“Let’s see if Skeptical Science makes another appearance on LinkedIn. It is up to 458 follows. And see if this organization will simply prepare an entry on what ‘skeptic’ arguments are the best. With that middle ground, maybe we can have a real debate.”
On LinkedIn, the alarmist Skeptical Science posted:
Somewhat surprisingly for what is regarded as a network of professionals, climate science misinformation is getting shared on LinkedIn as well. Here is a list of some signs to be on the lookout for when reading posts or comments related to human-caused climate change or global warming:
Read the list here, but their pitch is little more than ‘trust us’ and visit the DeSmog database of “deniers” for the bad actors. (Note: DeSmog’s smear-list encyclopedia has backfired! First, there are so many excellent thinkers and influencers on the list that a new ‘majority’ has been identified. Here is my entry. Second, many folks not on the list are upset and want their non-alarmist views recognized.)
Skeptical Science’s list continued in a comment that begins: “Sometimes a commenter’s job or tagline can also give a clue. If there’s a relationship to anything having to do with the fossil fuel or mining industries, whatever is being written might need to be read with a suitably large grain of salt.”
And ends: “Reactions via the „laugh“ icon on serious topics like human-caused climate change could either have happened accidentally (unlikely) or be a sign that the commenter doesn‘t quite (want to) grasp or accept scientific findings on the topic (quite likely).”
The comments were harsh. Here are some.
Randall Utech: There are thousands of independently thinking individuals (geologists, geophysicists, astrophysicists, engineers, meteorologists, physicists, chemists) practicing science. They are not paid to confront the alarmists but merely see the climate science (a relatively immature science) as unsettled. Questioning the all-pervasive climate narrative is exactly what scientists should do. Unfortunately for many of the masses with little time to investigate on their own, the deck is stacked against them due to what is in most cases pervasive propaganda from your side of the of the arena.
You call yourself scientists but you disregard the fundamental purpose [of] science which is scientific debate. By silencing opposing viewpoints, you are no longer a scientist or providing scientific information, you are providing propaganda or misinformation. We want to have a full discourse of this topic. If you negate a viewpoint that doesn’t conform to your view, you are not a scientist you are a manipulator; you care nothing about reality and only about the viewpoint you want to provide.
Rob Bradley: So tell all of us on LinkedIn how to think and what to believe? Stay vague and invoke half-truths and strawmen/women (above) and try to get the critics to ‘lay down their arms’?
I have engaged in numerous debates on LinkedIn with climate alarmists to great profit for me and for the other readers. Why not go ahead, Skeptical Science, and list the valid points of the CO2/climate optimists?
Talk about the distribution of the enhanced greenhouse effect, time-series data on weather extremes, the saturation effect, government failure in the quest to address market failure, the role of adaptation instead of (futile) mitigation? And the ecological problems of wind, solar, and batteries?
Where’s the middle ground, Skeptical Science? If you say there is none, I rest my case.
My comment attracted 60 replies.
Daniel Gruenberg: “Skeptical Science is founded by a partisan cartoonist, author of the famous massively debunked 97% consensus article and is the king of climate disinformation.”
James Phillips (retired geoscientist): “This has to be the most ridiculous post I have seen on LinkedIn since I joined 10 years ago. Any true scientist with independent thinking should disregard this complete propaganda ‘climate religion’ post.”
Hans Wolkers (science journalist): “Great to see that skeptical science has a patent on the truth and doesn’t want any scientific debate nor critically thinking scientists. I guess 97% of readers agree and believe these wonderful statements?”
Robert Ballantyne: “Consensus is among scientist living on government largesse that agreed to ‘hide the decline’.”
Jim Ligon (geophysicist): “Oh I get it! If I agree then I am good. If I question as a true scientist should do then I am bad. This is not science it is religious dogma on par with the inquisition. So how do you know climate alarmists are a hoax? The print garbage like this.”
Graeme Morrison: “I like the rebuke of people ‘just asking questions’ as insincere. It made me laugh.”
Alexis Pilotelle: “Imagine publishing the same post with “quantum physics” or “organic chemistry” instead of “climate science”, taking one theory inside the field as the absolute not-to-be challenged truth. Not only this would create backlash but it would make highly suspicious the claim made by the only acceptable theory. Skeptical science should go back to basics and understand what science is instead of pushing propaganda.”
Skeptical Science, blooded, joined in:
Well, our post seems to have hit a nerve based on the many comments exhibiting exactly the warning signs to be on the look-out for! Some people just seem to prefer that others do not know what these warning signs and red flags are.
Also note that some comments with baseless accusations and ad hominem attacks against Skeptical Science and our team have been deleted and any others will be deleted without notice. It’s our page, so our rules apply.
Ad hominem? That is what the we in the non-alarmist camp endure every minute of every day. From the above exchange one Jim Hunt could only question my credentials to engage in the physical science debate. Funny how us amateurs can pin down the weaknesses of the alarmist argument (and why WUWT, for example, is the world’s leading climate website.)
Final Comment
“Skeptical Science” is a name akin to the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022. A ploy to fool, in this case to draw in doubters to try to show that alarmist science is settled and, in fact, science. Nope, climate models and climate physics are the opposite of settled.
Let’s see if Skeptical Science makes another appearance on LinkedIn. It is up to 458 follows. And see if this organization will simply prepare an entry on what ‘skeptic’ arguments are the best. With that middle ground, maybe we can have a real debate.
LOL— poetic justice.
NPR, Mike Bloomberg, Seth Borenstein, Mark Hertsgaard, Carl Pope, Bill McKibben, the Associated Press, the New York Times, the WaPo and the La-La Times are next !
Thanks for the mention Rob, out of context though it is.
Since commenting on the thread on LinkedIn is now closed. I’ll add this comment here instead.
There is no “debate”.
The physics is clear.
CO₂ is not “saturated”
Period.
Just the opposite, Jim. The physics of the GHG signal is winter, night, and high latitude. That’s benign, not catastrophic.
CO2 fertilization is settled science versus climate models that have unknown physics and are not testable–and have been running ‘too hot’ for most of their lives.
Never said the CO2 is saturated as documented in our exchange. Diminishing returns just makes mitigation less and less feasible relative to adaptation.
Climate alarmism is losing steam and hurting the environment via climate policies. Time to change course? Real environmentalists are speaking up against wind and solar–the Climate Industrial Complex is just ‘green’ as in money and power.
Rob,
Your initial comment on LinkedIn, reproduced above, said:
“Talk about… the saturation effect”
So that’s what I did. At the risk of repeating myself:
“CO₂ is not ‘saturated’. Period.”
Evidently we’re agreed on that point?
No Jim. As I have stated from the beginning, and captured in the post, the point of the “saturation effect” is that each metric ton of additional CO2 avoided has less and less of a warming effect than the prior metric ton. It is the log relationship of GHG forcing (not linear).
Diminishing returns, that’s all.
One has to provide some quantitative definition of “saturated out” or “completely saturated”, which I have not done.
The obvious implication is that by the day, mitigation becomes less and less effective. A powerful point in favor of free-market adaptation, not governmental energy rationing.
Saturation should not be used for the logarithmic effect which is an integral part of the IPCC endorsed science.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) may have a name that brings to mind Noah and the Great Flood, but it has a vital job: To measures U.S. temperatures. Unfortunately, it also appears to be a captive of the global warming religion by issuing fraudulent.
Why fraudulent? NOAA makes repeated “adjustments” to its data, for the ostensible scientific reason of making them more accurate. Nothing wrong with that. Except, all their changes point to one thing — altering previously measured temperatures to show cooler weather in the past and raising more recent temperatures to show warming in more recent years.
These data create an illusion – ever-rising temperatures to match the increase in CO2 in the atmosphere since the mid-1800s, which global warming advocates claim to be a cause-and-effect relationship: The more CO2, the more warming.
But actual measured temperature records show something different: There have been hot years and hot decades (the 1930s were a historic record) since the turn of the last century, and colder decades (e.g. the 1940s and 1979s). But the overall measured temperature shows no clear trend over the last century, certainly not runaway warming.
That is, until the NOAA “adjusts” the data. Using complex statistical models, they change the data not to reflect reality but their underlying theories of global warming. According to the NOAA, the errors aren’t random but systematic. All of their temperature adjustments lean cooler in the distant past and warmer more recently. Far from legitimately “adjusting” anything, it appears they are cooking the data to show a politically correct trend toward global warming; part and parcel of the government’s underlying policies for the better part of two decades.
Pre-2000 temperatures are progressively cooled, and post-2000 temperatures are warmed. Recent years have shown a particularly spectacular episode of data tampering by NOAA, as they introduce nearly 2.5 degrees of fake warming since 1895, bolstering the catastrophic global warming hoax.
Some recent winters, as measured by temperature in city after city and by snow-storm severity, have shown some of the coldest on record in the Northeast. But after the NOAA’s wizards finished with the data, they were merely about average.
In New York state in the 2017-18 winter, for example, measured temperatures were 2.7 degrees colder than in 1943 (itself in a cold decade). But not to NOAA. Its data show temperatures that year as just 0.9 degrees cooler than in 1943. Similarly after the brutally cold 2013-2014 winter in New York: It was simply “adjusted” away. By radically altering the temperature record to fit the global warming narrative, you have what amounts to climate fraud. And for those who think that government officials don’t have political, cultural and social agendas, that’s naivete of the highest sort. Of course they do. A trillion here, a trillion there; soon you’re talking real money.
Since the official government mantra for all of the bureaucracies is that CO2 production is an evil that inevitably leads to runaway global warming, those who toil in their statistical sweat shops know that their careers and future funding depend on having the politically correct answers — not the scientifically correct ones. NOAA has never given a convincing explanation of why adjustments to the climate data are necessary (or consistently one-sided.)
We urgently need greater honesty in government and to keep climate charlatans from bankrupting our nation with spurious demands for carbon taxes, elimination of fossil fuels and deindustrialization of our economy to prevent global warming. If not it’s won’t be a case of a cooler planet, but mass poverty and lower standards of living for all.