Climate Change Business Journal estimates the Climate Change
Industry is a $1.5 Trillion dollar escapade, which means four billion
dollars a day is spent on our quest to change the climate. That includes
everything from carbon markets to carbon consulting, carbon
sequestration, renewables, biofuels, green buildings and insipid cars.
For comparison global
retail sales online are worth around $1.5 trillion. So all the money wasted on the climate is equivalent to all the goods bought online.
The special thing about this industry is that it wouldn’t exist if it
weren’t for an assumption about relative humidity that is probably
wrong. As such, it’s the only major industry in the world dependent on
consumer and voter ignorance. This is not just another vested interest
in a political debate; it’s vested-on-steroids, a mere opinion poll away
from extinction. You can almost hear the captains of climate industry
bellowing: “Keep ‘em ignorant and believing, or the money goes away!”.
To state the obvious:
Policy, or the anticipation of new policy, has been one of the biggest drivers of the industry
A new
JAMA study found the
Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is silent on matters of scientific misconduct and fraud.
Researchers reported in at least 57 clinical trials, the FDA found
evidence of one or more of the following problems: falsification or
submission of false information, problems with adverse events reporting,
protocol violations, inadequate or inaccurate recordkeeping, failure to
protect the safety of patients or issues with informed consent. Yet,
only three of the 78 publications that resulted from these trials made
note of this. There were largely no corrections, retractions, or listed
concerns.
The
General Circulation Models (GCMs) that underpin the paradigm of
AGW
have difficulty generating rainfall forecasts with any real level of
skill more than 4 days in advance. If a fraction of the billions spent
developing these simulation models, had instead been invested in a
theory of climate underpinned with state-of-the-art statistical models
based on an understanding of natural climate cycles, I believe we would
be much closer to being able to mitigate climate variability across the
globe through better rainfall forecasts with very significant benefits
for all of mankind, but particularly subsistence farmers in places like
India. In short, what we really need is a new paradigm for climate
science, underpinned by new tools
with some utility.
Fabius Maximus asks whether there is a common skeptic view-point, or a dominant paradigm, and talks about
Thomas Kuhn’s
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
.
Kuhn’s work shows that a paradigm cannot be disproved, only replaced (
details here).
Unless the skeptics form a theory, they’ll remain minor players in the
debates — the climate science debate and the public policy debate about
climate change (they’re distinct, although often conflated).
To that end, I would say that
no one has ever done a decent survey of
skeptical scientists, so we don’t know. Though the fact that so many
psychologists say they want to understand skeptics and so
few of them
survey the scientists or leaders involved in this is rather significant,
methinks.
Climate and the Carboniferous Period
Average global temperatures
in the
Early Carboniferous Period were
hot- approximately
20° C (68° F). However, cooling during the Middle Carboniferous
reduced average global temperatures to about
12° C (54° F).
As shown on the chart below, this is comparable to the average
global temperature
on Earth today!
Similarly, atmospheric concentrations of
carbon dioxide (CO2)
in the
Early Carboniferous Period were approximately
1500 ppm
(parts per million), but by the
Middle Carboniferous had declined
to about
350 ppm -- comparable to average CO2 concentrations today!
Earth's atmosphere today contains about 380
ppm CO2 (0.038%). Compared to former geologic times,
our
present
atmosphere,
like the
Late Carboniferous atmosphere, is
CO2- impoverished! In the last 600 million years of Earth's history
only the
Carboniferous Period and our present age, the
Quaternary
Period, have witnessed CO2 levels less than
400 ppm.
Two
special conditions
of terrestrial landmass distribution, when they exist concurrently, appear
as a sort of
common denominator for the occurrence of very long-term
simultaneous declines in both global temperature and atmospheric carbon
dioxide (CO2):
1) the existence of a continuous continental
landmass stretching from pole to pole, restricting free circulation of
polar and tropical waters, and
2) the existence of a large (south)
polar landmass capable of supporting thick glacial ice accumulations.
These special conditions existed during the Carboniferous Period, as
they do today in our present Quaternary Period.
Evidence for decoupling of
atmospheric CO
and global climate
during the Phanerozoic eon
Temporary Loss of Sanity: What Rand Paul Thinks About Donald Trump's Surge(everyjoe.com)
Mark Steyn: Rise Of Donald Trump Is Because GOP Base 'Absolutely Hates' GOP Leadership(downtrend.com)
What Trudeau and Mulcair have in common with Donald Trump at first election debate(thestar.com)
Letter: Strange attitudes about POWs(newsday.com)
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