Embarrassed Scientists

Awkward Syndrome of Embarrassing Advocates

We have sometimes wondered what real scientists think of the human-caused global warming charade.  To laymen it has always seemed odd that so-called scientists would commit themselves irrevocably to a theory which relied upon assumptions being fed into a computer which spat out "results" purporting to predict the future.  Early on in the development of ubiquitous PC computing we were repeatedly told "garbage in-garbage out".  Secondly, we have always been suspicious of group-think.  Thirdly, when we observed scientists refusing to engage with critics on the grounds that "the science is settled" and global warming sceptics were either mentally deficient or socially unacceptable misanthropes we knew that something wrong, if not evil, was afoot. 

We use the term "evil" deliberately.  When a prevailing speculative theory leads to objections to poorer countries developing an electricity generating industry on the grounds that it would contribute to "global warming", thereby consigning millions of impoverished people to cooking over smoky dung stoves--their lungs gooped with years of smoke and fumes--"evil" is not too strong a word.

Now some real scientists have spoken out.
  They are rocket scientists--men and women retired from NASA--which, ironically, has been a bastion of cheerleading for the global-warming cause.  James Delingpole calls the game:

Earth is Safe From 'Global Warming' Say the Men Who Put Man on the Moon

By James Delingpole  

8 Mar 2014

Breitbart London

The planet is not in danger of catastrophic man made global warming. Even if we burn all the world's recoverable fossil fuels it will still only result in a temperature rise of less than 1.2 degrees C.

So say The Right Climate Stuff Research Team, a group of retired NASA Apollo scientists and engineers - the men who put Neil Armstrong on the moon - in a new report.  "It's an embarrassment to those of us who put NASA's name on the map to have people like James Hansen popping off about global warming," says the project's leader Hal Doiron.

Doiron was one of 40 ex NASA employees - including seven astronauts - who wrote in April 2012 to NASA administrator Charles Bolden protesting about the organization's promotion of climate change alarmism, notably via its resident environmental activist James Hansen.

Forty embarrassed ex-NASA employees wanting to put the record straight.  But how can these scientists do anything which will stack up against the "settled-science-consensus" brigade?  By doing the math, that's how.

Doiron and his team now hope to set the record straight in a report called Bounding GHG Climate Sensitivity For Use In Regulatory Decisions. Using calculations by George Stegemeier of the National Academy of Engineering, they estimated the total quantity of recoverable oil, gas and coal on the planet. They then used 163 years of real world temperature data to calculate Transient Climate Sensitivity (ie how much the world will warm as a result of the burning of all the carbon dioxide in the fossil fuel). The figure they came up with 1.2 degrees C which is considerably lower than the wilder claims of the IPCC, whose reports have suggested it could be as high as 4 degrees C or more.

The calculations represent the extreme case--that is, the burning of all fossil fuel known to be on the planet.  Even in this extreme hypothesis, the temperature rise of 1.2 degrees C is nothing.  Human beings, which as a species are marvellously adaptive, will adjust easily.  And, there are likely to be huge benefits to a slight increase in global temperatures.  So, burning all known fossil fuels is a good news story--far, far from the apocalyptic scaremongering and catastrophism that titillates media, politicians, and other talking heads.

Doiron goes on to ridicule the warmists misuse of computer models.  

Doiron is similarly sceptical of the computer models used by climate alarmists. He and his team argue that the 105 models currently used by the IPCC are seriously flawed because they don't agree with each other and don't agree with empirical data.  There is no empirical data indicating Anthropogenic Global Warming will produce catastrophic climate changes. AGW can only produce modest global warming, likely to be beneficial when CO2 benefits to crop production are considered.

Doiron says: "I believe in computer models. My whole career was about using computer models to make life or death decisions. In 1963 I had to use them to calculate whether, when the lunar module landed on a 12 degree slope it would fall over or not - and design the landing gear accordingly. But if you can't validate the models - and the IPCC can't - then don't use them to make critical decisions about the economy and the planet's future."

Quite.  And let's not overlook an argument not made enough.  CO2 is the most green gas known to mankind. If we had more of it in the atmosphere, arid drylands and deserts would likely shrink significantly so the globe would more resemble the glorious Paradise it once was.