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A top US scientist blasts the AGW alarmists

· Science & Technology

I have been busy travelling lately, so not much opportunity to post much on the site at the moment, but I could not resist this.

October 11th, 2010 |

15 comments to A top US scientist blasts the AGW alarmists

  • Ellen
    October 11, 2010 at 4:29 pm

    I had similar feelings in the Seventies, about a questionnaire put out in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, when they asked Manhattan Project scientists how they ‘justified’ working on the atomic bomb.

    Of course I wrote back saying that only a fool would reply to such a question – it had agenda dripping from every pore. Never heard back from them.

    (No, I didn’t work on the Manhattan Project. I did, however, work with a physicist who was there.)

  • Paul Marks
    October 11, 2010 at 4:59 pm

    I hope this scientist is correct (i.e. that man made global warming is a corrupt farce), however even if he is NOT correct it should be remembered that the policies of the various governments will not do anything about it.

    More subsidies for solar cells and wind power (i.e. for General Electric and for Chinese manufacturing sites) will do nothing to really reduce C02 emissions.

    And as for the Chicago Climate Exchange and the whole (Enron invented) “carbon trading” concept (as in “Cap and Trade” and so on) this really is a corrupt farce.

    The point of “Crime Inc” (as Glenn Beck rightly calls it) is partly to personally enrich certain corporations (such as General Electric and Goldman Sachs) and, of course, leftists political activists (remember the CCE was set up with grants from foundations which Comrade Barack Obama and co had taken control of) and partly to subsidize Third World regimes.

    It has nothing to do with reducing C02 emissions – “social justice” (i.e. theft – the handing of money to politically connected corporations and to various political hacks around the world who claim to represent the poor) not “save the planet” is what the thing is about.

  • Euan Gray
    October 11, 2010 at 6:08 pm

    We’re too clever for traditional religion these days, so we must find our eschatology and catastrophism in environmental tales of doom.

    Cf. mass starvation, global cooling, resource depletion, global warming, ocean acidification, threatened biodiversity, et cetera ad nauseam.

    Woe unto us, for we have sinned against Gaia.

    EG

  • Phil Mill
    October 11, 2010 at 8:54 pm

    Good on you for posting a link but I agree with Anthony Watts: “It is worthy of repeating this letter in entirety on every blog that discusses science.”

    You discuss aerospace etc. So please quote the whole thing!

  • Chuck6134
    October 11, 2010 at 10:27 pm

    Discouraging indeed

  • Alasdair
    October 11, 2010 at 10:35 pm

    Is it time to start to distinguish between ‘climatologists’ (AGW-sceptics) and ‘climatheologists’ (AGW Believers) ?

  • Nuke Gray
    October 12, 2010 at 12:47 am

    Not bad, Alasdair, but I prefer the term I came across somewhere, calling them Greenshirts.

  • James Waterton
    October 12, 2010 at 9:21 am

    Drip, drip, drip.

    Euan Gray! It’s been a while.

  • NickM
    October 12, 2010 at 11:50 am

    Paul,
    It is worse than that. I’d heard of subsidies to home-owners who are “early adopters” of solar….

    I have very little doubt that solar is gonna be big but the tech ain’t there yet. It’s coming on in leaps and bounds but do we really want to shell out (possibly Shell out) lots of $$$ to people to tie them into a system that will rapidly be superseded? This shows just to what extent the gubbermunt doesn’t understand technology or the consumer. Yes, there always will be early adopters (or beta testers as Microsoft calls em 😉 ) but that doesn’t make a volume consumer product. That comes later and it comes naturally.

  • Rob Fisher
    October 12, 2010 at 2:05 pm

    I keep wishing Richard Feynman was still around to comment on AGW. I’d imagine he’d say something like this.

  • Mose Jefferson
    October 12, 2010 at 3:57 pm

    The comment section on Delingpole’s post is freaky. The character attacks being leveled against a member of this “scientific” organization because he attempted to open a proper inquiry on the subject are nearly unbelievable.

    Count me among the future solar panel beta testers. While I may not be a member of the AGW faith, I am a rabid Heinlein reader and pursuer of neato science fiction inspired gizmos, and any technology that provides me with energy independance from my regional electric grid is a-okay.

  • ghost of feynman past
    October 12, 2010 at 8:36 pm

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AU8PId_6xec

    while this discussion is ostensibly about electromagnetic waves; the discussion can be construed to chaotic systems, including information, and our ability to understand them using the tools available too us.

    the use of machines to interpret some of these chaotic systems while not knowing what the machine may do to the result (additional noise, improper filters, etc) is emblematic of the psuedo science/politics/money involved.

  • mdc
    October 13, 2010 at 4:31 am

    Open question: If AGW actually is real, what’s our next move? Surrender to fascist world government?

  • Bruce Hoult
    October 13, 2010 at 5:01 am

    Rob Fisher: we don’t have Feynman, but we do still have Freeman Dyson:

    http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/dysonf07/dysonf07_index.html

  • mike
    October 13, 2010 at 5:48 am

    “… any technology that provides me with energy independance from my regional electric grid is a-okay.”

    You’ll be paying through the nose for batteries then – because small, efficient and cheap ones don’t yet exist so far as I know.

    Commercially produced solar modules can achieve a conversion efficiency of around 15%, possibly rising to 20% in the next few years. The scale and thus cost of your installation must therefore be rather large and expensive, meaning you might have a waiting time in the decades before you break even – and that’s assuming you sell your surplus back to the grid. Those ridiculous fixed costs are the reason why governments subsidize either the purchase and installation cost of the panels (not to mention their development) or the price at which the power company purchases your surplus for further inefficient distribution through the grid.

    I’ve always thought radioisotope batteries would have been a better, network-independent alternative.

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