Opinion Forum

The Fallacy of Global Warming

October 27th, 2009

Now comes a man of letters on the fallacy of global warming, Lord Christopher Monckton.

He recently addressed the Minnesota Free Market Institute regarding the scam being perpetrated upon us by the global warming crowd. Here’s a link to the speech he gave. It is an hour and a half long, but it is well worth your time to sit and watch it. We are being taken for a ride, and it is likely to cost us everything.

We have been, and are presently, being lied to. The lies are more monstrous than even I have led readers of this site to believe. To top it off, it appears that our president will be signing a climate treaty in December in Copenhagen that will emasculate us.

All I ask is that you watch the video and think for yourself. What Monckton says doesn’t matter. What I say doesn’t matter. What you believe doesn’t matter. In the end, there is only what is the case (what is true as demonstrated by facts) and what is not the case. The truth doesn’t require belief, it can only be recognized or denied.

Articles written by Brian Bagent
Tags: Christopher Monckton, climate change, climate treaty, global warming
Categories: Life, News, Politics | Comments (32) | Home

32 Responses to “The Fallacy of Global Warming”

larry | October 27th, 2009 at 9:17 am

Brian
I’ve long held the opinion that global warming is a fact but not because of man. I would go so far as to wager the climate would change even if man and his life style had never existed. If we can believe past scientific data our planet has gone through several major changes already. The reason for all the interest in Washington is the potential of turning global warming into an insider’s money tree. Al Gore is a prime example.

Brianna | October 27th, 2009 at 11:57 am

Larry – Don’t forget that global cooling also exists. Twice in the last century we have been warned of the dangers of global cooling; in fact, the very reason they call it “climate change” now instead of global warming or cooling is in an attempt to cover their tracks. The current global warming panic is the fourth climate change scare we have had in the last century, each of which were supposedly caused by the activities of man, each of which eventually burned themselves out when people got tired of hearing everyone scream that the sky was falling.

Harvey | October 27th, 2009 at 12:43 pm

The Copenhagen meeting in December will not, I understand, to be to sign an actual treaty — it will be to sign some form of “letter of intent;” the actual treaty is some months down the road. Obama does, however, intend to show up in Copenhagen with signed Cap and Trade Legislation — hopefully that will not happen.

Brian | October 27th, 2009 at 5:25 pm

Well, Obama can sign all the treaties he wants. Treaties must be approved by the Senate, and while I have little faith in that feckless bunch, I don’t think they’ll approve it. Accordingly, no matter what Obama signs, it cannot become the law of the land without the consent of the Senate.

For those that haven’t yet watched the video, one of the things pointed out was that atmospheric carbon dioxide levels during the Cambrian period, roughly 500 million years ago, were something like 20 times higher than they are now. Two obvious points should be drawn from that: 1) we did not cause it and 2) the earth was not permanently damaged.

On the lighter side, even though Al Gore warns of an imminent 20′ rise in sea levels, he still bought a condo in a high rise on Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco. I guess maybe he’s planning on swimming to the elevator to get to it.

For more details of how fast and lose Gore and his fellow-travelers are playing with the this “imminent” tragedy, read this paper from the Science and Public Policy Institute of the UK.

Brian | October 27th, 2009 at 6:33 pm

For anyone in metro Houston, Lord Monckton (among others) will be speaking at the Sam Houston Race Track on Monday, 2 Nov 09 at 7 PM. Admission is free, but you can buy VIP or reserved seats if you want to sit up close.

Tom | October 27th, 2009 at 7:32 pm

According to all the press reports I’ve seen, Obama isn’t going to be in Copenhagen for the climate conference. (Maybe he’s still smarting from his failure there to get the Olympics for Chicago.) However, the President will be in the neighborhood, accepting his Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo while the conference is in progress.

Obama had hoped to show up in Copenhagen with his teleprompters and a signed energy (cap-and-trade) law. However, the chances of a bill of that sort being passed this year are virtually nil. If I were him, I’m sure I would also prefer to be a hero in Oslo rather than a goat in Copenhagen.

The idea at Copenhagen will be to agree on something to replace the Kyoto Protocol, which was doomed in the U.S. from the beginning because neither Clinton nor Bush submitted it to the Senate for ratification. Wise decision on their part because the Senate had already voted 95-0 for a resolution against anything like Kyoto. In general, Kyoto was also fatally flawed because it excluded major emitters like India and China, who obviously don’t want to be included in any new agreement. Even the UN is now admitting that they aren’t likely to achieve a new agreement, or even an agreement to agree, in Copenhagen.

Harvey | October 27th, 2009 at 11:18 pm

The high level of carbon dioxide during the Cambrian period can’t even be blamed on flatulent dinosaurs — they weren’t around yet!

LOL!

Kevin | October 28th, 2009 at 11:04 am

The fallacy of global cooling – http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2009/oct/27/mary-matalin/matalin-claims-earth-cooling/

Brian | October 28th, 2009 at 11:17 am

I’m guessing you didn’t bother to watch the video.

From your link: “Last spring, we checked a similar claim made by the Cato Institute, a free-market think tank. The group claimed that there has been no net global warming for over a decade; we found that False because the climate scientists we spoke with said that, while temperatures have remained relatively static over the last decade, very little can be learned about climate change in a 10-year window.”

I nearly spotted myself when I read that. I guess we’re just supposed to accept the fact that the people that wrote this article actually did talk with climatologists. A pity that didn’t say who, or by whom they are employed.

And speaking of false start points, you might actually bother yourself to see how the global warming crowd has not only been jiggering numbers, but ignoring entirely the very inconvenient ones (like the Medieval warming period, when it was warmer by about 5 degrees than it is now).

There is independent research going on everywhere on your myth of warming. We are at the front end of a 30 year cooling cycle. Around 2025 or 2030, it will probably start warming up again.

And please account for the earth’s recovery from the “disastrous” Cambrian period when there was 20X more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere than there presently is.

Watch the video and see if you can dispute the math or the research.

Kevin | October 28th, 2009 at 11:42 am

Do you know what a statisticulator is?

Of course I didn’t watch the video. And for the same reason that I didn’t watch Al Gore’s movie. Both have patently obvious axes to grind and therefore can’t be trusted as sources of objective facts.

Brianna | October 28th, 2009 at 12:43 pm

“Of course I didn’t watch the video. And for the same reason that I didn’t watch Al Gore’s movie. Both have patently obvious axes to grind and therefore can’t be trusted as sources of objective facts.”

If everyone in the debate, including the people you side with, have ideological axes to grind, did it ever occur to you that maybe the whole d*** thing was a load of hooey on both sides and nothing’s actually wrong?

Kevin | October 28th, 2009 at 1:18 pm

You mean besides the fact that your proffered conclusion is premised on a logical fallacy (several actually)?

Brianna | October 28th, 2009 at 2:05 pm

I don’t think that there are any logical fallacies involved in the idea that if people have ideological axes to grind, they might make stuff up to do it. Nor do I think it’s a logical fallacy to include the people grinding the climate change axe into that statement. And frankly, I have no idea how you can claim that either side is just grinding an ideological axe if you haven’t even taken the time to listen to what they’ve said.

If you take the time to actually *watch* the video, you’ll see that the people sponsoring the occasion have the speaker’s presentation slides for sale (no profits go to the speaker). Those slides are annotated with the source of the information presented on them so that people can see for themselves that the sources are valid and the information accurate. Even if you don’t want to watch the video so as to avoid listening to people’s “ideological axes” why not buy the slides and check the data for yourself?

Kevin | October 28th, 2009 at 3:43 pm

So now my not having watched this one video equals me never having listened to anything from that “side”?

I’ll say this much for you: at least you are consistent…

This may not register behind your ideological filter but I’m actually quite comfortable with the notion that a reigning scientific paradigm can be woefully wrong. John E. Mellish was my great-grandfather.

Tom | October 28th, 2009 at 4:11 pm

Well, at the risk of committing another logical fallacy, I have to agree with Brianna that given the fact that global warming is/was an article of faith for the left and a scam for the right, it could be just so much hooey. Any time you see all liberals taking one side of an issue and all conservatives taking the other side, with few agreed-upon facts to support either side, watch out. And watch your wallet.

Kevin | October 28th, 2009 at 4:43 pm

With all due respect, Tom, the notion that since conservatives have lined up to claim that global warming is a hoax, that therefore any and all claiming that it’s not a hoax are therefore liberals is about as glaring of a logical fallacy as can be had on this subject.

Glaciers (which have been monitored since the 1890s) around the world are, on the whole, melting at record rates. Those rates have increased since 2000. That’s neither “liberal” nor “conservative”. It’s just the facts. Yes, some here and there have increased their mass in recent years. But that doesn’t disprove or otherwise dismiss the overall global trend data that glaciers as a whole are melting at record rates.

Does that fact therefore mean that everything Al Gore has claimed is therefore legit? Of course not! But the notion that there is no global warming going on right now strikes me as simply out of touch with objective reality.

Similarly, Mary Matalin’s claim that the Earth has been cooling for the last 10 years is easily disproven with hard data from NASA and NOAA – as demonstrated in my earlier link. And, just as with the melting glaciers, the fact that she’s demonstrably wrong doesn’t somehow therefore verify all of the wild-eyed claims from the global warming prophets.

Seems to me that the preponderance of *objective* data indicates that global warming is a reality.

The question is… what do we make of it?

Is it abnormal as Al Gore claims? Or is it normal as Larry very reasonably suggested in the very first comment in this thread?

Brianna | October 28th, 2009 at 4:49 pm

“Of course I didn’t watch the video. And for the same reason that I didn’t watch Al Gore’s movie.”

“So now my not having watched this one video equals me never having listened to anything from that “side”?”

Well, since Monckton is on one side and Gore is on the other, that would include both sides. You explicitly stated that you were criticizing the video without watching it. You explicity stated that you criticized Gore without listening to him. They may well have ideological axes to grind, but since you have explicitly stated that you decided that before you even listened to them, I am rather surprised at the certainty of your conclusions.

Kevin | October 28th, 2009 at 5:46 pm

LOL – again with the fallacies, Brianna?

Since when do this one video from Monckton and the one movie from Gore comprise the totality of both sides???

Does my not watching the video logically imply that I’ve never, ever been exposed to anything from his side? No!

Does my not watching Gore’s movie logically imply that I’m blissfully unaware of his positions and have never, ever been exposed to anything from his side? No!

Hell, you can’t even draw a logical conclussion from what I’ve said! My statement, which you keep quoting, implies precisely ZERO “criticism” of either the video or Gore’s movie. What it does logically imply is that I’ve d-i-s-m-i-s-s-e-d Gore and Monckton as biased sources.

Which brings me back to the question I posed to Brian: “Do you know what a statisticulator is?”

For the edification of those not participating in this thread, a statisticulator is someone who lies with statistics. It doesn’t mean that the statistics are necessarily wrong or deceitful. It means rather that deceitful conclussions are being drawn from deliberately distorted statistics.

For example: A one year trend which unmistakably shows an overall increase might well contain any number of extremely short-term decreases. Stripping away the one year data to show only a decrease and then passing that off as being representative of the one year trend would be a classic example of lying with statistics. The decrease is there all right, there’s nothing untruthful about it. But it is NOT representative of the year’s overall trend and any suggestion that it is representative is an attempt to deceive.

The relevance here is that it’s perfectly reasonable to assume that both Gore and this other guy present some valid data but that I question the validity of the overall conclussions being drawn, based on what I see as their respective self-evident ideological axes.

Tom | October 28th, 2009 at 8:11 pm

Kevin, either I misexplained myself or you misunderstood me. I didn’t say or imply that since conservatives say global warming is a hoax, therefore those who say it’s not a hoax are liberals. That’s nonsense.

What I did say: “Any time you see all liberals taking one side of an issue and all conservatives taking the other side, with few agreed-upon facts to support either side, watch out.” To be a bit more clear, almost everyone who sees the world through liberal ideology believes in global warming as though it were a kind of religious faith. Conversely, those who see the world through conservative ideology almost all consider it a scam or a hoax, again as a kind of faith. The “watch out” part comes when political and economic policy is based on the ideology of the side which has the most votes in that kind of situation.

You can throw around factoids all you like. The conservative side will throw their factoids right back at you, and they’ll be just about equally convincing. We need to figure out what’s going on with science, not ideology. Until that happens, I’d prefer that we not destroy our economy and our entire way of life in trying to solve a problem that may not exist, may be better or worse than we think, or maybe be something we haven’t figured out yet.

Kevin | October 28th, 2009 at 11:35 pm

I take your point, Tom. And I agree with the main thrust of it, which is that science should be the arbitor not ideology.

However with respect to conservatives it seems to me that, as with government-run health care insurance, it is more a problem for American conservatives than for non-American conservatives. Which is to say that the Left/Right dichotomy on global warming is mostly an American phenomenon. Which seems to me to say more about our political culture than it does about global warming.

Brian | October 29th, 2009 at 1:26 am

“Of course I didn’t watch the video. And for the same reason that I didn’t watch Al Gore’s movie. Both have patently obvious axes to grind and therefore can’t be trusted as sources of objective facts.”

How on earth can you ascertain the veracity of facts if you do not even bother yourself to find out what they are?

Facts speak for themselves and are independant of ideology.

Try reading Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus by Ludwig Wittgenstein so that you will understand the nature of facts, not of opinions or jiggered statistics.

Brianna | October 29th, 2009 at 1:45 am

Kevin – you’re right, I should have included the disclaimer that you could be listening to other sources in my previous post. You probably won’t believe me, but I did consider it at the time. I turned it down because I was trying to keep the discussion confined to the sources in question. However, I still stick to the silly, stubborn idea think you should watch the movie before giving an opinion of it. Among other things, it spends a fair amount of time on the statistical lies you are discussing.

“Do you know what a statisticulator is?”

I do not want to tout my own horn or get into a contest, but engineering degrees are not handed out in cracker-jack boxes, nor do they go light on the math and science. I *have* actually taken statistics courses and performed work that depended on probability. The reason I don’t like that part of the job very much is because I know precisely how unreliable stats can be and how easily they can be manipulated (and that’s when the people who collect them are still hanging on to them, before the press gets their hooks in).

“My statement, which you keep quoting, implies precisely ZERO “criticism” of either the video or Gore’s movie. What it does logically imply is that I’ve d-i-s-m-i-s-s-e-d Gore and Monckton as biased sources.”

Dismissing someone as a biased source is a criticism of that source. If you had nothing critical to say about them, you’d watch them or at least keep your mouth shut.

Finale: The only reason I answered this comment was because you had a valid point when you said that I had indirectly dismissed the idea that you were looking at third-party sources from consideration. I am not going to reply to your posts again. Say it’s because I’ve backed down in the face of superior intellectual arguments, call me stupid and ignorant, crow about your victory; frankly I don’t care. But if you want to know the real reason, which I am honestly saying as tactfully as I can phrase it (though it might not sound that way, because I’ve never been very tactful), it is this: I don’t like people who make me bang my head against the wall.

Kevin | October 29th, 2009 at 11:32 am

Brianna, nobody can make you bang your head against the wall. You choose to do so according to your own rationale.

At the risk of pointing out the obvious… Dismissing someone as a biased source is a criticism of that source, not of the data (faux or real) presented by that source.

For example: Let’s say that I wanted to get into the legit, law-abiding debt collection business. Now, I could go have a chat with Guido the Mafia Don. It is certainly possible that the advice he would give would be useful for me setting up a legit, law-abiding debt collection business. But that doesn’t seem very likely so I would dismiss him as a desirable source of info on how to set up a legit, law-abiding debt collection business.

Brian, the Minnesota Free Market Institute is self-evidently a rightwing think-tank. They’re not going to invite someone to speak to their membership who won’t be preaching to the choir. The exact same goes for leftwing think tanks too, BTW. Which means that one can’t reasonably expect them to be an objective source. One may well get something close to the unvarnished truth from such a source. But would it be the *whole* truth or would it be a recitation of just those data points which seem to support the preconceived ideological conclussion? My money (all of it) says the latter.

doris | October 29th, 2009 at 4:36 pm

Kevin, I think you are my hero. I love people who make me bang my head, sometimes I bang some sense into it. Right on, Kevin.

Brian Bagent | October 29th, 2009 at 5:55 pm

Kevin, everybody that deals with the global warming issue has a dog in the hunt. I guess you should dismiss them all and go about your merry way as if nothing ever happened.

Oh, wait, maybe I’ll use your own rationalizations against you and dismiss your view point as politically tainted because you are on the left.

Anthropogenic ~~global warming~~ climate change is either true or not true. Those that believe in it are largely on the left, those that do not are largely on the right or libertarian. You can bet that everybody that derives money (largely in the form of government grants) from the support of the idea is on the political left.

Monckton’s video is productive in that he doesn’t merely dismiss the idea of anthropogenic climate change, he goes point by point on how the data collection of those who support the idea is flawed, and point by point on how the data are manipulated to produce the results that the climate change crowd wants everyone to see.

I’ll use an example from the book/movie “Jurassic Park” to illustrate flawed data collection (Monckton doesn’t use this example.). All around the island, the fictional company Ingen has sensors and cameras, and uses computer programs to track the number of animals of each different species. The software was written with the idea that some of the animals might die, not with the idea that the animals might somehow begin to procreate. Consequently, when the software counted the number of veloceraptors that had been hatched in the lab, it “concluded” that all was well.

The computer models that the global warming crowd uses are similarly flawed – the programs are producing the data that they expect to find, never mind that the data doesn’t match what is really occurring.

The flaw that he identifies in the computer models, every one of them, is the same flaw that I identified several months ago – we do not know all of the variables that account for climate change, and we do not know all of the upper and lower limits for the variables that we actually do know exist. Any data set produced by such an equation, or set of them, is worthless.

If Raytheon were to use software as flawed as the climate change crowd uses, NASA would never get a rocket off the launch pad or the USAF a missile off the wing. If Aon were to use software as flawed as the global warming crowd, many of their customers would go bankrupt (assuming they didn’t fire Aon first when they discovered the errant data sets). If Boeing were to use software as flawed as the global warming crowd, their planes wouldn’t fly.

Kevin | October 29th, 2009 at 6:44 pm

Brian, when you say that everyone who deals with this issue has a dog in the hunt do you mean to say that all the scientists who did work on this before it became a political football, as well as all who have done work on it since then, were all driven by ideology/politics to do that work. Or were you referring just to pundits? If the later then I agree at least in principle. If the former then I disagree and submit that it’s beyond pointless to even discuss the issue.

Brian | October 29th, 2009 at 10:50 pm

Perhaps the scientists that think global warming is rubbish have the same thoughts that I do: it isn’t real, as documented by mountains of evidence, and that those who assert that it is happening wish to grab power and money, and in so doing will trample our liberties and ruin western economies.

No one is apolitical. The scientists working on this understand the gravity of the work they are doing and know the implications of their work. Those on the left say “the sky is falling, the sky is falling, you HAVE to believe us.” The real scientists are saying “here are the facts, ascertain what you will.” Truth doesn’t require belief or faith or trust, all of which are being asked by leftist politicians and scientists.

And yes, it is apparent that even the scientists who first began to suggest this were about the politics of it, not the science. Those on the left came up with a conclusion and sought facts to buttress it. The other ones have looked at the facts and determined that do not represent anything of the sort that we have been told for the last 15 or 20 years.

Here’s an idea. Watch the video. If Monckton is in error or being deceitful and is playing fast and loose, rebut him (which is precisely what he has done with the “evidence” of global warming “data”).

Kevin | October 30th, 2009 at 12:38 am

I see. So, the scientists who agree with you are “real scientists” and the rest are all leftist political hacks.

Gee, why doesn’t that surprise me even a little bit?

Meanwhile, glaciers around the world continue to shrink at historic rates… which have increased since 2000.

Of course everybody knows that ice melts faster when the globe is cooling. And anyone who says otherwise is a leftist political hack… apparently.

doris | October 30th, 2009 at 10:01 am

If the left is fabricating facts, Brian, why would believe the right’s facts? Or anyone’s facts, for that matter? If we are to believe your facts and nobody else’s, what makes your facts right, literally, but we shouldn’t believe real scientists, before all the hoopla? Doesn’t set well with me, to believe a bunch of politicians and right-wingers instead of the real deals.

Brian Bagent | October 31st, 2009 at 12:12 am

Doris,

From the original article, all the way at the top:
All I ask is that you watch the video and think for yourself. What Monckton says doesn’t matter. What I say doesn’t matter. What you believe doesn’t matter. In the end, there is only what is the case (what is true as demonstrated by facts) and what is not the case. The truth doesn’t require belief, it can only be recognized or denied.

I would also add that facts do not require belief or faith – they stand or fall on their own merits.

Those on the left (the proponents of global warming, largely) are asking for trust. The rest of us are asking you to examine the facts and draw your own conclusion, to not be led around by the nose by people who stand to gain financially and politically by the continued hysteria.

doris | October 31st, 2009 at 10:10 am

I believe the facts do imply global warming, but I don’t have the scientific knowledge to interpret what this means to us. As you know, all people interpret the facts differently, with a lot of opinion thrown in. It all depends on whose facts you believe, facts can also be fabricated.

Brian | October 31st, 2009 at 11:58 pm

You do have the wherewithal to determine for yourself. And as I’ve said, facts do not require *belief*. Facts are true or not true, and the facts do not support anthropogenic global warming.

Facts cannot be fabricated. If “data” are fabricated, then are not facts.

For example, which of the following data collection methods would be a more accurate way to obtain data on ocean water temperature and salinity: placing about 2000 probes in various places around the world that ride along with the currents, continuously diving to about 1 mile depth and rising back to the surface, then diving and resurfacing and so no, then relaying that data to satellites and then to researchers; or ships dipping buckets into the ocean as they go, then sticking a thermometer in the water after it has been hauled up to the ship’s deck?

Both of those scenarios are happening right now. One of those two methods demonstrates that the oceans are cooling, and the other demonstrates warming. Which of those two methods produces more accurate data?