Andrew Dessler vs. The ‘a–hole’ World
By Robert Bradley Jr. -- August 25, 2021“Hey assholes. We’ve been telling you for decades that this was going to happen if we didn’t reduce greenhouse gas emissions. You didn’t listen and now it’s all happening. We hope you’re happy. Enjoy the heatwaves, intense rainfall, sea level rise, ocean acidification, and many other things, you fucking morons.” (below)
It was supposed to be a funny. But really, it is a candid commentary of an agenda-driven, frustrated climate scientist/activist at a world that is (correctly) demoting rigid alarmism for realism.
Professor Andrew Dessler is the smartest guy in the climate room. He is, by his own account, hot headed. He says rude things about even the most polite of his scientific adversaries, not unlike his infamous cohort, Michael Mann. Dessler’s predictions are exaggerated, even falsified (here’s one on Texas weather from a decade ago).
He does not understand the primary energy driver, density, or energy economics in general. He refuses to factor in government failure in his question to correct “market failure.”
And when it comes to his views, he is a master of misdirection and silence. Instead, he wants to censure his opponents and refuses to debate live (he would lose). And, not surprisingly, he exhibits authoritarian tendencies.
If Dessler’s persona is this strained now, imagine how he will be post-COP26 (failure coming, as James Hansen predicted) and in the years ahead.
Dense mineral energies are not to be denied for a better economy and a better, greener environment. Warmer winters, warmer nights, and CO2 fertilization, coupled with growing societal wealth (absent climate activism) for adaptation, is the obvious way forward.
Industrial wind turbines, solar arrays, and batteries taking over the landscape are not the way to go (again, as James Hansen has noted). But Dessler dreams of an alternative energy reality.
The Latest
Here is Texas A&M’s Andrew Dessler from earlier this month on Twitter:
Andrew Dessler@AndrewDessler I just got a copy of the embargoed IPCC Summary for Policymakers. I hate to break the embargo, but this is too important to wait. Here it is, the entire SPM. Surprisingly, it’s just one paragraph long.
Hey assholes. We’ve been telling you for decades that this was going to happen if we didn’t reduce greenhouse gas emissions. You didn’t listen and now it’s all happening. We hope you’re happy. Enjoy the heatwaves, intense rainfall, sea level rise, ocean acidification, and many other things, you fucking morons.
He then comments:
Much cruder language than I would have expected, but sometimes foul language is called for.
The above is but the latest rant from a troubled soul. There are many other examples, one of which is here:
Who should be madder about calling people who reject climate science ‘climate deniers.’ Climate deniers, because it lumps them in with holocaust deniers? Or Holocaust deniers, because it lumps them in with climate deniers. (Andrew Dessler, July 18, 2019)
Unbridled Alarmism
Dessler’s madness comes from a hyper-extreme view of what he believes is settled, incontrovertible science. He believes:
If “some humans survive” is the only thing we care about, then climate change is a non-issue. I think it’s certain that “some” humans will survive almost any climate change. They may be living short, hard lives of poverty, but they’ll be alive.
I find the path we’re on now — the rich world survives (if lucky), but abandons everyone else — to be morally problematic.
Conclusion
The mad professor, aka Angry Andy, ultimately discredits himself. Climate exaggeration for momentary impact stopped working long ago. Did not Fred Krupp of the Environmental Defense Fund once warn:
There has to be a lot of shrillness taken out of our language. In the environmental community, we have to be more humble. We can’t take the attitude that we have all the answers.
And insults to his opponents–and the world at large–only adds to his problem.
Whoa! I didn’t realize just how nutty the professor is.
It really does reach the threshold of an irrational religious mania for some people. Especially when their career and paycheck depend upon it.
Recently some Oslo researchers demonstrated via experiment that CO2 levels from .04% to 100% had no impact on warming.
This is not surprising since alarmists have never been able to provide any evidence that CO2 has anything to do with global warming. (Obfusation has little to do with evidence.)
Thanks for the info on the lab experiment. I was aware of a lab experiment but did not have the details. Keep in mind that they claim water vapor also causes global warming, that despite the fact that evaporation is taking place from the oceans and land masses 24/7. Heat is being removed, it can’t be stopped. The oceans are getting heat from the earth. If it were not for that heat the oceans would be solid ice by now. It sounds like a perfect system, I wonder who designed it?
You write about CO2 fertilization, but it doesn’t exist on its own, it brings with it climate change: heat, drought, extreme rainfall, and other phenomena that affect crops. In fact there is evidence that crops aren’t doing well under higher CO2 and its associated anthropogenic climate change. The wheat crop in the west has been ruined this year by the massive heat wave, and drought. It’s been shown that many crops are becoming less nutritious, and that global agricultural productivity is down with anthropogenic climate change. For example:
“Our baseline model indicates that ACC has reduced global agricultural total factor productivity by about 21% since 1961, a slowdown that is equivalent to losing the last 7 years of productivity growth. The effect is substantially more severe (a reduction of ~26–34%) in warmer regions such as Africa and Latin America and the Caribbean.”
“Anthropogenic climate change has slowed global agricultural productivity growth,” Ariel Ortiz-Bobea et al, Nature Climate Change, vol 11 pp 306–312 (2021).
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-021-01000-1
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“Higher CO2 tends to inhibit the ability of plants to make protein… And this explains why food quality seems to have been declining and will continue to decline as CO2 rises — because of this inhibition of nitrate conversion into protein…. “It’s going to be fairly universal that we’ll be struggling with trying to sustain food quality and it’s not just protein… it’s also micronutrients such as zinc and iron that suffer as well as protein.”
– University of California at Davis Professor Arnold J. Bloom, on Yale Climate Connections 10/7/14
http://www.yaleclimateconnections.org/2014/10/crop-nutrition/2014
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“Ask the Experts: Does Rising CO2 Benefit Plants?” Annie Sneed, Scientific American 1/23/18
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/ask-the-experts-does-rising-co2-benefit-plants1/
From this article:
“Even with the benefit of CO2 fertilization, when you start getting up to 1 to 2 degrees of warming, you see negative effects,” she [Frances Moore, an assistant professor of environmental science and policy at the University of California, Davis] says. “There are a lot of different pathways by which temperature can negatively affect crop yield: soil moisture deficit [or] heat directly damaging the plants and interfering with their reproductive process.” On top of all that, Moore points out increased CO2 also benefits weeds that compete with farm plants.
“We know unequivocally that when you grow food at elevated CO2 levels in fields, it becomes less nutritious,” notes Samuel Myers, principal research scientist in environmental health at Harvard University. “[Food crops] lose significant amounts of iron and zinc—and grains [also] lose protein.”
Questions:
First, if you assume bad things from climate change, we get bad things from climate change. That begs the question.
Second, hasn’t agricultural productivity increased overall, making ‘would have’ speculative?
Third, third-world countries have serious problems from a lack of private property rights, hampered market exchange, rampant corruption–how do the studies adjust for this? Relatedly, how has agriculture performed in free countries where economic growth is the norm?
Fourth, what are the criticisms of the mentioned studies, such as from the CO2 Coalition, an organization that specializes in this area? They have citations of hundreds if not thousands of studies showing global greening and higher productivity from the enhanced greenhouse effect.
Dennis Ables: There is copious evidence that CO2 causes warming:
“Increases in greenhouse forcing inferred from the outgoing longwave radiation spectra of the Earth in 1970 and 1997,” J.E. Harries et al, Nature 410, 355-357 (15 March 2001).
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v410/n6826/abs/410355a0.html
“Radiative forcing – measured at Earth’s surface – corroborate the increasing greenhouse effect,” R. Philipona et al, Geo Res Letters, v31 L03202 (2004).
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2003GL018765/abstract
“Observational determination of surface radiative forcing by CO2 from 2000 to 2010,” D. R. Feldman et al, Nature 519, 339–343 (19 March 2015). http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v519/n7543/full/nature14240.html
“Comparison of spectrally resolved outgoing longwave data between 1970 and present,” J.A. Griggs et al, Proc SPIE 164, 5543 (2004).
“Spectral signatures of climate change in the Earth’s infrared spectrum between 1970 and 2006,” Chen et al, (2007)
“Measurements of the Radiative Surface Forcing of Climate,” W.F.J. Evans, ams.confex.com, Jan 2006
“Satellite-Based Reconstruction of the Tropical Oceanic Clear-Sky Outgoing Longwave Radiation and Comparison with Climate Models,” Gastineau et al, J Climate, vol 27, 941–957 (2014).
Links and more papers on this subject are listed here:
http://agwobserver.wordpress.com/2009/08/02/papers-on-changes-in-olr-due-to-ghgs/
Warming has many beneficial effects: warmer nights, longer growing seasons, warmer winters. Natural or anthropogenic, shouldn’t we appreciate coming out the Little Ice Age with gusto?