Statistics

The Great Global Warming—A.K.A. “Climate Change”—A.K.A. “Climate Emergency”—Post!

This is mainly a catch up post for new readers who won’t recall the old days.

Listen to the podcast at YouTube, BitChute, or Gab. I’m late on this!

STATE OF THE WEATHER

You will naturally have noticed the increase in global warming posts. Which they now call “climate change”.

I used to believe in global warming, the story of which I put in How I Became A Renegade Scientist. I won’t repeat any of that here. But I do want to emphasize certain other points of science from the old days that are going to arise.

Nobody can, or should, believe in “climate change”. The reason is simple: “global warming” had a definite meaning; “climate change” doesn’t mean anything. Rather, it means whatever each listener wants to mean each time they hear it. It functions like “racism” does outside science.

That global warming became “climate change” is one reason, but not the most important reason, that I lost, and why you should lose, confidence in global warming. Let’s discuss that before the review.

It is true that in the early days of climatology a majority of scientists were concerned about global cooling and the looming ice age. This was exacerbated to some degree because of fears of nuclear winter. See The Horrible Predictions Of Climate Change.

Global cooling had its brief, albeit modest, fame. But the weather failed to cooperate. It got warmer, and then we had “global warming”. Everybody remembers that.

But again, alas, the weather failed its alleged masters. And that’s when we got this mysterious thing called “climate change”.

“CLIMATE CHANGE”

All (and not just a consensus of) scientists agree that the climate of the earth has changed before, that it is changing now, and that it will continue changing until the last trump. The temperature, its geographic and altitudinal distributions, the oceans, precipitation, everything—none of it has remained constant. All is ever in flux. The processes of change are inexorable: it cannot be stopped.

So it is perplexing to hear demands to “Fight climate change!” You may as well scream “Battle gravity!” or “War against electromagnetism!” You will achieve the same result.

The objection will be that is the human contributions to climate change that must be battled: that ought to be stopped or minimized.

It cannot be stopped. That is an impossibility. Not while people live. It can be minimized, but only in the same sense that it can be stopped. Which is to say, you must eliminate people to stop or minimize human contributions to a changing climate.

Any other argument about human contribution involves uncertain costs and benefits of amorphous actions, all of which rely on the quality of models and trust in politicians. More on models in a moment.

Meanwhile, the term “climate change” became a cudgel. Any bad weather event was called “climate change”. And not just weather events, but really bad events of all kinds were, and are, being tied to “climate change.”

Nothing good, though: “climate change” is incapable of any good. It is purely bad. It is always frightening, something which must be avoided at all costs.

“Climate change” thus serves the same purpose as wily unscrupulous evil gods did in pagan religions.

This is why nobody should “believe” in “climate change.” It does not mean anything fixed. It does not describe something that can be stopped.

DENIER!

“Climate change”, while still around, is falling out of popularity. They tried out “climate disruption” and a host of other apocalyptic terms as replacements, settling (for now) on “climate crisis.”

There is no climate crisis.

Which brings up “climate denier”. My answer when confronted with this is to always say, “Yes, I deny there is a climate.” This usually leaves the yeller perplexed. The reason is simple.

Because “denying” “climate change” has nothing to do with denying the climate changes, which, as said, everybody accepts. It means only that you do not want the “solutions” to the “crisis”, “solutions” the “Denier!”-crier badly wants.

Here’s a speech I did on this (this was seven years ago, and I’d change a bit here and there, but the core idea about true believers is sound): YouTube Link.

REMEMBER THIS

A small increase in global average temperature means almost nothing, and even less than nothing (i.e. it’s a benefit), which is all that global warming promised us.

If “climate change” is a threat, it is only because of those things that are affected by the changing weather, and not the small averaged temperature increase.

But those things affected by the weather are necessarily less certain than changes in the weather, which are themselves uncertain. The whole—the claims of “climate change” married to the bad things said will happen—must therefore necessarily be less certain than “climate change” itself.

If you haven’t already, read these:

The last is a talk I gave at the Real Academia de Ciencias Exactas, Físicas y Naturales in Madrid in 2008. I did a poor job, unnecessarily making things complex by introducing math. The basic idea was sound, but the method of communicating it was not.

BAD SCIENCE & STATISTICS

Now some highlights of the worst and badly over-confident science. We’ve done hundreds of articles over the last decade, and we’ve seen certain patterns. First, No: climatology is not a pseudoscience.

Consensuses (or is it consensii?):

Time series are handled very, very baldy—not just in global warming, but everywhere. Here are some favorites:

Another is in complexity of temperature observations and estimations:

Don’t even get me started on dust, a.k.a. PM2.5:

Every bad things is caused by climate change. Here is only a scant sampling of the hundreds of papers we have reviewed:

“Deniers” and our Expertocracy.

Models and attributions:

The bizarre:

There are many, many more. To find them, try the Classic Post page, or the search—which doesn’t work as well for old posts, since my old site was hacked (as described in the Renegade post linked above).

Buy my new book and learn to argue against the regime: Everything You Believe Is Wrong.

Subscribe or donate to support this site and its wholly independent host using credit card click here. For Zelle, use my email: matt@wmbriggs.com, and please include yours so I know who to thank.

Categories: Statistics

29 replies »

  1. @WMB – Thanks, a useful go-to reference post – for those few individuals who really wants to know about this stuff.

    Would you agree with me that

    1. (Very probably) the activity/ heat of the sun is the primary driver of global temperature?

    2. Nobody has – so far – been able to make valid and accurate (ie prospective and tested) predictions of long term changes in overall solar activity (apart from the anciently discovered 11 year cycle in sunspots)?

    (I’ve been following websites about solar activity for several years, and it is very obvious that the scientists can’t predict the sun.)

    Therefore,

    3. nobody can validly predict global climate. Anybody who *claims* to be able to predict climate over the long term is certainly Wrong. (i.e. They are dishonest, incompetent, lying – or whatever.)

    This seems obvious to me; but I don’t hear many people saying just it – except (maybe) Piers Corbyn.

  2. “War against electromagnetism!”

    HAHAHAHAHAHA

    I really did laugh at loud.

    I SO want to see some clown carrying this on a placard at some protest march.

    Just think of all of the magic words men use to control others

    climate change
    antisemitism

    Words never defined are useful because elasticity – they can be stretched to shroud any enemy the powerful hate

  3. Briggs, shouldn’t the “t” be capitalized in “until the last trump.” Remember, the derangement still exists.

  4. How wonderful to see this compendium, evidencing such staggering amounts of energy, integrity, and perspicacity over many years. We mourn that Matt, far from enjoying the professional positions and accolades he deserves, has been required to become a Gentleman Scientist, the kind known from days of yore, those who used to do the majority of the world’s scientific work more or less gratis — yet still, a true gentleman, and a true scientist.

  5. That’s a lot of writing aimed at the climate zombie golem. Like so many little arrows shot at various parts of the monster —->thwack! in the knee, —->thwack! in the nose, —->thwack! in the sacroiliac, until, for many of us, the great ridiculous beast flopped down in the dust deader than dog meat. Nice shootin’, Briggs, thanks for a fine service.

    Of course for true believers and their handlers the frightful monster staggers on, deathless as Godzilla, thrilling as King Kong, and as real. Monsters are popular. If one bites the dust another will have to be made to take its place. Until the day you look behind the curtain and see the stage machinery, the sets, actors, producers, all the stuff of illusion, and you go aha! — and leave the theater.

  6. 1 – your site looks like wordpress. Assuming so, you might want to look at a search plugin. I’ve had good results with the free version of Relevansii – even indexes comments correctly.

    2 – while I admire the work you’ve done debunking the climate hysterics the fact is that they’re immune to reason so you’re just banging your head against the wall. If you really want to beat them, you need to deprogram them, and that starts with figuring out the source of the insanity – hence my telearb.net book (that nobody wants to read.. 😉 .

    3 – cf: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/11/04/warmism-credible-politics-incredible-science/ (me, of course, but in 2013).

  7. 1. The oceans have never been measured excluding the total contribution of all volcanoes (etc magma chambers).
    .
    2. The dating of planetary layers requires that matter came from exactly one protoplanetary disk — precisely the scraps from one edge of a single supernova.
    .
    3. After these dogmata bubbles are burst, the earth has no more age and cools/-ed with empirically inexplicable dynamics.

  8. Zombies is right. Kill all humans. They want to eat your brains.

    Warmer is obviously and intuitively Better, as known by each of us in a primal biological way, and yet warmer is to be feared, against our instincts and experience!

    And somehow that irrational paranoia resonates and sticks! And it’s used by total crazies (zombie overlords, the Omega Coven) to “justify” suicidal economic collapse, famine, plague, and world war.

    The Hotpocalypse prevention narrative is ironic, because the Zombies actually want Doomsday. They wish, desire, yearn for the Big Die Off when hopefully 99% of the human race croaks all at once. That’s the dream. Humans bad, zombies good. Anything and everything humans do, including breathing, is bad and must be eliminated, and species self-genocide is the best way, the only option really, for the Zombies.

    Don’t laugh. The Zombie Philosophy is powerful. It dominates. Kill all humans. Start with the innocent, because nobody is.

  9. This is a fascinating post – thank you for all the links.

    When I read the 1 in 27 million chance post, I noticed that depending on the context, the public’s perception will differ.

    If we have a big bad (in the public’s eyes) banker or financial analyst say something like “This market crash is a 1 in 1000-year occurrence”, the public laughs at said analyst and knowingly notes that the corrupt financial industry can’t get anything right.

    But if a climate scientist says “This weather event is a 1 in 27 million occurrence” the public is awed and contemplates the immense danger of such an outcome.

  10. Briggs, speaking in the podcast: “… a small increase in global average temperature…”

    WOOP! WOOP! – ERROR – DOES NOT EXIST !

    It is a fallacy to make an average of temperatures, as you should and will know, and why this is so. By saying that you are adopting the language of your adversary (who even now is walking about as a roaring lion, etc.).

    I periodically ask a local lay minister that I know, who Believes In The Climate Emergency, each time his sermon mentions this foolishness: “So, what is the current temperature of the globe? Can you tell me? If you can’t, how will we know when it gets 1.5oC warmer?”. I have yet to extract an answer.

    This simple thing seems to me a chink in the armor of alarmists, one that should be probed, frequently, and explanation demanded. And, as has been observed, when you are explaining you are loosing…

  11. The current climate is the best climate for humans, animals and especially plants, in the past 5,000 years sinve the Holocene Climate Optimum ended.

    For C3 plants (90% of about 300,000 species), the current climate is the best climate in millions of years, doe to a higher CO2 content.

    We should be celebrating the current climate, not fearing the future climate.
    The best climate on this planet for humans and animals is during a warming trend in an interglacial. That’s where we are now.

  12. To Mr, Charlton
    The sun is not a cause of the 1975 to 2015 global warming. Because top of the atmosphere solar energy actually declined slightly in that period. The amount of sunlight that reaches Earth’s surface could have increased, from changes in cloudiness and/or changes in air pollution, but they are two different variables

    To gareth
    The current average temperature of the globe is about 15 degree C. , but no one lives in the average temperature, so why does that matter so much?

    +1.5 degrees C. is an incremental anomaly, so you don’t need to know the exact global average absolute temperature. Not that we have an accurate global average temperature before the use of weather satellites in 1979. The 1850 average is just a guess and really only applies to the Northern Hemisphere.

    The +1.5 degree C. tipping point is a meaningless number pulled out of a hat, or from two feet below the back of the hat. The same applies to the +2.0 degree C. tipping pony. Both are, in scientific language, tall, steaming piles of farm animal digestive waste products.

    We already know what will happen if the anomaly reaches +1.5 degrees C. (from a very rough 1850 estimate) because it has already happened twice. In April 1998 and February 2016, the +1.5 degree tipping point was reached temporarily during the heat peaks of two unusually large Pacific Ocean ENSO (aka El Ninos)

    During those months, as expected, millions of people died from the heat. It was in all the newspapers. And it was the worst disaster since World War !!, and also the time i purchased a 25% share of the Brooklyn Bridge. The +2.0 degrees C. will be even worse: All life will end, except Mother-in-Laws — they are eternal.

    I treaty the Howlers and their Computer Games with the lack of respect they deserve: None.

    Climate change is data-free fearmongering, using always wrong scary predictions, with the goal of scaring people. Scared people tend to demand that their government “do something”. It is a very day when leftist leaders hear “do something”. Because we libertarians NEVER like their fundamental transformation (to Marxism), with a stop at fascism along the way.

    In the Obama years, we thought fundamental transformation was to socialism. We already have socialism here in the US (see note below), so why is fundamental transformation continuing? Answer: Next stop, Marxism.

    NOTE: In 2022, total US government spending at all levels was 34.5% of GDP (even higher in 2020 and 2021). That’s socialism is my book.

  13. I am told hstorically of greater availability of CO2, perhaps warmer temperatures have been, if anything associated with biodiversity. It’s plausible enough on the face of it.

    Extinction is viewed as tragic, but really it is part of the inevitable nature of life. And look at the flora and fauna of the south Pole compared to the Amazon. Even the practical restriction of energy resources by ruling ideology would essentially restrict availability of life sustaining resources for humans. Perhaps that’s the point.

  14. “It does not mean anything fixed. It does not describe something that can be stopped.”

    It is a untestable hypothesis. Science consists of asking why did that happen, can I control or predict it? “Because God wills it so.” is the exact opposite of science and the definition of religion.

    If you relate to dialect, the first sentence finishes the entire argument. If you rely on rhetoric, the second two have you covered.

  15. I have to disagree with you on climate science not being a pseudo-science. Karl Popper is considered the leading expert on the demarcation between science and pseudoscience, and his differentiation is a simple matter of attitude. In science you seek to disprove a theory (universal scepticism is mandatory due to the induction problem) while pseudo-science seeks to prove a theory (suffering from confirmation bias, groupthink and dogmatism). The fact that challenging the dogma of climate changism is considered heresy makes it rather apparent that it is pseudo-science by Popper’s Definition!

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