Reclaiming and Rebuilding Climate Science -
Gaining agreement on key issues

Work in progress on this website: pages I've set up to work through key issues, both science and strategy, as far as is necessary to reclaim the science. I don't want side arguments, and would rather leave all that to others more capable and interested than myself. I explain at the top of each page why I consider the issue significant.

Science has grown complicated, and often people cannot understand areas of science outside their speciality. But this has left Climate Science vulnerable to fundamentalist activists, shouting that this is TRUE and SERIOUS and TIME FOR ACTION and NO MORE TIME TO DOUBT THE SCIENCE and ALL GOOD SCIENTISTS AGREE.

Anthropogenic Global Warming particularly as handled by IPCC, Al Gore, Jim Hansen, the official scientific bodies, the MSM, Gavin Schmidt, and friends, is a complete travesty of Science, a science-lookalike, a usurper, an impostor. If we are to flush it out into public visibility and discredit it, we need to crystallize out the key issues of the good science, and gain sufficient agreement in the open science community. Only then can we really deconstruct the AGW "answers to skeptics" to cut the AGW fuel lines.

Scientific Method is actually extremely simple. It needs neither formal peer-reviews nor a science degree, though these can help an openminded researcher. It just means paying attention to the evidence and staying open and only constructing theories that actually accord with ALL the evidence. We all do this in one way or another.

The key issues of "manmade global warming" are so simple that many scientists (eg in BBC's Climate Wars) just skate over them and take them as proved and agreed. "Nearly all climate scientists would agree with three propositions":-

• First, the climate is in a warming trend.
• Second, that most of this warming trend is down to human emissions of greenhouse gases.
• And third, that if emissions continue to rise then the result will be continued warming which will become damaging to human society.

Can we counter such simple claims with clear, simple arguments? Joanne Nova says, YES!!... in her Skeptics Handbook The Bottom Line is Simple: “What evidence is there that more CO2 forces temperatures up further?” The climate is complex, but the only thing that matters here is whether adding more CO2 to the atmosphere will make the world much warmer. Everything hinges on this one question. Having a real debate IS the best thing for the environment. The Surgical Strike: 1: Stick to the four points that matter There is only one question and four points worth discussing. Every time you allow the conversation to stray, you get stuck in a dead end, and miss the chance to definitively expose the lack of evidence that carbon is ‘bad’. 2: Ask questions Non believers don’t have to prove anything. Skeptics are not asking the world for money or power. Believers need to explain their case, so let them do the talking. As long as the question you asked doesn’t get resolved, repeat it. 3: Greenhouse and global warming are different Don’t let people confuse global warming with greenhouse gases. Mixing these two different topics has confounded the debate. Proof of global warming is not proof that greenhouse gases caused that warming. 4: Deal with the bully-boy It’s entirely reasonable to ask for evidence. If you are met with dismissive, intimidatory, or bullying behavior, don’t ignore it. Ask them why they’re not willing to explain their case. In scientific discussions, no theory is sacrosant. Taboos belong in religions. Proof of global warming is not proof that greenhouse gases caused that warming.

I wrote my own skeptics' primer here, but though it's a start, I'm not an expert and am always open to improve it. I'm putting key issues onto our Forum for debate. If others are doing similar work, I'd like to collaborate. I hope the work here will eventually be good enough for the true science community to own. We have to get rid of all the bad material that overthrows existing good science, is done to solicit publicity and create fear, builds within small cliques, and disallows debate.

I think that we can join up the dots of specialised knowledge to show a consistent IPCC fraud. The very principles of Science are under threat: openness to new paradigms, thoroughness of observation, transparency of records, and checkability. There is also, unfortunately, ad hom. Somewhere my name may stink even though I'm a newcomer!

Five Keys of Evidence that correlate but are not linked causally
To a naive, young, or mediocre scientist in the 1980's and 1990's, there were five pieces of evidence which, if taken together as causally related, seemed to incriminate us. These are the issues we need to answer:
-- Global temperatures were rising from 1970 up to 2000 (correlating item number one).
-- Carbon dioxide levels were also relentlessly rising during a similar time period (correlation two).
-- Carbon dioxide revealed "greenhouse gas" properties when tested in the laboratory (correlation three).
-- We have been releasing huge and growing quantities of carbon dioxide from fossil fuels (correlation four).
-- We have already been causing environmental problems (DDT, acid rain, ozone depletion etc) (correlation five).

Enough History
Concern about the greenhouse effect of carbon dioxide goes back nearly a century. Then in the 1980's, Maggie Thatcher cut UK research funding in all areas except that of proving manmade Global Warming. This gave doomsayers the edge, and provided a convincing, transnational, multidisciplinary basis for the development of a "science-lookalike". As temperatures and CO2 continued to rise, correlations were read falsely as causations, and in the panic, well-known but very different answers to all of these issues remained unchecked, unseen, shunted aside. Environmentalists now became concerned and raised the idealistic energy of the Rio summit. Older, soundly scientific answers were forgotten or deliberately obscured, new evidence against global warming was denied publication, bad science was supported wherever it supported AGW, and false material was used, to provide "evidence" and "science" for what was feared, and to satisfy crass political and economic desires to jump on the bandwaggon. Soon the thrice-false thesis, that our CO2 emissions are causing serious global warming, was trumpeted as "well-proven and well-known".

Forgotten Antidotes to the Five Significant Keys
As Apocalyptics and Politics jumped into bed together, well-known answers to all of the original points were shunted aside:
-- temperatures have gone up and down over the centuries and were higher than now in the Medieval Warm Period;
-- Early accurate measurements of CO2 gives much higher levels than today; geological records show far higher levels;
-- The greenhouse gas effect is neither tested in real life nor evidenced in history; it levels off well below the present level;
-- What about volcanoes and natural forest fires? what about Henry's Law? and biosequestration?
-- "Environmental problems" - the science is questionable - we need GOOD science, not bad science, to solve problems!

Building an Army of True Science
To answer this with Science, we need to:
-- show it's the Sun (both Total Solar Irradiance and Solar Magnetic Flux),
-- flag up the false assumptions that correlation was causation, and the crass misuse of science,
-- show how the assumed catastrophic greenhouse effect doesn't work in practice,
-- properly quantify the manmade emissions and how they go into the biosphere,
-- and specifically deconstruct each of the five points with good science that cannot be reasonably refuted.

Waging the Real "Climate Wars"
To reclaim Climate Science, to re-empower ourselves, and to help guard against future corruption, we need to:
-- speak as one voice, to demonstrate the true cause of recent warming and debunk the false science;
-- sift out only the bare essentials, but making those essentials comfortable to read, not threadbare;
-- put together all the areas involved - to see the consistent IPCC agenda-forcing, science-corrupting patterns;
-- gather all relevant data and papers for such an important issue, freely available on the Internet;
-- translate the high science into layman's language - pictures and presentation help greatly.

*straw man argument: this seems to be pretty much the universal AGW tactic against skeptics. First, state "this is what skeptics say" but state what is out of date, or only a part of the issue, or a misrepresentation, "cherry-picking" etc. Then procede to demolish it. Easy. Of course, skeptics then look gullible, unscientific, in a tiny minority, in denial, in the pay of exxxx, and totally untrustworthy. When, as these AGW websites do, multiple arguments "debunking" skeptics are piled up together, it takes some effort / courage / idiocy to actually check the skeptics to see if they have been fairly represented.

updated 23rd October 2008