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I nominate the writer and Harvard MD Dr. Michael Chrichton as the most famous skeptic of the so called climate change fear mongering. I add key studies by leading climate scientists that support Crichton in is skepticism.Michael Crichton13,786 followersMichael Crichton (1942-2008) was one of the most successful novelists of his generation, admired for his meticulous scientific research and fast-paced narrative. He graduated summa cum laude and earned his MD from Harvard Medical School in 1969.HIS famous bestseller book, STATE OF FEAR is his case for skepticism on global warming in fictional form.Reviews“Provocative and controversial. [Crichton] marries compelling subject matter with edge-of-your-seat storytelling.” (USA Today)“In STATE OF FEAR, Michael Crichton delivers a lightning-paced technopolitical thriller...every bit as informative as it is entertaining.” (Wall Street Journal)“Fascinating for how Crichton was trying to make the very absence of fear spooky.” (San Francisco Chronicle)“There’s no one else like him…a fast, fun read.” (Weekly Standard)“This is definitely one for the Christmas list.” (National Review)“He imparts science while entertaining readers.” (Denver Post)“STATE OF FEAR is a valuable education in the guise of entertainment. Do yourself a favor and buy it.” (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)“The thrills of Crichton’s latest are interspersed with fascinating facts and data. Perhaps his most serious and important book yet.” (Booklist)“STATE OF FEAR is Michael Crichton’s best.” (http://Bookreporter.com)“Michael Crichton’s new book will appeal to your inner techie.” (Washington Post Book World)About the AuthorMichael Crichton (1942-2008) was the author of the bestselling novels The Terminal Man, The Great Train Robbery, Jurassic Park, Sphere, Disclosure, Prey, State of Fear, Next and Dragon Teeth, among many others. His books have sold more than 200 million copies worldwide, have been translated into forty languages, and have provided the basis for fifteen feature films. He wrote and directed Westworld, The Great Train Robbery, Runaway, Looker, Coma and created the hit television series ER. Crichton remains the only writer to have a number one book, movie, and TV show in the same year.Michael Crichton's 'Author's Message' from the book State of Fear:AUTHOR'S MESSAGEA novel such as State of Fear, in which so many divergent views are expressed, may lead the reader to wonder where, exactly, the author stands on these issues. I have been reading environmental texts for three years, in itself a hazardous undertaking. But I have had an opportunity to look at a lot of data, and to consider many points of view. I conclude:- We know astonishingly little about every aspect of the environment, from its past history, to its present state, to how to conserve and protect it. In every debate, all sides overstate the extent of existing knowledge and its degree of certainty.- Atmospheric carbon dioxide is increasing, and human activity is the probable cause.- We are also in the midst of a natural warming trend that began about 1850, as we emerged from a four-hundred-year cold spell known as the "Little Ice Age."- Nobody knows how much of the present warming trend might be a natural phenomenon.- Nobody knows how much of the present warming trend might be man-made.- Nobody knows how much warming will occur in the next century. The computer models vary by 400 percent, de facto proof that nobody knows. But if I had to guess-- the only thing anyone is doing, really-- I would guess the increase will be 0.812436 degrees C. There is no evidence that my guess about the state of the world one hundred years from now is any better or worse than anyone else's. (We can't "assess" the future, nor can we "predict" it. These are euphemisms. We can only guess. An informed guess is just a guess.)- I suspect that part of the observed surface warming will ultimately be attributable to human activity. I suspect that the principal human effect will come from land use, and that the atmospheric component will be minor.- Before making expensive policy decisions on the basis of climate models, I think it is reasonable to require that those models predict future temperatures accurately for a period of ten years. Twenty would be better.- I think for anyone to believe in impending resource scarcity, after two hundred years of such false alarms, is kind of weird. I don't know whether such a belief today is best ascribed to ignorance of history, sclerotic dogmatism, unhealthy love of Malthus, or simple pigheadedness, but it is evidently a hardy perennial in human calculation.- There are many reasons to shift away from fossil fuels, and we will do so in the next century without legislation, financial incentives, carbon-conservation programs, or the interminable yammering of fearmongers. So far as I know, nobody had to ban horse transport in the early twentieth century.- I suspect the people of 2100 will be much richer than we are, consume more energy, have a smaller global population, and enjoy more wilderness than we have today. I don't think we have to worry about them.- The current near-hysterical preoccupation with safety is at best a waste of resources and a crimp on the human spirit, and at worst an invitation to totalitarianism. Public education is desperately needed.- I conclude that most environmental "principles" (such as sustainable development or the precautionary principle) have the effect of preserving the economic advantages of the West and thus constitute modern imperialism toward the developing world. It is a nice way of saying, "We got ours and we don't want you to get yours, because you'll cause too much pollution."- The "precautionary principle," properly applied, forbids the precautionary principle. It is self-contradictory. The precautionary principle therefore cannot be spoken of in terms that are too harsh.- I believe people are well intentioned. But I have great respect for the corrosive influence of bias, systematic distortions of thought, the power of rationalization, the guises of self-interest, and the inevitability of unintended consequences.- I have more respect for people who change their views after acquiring new information than for those who cling to views they held thirty years ago. The world changes. Ideologues and zealots don't.- In the thirty-five-odd years since the environmental movement came into existence, science has undergone a major revolution. This revolution has brought new understanding of nonlinear dynamics, complex systems, chaos theory, catastrophe theory. It has transformed the way we think about evolution and ecology. Yet these no-longer-new ideas have hardly penetrated the thinking of environmental activists, which seems oddly fixed in the concepts and rhetoric of the 1970s.- We haven't the foggiest notion how to preserve what we term "wilderness," and we had better study it in the field and learn how to do so. I see no evidence that we are conducting such research in a humble, rational, and systematic way. I therefore hold little hope for wilderness management in the twenty-first century. I blame environmental organizations every bit as much as developers and strip miners. There is no difference in outcomes between greed and incompetence.- We need a new environmental movement, with new goals and new organizations. We need more people working in the field, in the actual environment, and fewer people behind computer screens. We need more scientists and many fewer lawyers.- We cannot hope to manage a complex system such as the environment through litigation. We can only change its state temporarily-- usually by preventing something-- with eventual results that we cannot predict and ultimately cannot control.- Nothing is more inherently political than our shared physical environment, and nothing is more ill served by allegiance to a single political party. Precisely because the environment is shared it cannot be managed by one faction according to its own economic or aesthetic preferences. Sooner or later, the opposing faction will take power, and previous policies will be reversed. Stable management of the environment requires recognition that all preferences have their place: snowmobilers and fly fishermen, dirt bikers and hikers, developers and preservationists. These preferences are at odds, and their incompatibility cannot be avoided. But resolving incompatible goals is a true function of politics.- We desperately need a nonpartisan, blinded funding mechanism to conduct research to determine appropriate policy. Scientists are only too aware whom they are working for. Those who fund research-- whether a drug company, a government agency, or an environmental organization-- always have a particular outcome in mind. Research funding is almost never open-ended or open-minded. Scientists know that continued funding depends on delivering the results the funders desire. As a result, environmental organization "studies" are every bit as biased and suspect as industry "studies." Government "studies" are similarly biased according to who is running the department or administration at the time. No faction should be given a free pass.- I am certain there is too much certainty in the world.- I personally experience a profound pleasure being in nature. My happiest days each year are those I spend in wilderness. I wish natural environments to be preserved for future generations. I am not satisfied they will be preserved in sufficient quantities, or with sufficient skill. I conclude that the "exploiters of the environment" include environmental organizations, government organizations, and big business. All have equally dismal track records.- Everybody has an agenda. Except me.AMAZONDavid W. Wildeboer4.0 out of 5 starsRead this book - no matter what side of the debate you're onReviewed in Canada on May 6, 2005Verified PurchaseOne of the masters of the science type thriller (the Jurassic Park books, Timeline, etc.) returns with this compelling and well researched thriller that challenges the bedrock upon which the environmental movement and the global warming debate stand. Using well thought out and documented arguments, Crichton questions the present infatuation with the fear of global warming. As the thriller suggests, anyone with a view contrary to the media and environmental elite is instantly discredited. Using a radical environmental organization's (one that really exists) plans to further their agenda allows the author to expound in laymen's terms on the arguments for (very little reliable and reproducible evidence) global warming and those against it.Crichton also gives the reader a lesson on the pervasiveness of the media in our society and how it can drive opinion even when the evidence isn't there. Dr. Crichton has written an engrossing thriller that can be enjoyed for the thrills alone, yet he's also made an important argument about not blindly believing "everything" but instead, checking the evidence for oneself.No matter what side of the debate about the theory of "global warming" (remember, it is only a theory, it's not a proven scientific fact) and climate change one is on, this book deserves a read. I challenge everyone, no matter how set in your beliefs you are, to read this with skepticism, check out the references and do the research yourself and prove Crichton wrong. Go for it!AMAZONPopular opinions are almost always wrong. That's the theme of this book. The point is made in the context of describing how global warming, as perceived by the public and media, is different from what scientists are describing. Dr. Crichton argues through his story that we can waste a lot of time and resources on popular delusions, and we need to get our facts right. His appendix I on the dangers of politicized science is something everyone should read. The eugenics example is a chilling one.AMAZONMay 24, 2008Brian rated it it was amazing · review of another editionShelves: fiction, 2009"So what [we:] need is to structure the information so that whatever kind of weather occurs, it always confirms your message. That's the virtue of shifting the focus to abrupt climate change. It enables [us:] to use everything that happens. There will always be floods, and freezing storms, and cyclones, and hurricanes. These events will always get airtime. And in every instance, [we:] can claim it is an example of global warming. So the message gets reinforced. The urgency is increased."This from a PR person in the book that works for a large and mainstream environmentalist group. But it could have been spoken by any of the ideologues of the movement as they switch from just global warming to climate change, and try to capitalize on every disaster as a reason for their existence.As I mentioned in one of my updates, this is my first try at a Michael Crichton book and I found it well-informed and fast-paced. The plot is plausible enough (at least until the end) and serves as a rebuttal to the claims of the power hungry environmentalist crowd. It is his case for skepticism on global warming in fictional form.A key graph:"Has it occurred to you how astonishing the culture of Western society really is? Industrialized nations provide their citizens with unprecedented safety, health, and comfort. Average life spans increased fifty percent in the last century. Yet modern people live in abject fear. They are afraid of strangers, of disease, of crime, of the environment. They are afraid of the homes they live in, the food they eat, the technology that surrounds them. They are in a particular panic over the things they can't even see--germs, chemicals, additives, pollutants. They are timid, nervous, fretful, and depressed. And even more amazingly, they are convinced that the environment of the entire plant is being destroyed around them. Remarkable!"State of Fear GOODREADSSpiritual Ecology Versus ScienceEnvironmentalism as Religion by Michael CrichtonOne of the defining features of religion is that your beliefs are not troubled by facts, because they have nothing to do with facts.Michael CrichtonIn 2003 Michael Crichton sent the Ecology industry into a rage by exposing them as a religion. He can get away with it because he has both the science background and enough money not to be silenced by the eco-lobby. In fact environmentalism is as much a fundamentalist' religion as that of Pat Robertson. He is correct about the religious undertones, but it's also a political movement as he points out.In 2008 global warming has fallen off the radar as the presidential election, high energy costs, and the Wall Street meltdown have dominated the news. But this one article seems to have been left out of the discussion. Besides reports of such record cold in Mongolia killing people and livestock, the December 19, 2007 Washington Times reports:"In Buenos Aires (Argentina), snow fell for the first time since the year 1918. Dozens of homeless people died from exposure. In Peru, 200 people died from the cold...(in 2007) Johannesburg, South Africa, had the first significant snowfall in 26 years. Australia...New Zealand...weather turned so cold..."Remarks to the Commonwealth Club by Michael Crichton San Francisco September 15, 2003 (Extract)I have been asked to talk about what I consider the most important challenge facing mankind, and I have a fundamental answer. The greatest challenge facing mankind is the challenge of distinguishing reality from fantasy, truth from propaganda. Perceiving the truth has always been a challenge to mankind, but in the information age (or as I think of it, the disinformation age) it takes on a special urgency and importance.We must daily decide whether the threats we face are real, whether the solutions we are offered will do any good, whether the problems we're told exist are in fact real problems, or non-problems. Every one of us has a sense of the world, and we all know that this sense is in part given to us by what other people and society tell us; in part generated by our emotional state, which we project outward; and in part by our genuine perceptions of reality. In short, our struggle to determine what is true is the struggle to decide which of our perceptions are genuine, and which are false because they are handed down, or sold to us, or generated by our own hopes and fears.As an example of this challenge, I want to talk today about environmentalism. And in order not to be misunderstood, I want it perfectly clear that I believe it is incumbent on us to conduct our lives in a way that takes into account all the consequences of our actions, including the consequences to other people, and the consequences to the environment. I believe it is important to act in ways that are sympathetic to the environment, and I believe this will always be a need, carrying into the future.I believe the world has genuine problems and I believe it can and should be improved. But I also think that deciding what constitutes responsible action is immensely difficult, and the consequences of our actions are often difficult to know in advance. I think our past record of environmental action is discouraging, to put it mildly, because even our best intended efforts often go awry. But I think we do not recognize our past failures, and face them squarely. And I think I know why.I studied anthropology in college, and one of the things I learned was that certain human social structures always reappear. They can't be eliminated from society. One of those structures is religion. Today it is said we live in a secular society in which many people---the best people, the most enlightened people---do not believe in any religion. But I think that you cannot eliminate religion from the psyche of mankind. If you suppress it in one form, it merely re-emerges in another form. You can not believe in God, but you still have to believe in something that gives meaning to your life, and shapes your sense of the world. Such a belief is religious.Today, one of the most powerful religions in the Western World is environmentalism. Environmentalism seems to be the religion of choice for urban atheists. Why do I say it's a religion? Well, just look at the beliefs. If you look carefully, you see that environmentalism is in fact a perfect 21st century remapping of traditional Judeo-Christian beliefs and myths.There's an initial Eden, a paradise, a state of grace and unity with nature, there's a fall from grace into a state of pollution as a result of eating from the tree of knowledge, and as a result of our actions there is a judgment day coming for us all. We are all energy sinners, doomed to die, unless we seek salvation, which is now called sustainability. Sustainability is salvation in the church of the environment. Just as organic food is its communion, that pesticide-free wafer that the right people with the right beliefs, imbibe.Eden, the fall of man, the loss of grace, the coming doomsday---these are deeply held mythic structures. They are profoundly conservative beliefs. They may even be hard-wired in the brain, for all I know. I certainly don't want to talk anybody out of them, as I don't want to talk anybody out of a belief that Jesus Christ is the son of God who rose from the dead. But the reason I don't want to talk anybody out of these beliefs is that I know that I can't talk anybody out of them. These are not facts that can be argued. These are issues of faith.And so it is, sadly, with environmentalism. Increasingly it seems facts aren't necessary, because the tenets of environmentalism are all about belief. It's about whether you are going to be a sinner, or saved. Whether you are going to be one of the people on the side of salvation, or on the side of doom. Whether you are going to be one of us, or one of them.Am I exaggerating to make a point? I am afraid not. Because we know a lot more about the world than we did forty or fifty years ago. And what we know now is not so supportive of certain core environmental myths, yet the myths do not die. Let's examine some of those beliefs.There is no Eden. There never was. What was that Eden of the wonderful mythic past? Is it the time when infant mortality was 80%, when four children in five died of disease before the age of five? When one woman in six died in childbirth? When the average lifespan was 40, as it was in America a century ago. When plagues swept across the planet, killing millions in a stroke. Was it when millions starved to death? Is that when it was Eden?...In short, the romantic view of the natural world as a blissful Eden is only held by people who have no actual experience of nature. People who live in nature are not romantic about it at all. They may hold spiritual beliefs about the world around them, they may have a sense of the unity of nature or the aliveness of all things...If Eden is a fantasy that never existed, and mankind wasn't ever noble and kind and loving, if we didn't fall from grace, then what about the rest of the religious tenets? What about salvation, sustainability, and judgment day? What about the coming environmental doom from fossil fuels and global warming, if we all don't get down on our knees and conserve every day?Well, it's interesting. You may have noticed that something has been left off the doomsday list, lately. Although the preachers of environmentalism have been yelling about population for fifty years, over the last decade world population seems to be taking an unexpected turn. Fertility rates are falling almost everywhere.As a result, over the course of my lifetime the thoughtful predictions for total world population have gone from a high of 20 billion, to 15 billion, to 11 billion (which was the UN estimate around 1990) to now 9 billion, and soon, perhaps less. There are some who think that world population will peak in 2050 and then start to decline. There are some who predict we will have fewer people in 2100 than we do today.Is this a reason to rejoice, to say halleluiah? Certainly not. Without a pause, we now hear about the coming crisis of world economy from a shrinking population. We hear about the impending crisis of an aging population. Nobody anywhere will say that the core fears expressed for most of my life have turned out not to be true...Okay, so, the preachers made a mistake. They got one prediction wrong; they're human. So what. Unfortunately, it's not just one prediction. It's a whole slew of them. We are running out of oil. (Note: oil has fallen to $45 a barrel June 2017) We are running out of all natural resources. Paul Ehrlich: 60 million Americans will die of starvation in the 1980s. Forty thousand species become extinct every year. (Ehrlich is still at it in 2017. See There's No Man-Made Global Mass Extinction.)Half of all species on the planet will be extinct by 2000. And on and on and on. With so many past failures, you might think that environmental predictions would become more cautious. But not if it's a religion. Remember, the nut on the sidewalk carrying the placard that predicts the end of the world doesn't quit when the world doesn't end on the day he expects.He just changes his placard, sets a new doomsday date, and goes back to walking the streets. One of the defining features of religion is that your beliefs are not troubled by facts, because they have nothing to do with facts....I can cite the appropriate journal articles not in whacko magazines, but in the most prestigious science journals, such as Science and Nature. But such references probably won't impact more than a handful of you, because the beliefs of a religion are not dependant on facts, but rather are matters of faith. Unshakeable belief.See part 2 Religious Fundamentalism Explained by Michael Crichton.Common Sense Environmentalism (Archive)Spiritual Ecology Versus ScienceDr. James Hansen Paid EnvironmentalistGreen Religion Won't Save AppalachiaHow Ecological Homeostasis and Hysteresis Regulate ClimateMichael Crichton Speech - Environmentalism as ReligionDissecting Al Gore's Book Earth in the BalancePostmodernism Attacks Reason, Science, and CultureAges of Gaia Writer James Lovelock Sounds an AlarmWriter James Lovelock Backtracks on Revenge of GaiaHypsithermal Warming Spreads CivilizationShockingly Rapid Climatic Shifts are RealBikini Atoll Recovery From Nuclear BlastsNASA says Earth Going GreenerClimate change changes history:Fall of the Late Roman EmpireEnd of the Vikings in GreenlandLost Colony of Roanoke IslandWhale Fossils Unlock the History of the North[ Challenge to Atheists 1 ] [ Challenge to Atheists 2 ][ Challenge to Atheists 3 ] [ Challenge to Atheists 4 ][ Challenge to Atheists 5 ]Environmental Religion by Michael CrichtonEnvironmental Religion by Michael Crichton“The Climate Scientists' Register“We, the undersigned, having assessed the relevant scientific evidence, do not find convincing support for the hypothesis that human emissions of carbon dioxide are causing, or will in the foreseeable future cause, dangerous global warming."Click on country name in the following list to see endorsers from that nation:Algéria (1 endorser), Australia (8), Bulgaria (1), Canada (17), Denmark (1),Estonia (1), Finland(1), France (1), Germany (4), Greece (1), India (3),Italy (3), Luxembourg (1), Mexico (1), New Zealand (6), Norway (5),Poland (3), Russia (5), South Africa (1), Sweden(8), United Kingdom (6),United States of America (64).CAMILLE PAGLIAOCTOBER 10, 2007 11:19AM (UTC)I too grew up in upstate New York. I am an environmental groundwater geologist (who almost majored in fine arts). Your take on the Al Gore/global warming pseudo-catastrophe was right on target. Anyone can read up on Holocene geology and see that climate changes are caused by polar wandering and magnetic reversals. It is entertaining, yet sad to read bloviage from Leonardo DiCaprio, who is so self-centered that he thinks the earth's history and climate is a function of his short personal stay on this planet. Still he, Al Gore, Prince Charles and so on, ad nauseam, continue with their jet-set lifestyles. What hypocrisy!Thank you for your input on the mass hysteria over global warming. The simplest facts about geology seem to be missing from the mental equipment of many highly educated people these days. There is far too much credulity placed in fancy-pants, speculative computer modeling about future climate change. Furthermore, hand-wringing media reports about hotter temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere are rarely balanced by acknowledgment of the recent cold waves in South Africa and Australia, the most severe in 30 years.Where are the intellectuals in this massive attack of groupthink? Inert, passive and cowardly, the lot of them. True intellectuals would be alarmed and repelled by the heavy fog of dogma that now hangs over the debate about climate change. More skeptical voices need to be heard. Why are liberals abandoning this issue to the right wing, which is successfully using it to contrast conservative rationality with liberal emotionalism? The environmental movement, whose roots are in nature-worshipping Romanticism, is vitally important to humanity, but it can only be undermined by rampant propaganda and half-truths.https://www.salon.com/2007/10/10/britney/Camille Paglia is a second-wave feminist and an American academic specializing in literature and culture, particularly topics around gender, sex, and sexuality. She has taught at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia since 1984, but is better known for her books and journalism. In 2005 she was voted #20 on a list of top public intellectuals by Prospect and Foreign Policy magazines.[Here are details of leading climate scientists skeptical of Anthropogenic Global Warming as a valid hypothesis. The list includes peer reviewed papers in major science journals. I AM UNAWARE OF ANY ANY PEER REVIEWED RESEARCH SUPPORTING THE IPCC AGW HYPOTHESIS. For example, here is very recent published research in the Environment Pollution Climate Change Journal“Hence, there are no greenhouse gases in reality – as in, gases that can cause warming,” Nikolov said when asked to explain the paper in layman’s terms.“Humans cannot in principle affect the global climate through industrial emissions of CO2, methane and other similar gases or via changes in land use,” he added. “All observed climatic changes have natural causes that are completely outside of human control.”For the first time, Nikolov said, there is now empirical evidence from NASA data that the greenhouse effect of the atmosphere is not caused by the trapping of heat, but by the force of atmospheric pressure.The pressure is the weight of the atmosphere, he added.Citation: Nikolov N, Zeller K (2017) New Insights on the Physical Nature of the Atmospheric Greenhouse Effect Deduced from an Empirical Planetary Temperature Model. Environment Pollution Climate Change Journal 1: 112.See more detail below.The Chinese scholars have addressed the issue head on in research published by the prestigious NATURE JOURNALinstrumental temperature recordNew research confirms the view of leading climate scientists and scholars that trace amounts of Co2 emissions are not destabilizing the planet. Co2 is essential plant food and therefore green energy.The authors Geli Wang & Peicai Yang and Xiuji Zhou are scientists at the CHINESE ACADEMY OF SCIENCE andChinese Academy of Meteorological Sciences, Beijing, China 中国气象科学研究院ANTHROPOGENIC (human activity). The driving forces are“the El Niño–Southern Oscillation cycle and the Hale sunspot cycle, respectively.”The title of the study published in the prestigious NATURE Journal is: Identification of the driving forces of climate change using the longest instrumental temperature recordhttps://www.nature.com/articles/...Their study confirms THE DRIVING FORCES OF GLOBAL WARMING AND CLIMATE CHANGE ARE NATURALThe “driving forces” of climate change are natural and not Co2 plant food emissions. A new Chinese study confirms climate change comes from natural cycles. This research is based on the longest actual temperature data of more than 400 years from 1659 to 2013, including the period of anthropogenic warming.AbstractThe identification of causal effects is a fundamental problem in climate change research. Here, a new perspective on climate change causality is presented using the central England temperature (CET) dataset, the longest instrumental temperature record, and a combination of slow feature analysis and wavelet analysis. The driving forces of climate change were investigated and the results showed two independent degrees of freedom —a 3.36-year cycle and a 22.6-year cycle, which seem to be connected to the El Niño–Southern Oscillation cycle and the Hale sunspot cycle, respectively. [Emphasis added]. Moreover, these driving forces were modulated in amplitude by signals with millennial timescales.MY PUBLISHED COMMENTJames Matkin 
This Chinese research is very relevant and should make climate alarmists pause in their crusade against Co2 emissions from fossil fuels. Far too much focus on Co2 like a one trick pony in a big tent circus where solar radiation is a more compelling show. The thrust of recent research has demonstrated that climate changes continually and is determined by natural forces that humans have no significant control over. Many leading scientists have presented research of other "driving forces" and cautioned against the arrogance of many that "the science is settled." See Judith Curry of the Georgia Institute of Technology and blogger at Climate Etc. talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about climate change. Curry argues that climate change is a "wicked problem" with a great deal of uncertainty surrounding the expected damage as well as the political and technical challenges of dealing with the phenomenon. She emphasizes the complexity of the climate and how much of the basic science remains incomplete. The conversation closes with a discussion of how concerned citizens can improve their understanding of climate change and climate change policy.
http://www.econtalk.org/arc...https://www.nature.com/articles/...This peer reviewed from German scientists demolishs the false idea of a greenhouse effect heating the planet with minute amounts of Co2 plant food emissions from fossil fuels.GERMAN CLIMATE RESEARCH PAPERFalsification Of The Atmospheric CO2 Greenhouse Effects Within The Frame Of PhysicsGerhard Gerlich, Ralf D. Tscheuschner(Submitted on 8 Jul 2007 (v1), last revised 4 Mar 2009 (this version, v4))The atmospheric greenhouse effect, an idea that many authors trace back to the traditional works of Fourier (1824), Tyndall (1861), and Arrhenius (1896), and which is still supported in global climatology, essentially describes a fictitious mechanism, in which a planetary atmosphere acts as a heat pump driven by an environment that is radiatively interacting with but radiatively equilibrated to the atmospheric system. According to the second law of thermodynamics such a planetary machine can never exist. Nevertheless, in almost all texts of global climatology and in a widespread secondary literature it is taken for granted that such mechanism is real and stands on a firm scientific foundation. In this paper the popular conjecture is analyzed and the underlying physical principles are clarified. By showing that (a) there are no common physical laws between the warming phenomenon in glass houses and the fictitious atmospheric greenhouse effects, (b) there are no calculations to determine an average surface temperature of a planet, (c) the frequently mentioned difference of 33 degrees Celsius is a meaningless number calculated wrongly, (d) the formulas of cavity radiation are used inappropriately, (e) the assumption of a radiative balance is unphysical, (f) thermal conductivity and friction must not be set to zero, the atmospheric greenhouse conjecture is falsified.115 pages, 32 figures, 13 tables (some typos corrected)Atmospheric and Oceanic Physics (http://physics.ao-ph)Journal reference: Int.J.Mod.Phys.B23:275-364,2009DOI: 10.1142/S021797920904984XCite as: arXiv:0707.1161 [http://physics.ao-ph](or arXiv:0707.1161v4 [http://physics.ao-ph] for this version)PEER REVIEWIzvestiya, Atmospheric and Oceanic Physics is a peer reviewed journal. We use a double blind peer review format. Our team of reviewers includes 75 reviewers, both internal and external (90%). The average period from submission to first decision in 2017 was 30 days, and that from first decision to acceptance was 30 days. The rejection rate for submitted manuscripts in 2017 was 20%. The final decision on the acceptance of an article for publication is made by the Editorial Board.Henrik Svensmark: While the Sun Sleeps“In fact global warming has stopped and a cooling is beginning. No climate model has predicted a cooling of the Earth – quite the contrary. And this means that the projections of future climate are unreliable,” writes Henrik Svensmark.A brilliant Danish scientist PROF HENRIK SVENSMARK explained this reality as follows:Svensmark: “global warming stopped and a cooling is beginning” – “enjoy global warming while it lasts”Anthony Watts / September 10, 2009While the sun sleepsTranslation approved by Henrik SvensmarkWhile the Sun sleepsHenrik Svensmark, Professor, Technical University of Denmark, CopenhagenThe star that keeps us alive has, over the last few years, been almost free of sunspots, which are the usual signs of the Sun’s magnetic activity. Last week [4 September 2009] the scientific team behind the satellite SOHO (Solar and Heliospheric Observatory) reported, “It is likely that the current year’s number of blank days will be the longest in about 100 years.” Everything indicates that the Sun is going into some kind of hibernation, and the obvious question is what significance that has for us on Earth.If you ask the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) which represents the current consensus on climate change, the answer is a reassuring “nothing”. But history and recent research suggest that is probably completely wrong. Why? Let’s take a closer look.2. Scrutinizing the atmospheric greenhouse effect and its climatic impactDOI: 10.4236/ns.2011.312124 15,065 Downloads 36,460 Views CitationsGerhard Kramm, Ralph DlugiABSTRACTIn this paper, we scrutinize two completely different explanations of the so-called atmospheric greenhouse effect: First, the explanation of the American Meteorological Society (AMS) and the World Meteorological Organization (W?MO) quan- tifying this effect by two characteristic temperatures, secondly, the explanation of Ramanathan et al. [1] that is mainly based on an energy-flux budget for the Earth-atmosphere system. Both explanations are related to the global scale. In addition, we debate the meaning of climate, climate change, climate variability and climate variation to outline in which way the atmospheric greenhouse effect might be responsible for climate change and climate variability, respectively. In doing so, we distinguish between two different branches of climatology, namely 1) physical climatology in which the boundary conditions of the Earth-atmosphere system play the dominant role and 2) statistical climatology that is dealing with the statistical description of fortuitous weather events which had been happening in climate periods; each of them usually comprises 30 years. Based on our findings, we argue that 1) the so-called atmospheric greenhouse effect cannot be proved by the statistical description of fortuitous weather events that took place in a climate period, 2) the description by AMS and W?MO has to be discarded because of physical reasons, 3) energy-flux budgets for the Earth-atmosphere system do not provide tangible evidence that the atmospheric greenhouse effect does exist. Because of this lack of tangible evidence it is time to acknowledge that the atmospheric greenhouse effect and especially its climatic impact are based on meritless conjectures. [Emphasis added]KEYWORDSPhysical Climatology; Statistical Climatology; Atmospheric Greenhouse Effect; Earth-Atmosphere SystemCite this paperKramm, G. and Dlugi, R. (2011) Scrutinizing the atmospheric greenhouse effect and its climatic impact. Natural Science, 3, 971-998. doi: 10.4236/ns.2011.312124.“In fact global warming has stopped and a cooling is beginning. No climate model has predicted a cooling of the Earth – quite the contrary. And this means that the projections of future climate are unreliable,” writes Henrik Svensmark.Environment Pollution andClimate Change JOURNALNew Insights on the Physical Nature of the Atmospheric GreenhouseEffect Deduced from an Empirical Planetary Temperature ModelNed Nikolov* and Karl ZellerAbstractA recent study has revealed that the Earth’s natural atmospheric greenhouse effect is around 90 K or about 2.7 times stronger than assumed for the past 40 years. A thermal enhancement of such a magnitude cannot be explained with the observed amount of outgoing infrared long-wave radiation absorbed by the atmosphere (i.e. ≈ 158 W m-2), thus requiring a re-examination of the underlying Greenhouse theory. We present here a new investigation into the physical nature of the atmospheric thermal effect using a novel empirical approach toward predicting the Global Mean Annual near-surface equilibrium Temperature (GMAT) of rocky planets with diverse atmospheres. Our method utilizes Dimensional Analysis (DA) applied to a vetted set of observed data from six celestial bodies representing a broad range of physical environments in our Solar System, i.e. Venus, Earth, the Moon, Mars, Titan (a moon of Saturn), and Triton (a moon of Neptune). Twelve relationships (models) suggested by DA are explored via non-linear regression analyses that involve dimensionless products comprised of solar irradiance, greenhouse-gas partial pressure/density and total atmospheric pressure/density as forcing variables, and two temperature ratios as dependent variables. One non-linear regression model is found to statistically outperform the rest by a wide margin. Our analysis revealed that GMATs of rocky planets with tangible atmospheres and a negligible geothermal surface heating can accurately be predicted over a broad range of conditions using only two forcing variables: top-of-the-atmosphere solar irradiance and total surface atmospheric pressure. The hereto discovered interplanetary pressure-temperature relationship is shown to be statistically robust while describing a smooth physical continuum without climatic tipping points. This continuum fully explains the recently discovered 90 K thermal effect of Earth’s atmosphere. The new model displays characteristics of an emergent macro-level thermodynamic relationship heretofore unbeknown to science that has important theoretical implications. A key entailment from the model is that the atmospheric ‘greenhouse effect’ currently viewed as a radiative phenomenon is in fact an adiabatic (pressure-induced) thermal enhancement analogous to compression heating and independent of atmospheric composition. Consequently, the global down-welling long-wave flux presently assumed to drive Earth’s surface warming appears to be a product of the air temperature set by solar heating and atmospheric pressure. In other words, the so-called ‘greenhouse back radiation’ is globally a result of the atmospheric thermal effect rather than a cause for it. Our empirical model has also fundamental implications for the role of oceans, water vapour, and planetary albedo in global climate. Since produced by a rigorous attempt to describe planetary temperatures in the context of a cosmic continuum using an objective analysis of vetted observations from across the Solar System, these findings call for a paradigm shift in our understanding of the atmospheric ‘greenhouse effect’ as a fundamental property of climate.Received November 11, 2016;Accepted February 06, 2017;Citation: Nikolov N, Zeller K (2017) New Insights on the Physical Nature of the Atmospheric Greenhouse Effect Deduced from an Empirical Planetary Temperature Model. Environment Pollution Climate Change Journal 1: 112.https://www.researchgate.net/pro...STUDY BLOWS 'GREENHOUSE THEORY OUT OF THE WATER''All observed climatic changes have natural causes completely outside of human control'Published: 07/08/2017 at 8:53 PMRead more at Study blows ‘greenhouse theory out of the water’ - WNDBOZEMAN, Mont. – A new scientific paper contends the entire foundation of the man-made global-warming theory – the assumption that greenhouse gases warm the atmosphere by trapping heat – is wrong.If confirmed, the study’s findings would crush the entire “climate change” movement to restrict CO2 emissions, the authors assertSome experts contacted by WND criticized the paper, while others advised caution.Still others suggested that the claimed discovery represents a massive leap forward in human understanding – a “new paradigm.”The paper argues that concentrations of CO2 and other supposed “greenhouse gases” in the atmosphere have virtually no effect on the earth’s temperature.They conclude the entire greenhouse gas theory is incorrect.Instead, the earth’s “greenhouse” effect is a function of the sun and atmospheric pressure, which results from gravity and the mass of the atmosphere, rather than the amount of greenhouse gases such as CO2 and water vapor in the atmosphere.The same is true for other planets and moons with a hard surface, the authors contend, pointing to the temperature and atmospheric data of various celestial bodies collected by NASA.So precise is the formula, the authors of the paper told WND, that, by using it, they were able to correctly predict the temperature of other celestial bodies not included in their original analysis.The paperThe paper, published recently in the journal “Environment Pollution and Climate Change,” was written by Ned Nikolov, a Ph.D. in physical science, and Karl Zeller, retired Ph.D. research meteorologist.The prevailing theory on the earth’s temperature is that heat from the sun enters the atmosphere, and then greenhouse gases such as CO2, methane and water vapor trap part of that energy by preventing it from escaping back into space.That theory, which underpins the anthropogenic global-warming hypothesis and the climate models used by the United Nations, was first proposed and developed in the 19th century.However, the experiments on which it was based involved glass boxes that retain heat by preventing the mixing of air inside the box with air outside the box.The truth about global warming is no further than the WND Superstore, where “Climategate,” “The Greatest Hoax,” and more publications are available.The experiment is not analogous to what occurs in the real atmosphere, which does not have walls or a lid, according to Nikolov and Zeller.The new paper, headlined “New Insights on the Physical Nature of the Atmospheric Greenhouse Effect Deduced from an Empirical Planetary Temperature Model,” argues that greenhouse theory is incorrect.“This was not a pre-conceived conclusion, but a result from an objective analysis of vetted NASA observations,” Nikolov told WND.The real mechanisms that control the temperature of the planet, they say, are the sun’s energy and the air pressure of the atmosphere. The same applies to other celestial bodies, according to the scientists behind the paper.To understand the phenomena, the authors used three planets – Venus, Earth and Mars – as well as three natural satellites: the Moon of Earth, Titan of Saturn and Triton of Neptune.They chose the celestial bodies based on three criteria: having a solid surface, representation of a broad range of environments, and the existence of reliable data on temperature, atmospheric composition and air pressure.“Our analysis revealed a poor relationship between global mean annual temperature] and the amount of greenhouse gases in planetary atmospheres across a broad range of environments in the Solar System,” the paper explains.“This is a surprising result from the standpoint of the current Greenhouse theory, which assumes that an atmosphere warms the surface of a planet (or moon) via trapping of radiant heat by certain gases controlling the atmospheric infrared optical depth,” the study continues.image:The paper outlines four possible explanations for those observations, and concludes that the most plausible was that air pressure is responsible for the greenhouse effect on a celestial body.In essence, what is commonly known as the atmospheric “greenhouse” effect is in fact a form of compression heating caused by total air pressure, the authors told WND in a series of e-mails and phone interviews, comparing the mechanics of it to the compression in a diesel engine that ignites the fuel.”And that effect is completely independent of the so-called “greenhouse gases” and the chemical composition of the atmosphere, they added.“Hence, there are no greenhouse gases in reality – as in, gases that can cause warming,” Nikolov said when asked to explain the paper in layman’s terms.“Humans cannot in principle affect the global climate through industrial emissions of CO2, methane and other similar gases or via changes in land use,” he added. “All observed climatic changes have natural causes that are completely outside of human control.”For the first time, Nikolov said, there is now empirical evidence from NASA data that the greenhouse effect of the atmosphere is not caused by the trapping of heat, but by the force of atmospheric pressure.The pressure is the weight of the atmosphere, he added.And the combination of gravity and the mass of the atmosphere explains why the Earth, for example, is warmer than the moon.“The moon receives about the same amount of heat from the sun as Earth, yet it is 90 degrees [Celsius] colder than the Earth, because it has no atmosphere,” Nikolov explained.Read more at https://www.wnd.com/2017/07/study-blows-greenhouse-theory-out-of-the-water/#FPuf1lW59KOtRBxu.99“In fact global warming has stopped and a cooling is beginning. No climate model has predicted a cooling of the Earth – quite the contrary. And this means that the projections of future climate are unreliable,” writes Henrik Svensmark.Leading climate scientists who doubt the science of the IPCC and Al Gore alarmism.Nobel Laureate in Physics Dr. Ivar Giaever; "Global Warming is Pseudoscience"MIT Professor Richard Lindzen and his recent lecture:ConclusionSo there you have it. An implausible conjecture backed by false evidence and repeated incessantly has become politically correct ‘knowledge,’ and is used to promote the overturn of industrial civilization. What we will be leaving our grandchildren is not a planet damaged by industrial progress, but a record of unfathomable silliness as well as a landscape degraded by rusting wind farms and decaying solar panel arrays. False claims about 97% agreement will not spare us, but the willingness of scientists to keep mum is likely to much reduce trust in and support for science. Perhaps this won’t be such a bad thing after all – certainly as concerns ‘official’ science.There is at least one positive aspect to the present situation. None of the proposed policies will have much impact on greenhouse gases. Thus we will continue to benefit from the one thing that can be clearly attributed to elevated carbon dioxide: namely, its effective role as a plant fertilizer, and reducer of the drought vulnerability of plants. Meanwhile, the IPCC is claiming that we need to prevent another 0.5◦C of warming, although the 1◦C that has occurred so far has been accompanied by the greatest increase in human welfare in history.Notes1. ‘This is the first time in the history of mankind that we are setting ourselves the task of intentionally, within a defined period of time, to change the economic development model that has been reigning for at least 150 years, since the Industrial Revolution.’PDF version of this lecture: https://www.thegwpf.org/content/...

Legislators should approach so called climate change with the great skepticism that it deserves and leave science to the scientists without political interference."The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus. There is no such thing as consensus science. If it’s consensus, it isn’t science. If it’s science, it isn’t consensus." - Michael CrichtonGovernment science has a terrible history of creating a state of fear based on shoddy and unfounded science then taking action that has devastating results for millions. Demonizing fossil fuels by attacking carbon dioxide as pollution by the Paris Accord when it is the air we exhale with every breath and is essential to all life on the planet is an example of legislators gone a muck.Friends of Science |The solar and wind electrical power is highly variable, intermittent and unreliable. These sources of electricity requires near 100% backup from other sources of electricity that are able to immediately ramp up and down power generation to offset the variability of solar and wind power. This enormously increases the cost of the backup power compared to base load power and causes increased CO2 emissions per unit of electricity produced. In this article, "other sources of electricity" means sources of electricity other than from solar and wind power, and is mostly from fossil fuels but also includes electrical power from nuclear, biomass and geothermo sources. The cost of other sources of electricity that is not used for solar and wind backup is much less expensive than the electricity used for backup of solar and wind power. Backup power is usually provided by natural gas fired power plants. Combined cycle natural gas power plants can operate at about 55% efficiency when running near continuously. New “H class” gas turbines with a triple pressure heat recovery steam generators can run at 60% efficiency. However, if these plants are forced to provide backup power and are cycled off and on, the changing temperatures of the power equipment cause significantly increased maintenance costs. Instead, simple cycle (also called open cycle) natural gas plants are commonly used as backup, but their efficiency is only around 35% (a range of 32% to 38%). A 35% efficient single cycle gas plant uses 57% more fuel (and emits 57%Bad government science pushes subsidies for wind and solar that cause electricity costs to be 9.2 times that of electricity from other sources. The result of this boon doggle is heat poverty that kills more seniors than road accidents.The best advice for American legislators on climate change is to take many pages out of the famous author Michael Crichton’s book, STATE OF FEAR. The US is in constant turmoil politically because of exaggerated fears from government science including the recent Covid 19 exaggerated and false predictions.About the AuthorMichael Crichton (1942-2008) was one of the most successful novelists of his generation, admired for his meticulous scientific research and fast-paced narrative. He graduated summa cum laude and earned his MD from Harvard Medical School in 1969.[We both graduated from Harvard in 1969 and while in different disciplines I am very proud to be his graduating classmate. ]State of Fear is a 2004 techno-thriller novel by Michael Crichton, his fourteenth under his own name and twenty-fourth overall, in which eco-terrorists plot mass murder to publicize the danger of global warming. WikipediaAMAZONDavid W. Wildeboer4.0 out of 5 starsRead this book - no matter what side of the debate you're onReviewed in Canada on May 6, 2005Verified PurchaseOne of the masters of the science type thriller (the Jurassic Park books, Timeline, etc.) returns with this compelling and well researched thriller that challenges the bedrock upon which the environmental movement and the global warming debate stand. Using well thought out and documented arguments, Crichton questions the present infatuation with the fear of global warming. As the thriller suggests, anyone with a view contrary to the media and environmental elite is instantly discredited. Using a radical environmental organization's (one that really exists) plans to further their agenda allows the author to expound in laymen's terms on the arguments for (very little reliable and reproducible evidence) global warming and those against it.Crichton also gives the reader a lesson on the pervasiveness of the media in our society and how it can drive opinion even when the evidence isn't there. Dr. Crichton has written an engrossing thriller that can be enjoyed for the thrills alone, yet he's also made an important argument about not blindly believing "everything" but instead, checking the evidence for oneself.No matter what side of the debate about the theory of "global warming" (remember, it is only a theory, it's not a proven scientific fact) and climate change one is on, this book deserves a read. I challenge everyone, no matter how set in your beliefs you are, to read this with skepticism, check out the references and do the research yourself and prove Crichton wrong. Go for it!AMAZONPopular opinions are almost always wrong. That's the theme of this book. The point is made in the context of describing how global warming, as perceived by the public and media, is different from what scientists are describing. Dr. Crichton argues through his story that we can waste a lot of time and resources on popular delusions, and we need to get our facts right. His appendix I on the dangers of politicized science is something everyone should read. The eugenics example is a chilling one.AMAZONMay 24, 2008Brian rated it it was amazing · review of another editionShelves: fiction, 2009"So what [we:] need is to structure the information so that whatever kind of weather occurs, it always confirms your message. That's the virtue of shifting the focus to abrupt climate change. It enables [us:] to use everything that happens. There will always be floods, and freezing storms, and cyclones, and hurricanes. These events will always get airtime. And in every instance, [we:] can claim it is an example of global warming. So the message gets reinforced. The urgency is increased."This from a PR person in the book that works for a large and mainstream environmentalist group. But it could have been spoken by any of the ideologues of the movement as they switch from just global warming to climate change, and try to capitalize on every disaster as a reason for their existence.As I mentioned in one of my updates, this is my first try at a Michael Crichton book and I found it well-informed and fast-paced. The plot is plausible enough (at least until the end) and serves as a rebuttal to the claims of the power hungry environmentalist crowd. It is his case for skepticism on global warming in fictional form.A key graph:"Has it occurred to you how astonishing the culture of Western society really is? Industrialized nations provide their citizens with unprecedented safety, health, and comfort. Average life spans increased fifty percent in the last century. Yet modern people live in abject fear. They are afraid of strangers, of disease, of crime, of the environment. They are afraid of the homes they live in, the food they eat, the technology that surrounds them. They are in a particular panic over the things they can't even see--germs, chemicals, additives, pollutants. They are timid, nervous, fretful, and depressed. And even more amazingly, they are convinced that the environment of the entire plant is being destroyed around them. Remarkable!"State of Fear GOODREADSSpiritual Ecology Versus ScienceEnvironmentalism as Religion by Michael CrichtonOne of the defining features of religion is that your beliefs are not troubled by facts, because they have nothing to do with facts.Michael CrichtonIn 2003 Michael Crichton sent the Ecology industry into a rage by exposing them as a religion. He can get away with it because he has both the science background and enough money not to be silenced by the eco-lobby. In fact environmentalism is as much a fundamentalist' religion as that of Pat Robertson. He is correct about the religious undertones, but it's also a political movement as he points out.In 2008 global warming has fallen off the radar as the presidential election, high energy costs, and the Wall Street meltdown have dominated the news. But this one article seems to have been left out of the discussion. Besides reports of such record cold in Mongolia killing people and livestock, the December 19, 2007 Washington Times reports:"In Buenos Aires (Argentina), snow fell for the first time since the year 1918. Dozens of homeless people died from exposure. In Peru, 200 people died from the cold...(in 2007) Johannesburg, South Africa, had the first significant snowfall in 26 years. Australia...New Zealand...weather turned so cold..."Remarks to the Commonwealth Club by Michael Crichton San Francisco September 15, 2003 (Extract)I have been asked to talk about what I consider the most important challenge facing mankind, and I have a fundamental answer. The greatest challenge facing mankind is the challenge of distinguishing reality from fantasy, truth from propaganda. Perceiving the truth has always been a challenge to mankind, but in the information age (or as I think of it, the disinformation age) it takes on a special urgency and importance.We must daily decide whether the threats we face are real, whether the solutions we are offered will do any good, whether the problems we're told exist are in fact real problems, or non-problems. Every one of us has a sense of the world, and we all know that this sense is in part given to us by what other people and society tell us; in part generated by our emotional state, which we project outward; and in part by our genuine perceptions of reality. In short, our struggle to determine what is true is the struggle to decide which of our perceptions are genuine, and which are false because they are handed down, or sold to us, or generated by our own hopes and fears.As an example of this challenge, I want to talk today about environmentalism. And in order not to be misunderstood, I want it perfectly clear that I believe it is incumbent on us to conduct our lives in a way that takes into account all the consequences of our actions, including the consequences to other people, and the consequences to the environment. I believe it is important to act in ways that are sympathetic to the environment, and I believe this will always be a need, carrying into the future.I believe the world has genuine problems and I believe it can and should be improved. But I also think that deciding what constitutes responsible action is immensely difficult, and the consequences of our actions are often difficult to know in advance. I think our past record of environmental action is discouraging, to put it mildly, because even our best intended efforts often go awry. But I think we do not recognize our past failures, and face them squarely. And I think I know why.I studied anthropology in college, and one of the things I learned was that certain human social structures always reappear. They can't be eliminated from society. One of those structures is religion. Today it is said we live in a secular society in which many people---the best people, the most enlightened people---do not believe in any religion. But I think that you cannot eliminate religion from the psyche of mankind. If you suppress it in one form, it merely re-emerges in another form. You can not believe in God, but you still have to believe in something that gives meaning to your life, and shapes your sense of the world. Such a belief is religious.Today, one of the most powerful religions in the Western World is environmentalism. Environmentalism seems to be the religion of choice for urban atheists. Why do I say it's a religion? Well, just look at the beliefs. If you look carefully, you see that environmentalism is in fact a perfect 21st century remapping of traditional Judeo-Christian beliefs and myths.There's an initial Eden, a paradise, a state of grace and unity with nature, there's a fall from grace into a state of pollution as a result of eating from the tree of knowledge, and as a result of our actions there is a judgment day coming for us all. We are all energy sinners, doomed to die, unless we seek salvation, which is now called sustainability. Sustainability is salvation in the church of the environment. Just as organic food is its communion, that pesticide-free wafer that the right people with the right beliefs, imbibe.Eden, the fall of man, the loss of grace, the coming doomsday---these are deeply held mythic structures. They are profoundly conservative beliefs. They may even be hard-wired in the brain, for all I know. I certainly don't want to talk anybody out of them, as I don't want to talk anybody out of a belief that Jesus Christ is the son of God who rose from the dead. But the reason I don't want to talk anybody out of these beliefs is that I know that I can't talk anybody out of them. These are not facts that can be argued. These are issues of faith.And so it is, sadly, with environmentalism. Increasingly it seems facts aren't necessary, because the tenets of environmentalism are all about belief. It's about whether you are going to be a sinner, or saved. Whether you are going to be one of the people on the side of salvation, or on the side of doom. Whether you are going to be one of us, or one of them.Am I exaggerating to make a point? I am afraid not. Because we know a lot more about the world than we did forty or fifty years ago. And what we know now is not so supportive of certain core environmental myths, yet the myths do not die. Let's examine some of those beliefs.There is no Eden. There never was. What was that Eden of the wonderful mythic past? Is it the time when infant mortality was 80%, when four children in five died of disease before the age of five? When one woman in six died in childbirth? When the average lifespan was 40, as it was in America a century ago. When plagues swept across the planet, killing millions in a stroke. Was it when millions starved to death? Is that when it was Eden?...In short, the romantic view of the natural world as a blissful Eden is only held by people who have no actual experience of nature. People who live in nature are not romantic about it at all. They may hold spiritual beliefs about the world around them, they may have a sense of the unity of nature or the aliveness of all things...If Eden is a fantasy that never existed, and mankind wasn't ever noble and kind and loving, if we didn't fall from grace, then what about the rest of the religious tenets? What about salvation, sustainability, and judgment day? What about the coming environmental doom from fossil fuels and global warming, if we all don't get down on our knees and conserve every day?Well, it's interesting. You may have noticed that something has been left off the doomsday list, lately. Although the preachers of environmentalism have been yelling about population for fifty years, over the last decade world population seems to be taking an unexpected turn. Fertility rates are falling almost everywhere.As a result, over the course of my lifetime the thoughtful predictions for total world population have gone from a high of 20 billion, to 15 billion, to 11 billion (which was the UN estimate around 1990) to now 9 billion, and soon, perhaps less. There are some who think that world population will peak in 2050 and then start to decline. There are some who predict we will have fewer people in 2100 than we do today.Is this a reason to rejoice, to say halleluiah? Certainly not. Without a pause, we now hear about the coming crisis of world economy from a shrinking population. We hear about the impending crisis of an aging population. Nobody anywhere will say that the core fears expressed for most of my life have turned out not to be true...Okay, so, the preachers made a mistake. They got one prediction wrong; they're human. So what. Unfortunately, it's not just one prediction. It's a whole slew of them. We are running out of oil. (Note: oil has fallen to $45 a barrel June 2017) We are running out of all natural resources. Paul Ehrlich: 60 million Americans will die of starvation in the 1980s. Forty thousand species become extinct every year. (Ehrlich is still at it in 2017. See There's No Man-Made Global Mass Extinction.)Half of all species on the planet will be extinct by 2000. And on and on and on. With so many past failures, you might think that environmental predictions would become more cautious. But not if it's a religion. Remember, the nut on the sidewalk carrying the placard that predicts the end of the world doesn't quit when the world doesn't end on the day he expects.He just changes his placard, sets a new doomsday date, and goes back to walking the streets. One of the defining features of religion is that your beliefs are not troubled by facts, because they have nothing to do with facts....I can cite the appropriate journal articles not in whacko magazines, but in the most prestigious science journals, such as Science and Nature. But such references probably won't impact more than a handful of you, because the beliefs of a religion are not dependant on facts, but rather are matters of faith. Unshakeable belief.See part 2 Religious Fundamentalism Explained by Michael Crichton.Common Sense Environmentalism (Archive)Spiritual Ecology Versus ScienceDr. James Hansen Paid EnvironmentalistGreen Religion Won't Save AppalachiaHow Ecological Homeostasis and Hysteresis Regulate ClimateMichael Crichton Speech - Environmentalism as ReligionDissecting Al Gore's Book Earth in the BalancePostmodernism Attacks Reason, Science, and CultureAges of Gaia Writer James Lovelock Sounds an AlarmWriter James Lovelock Backtracks on Revenge of GaiaHypsithermal Warming Spreads CivilizationShockingly Rapid Climatic Shifts are RealBikini Atoll Recovery From Nuclear BlastsNASA says Earth Going GreenerClimate change changes history:Fall of the Late Roman EmpireEnd of the Vikings in GreenlandLost Colony of Roanoke IslandWhale Fossils Unlock the History of the North[ Challenge to Atheists 1 ] [ Challenge to Atheists 2 ][ Challenge to Atheists 3 ] [ Challenge to Atheists 4 ][ Challenge to Atheists 5 ]Environmental Religion by Michael Crichton“The Climate Scientists' Register“We, the undersigned, having assessed the relevant scientific evidence, do not find convincing support for the hypothesis that human emissions of carbon dioxide are causing, or will in the foreseeable future cause, dangerous global warming."Click on country name in the following list to see endorsers from that nation:Algéria (1 endorser), Australia (8), Bulgaria (1), Canada (17), Denmark (1),Estonia (1), Finland(1), France (1), Germany (4), Greece (1), India (3),Italy (3), Luxembourg (1), Mexico (1), New Zealand (6), Norway (5),Poland (3), Russia (5), South Africa (1), Sweden(8), United Kingdom (6),United States of America (64).CAMILLE PAGLIAOCTOBER 10, 2007 11:19AM (UTC)I too grew up in upstate New York. I am an environmental groundwater geologist (who almost majored in fine arts). Your take on the Al Gore/global warming pseudo-catastrophe was right on target. Anyone can read up on Holocene geology and see that climate changes are caused by polar wandering and magnetic reversals. It is entertaining, yet sad to read bloviage from Leonardo DiCaprio, who is so self-centered that he thinks the earth's history and climate is a function of his short personal stay on this planet. Still he, Al Gore, Prince Charles and so on, ad nauseam, continue with their jet-set lifestyles. What hypocrisy!Thank you for your input on the mass hysteria over global warming. The simplest facts about geology seem to be missing from the mental equipment of many highly educated people these days. There is far too much credulity placed in fancy-pants, speculative computer modeling about future climate change. Furthermore, hand-wringing media reports about hotter temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere are rarely balanced by acknowledgment of the recent cold waves in South Africa and Australia, the most severe in 30 years.Where are the intellectuals in this massive attack of groupthink? Inert, passive and cowardly, the lot of them. True intellectuals would be alarmed and repelled by the heavy fog of dogma that now hangs over the debate about climate change. More skeptical voices need to be heard. Why are liberals abandoning this issue to the right wing, which is successfully using it to contrast conservative rationality with liberal emotionalism? The environmental movement, whose roots are in nature-worshipping Romanticism, is vitally important to humanity, but it can only be undermined by rampant propaganda and half-truths.The paranoid withdrawal fantasyCamille Paglia is a second-wave feminist and an American academic specializing in literature and culture, particularly topics around gender, sex, and sexuality. She has taught at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia since 1984, but is better known for her books and journalism. In 2005 she was voted #20 on a list of top public intellectuals by Prospect and Foreign Policy magazines.[Here are details of leading climate scientists skeptical of Anthropogenic Global Warming as a valid hypothesis. The list includes peer reviewed papers in major science journals. I AM UNAWARE OF ANY ANY PEER REVIEWED RESEARCH SUPPORTING THE IPCC AGW HYPOTHESIS. For example, here is very recent published research in the Environment Pollution Climate Change Journal“Hence, there are no greenhouse gases in reality – as in, gases that can cause warming,” Nikolov said when asked to explain the paper in layman’s terms.“Humans cannot in principle affect the global climate through industrial emissions of CO2, methane and other similar gases or via changes in land use,” he added. “All observed climatic changes have natural causes that are completely outside of human control.”For the first time, Nikolov said, there is now empirical evidence from NASA data that the greenhouse effect of the atmosphere is not caused by the trapping of heat, but by the force of atmospheric pressure.The pressure is the weight of the atmosphere, he added.Citation: Nikolov N, Zeller K (2017) New Insights on the Physical Nature of the Atmospheric Greenhouse Effect Deduced from an Empirical Planetary Temperature Model. Environment Pollution Climate Change Journal 1: 112.See more detail below.The Chinese scholars have addressed the issue head on in research published by the prestigious NATURE JOURNALinstrumental temperature recordNew research confirms the view of leading climate scientists and scholars that trace amounts of Co2 emissions are not destabilizing the planet. Co2 is essential plant food and therefore green energy.The authors Geli Wang & Peicai Yang and Xiuji Zhou are scientists at the CHINESE ACADEMY OF SCIENCE andChinese Academy of Meteorological Sciences, Beijing, China 中国气象科学研究院ANTHROPOGENIC (human activity). The driving forces are“the El Niño–Southern Oscillation cycle and the Hale sunspot cycle, respectively.”The title of the study published in the prestigious NATURE Journal is: Identification of the driving forces of climate change using the longest instrumental temperature recordhttps://www.nature.com/articles/...Their study confirms THE DRIVING FORCES OF GLOBAL WARMING AND CLIMATE CHANGE ARE NATURALThe “driving forces” of climate change are natural and not Co2 plant food emissions. A new Chinese study confirms climate change comes from natural cycles. This research is based on the longest actual temperature data of more than 400 years from 1659 to 2013, including the period of anthropogenic warming.AbstractThe identification of causal effects is a fundamental problem in climate change research. Here, a new perspective on climate change causality is presented using the central England temperature (CET) dataset, the longest instrumental temperature record, and a combination of slow feature analysis and wavelet analysis. The driving forces of climate change were investigated and the results showed two independent degrees of freedom —a 3.36-year cycle and a 22.6-year cycle, which seem to be connected to the El Niño–Southern Oscillation cycle and the Hale sunspot cycle, respectively. [Emphasis added]. Moreover, these driving forces were modulated in amplitude by signals with millennial timescales.MY PUBLISHED COMMENTJames Matkin 
This Chinese research is very relevant and should make climate alarmists pause in their crusade against Co2 emissions from fossil fuels. Far too much focus on Co2 like a one trick pony in a big tent circus where solar radiation is a more compelling show. The thrust of recent research has demonstrated that climate changes continually and is determined by natural forces that humans have no significant control over. Many leading scientists have presented research of other "driving forces" and cautioned against the arrogance of many that "the science is settled." See Judith Curry of the Georgia Institute of Technology and blogger at Climate Etc. talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about climate change. Curry argues that climate change is a "wicked problem" with a great deal of uncertainty surrounding the expected damage as well as the political and technical challenges of dealing with the phenomenon. She emphasizes the complexity of the climate and how much of the basic science remains incomplete. The conversation closes with a discussion of how concerned citizens can improve their understanding of climate change and climate change policy.
http://www.econtalk.org/arc...https://www.nature.com/articles/...