Global warming could cut over 60 countries' credit ratings by 2030, study warns

[BritManToo]

32 minutes ago, ozimoron said:

OK, for arguments sake, lets concede that Michael Mann is a fraud. What about every scientific organization and academic institution in the world which studies the subject?

Makes you wonder how accurate your beloved 'consensus peer reviewed' science really is.

Or did Mann get a free pass on the peer reviews?

[Chomper Higgot]

46 minutes ago, BritManToo said:

the jury is certainly out on Mann and his hockey stick, and he lost and had to pay all costs.

it was either incompetence or fraud, but they couldn't prove criminal fraud  as he refused to provide his original data (if there was any).

Perhaps you’d like to try having a crack at NASA:

 

https://climate.nasa.gov

[ozimoron]

2 minutes ago, BritManToo said:

Makes you wonder how accurate your beloved 'consensus peer reviewed' science really is.

Or did Mann get a free pass on the peer reviews?

 

Peer reviewed papers is the basis of all science. I'm just trying to get you to let go of your obsession with Mann and discuss climate change. You are clinging to the non sequitur that if you can discredit Mann then by extension you can discredit the entire world's fleet of climate scientists as if they were all part of some giant conspiracy to soak up grants for fake research.

[BritManToo]

3 minutes ago, ozimoron said:

Peer reviewed papers is the basis of all science. I'm just trying to get you to let go of your obsession with Mann and discuss climate change. You are clinging to the non sequitur that if you can discredit Mann then by extension you can discredit the entire world's fleet of climate scientists as if they were all part of some giant conspiracy to soak up grants for fake research.

If you can discredit one, you can discredit them all.

This is an absolute truth, if peer reviewing doesn't work, there's no point having it.

if science by consensus doesn't work, it casts the whole climate change science into doubt.

 

How could it be any other way?

Is there one climate change alarmist who didn't hold Mann's 'hockey stick' work in awe as almost religious prophecy?

 

Now that Mann is gone, who do you have left to follow, a high school drop out child who's really good at pulling angry faces and a failed politician who likes to drive around in hummers and private jets?

[ozimoron]

7 minutes ago, BritManToo said:

If you can discredit one, you can discredit them all.

This is an absolute truth, if peer reviewing doesn't work, there's no point having it.

if science by consensus doesn't work, it casts the whole climate change science into doubt.

 

Rubbish., There are dissenters out there, they are just wrong or paid to create pseudoscience. The argument that if one theory is wrong they are all wrong is just ridiculous.

 

Quote

 

How could it be any other way?

 

You're kidding, right?

 

Quote

Is there one climate change alarmist who didn't hold Mann's 'hockey stick' work in awe as almost religious prophecy?

 

Your assumption that climate scientists worship any one person is manifestly incorrect. Your use of the term "alarmist" as a blanket epithet shows your unwillingness to accept anything other than confirmation bias of your "fixed beliefs".

[placeholder]

1 hour ago, BritManToo said:

You don't think 8 years of him not providing his original data (if he ever had any) was accidental?

If there haven't been many many other pieces of independent research validating the hockey stick, you might have a point. But there have been, so you don't.

More than two dozen reconstructions, using various statistical methods and combinations of proxy records, support the broad consensus shown in the original 1998 hockey-stick graph, with variations in how flat the pre-20th century "shaft" appears.^[12][13]

^{https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hockey_stick_graph}

[Chomper Higgot]

14 minutes ago, BritManToo said:

If you can discredit one, you can discredit them all.

Nonsense.

 

The history of science is littered with scientists who’s work was discredited, non of which discredits Newton, Copernicus, Watt, Currie, Einstein ....,,

[placeholder]

4 hours ago, Yellowtail said:

 

No, it makes them liars. The said it was the first and they have know way of knowing that. 

 

At least they did qualify the due to climate change with "likely". 

Please. If their intent was to deceive, why not state that there could have been others? Their omission actually makes the case weaker? They just should have stipulated that it was the first known species to go extinct due to climate change. Of course, had they done that, then denialists would doubtless have accused them of exaggerating the problem.

[placeholder]

49 minutes ago, BritManToo said:

Makes you wonder how accurate your beloved 'consensus peer reviewed' science really is.

Or did Mann get a free pass on the peer reviews?

On to the innnuendoes.

[placeholder]

46 minutes ago, BritManToo said:

If you can discredit one, you can discredit them all.

This is an absolute truth, if peer reviewing doesn't work, there's no point having it.

if science by consensus doesn't work, it casts the whole climate change science into doubt.

 

How could it be any other way?

Is there one climate change alarmist who didn't hold Mann's 'hockey stick' work in awe as almost religious prophecy?

 

Now that Mann is gone, who do you have left to follow, a high school drop out child who's really good at pulling angry faces and a failed politician who likes to drive around in hummers and private jets?

more personal attacks  and no data.

[placeholder]

1 hour ago, BritManToo said:

You don't think 8 years of him not providing his original data (if he ever had any) was accidental?

.

[placeholder]

1 hour ago, BritManToo said:

the jury is certainly out on Mann and his hockey stick, and he lost and had to pay all costs.

it was either incompetence or fraud, but they couldn't prove criminal fraud  as he refused to provide his original data (if there was any).

You conveniently ignore the other lawsuit in this case where the institute that broadcast the interview with Ball apologized on the grounds that it was unethical. Your selective blindness is interesting.

[placeholder]

21 hours ago, RickBradford said:

Quite wrong, as usual.

 

I was referring equally to the phrase "Moreover, our results should be understood as scenario-based simulations rather than predictions."

 

Computer models have a dreadful prediction record, and the authors, quite rightly, are acknowledging that. The model is a useful experiment, and I doubt that the authors intended for it to be any more than that. "Don't blame us if it's rubbish," is the caveat that the authors were giving.

 

Reuters, however, sniffing a climate agenda story, has run the thing without any semblance of balance or perspective.

 

I'm objecting to the story, not the model.

Your generalization that computer models have a dreadful prediction record is typical in that it is an unverifiable generalization. We do know that event early models for global warming turned out to be mostly accurate.

[placeholder]

23 hours ago, BritManToo said:

There's nobody combating climate change (if it even exists).

But there are people making a lot of money from pretending to care while, driving hummers, flying in private jets and buying beach houses.

 

as you're a believer,

How are you doing your bit to help Chomper old chap?

Garden full of solar panels, refusing to fly or drive, not using air-con ...... give us a hint?

Thanks for all of the evidence including your mind-reading.

[placeholder]

On 3/29/2021 at 8:17 AM, thaibeachlovers said:

No one seems to be taking into account that much of the renewable technology depends on scarce resources like rare earth or is sourced from less than desirable places, which could become a problem if we try to convert 8 billion people to renewables, many living in poor countries that can't afford it.

You think that because it's called "rare earth" that it's scarce. Mostly untrue.

[placeholder]

On 3/23/2021 at 1:34 PM, VincentRJ said:

It makes me so sad that some people seem to believe there can be a 'scientific' consensus on such a complex topic as climate change and sea level rise. Even the IPCC, the so-called great authority on climate, has admitted that the climate is a very complex, chaotic, and non-linear system. They have also expressed uncertainty (low confidence) that extreme weather events have been increasing in severity and frequency, on a global scale, since the beginning of the industrial revolution.

Really? Lots of articles in leading journals debunking claims of anthropogenic climate change?

[placeholder]

On 3/23/2021 at 1:34 PM, VincentRJ said:

It makes me so sad that some people seem to believe there can be a 'scientific' consensus on such a complex topic as climate change and sea level rise. Even the IPCC, the so-called great authority on climate, has admitted that the climate is a very complex, chaotic, and non-linear system. They have also expressed uncertainty (low confidence) that extreme weather events have been increasing in severity and frequency, on a global scale, since the beginning of the industrial revolution.

 

Any consensus is mainly political, not scientific.

Those 3% of scientific papers that deny climate change? A review found them all flawed

Katharine Hayhoe, an atmospheric scientist at Texas Tech University, worked with a team of researchers to look at the 38 papers published in peer-reviewed journals in the last decade that denied anthropogenic global warming.

“Every single one of those analyses had an error—in their assumptions, methodology, or analysis—that, when corrected, brought their results into line with the scientific consensus,” Hayhoe wrote in a Facebook post.

One of Hayhoe’s co-authors, Rasmus Benestad, an atmospheric scientist at the Norwegian Meteorological Institute, built the program using the computer language R—which conveniently works on all computer platforms—to replicate each of the papers’ results and to try to understand how they reached their conclusions.

https://qz.com/1069298/the-3-of-scientific-papers-that-deny-climate-change-are-all-flawed/

[Yellowtail]

They build models to predict the market as well.

  Once the model is "built", they duplicate it twenty or a hundred times and adjust the parameters differently for each.

  Then they use each to model to generate a set of predictions.

  They publish the predictions.

  Every year they pick whichever is doing the best to show their clients how great their predictions are.

This is absolutely what investment firms do. 

 

There is no model that can predict the market accurately and consistently. The climate seems a lot more complex than the market to me.

 

I do not think climate scientists are frauds or stupid or evil, but they have no incentive to prove anything other than impending doom, anymore than an investment firm has any incentive to tell you there is nothing to invest in. 

 

1. I believe the Earth is warming, I do not believe how quickly it will warm, or how long it will continue to warm can accurately be predicted. 

2. I believe as the Earth warms, the seas will rise. I belied the level the sea will rise for any given rise in temperature can be predicted with reasonable accuracy.

3. I believe man has some impact on the Earths climate. How much impact, or how significant that impact is I do not believe can be accurately estimated.

4. Assuming man is not the primary reason for climate change, anything man does will have little or no benefit.

5. Assuming man is the primary reason for climate change, the little bit we can do it pointless.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Yellowtail]

39 minutes ago, placeholder said:

Those 3% of scientific papers that deny climate change? A review found them all flawed

Katharine Hayhoe, an atmospheric scientist at Texas Tech University, worked with a team of researchers to look at the 38 papers published in peer-reviewed journals in the last decade that denied anthropogenic global warming.

“Every single one of those analyses had an error—in their assumptions, methodology, or analysis—that, when corrected, brought their results into line with the scientific consensus,” Hayhoe wrote in a Facebook post.

One of Hayhoe’s co-authors, Rasmus Benestad, an atmospheric scientist at the Norwegian Meteorological Institute, built the program using the computer language R—which conveniently works on all computer platforms—to replicate each of the papers’ results and to try to understand how they reached their conclusions.

https://qz.com/1069298/the-3-of-scientific-papers-that-deny-climate-change-are-all-flawed/

 

There have only been 1,267 scientific papers on climate change in the last decade?

 

I wonder if they found any mistakes they found in the other 1,229, and how hard hey looked...

 

 

[placeholder]

 

12 minutes ago, Yellowtail said:

 

There have only been 1,267 scientific papers on climate change in the last decade?

 

I wonder if they found any mistakes they found in the other 1,229, and how hard hey looked...

 

 

Did you read the part that said when when corrected for their errors these papers actually supported anthropogenic global warming?

“Every single one of those analyses had an error—in their assumptions, methodology, or analysis—that, when corrected, brought their results into line with the scientific consensus,” Hayhoe wrote in a Facebook post.

[placeholder]

23 minutes ago, Yellowtail said:

They build models to predict the market as well.

  Once the model is "built", they duplicate it twenty or a hundred times and adjust the parameters differently for each.

  Then they use each to model to generate a set of predictions.

  They publish the predictions.

  Every year they pick whichever is doing the best to show their clients how great their predictions are.

This is absolutely what investment firms do. 

 

There is no model that can predict the market accurately and consistently. The climate seems a lot more complex than the market to me.

 

I do not think climate scientists are frauds or stupid or evil, but they have no incentive to prove anything other than impending doom, anymore than an investment firm has any incentive to tell you there is nothing to invest in. 

 

1. I believe the Earth is warming, I do not believe how quickly it will warm, or how long it will continue to warm can accurately be predicted. 

2. I believe as the Earth warms, the seas will rise. I belied the level the sea will rise for any given rise in temperature can be predicted with reasonable accuracy.

3. I believe man has some impact on the Earths climate. How much impact, or how significant that impact is I do not believe can be accurately estimated.

4. Assuming man is not the primary reason for climate change, anything man does will have little or no benefit.

5. Assuming man is the primary reason for climate change, the little bit we can do it pointless.

As I've already noted twice, even the early models mostly correctly predicted how much global warming there would be. The only adjustments that had to be made were for the predictions of how much greenhouse gas was actually produced. Once the actual amounts were plugged in, the algorithms were very accurate. So stop making silly comparisons to stock market models.

[Yellowtail]

22 minutes ago, placeholder said:

 

Did you read the part that said when when corrected for their errors these papers actually supported anthropogenic global warming?

“Every single one of those analyses had an error—in their assumptions, methodology, or analysis—that, when corrected, brought their results into line with the scientific consensus,” Hayhoe wrote in a Facebook post.

 

Did they give the authors of the 38 papers a chance to correct the other 1,229?

[placeholder]

7 minutes ago, Yellowtail said:

 

Did they give the authors of the 38 papers a chance to correct the other 1,229?

More nonsense implying dishonesty. I guess when you've got nothing, what else can you do?

[Yellowtail]

2 minutes ago, placeholder said:

More nonsense implying dishonesty. I guess when you've got nothing, what else can you do?

 

How is it dishonest to expect a little transparently? Were the authors of the 38 papers not allowed to respond the the claims, and if so, why is that not included?

 

Katharine Hayhoe, (God love her, what she must have suffered with that name) along with being an "Atmospheric Scientist" is a Professor of Political Science and CEO of ATMOS Research and Consulting. She may be exactly right about everything she says, but she makes her living from climate change.

 

Do you not see that as a conflict of interest?

[RickBradford]

5 hours ago, ozimoron said:

Mann is not climate change. He is one person among tens of thousands who assert that it is real and is a problem.

That is the usual sleight of hand used by the Green/Left when one of their pet heroes gets busted. "Oh, he wasn't that important, just one of a multitude of like-minded thinkers." It is a gross mischaracterization of the situation, to be generous to you.

 

Mann was the face of climate change in the late 1990s. The cartoonish hockey stick was placed on the cover of the 1999 WMO climate report and the 2001 IPCC report, yet such was the desire for a dramatic image that the IPCC would probably have put anything from a camel to a banana on the front cover if it had been offered to them.

 

It soon became clear that they had been sold a pup, and the hockey stick was quietly disappeared for the next report. Remarkably, following the 2009 Climategate scandal, the unerringly Green/Left British newspaper The Guardian published a largely factual report on the series of events leading up to the IPCC's fateful decision to use the hockey stick graph.

 

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2010/feb/09/hockey-stick-graph-ipcc-report

 

It's quite a good read, showing how even back then, politics had become thoroughly entwined in science, but one thing it certainly does is explode the notion that Mann was just "one person among tens of thousands".

[placeholder]

32 minutes ago, Yellowtail said:

 

How is it dishonest to expect a little transparently? Were the authors of the 38 papers not allowed to respond the the claims, and if so, why is that not included?

 

Katharine Hayhoe, (God love her, what she must have suffered with that name) along with being an "Atmospheric Scientist" is a Professor of Political Science and CEO of ATMOS Research and Consulting. She may be exactly right about everything she says, but she makes her living from climate change.

 

Do you not see that as a conflict of interest?

How do you know that they weren't allowed to respond? Scientific journals do allow for responses.

No, she doesn't make her living from climate change. she makes her living as a climatologist.

Are you suggesting that the conclusions of that paper were false and that other climatologists who reviewed or read it said nothing also out of self-interest? Aspersions like yours  only work via conspiracy theories.

[placeholder]

Just now, RickBradford said:

That is the usual sleight of hand used by the Green/Left when one of their pet heroes gets busted. "Oh, he wasn't that important, just one of a multitude of like-minded thinkers." It is a gross mischaracterization of the situation, to be generous to you.

 

Mann was the face of climate change in the late 1990s. The cartoonish hockey stick was placed on the cover of the 1999 WMO climate report and the 2001 IPCC report, yet such was the desire for a dramatic image that the IPCC would probably have put anything from a camel to a banana on the front cover if it had been offered to them.

 

It soon became clear that they had been sold a pup, and the hockey stick was quietly disappeared for the next report. Remarkably, following the 2009 Climategate scandal, the unerringly Green/Left British newspaper The Guardian published a largely factual report on the series of events leading up to the IPCC's fateful decision to use the hockey stick graph.

 

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2010/feb/09/hockey-stick-graph-ipcc-report

 

It's quite a good read, showing how even back then, politics had become thoroughly entwined in science, but one thing it certainly does is explode the notion that Mann was just "one person among tens of thousands".

The hockey stick was "cartoonish"? What does that even mean? Did it come with a smiley face? And what does it mean to you that it's since been confirmed by at least 24 other papers using independent means? Do ya think that might be slightly significant? 

Just more nonsensical personal attacks from you. Well, at least you haven't called him a moron or a nincompoop yet.

[placeholder]

17 minutes ago, RickBradford said:

That is the usual sleight of hand used by the Green/Left when one of their pet heroes gets busted. "Oh, he wasn't that important, just one of a multitude of like-minded thinkers." It is a gross mischaracterization of the situation, to be generous to you.

 

Mann was the face of climate change in the late 1990s. The cartoonish hockey stick was placed on the cover of the 1999 WMO climate report and the 2001 IPCC report, yet such was the desire for a dramatic image that the IPCC would probably have put anything from a camel to a banana on the front cover if it had been offered to them.

 

It soon became clear that they had been sold a pup, and the hockey stick was quietly disappeared for the next report. Remarkably, following the 2009 Climategate scandal, the unerringly Green/Left British newspaper The Guardian published a largely factual report on the series of events leading up to the IPCC's fateful decision to use the hockey stick graph.

 

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2010/feb/09/hockey-stick-graph-ipcc-report

 

It's quite a good read, showing how even back then, politics had become thoroughly entwined in science, but one thing it certainly does is explode the notion that Mann was just "one person among tens of thousands".

Once again the Climategate scandal that wasn't. Do you recall just a few pages ago how I linked to a Newsweek article recounting how  the Sunday Times of London, which created the "scandal"  had to retract its allegations? How Mann was cleared of them repeatedly by independent agencies? 

[VincentRJ]

6 hours ago, placeholder said:

Really? Lots of articles in leading journals debunking claims of anthropogenic climate change?

As I've mentioned before, the first thing that anyone should learn about climate, if they're interested, is that climate is an average of weather characteristics, and that climate has always been changing throughout the history of the planet, on a global (or average) scale and on numerous local scales. Climate is never static.

 

A 'Climate Change Denier' would be someone who knows nothing about climate. When I began to get interested in the issue of 'Anthropogenically-caused Climate Change' and listened to the interviews of renowned scientists such as James Lovelock and James Hansen, I initially accepted their claims that it was a serious issue which was mainly caused by CO2 emissions from fossil fuels, and that we could solve the problem, or at least mitigate the dire consequences, by reducing our CO2 emissions. This was around 20 years ago when I knew very little about the history of our climate. I wasn't even aware of the MWP and LIA. 

 

However, because I have a curious mind, have always been interested in science and the 'philosophy of science', I began doing internet searches to find answers to some obvious questions that were never addressed during the media interviews of those renowned scientists. 

 

I recall one interview of James Hansen, on the ABC (Australia), who used the analogy of the planet Venus to describe the dangers of rising CO2 levels. He claimed that the temperature of Venus was too hot for life to exist because of its high percentage of CO2 in its atmosphere. The interviewer, Phillip Adams, posed the question: 'So if we don't reduce our CO2 emissions, we could end up like Venus?' James Hansen didn't reply.

 

After listening to the interview, I couldn't help wondering why James Hansen never mentioned what the CO2 percentage was in the Venus atmosphere, so I did an internet search and discovered that, whilst Venus is about the same size as the Earth, it is closer to the sun and its atmosphere consisted of 96% CO2. Wow! The percentage of CO2 in Earth's atmosphere, at that time, was around 0.038%. What a comparison! It seemed obvious that the purpose of the interview was to create 'alarm', not to inform or educate.

 

I recall another interview around that time, that posed a few unanswered questions. The interview was of a scientist explaining the dangers of 'Ocean Acidification'. He explained that CO2 dissolves in water to produce Carbonic Acid, and as a result the oceans were becoming more acidic which would eventually make the oceans uninhabitable for most sea creatures and corals.

 

That was very alarming, but I was left wondering whether the oceans were already acidic, or perhaps near to neutral, or even alkaline. Why didn't the scientist mention during the interview what the average pH of the oceans are and how much that pH has changed since humans began emitting CO2 from fossil fuels.

 

To find the answer, I did an internet search again, reading a number of scientific papers, or at least the Abstracts and Summaries, and not just using Wikipedia as my source. It then became clear why the scientist did not mention the average pH of the oceans during the interview, nor by how much it had changed during the past 150 years or so of industrialization.

 

The pH scale is logarithmic. The value of 7 is neutral. Below 7 is acidic. Above 7 is alkaline. The articles I read were in agreement that the 'average pH' of the ocean surfaces are currently around 8.1, and during the past 150 years or so, they are 'estimated' to have fallen from a pH value of 8.2 to 8.1. That doesn't sound alarming to me. Gardening is one of my hobbies and it seems clear to me that a change in pH of 0.1 is of little consequence to the health and growth of a plant. There are far more important factors, such soil texture, nutrients, the presence of beneficial micro-bacteria, worms, sufficient water, and so on.

 

Reading further on the subject of the pH of the oceans, I discovered that the average pH of the ocean surfaces, just a few metres down, varies depending on the location of the oceans, and the season of the year, and that this yearly variation can be greater than the 'average change' during the past 150 years.
Further more, there is a continual upwelling and downwelling of ocean currents, causing the pH to be constantly changing to some degree in different parts of the ocean. There is also a huge 'unknown' regarding submarine volcanoes. It is estimated there are around 1 million, world-wide, but we don't know for sure. Some estimates are as high as 3 million. When a submarine volcano erupts at great depth, there is no sign of the eruption on the surface. Even when volcanoes are not erupting, they can still be emitting CO2, whether on land or under the sea.

 

I could go on, and on, and on, because I've read so much. However, I'll try to summarize my stance. There's no doubt that human activity, such as building cities and cutting down forests, must have some effect on the climate. Everything is connected, to some degree. The most extreme example would be the story: 'If a butterfly flaps its wings in South America, a storm might result in Europe.' It could 'theoretically' happen, but the chances are so remote, it might never have happened even once during the history of the butterfly, because so many different random events would have to all be in alignment.
Likewise, if you drop your pen, there's a very, very, very remote chance that the atoms and molecules in the pen will be in sufficient alignment at that precise moment to produce a temporary magnetic repulsion to gravity, so that your pen will hover for a short time before it drops. However, the chances are so remote it might never have happened even once during the history of humanity's use of pens.

 

In summary, the scare about CO2 emissions is politics and economics rather than sound science. There is a great lack of certainty about the degree to which humanity's actions are influencing the climate, and also uncertainty about the good and bad consequences of any such changes which might be exacerbated by human activity. Personally, I prefer warmer climates, which is one reason why I currently live in Australia instead of the UK.

 

Scientists can also be ordinary, flawed human beings, who are concerned about their careers, becoming famous and getting a Nobel Prize, or getting a major increase in salary due to a promotion which in some circumstances might not happen if they were 'scientifically honest' in a way which were to shed doubt on the accepted 'consensus of opinion' within the organization.

 

The big question that should be addressed is 'Why are so many scientists dismissing the high standards of the true 'methodology of science', which they must surely understand, and instead are becoming advocates for renewable energy using exaggerated scare tactics regarding CO2 emissions?'
 

[placeholder]

4 minutes ago, VincentRJ said:

As I've mentioned before, the first thing that anyone should learn about climate, if they're interested, is that climate is an average of weather characteristics, and that climate has always been changing throughout the history of the planet, on a global (or average) scale and on numerous local scales. Climate is never static.

 

A 'Climate Change Denier' would be someone who knows nothing about climate. When I began to get interested in the issue of 'Anthropogenically-caused Climate Change' and listened to the interviews of renowned scientists such as James Lovelock and James Hansen, I initially accepted their claims that it was a serious issue which was mainly caused by CO2 emissions from fossil fuels, and that we could solve the problem, or at least mitigate the dire consequences, by reducing our CO2 emissions. This was around 20 years ago when I knew very little about the history of our climate. I wasn't even aware of the MWP and LIA. 

 

However, because I have a curious mind, have always been interested in science and the 'philosophy of science', I began doing internet searches to find answers to some obvious questions that were never addressed during the media interviews of those renowned scientists. 

 

I recall one interview of James Hansen, on the ABC (Australia), who used the analogy of the planet Venus to describe the dangers of rising CO2 levels. He claimed that the temperature of Venus was too hot for life to exist because of its high percentage of CO2 in its atmosphere. The interviewer, Phillip Adams, posed the question: 'So if we don't reduce our CO2 emissions, we could end up like Venus?' James Hansen didn't reply.

 

After listening to the interview, I couldn't help wondering why James Hansen never mentioned what the CO2 percentage was in the Venus atmosphere, so I did an internet search and discovered that, whilst Venus is about the same size as the Earth, it is closer to the sun and its atmosphere consisted of 96% CO2. Wow! The percentage of CO2 in Earth's atmosphere, at that time, was around 0.038%. What a comparison! It seemed obvious that the purpose of the interview was to create 'alarm', not to inform or educate.

 

I recall another interview around that time, that posed a few unanswered questions. The interview was of a scientist explaining the dangers of 'Ocean Acidification'. He explained that CO2 dissolves in water to produce Carbonic Acid, and as a result the oceans were becoming more acidic which would eventually make the oceans uninhabitable for most sea creatures and corals.

 

That was very alarming, but I was left wondering whether the oceans were already acidic, or perhaps near to neutral, or even alkaline. Why didn't the scientist mention during the interview what the average pH of the oceans are and how much that pH has changed since humans began emitting CO2 from fossil fuels.

 

To find the answer, I did an internet search again, reading a number of scientific papers, or at least the Abstracts and Summaries, and not just using Wikipedia as my source. It then became clear why the scientist did not mention the average pH of the oceans during the interview, nor by how much it had changed during the past 150 years or so of industrialization.

 

The pH scale is logarithmic. The value of 7 is neutral. Below 7 is acidic. Above 7 is alkaline. The articles I read were in agreement that the 'average pH' of the ocean surfaces are currently around 8.1, and during the past 150 years or so, they are 'estimated' to have fallen from a pH value of 8.2 to 8.1. That doesn't sound alarming to me. Gardening is one of my hobbies and it seems clear to me that a change in pH of 0.1 is of little consequence to the health and growth of a plant. There are far more important factors, such soil texture, nutrients, the presence of beneficial micro-bacteria, worms, sufficient water, and so on.

 

Reading further on the subject of the pH of the oceans, I discovered that the average pH of the ocean surfaces, just a few metres down, varies depending on the location of the oceans, and the season of the year, and that this yearly variation can be greater than the 'average change' during the past 150 years.
Further more, there is a continual upwelling and downwelling of ocean currents, causing the pH to be constantly changing to some degree in different parts of the ocean. There is also a huge 'unknown' regarding submarine volcanoes. It is estimated there are around 1 million, world-wide, but we don't know for sure. Some estimates are as high as 3 million. When a submarine volcano erupts at great depth, there is no sign of the eruption on the surface. Even when volcanoes are not erupting, they can still be emitting CO2, whether on land or under the sea.

 

I could go on, and on, and on, because I've read so much. However, I'll try to summarize my stance. There's no doubt that human activity, such as building cities and cutting down forests, must have some effect on the climate. Everything is connected, to some degree. The most extreme example would be the story: 'If a butterfly flaps its wings in South America, a storm might result in Europe.' It could 'theoretically' happen, but the chances are so remote, it might never have happened even once during the history of the butterfly, because so many different random events would have to all be in alignment.
Likewise, if you drop your pen, there's a very, very, very remote chance that the atoms and molecules in the pen will be in sufficient alignment at that precise moment to produce a temporary magnetic repulsion to gravity, so that your pen will hover for a short time before it drops. However, the chances are so remote it might never have happened even once during the history of humanity's use of pens.

 

In summary, the scare about CO2 emissions is politics and economics rather than sound science. There is a great lack of certainty about the degree to which humanity's actions are influencing the climate, and also uncertainty about the good and bad consequences of any such changes which might be exacerbated by human activity. Personally, I prefer warmer climates, which is one reason why I currently live in Australia instead of the UK.

 

Scientists can also be ordinary, flawed human beings, who are concerned about their careers, becoming famous and getting a Nobel Prize, or getting a major increase in salary due to a promotion which in some circumstances might not happen if they were 'scientifically honest' in a way which were to shed doubt on the accepted 'consensus of opinion' within the organization.

 

The big question that should be addressed is 'Why are so many scientists dismissing the high standards of the true 'methodology of science', which they must surely understand, and instead are becoming advocates for renewable energy using exaggerated scare tactics regarding CO2 emissions?'
 

Typical semantic deflection re climate change denialist.k 

As for your comments on CO2, as the climatologist Zeke Hausfather pointed out, most of even the early climatological models got it right when it comes to the forcing effect of CO2. They've been astonishingly accurate in their predictions

And for at least the last 2000 years, temperatures haven't risen as quickly as they are now. Also, over the same time period, it's only some time after the advent of the industrial revolution, that virtually the troposphere of the entire planet is warming at the same time.

Oddly enough, the stratosphere is getting cooler.

This was predicted by greenhouse gas models.

As far as I'm aware no one has offered  an another successful explanation why it is that the troposphere is warming while the stratosphere is cooling. E

Even if acidification weren't an issue, warming oceans are. Coral reefs face repeated bleaching events as never before. And they are the cradle of so much oceanic life in the tropics. Plenty of evidence that those species of sea life that can, are fleeing towards the poles. Kelp forests are in massive decline. And so on.

And of course there's the accusation of careerism. For that allegation to work, not only would individual scientists have to be dishonest, but those who review their work would have to be so as well. Any evidence of this on a largescale basis? Any evidence at all?

Maybe you suffer, from a lack of certainty about the effects of CO2 on the climate, but climatologists don't. The evidence is overwhelming.