Sick of being lectured about the climate crisis

[Soulesssummer]

I try my best to leave as little carbon footprint as possible.
Married with no kids and annual dual fuel bills are under£700
1 small car, holiday overseas once every 5 years.
So why do those wealthy families with 3,4, 5 plus kids who drive SUV tanks and holiday every year multiple times.,who consume £300 plus in energy bills monthly, have the audacity and blatant cheek to lecture others on the climate crisis.

It's like they have only just twigged their excessive greed and consumption just might now mean your kids futures are ruined.
It's making me so angry.

Also: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2017/jun/28/climate-scientists-just-debunked-deniers-favorite-argument

I didn't realise how dismissive Christie was of human impact. I don't know why you think he's right and the vast majority of people in that field are wrong, though.

@LameBorzoi and anyone genuinely interested in learning more about the position of those mislabelled as 'deniers' - please watch this lecture by Dr John Christy. He goes into great detail about the actual data - he has been at the forefront of putting together those raw datasets that enable climate to be monitored. He evidences how extreme weather events are not increasing in response to changing CO2 levels. He is open to questions from students at the end, which also might help address the sort of concerns that are perpetuated by climate alarmism.
The Guardian article that is linked to says that "Whenever they hold one of their frequent hearings to reject and deny established climate science, congressional Republicans invariably trot out contrarian scientist John Christy, who disputes the accuracy of climate models". I don't think it is surprising that they would select precisely the scientist who has been responsible for producing the sort of datasets that measure climate change - and a scientist who is credible, not only academically, but also because he cannot be accused of being funded by the energy industry - he has gone out of his way to avoid this. The entire climate emergency narrative is only based on what has been churned out by the models - it is the evidence that is being used to fuel the idea that we are in a climate crisis that is predominantly driven by anthropogenic CO2 emissions. If those models are inaccurate, then the climate change science cannot be said to be settled - it is as simple as that. The constant and continued repetition of the settled science mantra is then discredited and can be viewed as no more than propaganda. Labelling Dr Christy as a 'contrarian' seems to be a linguistic trick to discredit, through implying that his views are out of sync because of some sort of contrary personality trait, rather than because he is a climate scientist who has been at the forefront of the actual process of measuring climate and is concerned that the data are being misrepresented.
In order to establish whether we are in a climate emergency, we do need to actually be able to back up claims with actual scientific data, for those claims to be credible!
I suppose we are making some sort of progress, in that the Guardian article does at least now go as far as acknowledging that the models are flawed and are not matching measurable reality - yes, they have a long way to go with the actual science - we can't forecast what the weather is going to do in a month, let alone 50 years. But what the evidence does show is that no measure of modern climate variability is significantly different from the climate variability experienced over the longer term.
I was actually quite confused about the scientific point that the Guardian article was trying to make. Christy does not 'cherry pick' information - he uses precisely the period for which the satellite datasets that he has put together are available for! A scientist like Christy is not denying climate change (he is an expert on climate change and acknowledges how ignorant the scientific community is, himself included, on its complexities and variabilities). He examines the magnitude of climate change through scientific measurements and demonstrates that these do not show trends within modern times that deviate significantly from the patterns of natural variations over the longer term. This is contrary to the information that is being pushed within the public information narrative - this implies a powerful political agenda is at play.
It is a bit rich for accusations to be made about cherry-picking data, when recent hysterical claims have required data from the 1930s, for example, to conveniently be overlooked. Also, cherry-picking data from surface weather stations that are more likely to be impacted by modification of the land surface (eg urban heat island effect and agricultural land-use change etc) - why not stick to the satellite data (which has its own issues, but at least can focus on parts of the atmosphere less contaminated by surface conditions and, presumably, more sensitive to atmospheric CO2).

I am afraid that I tried to find the Santer study referenced by the Guardian, but I was unable to pinpoint it quickly in the 'Nature Geoscience' library that is linked to for the study - I would be grateful, @LameBorzoi if you could point me to it - the only other link to contrary evidence in the Guardian article also seems to be broken (and I am rushing to respond during my too short lunch break!).

The fact that models are capable of reflecting historic climate fluctuations at low resolution is not surprising as they are built and retro-tuned to match those datasets. But their predictions , when that scaffolding of tuning to the known is removed, continue to go wildly wrong - this indicates that they have built too much climatic sensitivity into the CO2 variable - which is the variable within a hugely complex climatic system that they are primarily designed to focus on.

If I’m reading any scientific hypotheses and debate, I’ll be getting my sources from peer reviewed journals not YouTube.

Just wondering if anyone heard of the new report that’s been published on the impact of poor air quality on foetal health (and adults too but they’ve realised it crosses the placenta).

Let’s just entertain the ‘alarmists’ are wrong and there is no man-made climate change - do you think all the nasty particulates emitted in the air is all nonsense as well? The fact lung cancer in places like China with poor air quality must show the correlation so looking to reduce that irrespective of climate change must also be an issue.

I don't have time right now, but inital reading appears to indicate that Christy's opinions are generally considered to be not concordant with current models. I.e., he's a bit of a crackpot. And yes, science works via people questioning current models, but inital scanning seems to indicate that his views aren't standing up to scrutiny.

@Washeroo It can actually be very difficult for scientists challenging the current narrative to be accepted for publication in many journals - Professor Richard Lindzen (who was an MIT academic and atmospheric physicist) makes that clear. It is also noticeable that popular search engines such as Google and Youtube skew search results to sources designed to discredit sceptical positions - so it is important to recognise this context and have a balanced approach to the material, if you are genuinely interested in understanding the issues from all angles, you might find Dr Steven Koonin's book 'Unsettled' an acceptable source - he only bases his evidence on material that has been published by the IPCC - an organisation that he has been deeply involved with.
Actually, recorded interviews and debates between scientists can be very elucidating, and Steve Koonin provides an excellent example of why. If you Google his name, you will quickly find sources that aim to discredit his recent publication 'Unsettled'. This book was published in 2021 - one month later, the peer-reviewed journal, Scientific American, published a piece with 12 academic co-authors, roundly criticising the book - this critical review still appears high on Google's search returns, even though Dr Steven Koonin has provided a very credible and comprehensive rebuttal of it. If I hadn't watched a recorded debate between Koonin and one of the co-authors of that Scientific American review (Prof. Andrew Dessler), I would not have been able to understand the alternative narrative - Steven Koonin's actual webpage is rather more 'buried' when you try to search for it online (https://steven-koonin.medium.com/ ). Anyway, the recorded debate between Koonin and Dessler is very interesting ( - I wish we could see more of these sort of exchanges in mainstream media - rather than what seems to have been a mass cancelling of any scientific critics. Towards the end of the debate, when they are allowed to sum up their respective positions, Koonin raises the aforementioned critical Scientific American review - Dessler initially denies having been a co-author (until Koonin shows him a slide clearly listing him as one of the 12 contributors!). Koonin goes on to say the following to Andrew Dessler (and he is clearly very angry):

“ Inexplicably, the criticisms were based upon a review of the book, not what I’d actually written. They criticised 3 points I was alleged to have made. For example, they said I portrayed sea level rises as steady over time, when the entirety of ‘Unsettled;’ Chapter 8, if you've read it, is devoted to variations over the past century. Since Scientific American refused to publish a detailed rebuttal, I posted one on my 'Medium' page and it is worth checking out. But the great bulk of the 1000 words from those dozen ‘distinguished’ scientists were devoted to ad hominem attacks - for example, I was called a crank who is taken seriously only by far right disinformation peddlers, hungry for anything they can use to score some political points…really, Andy…you really think I am a crank, you really believe that? It is unfortunately typical of public discussions of climate and energy, when senior academics engage in name-calling they debase themselves and deny the public any real expertise that they have. It is the kind of thing people do when the facts aren't on their side…”

Notably, when publicly challenged by Koonin, Dessler appears not to stand by the article in the prestigious peer-reviewed journal.
And that conveys a microcosm of the reality of what has been happening with the manipulation of the scientific debate - despite that negative review being challenged and clearly discredited by Koonin, it remains very easy for the public to find, who then take it at face value, believing it to be a credible source - unlikely to scratch beneath the surface! This is how credible scientists are discredited when they refuse to accept the current paradigm in its entirety. Steve Koonin served as Undersecretary for Science in the US Department of Energy under the Obama administration. He has more than 200 peer-reviewed papers in the fields of physics and astrophysics, scientific computation, energy technology & policy and climate science. He was the professor of theoretical physics at Caltech, where he was also vice president. He is currently a professor at New York University. He clearly ticks the boxes of eminent scientist and academic - he does not dispute the underlying physics of anthropogenic global warming (most climate sceptics don't) - however, he does dispute the way that the science that feeds into the IPCC reports is subsequently misrepresented by mainstream media and politicians. He disputes that we are in a climate emergency - he sees a huge disparity between the actual data and the way that the data is misrepresented in subsequent summary documents and media headlines (I have read his book, and most of the material is drawn directly from IPCC published material - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Unsettled-Climate-Science-Doesnt-Matters/dp/B0948CBSY6/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=unsettled&qid=1690956367&sr=8-1 

@LameBorzoi Resorting to ad hominem attacks is a typical tactic - so you call an academic doctor, who is employed by a university - and is producing datasets that have been used to produce climatic models - a 'crackpot'...even the Guardian didn't go that far, preferring 'contrarian scientist'!

@Washeroo - sorry, just realised that I quoted the wrong one of your comments in my reply above. However, I don't disagree at all with what you say about the dangers of particulates - but it is conflating two separate issues (although granted there is overlap in the fossil fuel sources).

I really, really do not care about what Christy has to say.

You are presenting a phenomenon known as "false balance". It happens when a general scienific consensus is presented as having equal weight to one or two people with "outlier" opinions.

Yes, every now and then the "outlier" turns out to be correct. Howard Florey springs to mind. However, these are far outweighed by the unscrupulous and the just plain wrong. In this case, Christy has clear social and political reasons for giving his more controversial statements.

What are the "clear social and political reasons" and which of his "controversial statements" do you think are wrong, and why?

You really don't see why the evangelical boomer from Alabama who was working for the Trump administration might have a conflict of interest in these matters?

I mean, I'm not normally one for ad hominem attacks. And yes, challenging the dominant political paradigm is how science moves forward. But this particular challenge is so in line with his personal political and financial interests, that it's not even worth my time.

This is where there is a big problem - science should not be conflated with politics - that is what is getting us into this mess. All of the points that I have raised have been focused on scientific questions. So, do we need to pick a sceptical scientist who accords with your political and moral framework, in order for you to take their academic position seriously? In that case, how about Dr Steven Koonin - who I mentioned upthread. He served as the Undersecretary for Science in the U.S. Department of Energy under President Obama (so, nothing to do with Trump)...would his political leanings be more to your liking? We could talk about his position on climate alarmism, if you would find his political credentials more palatable!

You are darn right science shouldn't be conflated with politics, which is why papers come with a statement regarding the author's conflicts of interest and the financing of the research. It's one of the key pieces of information that you use in assessing the reliability and validity of a paper.

Dr Koonin - you mean the physicist who worked for British Petroleum?

And I'm not going to engage you on a scientific level, because you are mangling scientific concepts. It's this phenomenon that I've seen in other politically controversial topics ( ie vaccination and evolution) - people twisting ideas and terminology so badly to fit their preconceived notions that they are not even recognisable from the standpoint of the original framework.

@LameBorzoi I am quite keen to know which "scientific concepts" I am "mangling"! When it comes to mangling science, it is noteworthy that the IPCC's remit has been somewhat biased from the outset - ie to focus on anthropogenic global warming...CO2 was already guilty as charged! But, in many respects, the IPCC should perhaps have been in the dock - Donna Laframboise's book is well worth a read...'The Delinquent Teenager Who Was Mistaken for the World's Top Climate Expert' https://www.amazon.co.uk/Delinquent-Teenager-Mistaken-Worlds-Climate/dp/1466453486/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3LD47S4AEI2KT&keywords=the+delinquent+teenager&qid=1691195509&sprefix=the+delinquent+teenager%2Caps%2C416&sr=8-1

It is a fact that academic bids to secure grant funding are skewed by the need to tap into the manmade climate change narrative...ergo, the resulting 'scientific consensus' must surely, by your very logic, also suffer from the conflict of interest associated with having to satisfy their financial backers!

As fossil fuels are shunned in favour of pursuing the increasingly lucrative 'net zero', established wealth is rapidly restructuring...asset managers are collectively salivating at the prospect of being able to make money out of thin air!
I wanted to talk about the actual scientific uncertainties - alas, you have stubbornly steered the conversation to the political propaganda and rhetoric of 'settled science' (so de rigueur...but tyrannically tedious!).

Also, @LameBorzoi , it is worth noting that Dr Koonin was employed by BP in his capacity as an academic physicist (having been the Professor of Theoretical Physics for 30 years at Caltech). His role had nothing to do with the fossil fuel side of BP's business - it was focussed exclusively on BP's urgent need to start transitioning to renewables (so, you probably would have judged him to be absolutely one of the 'goodies' back then!). Koonin was part of the conventionally understood 'scientific consensus' that occupies such a prominent position in the public's imagination...he was as mainstream as it gets! Koonin's concern with the misrepresentation of scientific research is rooted later in his career - it came about precisely because he was so heavily involved in collaborative academic work that required him to gain a clear and detailed grasp of the science underpinning the IPCC's position. He became extremely uncomfortable with the gulf that he saw between the objective science and how that science was subsequently being presented to the public in summary documents, media headlines and policy pronouncements. So, you cannot simply tar this particular scientist with the same brush that is used to conveniently tar many so-called 'contrarian' scientists. He basically accepts most of the science that feeds into the IPCC's considerations. His book 'Unsettled' derives the bulk of its scientific sources directly from material published by the IPCC - therein lies the strength of his argument. He makes a compelling and rigorously evidenced case that the actual science is being systematically misrepresented to reflect an overly alarmist agenda. Why don't you broaden your understanding a little, move beyond the constraints of DeSmog 'fact-checking', and try reading his actual book? Then you might find yourself better-placed to make an informed judgement with respect to his academic position!

The lucrative net zero... as opposed to oil?

Complaining that climate science is politicised is a bit like complaining that the sea is wet. If you study climate change, you automatically threaten the profits of the world's largest companies (at least the largest companies 10 - 20 years ago). Climate scientists have had decades of gaslighting and sealioning from private enterprise. Some defensiveness is a given. I've already acknowledged that I personally don't think that the alarmist end is any more water than these other outliers you keep throwing at me. However, the considered opinion of just about every relevant scientific organisation on earth carries a great deal more weight than an ex BP employee.

Gosh! You really do seem to be impermeable to logic! But I will give it one more go! By the way, for the record, I come from a traditionally ''leftist' political background - in my youth I was a fully paid-up member of Greenpeace. I am still passionate about the environment (and have been an activist where necessary). I am personally aware of exactly the depth to which global warming was taught academically until relatively recently - climate science certainly didn't exist as a standalone discipline when I was at university - so your comment that "climate scientists have had decades of gaslighting" really does not bear scrutiny (climate scientists only became a real 'thing' once the global warming narrative had been politicised sufficiently - it was created in advance of the science being settled to serve the narrative! The number of people engaged in climate science has risen exponentially - but science is science, the physics that controls atmospheric processes is complex and the atmosphere as a whole cannot yet be completely modelled, as those physical processes and drivers are inadequately understood. Increasing the total quantum of climate scientists per se will not necessarily lead to a greater understanding of the system - for example, you need the expertise of astrophysicists to try to model the input of solar variation over time (another scientific area of massive unknowns that cannot be adequately modelled at the moment). An overuse of the mantra that the science of climate change is settled is dangerous - it risks work on the physics of currently poorly understood atmospheric complexities not being prioritised in the future.
If society was currently treating the science of climate change in a sensible way, I would be able to raise my questions about aspects of 'the science' without being shouted down, or having assumptions made about the politics of the scientists! There will continue to be changes in climate - some of those changes will be extreme and rapid - as they always have been. Focussing disproportionally on one component of climate change (and obviously I would be daft not to accept that human's impact the climate) will reduce the effort needed to build in resilience to inevitable future climatic impact. An overly simplistic narrative is being presented that somehow climate can be directly controlled by just driving down CO2 levels.
It is a fact that Koonin worked for BP in a capacity related to their need to shift their focus in the longer term away from fossil fuels to renewables. It is also a fact that his subsequent academic work was not driven by climate scepticism - he is not sceptical about the science of anthropogenic climate change, but rather about the way the actual evidence is being misrepresented. Part of that misrepresentation now, crucially, includes the way that he himself is being misrepresented - as you have clearly demonstrated! In case, in your determination to not really pay attention to what I have been saying, you missed a very relevant point that I made to a different poster upthread about Koonin - I would be interested to know whether you have watched the debate I linked to between Koonin and the climate scientist Andrew Dessler .
Towards the end of the debate, Koonin challenges Dessler's contribution to a very critical review of his recently published book 'Unsettled'. This review was published in the prestigious journal 'Scientific American' - it is still one of the top Google results if you search for Dr Koonin - it is more difficult to find Koonin's very credible rebuttal (https://steven-koonin.medium.com/). It is clear, during the recorded debate, that Dessler is incapable of defending the Scientific American review - even trying to deny his involvement - until he was shown proof that he was listed as a co-author!

So, what is your actual motive for so vehemently opposing my position that the science on climate change is not actually settled? To be able to sideline scientific 'outliers' you have to be confident that people have a grasp of what the mainstream scientific position actually is. In reality, where do the public get their grasp of the scientific 'consensus' from? Very few people will have taken the time, or have the expertise, to appraise that evidence directly. If decision-making and media headlines are routinely incorrectly interpreting key aspects of the scientific evidence - that is a major issue. As demonstrated above, a mainstream scientific journal could not even represent the basics of Koonin's position correctly - so, how can we be confident in the veracity of the entire narrative? People like Koonin are acting as scientific whistleblowers, to try to alert the public to the fact that there is a disconnect between key aspects of scientific evidence and the portrayal of that evidence by mainstream media and politics. Until you actually take the time to understand his position directly (by actually reading his book) none of your criticisms of him have any relevance to this debate!

"Need" to use planes? Some people have good reasons for flying. A fortnight under the sun isn't one of them.

Scientific American? It's not a journal! It's a pop science magazine, and not even a good one at that!

I don't get my information from the press, I get it from a variety of international representative bodies. The joys of the internet, you know. I'm intruiged that the US press has such a grip on, say, the CSIRO.

You seem to be under the misapprehension that there's a line to be toed, an agreed narrative. That's not really how it works. I mean, there are rules - if you want to be taken seriously in lung cancer research, you don't work for Benson and Hedges for several years. But science advances through argument. Good argument, with well thought out papers, not pop science books.

@LameBorzoi Do you dispute the fact that public policy is being informed by the IPCC's output? If it can be shown that there is a disconnect between the scientific evidence collated by the IPCC and the subsequent public and political messaging that informs national and international energy strategies, do you think that could be problematic?
A popular magazine like Scientific American is not a peer-reviewed journal - but it does help to inform public discourse and influence policy direction - that is relevant to the points that I am making within this discussion.
You talk about 'pop science magazines' - and yet you chose, upthread, to link through to a Guardian article - which referenced a Santer-led study without giving an actual usable citation and also referenced other studies, but gave a broken hyperlink!
I asked you the other day whether you could kindly point me in the direction of the actual research that informed that Guardian article - I am always interested, I have no agenda beyond curiosity!

Political policy will vary from nation to nation, but under the Westminster system, each party will develop their own policy. Individual ministers have advisers, who usually have a relevant background, and seek updated information from a variety of sources. Yes, the IPCC will be one of the sources used to inform this. However, advisers using this source are there to make their own critical appraisal.

There is never going to be total consensus on the finer points within something like the IPCC. There's a common saying regarding putting four experts in a room and getting five opinions.

You also make the challenging of Koonin's viewpoints sound as if it were something scandalous. However, that's how science works. People publish opinions, and then other people critique them. They don't usually use Scientific American to do it, but on reflection, as it was in answer to a pop science book rather than a journal article, it actually seems the appropriate medium.

Well, you might be right, it certainly seems to be how science works now...now that it has all morphed into some strange social science circus, in which judgement, belief and opinion dress themselves up as traditional hypothetico-deductive logic within a frenetic frenzy of increasingly cult-like zealotism!

So, we can agree that there is, in the current shambles of a context, no such thing as a policy trajectory driven by objective science! Fine...that was sort of my original point...so, we have settled the fact that 'the science' (which is an indeterminable concept) is not settled! Jolly good!