A global warmitarian loses faith

2008 July 24

From Down Under:

I DEVOTED six years to carbon accounting, building models for the Australian Greenhouse Office. I am the rocket scientist who wrote the carbon accounting model (FullCAM) that measures Australia’s compliance with the Kyoto Protocol, in the land use change and forestry sector.

When I started that job in 1999 the evidence that carbon emissions caused global warming seemed pretty good: CO2 is a greenhouse gas, the old ice core data, no other suspects.

The evidence was not conclusive, but why wait until we were certain when it appeared we needed to act quickly? Soon government and the scientific community were working together and lots of science research jobs were created. We scientists had political support, the ear of government, big budgets, and we felt fairly important and useful (well, I did anyway). It was great. We were working to save the planet.

But since 1999 new evidence has seriously weakened the case that carbon emissions are the main cause of global warming, and by 2007 the evidence was pretty conclusive that carbon played only a minor role and was not the main cause of the recent global warming. As Lord Keynes famously said, “When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?”

I recently was fortunate enough to see a presentation by Dr. John Christy of UAH about the subject of man made climate change.  The venue in which I saw Dr. Christy was mostly very technical, full of scientists and engineers.  It was a good audience for him because we could understand the numbers he presented and no one blinked when he talked about a nonlinear dynamic model.  I found one of Christy’s presentations on YouTube.  Yes, it’s long, but it is worth the time investment.  The sound is a bit low, so turn up your speakers.

YouTube Preview Image

7 Responses leave one →
  1. Mike on July 25, 2008 at 5:26 pm permalink

    There is another good presentation at (or possibly the same one with better resolution):
    http://www.uah.edu/inauguration/climatechange.php

    Dr. Christy’s clips are 5&6.

  2. Mike on July 25, 2008 at 6:55 pm permalink

    There is a good discussion, list of facts (many references to UAH data) by those against global warming on Hannity’s forum
    http://forums.hannity.com/showthread.php?t=646331&highlight=global+warming+watch

    Global Warming Watch is the thread in Washington Politics

    I think one of the UAH professors is Rush’s climatologist too.

  3. ivan swift on December 9, 2009 at 2:56 pm permalink

    mike — could not get the clips you referred to to open. can they be shown on flashpoint somehow so i and others can read them? ivan

  4. ivan on December 21, 2009 at 8:03 am permalink

    thanks for the references. it helps. keynes’ point about changing your mind about something when the facts change is good philosophy. but the way politics has become so entwined and enmeshed and dominant in this, maybe only with time will we know who’s right, and, to what degree? but, we may not have much time.

  5. Reactionary on December 21, 2009 at 12:26 pm permalink

    ivan – the true believer / socialist / global warmist uses Hegel’s response when facts conflict with ideology: ‘all the worse for the facts’.

    If you’re worried about CO2 emissions – hold your breath.

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