Scot (A. Mandia) if we had as much understanding and worthwhile experience of the effect of the emission of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere from our use of fossil fuels on global climates as we have of the effect of losing substantial amounts of blood, then I would agree with your analogy. Of course the difference is the degree of uncertainty about the outcome. As the Australian Government’s chief climate science advisor Professor Barry Brook said back in April (Note 1) QUOTE: There are a lot of uncertainties in science, and it is indeed likely that the current consensus on some points of climate science is wrong, or at least sufficiently uncertain that we don’t know anything much useful about processes or drivers. UNQUOTE. He then went on to try to suggest, without any substantiation whatsoever, that we understand 95% of climate processes and drivers with QUOTE: But EVERYTHING? Or even most things? Take 100 lines of evidence, discard 5 of them, and you’re still left with 95 and large risk management problem. UNQUOTE. I believe that this comment is highly significant and repeatedly but unsuccessfully tried to get Professor Brook to clarify what he was saying. He refused to discuss it, despite normally responding to comments within a couple of days, sometimes even minutes.

This is a scientist who can reasonably claim having a high level of expertise in biology, but does it justify him being considered to be an “expert” in climate science? He appears to claim expertise in QUOTE: climate change; global change biology; ecology; tropical biology; extinction; habitat loss; invasive species; palaeontology; modelling; conservation biology; endangered species; climate policy; sustainability; conservation genetics UNQUOTE (Note 2).

In June 2008 Professor Emeritus of Physics, James Cook University, Australia Dr Nicol presented a paper (Note 3) “Climate Change (A Fundamental Analysis of the Greenhouse Effect)” challenging the “scientific consensus” revered by supporters of The (significant human-made global climate change) Hypothesis. There have been the usual screams from supporters of The Hypothesis that “it hasn’t been peer reviewed” but a rejection of the argument on that basis is not acceptable to many of us. It is the argument itself that is relevant and if it is claimed to be flawed then such claims need to be justified. The reason for this is that arguments such as his fit in with what we lay people experience. Many of us accept that there may have been a slight increase in global temperatures and that changes in weather conditions take place repeatedly around the globe. We can see no evidence that using fossil fuels is causing this or any significant global climate change beyond what has been experienced in the past.

In December 2008 Dr. John Nicol was involved in exchanges on Professor Brook’s blog (Note 4). Dr Nicol tried very hard but unsuccessfully to have a reasonable debate with Professor Brook. In his final contribution Dr Nicol said QUOTE: So whether GHGs warm or cool depends on some difficult calculations. It has not been properly treated and having written to Barry Brooks, various modelers including our CSIRO Climate Science Group, I have not been able to obtain any information on a modern treatment of the Green house effect upon which our future economy will stand or fall. Barry, to his credit, replied to me saying he was a biologist and therefore unable to help, but to try a physicist. UNQUOTE.

So, is my questioning of the degree of climate science expertise enjoyed by those who set themselves up as experts fair? That last quote from Dr. Nicol in the previous paragraph appears to be Professor Brook’s answer to the question about the extent of his expertise in climate science. Perhaps my questioning is fair after all.

For anyone who is interested, I comment in more detail on this in early September at the blog that I invited Ian Forrester to visit (Note 5).

NOTES:
1) see http://bravenewclimate.com/2009/04/23/ian-plimer-heaven-and-earth lead item, but see also comments on 8 June 2009 at 1.24, 12 June 2009 at 20.42, 21 June 2009 at 0.09, 23 June 2009 at 5.02, 24 June 2009 at 6.12
2) see http://www.expertguide.com.au/!ProfessorBarryBrook!_8478.aspx
3) see http://www.ruralsoft.com.au/ClimateChange.doc
4) see http://climateprogress.org/2008/12/11/inhofe-morano-recycles-long-debunked-denier-talking-points-will-the-media-be-fooled-again/
5) see http://www.stevefielding.com.au/forums/viewthread/125/P2205/#6666

Best regards, Pete Ridley, human-made global climate change agnostic.

PS: Ian Forrester, I forgot to post the link.
NOTE 1) see http://www.stevefielding.com.au/forums/viewthread/125/P4290/

MarkB, thanks for the suggestion but if you’re interested do check around and you’ll find that (in my opinion) I do that most of the time.

Chris, I said earlier that Roger Taguchi is updating his paper showing that The (significant human-made global climate change) Hypothesis is flawed. Until he completes this I have about 6000 words of updates in 3 E-mails from him which I could pass to you if you like. Let me know.

Best regards, Pete Ridley, human-made global climate change agnostic.

Response– You are welcome to post them in a comment. I’ll review them and either leave it as a comment or paste them into a new post– chris

And you may want to read up on Charles Darwin a bit more. Yes, Darwin was born a christian, yes, he’s buried in a church, but he was far from believing in a god more or less from the middle of his life:
http://www.christiananswers.net/q-aig/darwin.html
(that’ll be a christian source)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Darwin’s_views_on_religion
(check the various reference if you are a wiki-disbeliever)

Finally, on arrogance: it’s only arrogance when you are wrong. Your limited understanding of Le Chatelier’s principle, and thus failure to apply it properly, is there for all to see. Calling you out for that failure is neither arrogance nor conceit, but directly in line with the search for ‘truth’.

Climate study is in its infancy. It will remain so until real science again gains the proper foothold it had before big government spending brought the leeches out from under their rocks to get grants and try to create a fictitious and false science that agrees with government dictum.

Climatologists cannot even measure near surface temperatures accurately. Suggest you go to “Surfacestations.org”

October 25, 2007
SCIENCE: Earth climate is too complex to predict
James Lewis
SCIENCE magazine just published a critical review of climate models by Professors Gerald Roe and Marcia Baker of the University of Washington, Seattle. It is echoed in the New Scientist magazine (October 25). As New Scientist puts it, “Climate is too complex for accurate predictions.”

Global surface temperatures correlate directly with solar irradiance. Not with human carbon production or atmospheric CO2.

While I understand that what contrarians tend to lack in robust scientific arguments they often make up for with rhetoric and repetition, I believe most readers of this blog are a bit more astute on average and are not easily fooled by such things.

As for a bit of humor…

- MarkB, Heliocentrism Agnostic (too many uncertainties to follow Heliocentrism religion, scientists need the grant money and makes me suspicious, it makes me further skeptical that they are dismissive towards unbelievers, claims that the issue is “settled” is evidence of a religion, not science, etc.)

and chose not to mention that enormous amounts of methane are produced by biological processes involving termites and livestock

So good of you to show everyone here just how ignorant of science you are. You also show a level of arrogance that puts you in the good company of most deniers who, as you, suffer from DKS.

For your edification, it is a population of bacteria (methanogens) in the guts of termites and in the rumen of ruminants that produce the methane, not the organisms themselves.

I must admit I had a good laugh while reading your post. I can assume that the rest of your posts are as full of elementary mistakes as this one.

You are a joke. Get a life or if you have so much time on your hands (you seem to post the same garbage on a large number of blogs) do some reading of real science as I alluded to above. You may even learn about the inner workings of termites and cows.

I call a spade a spade. I hate people like you who, while being ignorant of science, denigrate science and scientist with your lies, distortions, obfuscation and other forms of scientific malfeasance.

You can believe what you like about who I am and what my qualifications are. I know exactly what you are and it is not nice and I will not lower myself to put a description of you and your ilk on this blog.

I suspect that you are the same Ian Forrester who commented (Note 4) on a paper by Keppler et el (Note 5) that says QUOTE Most of the methane from natural sources in Earth’s atmosphere is thought to originate from biological processes in anoxic environments UNQUOTE. That Ian Forrester said QUOTE Methane production is limited to a very narrow group of bacteria UNQUOTE and chose not to mention that enormous amounts of methane are produced by biological processes involving termites and livestock.

This comment sums you up (Note 1) QUOTE: I know your policy on your blog is not to silence competing views. Normally, I would not ask that anyone not be allowed to present deferring views of the science and the studies that support their claim. I do however want to post a complaint about Ian Forrester. So far he has not discussed the science or presented studies to support any position. All I see is him making demeaning personal attacks on anyone he does not agree with. This is a science blog, so could you enforce a limit on these attacks and move the focus back to the science. I do not mind if people get caught up in the moment and the conversation gets a little emotional, after all most everyone posting here is passionate about the science. I know we rarely agree on scientific issues but I have always found you to be a civil opponent. Can we get the pointless personnel attacks eliminated? Posted by: Vernon | May 27, 2009 2:17 PM UNQUOTE.

You exclaim (Note 2) QUOTE: I am a scientist UNQUOTE with a QUOTE: BSc in chemistry and PhD in Biochemistry UNQUOTE but your comments here and elsewhere suggest that this is a serious distortion of fact (something that you repeatedly accuse others of – Note 3). A good example of your distortions is your QUOTE: Secondly, close to 100% of climate scientists agree that AGW is real UNQUOTE (Note 6). There is a reference (Note 7) to QUOTE: Dr Ian Forrester, NZ CS (New Zealand Chief Scientist), 1990-91 UNQUOTE but I cannot believe that you are he. You throw insults at scientists who can demonstrate competence in their discipline but despite searching very hard I can find not a single peer-reviewed paper of yours so have to assume that your scientific writings are limited to blogs like this. If you are scientifically qualified then the scientific community may well wish to disown you.

Staunch UK environmentalist Jonathan Porritt complained in one of his propaganda booklets about the arrogance of scientists. Bsed upon my experience working with scientists in the Telecommunications R&D my reaction to that was “rubbish”, but he may have been unfortunate only to have encountered scientists like yourself.

Scott (A Mandia) as I said earlier “You are entitled to your opinion, like the rest of us”.

NOTES:
1) see http://scienceblogs.com/illconsidered/2006/02/co2-lags-not-leads.php
2) see http://greenfyre.wordpress.com/denier-vs-skeptic/denier-myths-debunked/
3) e.g. see http://greenfyre.wordpress.com/denier-vs-skeptic/denier-myths-debunked/
4) see http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/loom/2007/04/27/the-missing-news-of-the-missing-methane/
5) see http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v439/n7073/abs/nature04420.html
6) see http://www.desmogblog.com/cheney-big-debate-needed-to-determine-whether-humans-are-changing-the-climate
7) see http://nla.gov.au/nla.ms-ms9476

Best regards, Pete Ridley, human-made global climate change agnostic.