, nuclear, plastics, GMO industry. Before that he was an early member of Greenpeace and rose to a director level, but became separated and began fish farming and lobbying for polluters
http://www.sourcewatch.org/…
http://www.greenpeace.org/i…
http://www.lobbywatch.org/p…
Calling people who wish to abate climate change and environmental decay neo-marxists with a global domination agenda is both WRONG, INSULTING, OFFENSIVE, and did I say, WRONG.
Don’t even bother, Yale. These quotes and other factoids come directly from Anthony Watts.
A good article about the Dark Money which funds climate denial:
http://www.scientificameric…
One of hundreds of examples…
(Credit NASA climate scientists)
http://www.cnn.com/2015/05/…
Pretty sure this man made climate change impact stuff is legit! It’s called science, based on widely accepted criteria of cause & effect, not some delusional preponderance of political doubt.
That was a very interesting essay.
I always assumed that NASA’s Earth Science Division was being gutted because it was providing uncomfortable data that the Koch brothers, et al, know they have to suppress.
This article takes the stance that the real danger is that NASA is viewed as a legitimate, capable, and competent authority and thus undercuts the denialists and their paying sponsors, and so must be executed by an anti-aircraft gun firing squad.
http://www.rfa.org/english/…
http://www.theguardian.com/…
There is climate deniers and client change deniers, I am a member of the latter not the former.
“Do now be afraid! I bring you evil news of great sorrow that will be for all the little people. Today in the world of Paul, a disaster has been born to you; it is ‘Apocolypse du jour’. This will be a sign to you: You wilt find a tax, wrapped in trappings of morality, and lying from a stranger.”
I would hope you are a climate change skeptic, and not a climate change denier. The first is honorable, the latter in not. “Deniers”, like anti-evolution denialism, climate change denialism, and other far more repugnant denialism, are not reason and evidence based, they are IN SPITE of any logic or fact.
Skeptics, on the other hand, are the very epitome of the scientist. They accept nothing at face value, but are wide open to being convinced.
Denialists STOP research, skeptics ENCOURAGE research.
Denialists cut NASA’s Earth Science budget, Skeptics want the budget increased.
“Nullius in Verba”
The only quibble I have with you is that 99% of the 2000 oe so climate scientists who contribute to the 5 year climate reports would not even agree with your term “climate skeptic” both terms I call out as BS
If you are referring to the IPCC, did you know that though they advertise it as having 2500 co-authors, they are counting people more than once, who in one section abbreviate with initials, spell out there name in another section, etc.?
The actual number for one report was 1190 actual individuals. However, examination finds many of them are not even scientists, but environmental activists.
Analysis finds 35 scientists driving the UN report, themselves being controlled by a much smaller core.
You have to read the fine print of IPCC AR4 (Humans Responsible for Climate Change) to discover it is the opinon of just 5 scientists, yet governments use it as a blueprint to create suffering among their populations by structurally changing their economies.
There is also quite a history of IPCC lead authors getting approval of all their co-authors, then for the final publication going through and stripping out all the qualifications the other authors had agreed to.
More crap from Watts.
There are plenty of radio hosts who mis-quote results from NASA sponsored researches to serve their own political agenda. NASA never endorsed any of the scientific results and should never do. This is not because scientists can be wrong (which happens often), but it violates acdemic freedom to adopt official views. Unfortunately NASA’s earth science public web pages does appear to endorse certain views. NASA should make it clear that any of it’s press conferences are used to report new results and the view of the scientists who carry out the study, and should make sure when such studies are quoted in media reports the researcher’s name rather than a generic “NASA scientists” be used.
Ignoring “radio hosts” like Rush or Hannity for mis-quoting scientists and research is easy. Where do you see “official views”? The pointing out that climate is changing? That life has evolved? No conclusions or operating ideas are ever possible?
Supply a specific link to a specific quote and we can discuss whether that specific quote is legitimate or not.
With no exception on every internet comment section you find at least one troll. These people are usually bored internet/cable tv addicts who have no life or rewarding career, and have a strong urge to show off whatever junk they have learnt on tv (or online) by repeating religiously what they heard or read. Commenting profusely gives them a sense of existence, and up voting each other serves as confirmation of their value. Looks like I got a troll of my own, lol.
A person that challenges your opinion is a troll? Interesting viewpoint as it seems you’re put out by having your opinions challenged.
You seem to find anyone that shows that you cannot back your opinions is doing something wrong. If you want a place to express any damn thing you want without fear of contradiction, then start your own blog and disable comments or hold them for censorship.
Try here:
http://stylecaster.com/best…
The climate is always changing. It gets colder, warmer. There are droughts, storms. I’d be interested in exact quotes where someone in Congress says that the climate is not changing.
One question I have is why haven’t we heard more about the results from OCO-2, launched last summer. A press release late last year seemed to show most of the carbon coming from the southern hemisphere, from South America, Africa and ocean areas. I haven’t seen anything since.
That would make sense. The biosphere breathes daily and seasonally. There would also be some real hot-spots from volcanic areas. Let me see if there are some more recent results. I bet we will see a strong nothern/southern hemisphere seasonal oscillation.
That would be neat to see in an animation.
Yes that was a beautiful example of seasonality. In the southern hemisphere in spring there is massive savanna burnoffs and land clearing. The OCO data was dead on in matching the predicted super high CO2 concentrations.
Where can I find information on the predicted super high CO2 concentrations?
http://scrippsscholars.ucsd…
http://onlinelibrary.wiley….
It is straightforward. When massive amounts of biomass are burned (as happens in local spring) there is a pulse of CO2. That is what gets detected.
Its not about the carbon, we are all carbon based forms of life, its all about the sun and our distance from it. The thin blue line of our atmosphere on this planet is provides a small buffer in the grand scheme of things. Our planet exists either by God or by a miracle, thats what drives the space program to find other options. Earth abides but we never know how long on this plane. Thats what drives my participation to make sure earthlings soldier on.
https://youtu.be/TDBt2BT899Y
https://youtu.be/TDBt2BT899Y
“Our planet exists either by God or by a miracle, “
Unwarranted assumption.
If climate isn’t “changing,” then why are shipping companies planning Northern Passage routes in Arctic Ocean when previously such a route was not possible? And countries that border the Arctic Ocean grumbling much more about territorial areas? With less ice that area is becoming more accessible unlike before was useless area except for scientists or occasional trip under the ice by a Navy sub.
The railroad tracks at KSC that run past pads 39 A & B are now awash due to increased sea level.
“The angry denialists in the comments section…..” it seems these folks are indeed for the most part angry white men a subset of whom still live in their mothers basement past 30 years of age 🙂 I am hoping someday soon that this subset of humanity and the greater set of that 47 percent who vote republican will learn the biological and social scientific theory’s of something called altruism. Altruism is found in the Eusocial insects and in the social mammals. individuals who harbor a deep since of selfishness who cant see their nieghbers having health care or a collective responsibility towards anthropocentric CO2 emissions may be an existential threat to our species survival, and such folks are a direct cause of never funding any kind of space colonizing effort, my brothers and sister on the left share some guilt in this as far as the space program goes
Funding such basic human needs removes much of the argument for we cant afford human spaceflight 🙂
So there are two options facing the World wrt man-made climate change being do nothing and hope that it doesn’t exist or do something on the basis the the effects are real and mankind is responsible for and can reduce at least some of the impacts.
Well what the cost of either option? It seems to me that mankind is stupid to gamble on the do-nothing option if there’s even a small chance that climate change is real and we can reduce at least some of the negative outcomes. After all, we end up with economies that are cleaner, healthier and more sustainable in the longer term than if we do nothing.
But then again, who said man-kind was sensible and far-sighted? As evidence just look what we’re responsible for even without the climate change debate? No, as a species we’re definitely stupid and that said, do not deserve to inherit this world we live on.
Cheers
–Well what the cost of either option? It seems to me that mankind is
stupid to gamble on the do-nothing option if there’s even a small chance
that climate change is real and we can reduce at least some of the
negative outcomes.–
We don’t have option of doing nothing because we already spent about 1 trllion dollars related to stopping global warming or “climate change”.
The question is how many trillions dollars are going to spend?
So the governmental laws involved in wind mills,solar energy, burning wood, ethanol have all been done in name of global warming. Germany has probably spent the most per capita and they have very high electrical costs- and it has not reduce CO2 by any significant amount.
It seems the US has been wasting money on alternative energy for the longest time but in terms of per captia the US not as extreme as other countries like Germany has been in last decade or so.
I’m not an “angry denialist” but I do think that NASA Earth Climate Studies is an exception to their recently stated larger focus of exploring the Solar System. Now, if they want to just roll the “Earth Climate Studies” into “Planetary Science” and use that as an excuse to increase Planetary Science funding, I’m all for that. That is a unique role that NASA alone can play in the Climate Change research.
NOAA owns satellites, they can own a few more.