HIT THE LINK IF YOU WISH TO WATCH HIS VIDEO
* Contact http://www.climate-skeptic.com/2010/01/catastrophe-denied-the-science-of-the-skeptics-position.html?gclid=CJfR9ujjj6ACFc9k4wod_gSneA



I have repaired the overscan issues in the DVD files and am re-posting the links, which are all good now.

Once upon a time, Al Gore had a PowerPoint deck. Several years ago, I came to the conclusion that Gore’s presentation was deeply flawed, so I made my own PowerPoint deck in response, and have been updating it ever since. Here is the most recent

Then, Al Gore made a movie from his PowerPoint deck. He won an Oscar and a Nobel prize for his movie. Those are a bit out of my reach, so I will have to settle for actually being right. My previous movie showed my PowerPoint deck presented to a live audience, and can still be found online here. I felt the sound quality could be improved and the narration could be tighter, so I went into the “studio” to create a tighter version. The product of this is what I believe to be my best effort yet at explaining, in a comprehensive but simple manner, the science of the skeptic’s position to laymen.

I have become a big fan of Vimeo because I don’t have to break videos up into 10-minute chunks as on YouTube. The Vimeo version is here and is embedded below:
Other Viewing Options

When I get the time to break this into 9(!) parts, I will post a link here to YouTube.

You can download the 212MB .wmv file here (link on the lower right). Alternatively, it can also be found here. The .wmv is also available via BitTorrent: You can find its page at Pirate Bay or the torrent directly here.

Download the .iso file (DVD disk image) to make you own playable DVD here (beware: 1.6GB). A free tool to burn the DVD from the image is ImgBurn

The .iso file is also available via BitTorrent: you can find its page at Pirate Bay with the torrent here.

Finally, you can buy the DVD at cost, here, for $7.50 plus shipping.
Category: Skeptic Summaries | Comment (RSS)

About 40 years ago now, the world used to hear a lot from a futurologist called Herman Kahn. Of ample girth and unquenchable volubility, Herman Kahn, who died in 1983, was always making confident pronouncements about what would happen in the future.
So and so, he would say, would happen 10, 20, 25 years years from now. It wouldn't happen tomorrow, so that you could check up on it straightaway, but it would happen 10, 20, 25 years from now.

FIND OUT MORE... A Point of View is on Fridays on Radio 4 at 2050 GMT Or listen to it here later

Some of us realised that he had invented a new unit of time, and we gave it a name. In tribute to Fermi, who could measure electrons, we called his new unit of time the Hermie. The merit of the Hermie, as a unit of measurement, was that, while being vague, it sounded impressive.
The prediction itself might or might not have been right. Herman Kahn predicted that within one Hermie everyone in the West would fly his own helicopter and have access to free-fall sex. That didn't happen within one Hermie, but it still might happen in the next Hermie.
All we can be sure of is that Herman Kahn's language exemplified an impressive way of talking about the future, a way of sounding impressive that sounded less impressive only when you realised that sounding impressive was its main motive. Big things would happen. It was big talk. And it paid the penalty of all big talk. As you got used to it, you got tired of it.
Language of alarm
Over the last 10 years we have heard a lot about how civilisation would be in trouble if it didn't soon do something drastic about global warming. But this impressive message tended to sound less impressive as time went on. It wasn't just that the globe uncooperatively declined to get warmer during the last 10 years.

Herman Kahn was always predicting the distant future

It was that the language of alarm wore out its welcome as it became ever more assertive about what had not yet happened.
The brief, unarguably still hot period, when the world had somehow refused to grow any hotter was soon explained, although it seemed strange that it had not been predicted.
The world, when it resumed warming again would heat up by so many degrees, or so many more degrees than that, and within 10, 20, 25 years - within a single Hermie - there would be the corpses of fried polar bears floating past your penthouse window.
According to the media, scientists were agreed, the science was settled, science said, that all this would happen. The media promoted this settled science, and the politicians went along with the media. The whole deal had the UN seal of approval.

A bunch of e-mails got hacked, or perhaps leaked. Some of the phrases that supposedly reveal skulduggery reveal a lot less when you put them in the context of what, we are told, was only locker-room enthusiasm

The coming catastrophe that had to be averted wasn't exactly like knowing when the asteroid would arrive so you could send Bruce Willis, but unless we did something, irreversible damage, if not certain doom, was only a Hermie or two away.
Today, after recent events at the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit, that supposedly settled science is still the story, but the story is in question. Suddenly there are voices to pronounce that the reputation of science will lie in ruins for the next 50 years.
For two Hermies at least, nobody will trust a single thing that a scientist says. Well, even to a non-scientist like myself, that last prediction sounds suspiciously like the others.
Layman's reading
My own view is that true science, the spirit of critical inquiry that unites all scientists, or is supposed to, is reasserting itself after being out-shouted by at least half a Hermie of uninterrupted public relations. But I hasten to admit that my view is not only not the view of a scientist, it is the view of somebody who can still remember the first day he was exposed to calculus and froze as if in a new Ice Age.
As I said in one of these columns earlier in the season - In praise of scepticism - before the events at the Climate Research Unit, my only position on the matter of man-made global warming was that from my own layman's background reading I thought the reported scientific unanimity that global warming is man-made, and likely to be catastrophic, was always a more active area of scientific debate than you would have guessed from the way the media told the story.
Just saying that much was enough to get me condemned by one of the broadsheet environmentalist gurus. He said I was an old man resistant to the facts because I didn't care what happened to the world after I was gone.

An issue couched in dramatic terms...

As I bounced my grand-daughter on my knee, rather hoping that in the course of the next Hermie she would not be obliged to star in a remake of Waterworld as the sea rose 30 feet above her house, I bit back a rude word.
But the guru still had a point when he said my scepticism about the settled science was a wilful defiance of established fact. Unfortunately the fact had been established largely by the media, who had been telling only one story. If you said the story might have two sides, that sounded like scepticism.
People in my position had to get used to being called sceptics, as if scepticism were a bad thing. We even had to get used to being called denialists, although clearly it was an unscrupulous word.
We were also called, are still called, flat-earthers by people like Gordon Brown and Ed Miliband, but that kind of abuse is comparatively easy to take, because everybody knows that neither man would be capable of proving mathematically that the earth is not a cube.
Mainstream media
So what happened at the Climate Research Unit? Well, basically nothing new. A bunch of e-mails got hacked, or perhaps leaked. Some of the phrases that supposedly reveal skulduggery reveal a lot less when you put them in the context of what, we are told, was only locker-room enthusiasm.
In the correspondence columns of the scientific websites - where the level of discussion has consistently been miles above anything the mainstream media has provided for the last decade - there are already wise voices to warn that the sceptics should not make the same mistake as the believers by treating any slip they can find in the arguments of their opponents as evidence of the biggest fraud since Bernie Madoff made off with the money.
That would be Hermie talk, and self-defeating, because the more absolutist man-made global warming case has always looked sufficiently vulnerable just by the way it has been reluctant to listen to opposing voices no matter how well qualified.

... and also deeply political for many

There has never been any point, and there is no point now, in calling the warmists a bunch of devious conspirators against the truth. All you ever had to do was notice how their more strident representatives didn't want to hear any other opinions, even when the opinions came from within their own ranks.
Far from there having been unanimity among scientists on the subject of catastrophic man-made global warming, there has scarcely been unanimity among climate scientists. It only takes one dissenting voice to punch a hole in the idea of unanimity, if that voice has a chance of being right.
There was a time when almost every scientist except Einstein thought that Newton had buttoned up the subject of celestial mechanics. And this time, on the subject of global warming, there was always, right from the beginning, a number of climate scientists who didn't endorse the alarmist picture.
You could say that the number was small, and a few of them were vengeful because they had been sidelined for not being sufficiently doom-laden in their claims. But a few of them were older men who just wouldn't go along with the prevailing emphasis.
Orthodox view
One of these few was Prof Lindzen of MIT. I never could convince myself that the professor of meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology knew less about the earth's climate than I did, so I started to watch him. Hopeless on the media, Prof Lindzen is the sort of pundit with a four figure IQ who can somehow never figure out that you are supposed to talk into the microphone.
His fellow anti-alarmist Prof Fred Singer not only formed a thought too slowly for radio, he was too slow for smoke signals. But gradually, as I watched the side roads, it seemed to me that these few dissenting scientists with zero PR skills increased in number.
The number of scientists who endorsed the orthodox view increased also, but the number of those who didn't went up instead of down. I couldn't do the calculus, but I could count heads.

Many scientists say the case for man-made climate change is irrefutable

There were scores of eminent scientists who signed the 2007 open letter to the secretary general of the UN, and then later on there were hundreds quoted in the US senate minority reports.
It could be said that few of them had expertise in climate science, but that argument looked less decisive when you considered that climate science itself was exactly what they were bringing into question.
So science was not speaking with one voice on the matter. It only seemed to be, because the media, on the whole, was giving no other story. Then this Climate Research Unit thing happened, and it was the end of the monologue. The dialogue has begun again.
The scientists are arguing on the matter, which is the proper thing for science to do, because in science the science is never settled. Some say that the argument about how all this happened will go on for another two Hermies at least.
We can hear, from deep underground, the contented purr of Herman Kahn. It's all turning out exactly as he predicted.

So I wasn't shocked that the film was attacked on the same night it was broadcast on ABC television   although I was impressed at the vehemence of the attack. I was more surprised, and delighted, by the response of the Australian public.
The ABC studio assault, led by Tony Jones, was so vitriolic it appears to have backfired. We have been inundated with messages of support, and the ABC, I am told, has been flooded with complaints. I have been trying to understand why.
First, the ferocity of the attack, I think, revealed the intolerance and defensiveness of the global warming camp. Why were Jones and co expending such energy and resources attacking one documentary? We are told the global warming theory is robust. They say you'd have to be off your chump to disagree. We have been assured for years, in countless news broadcasts and column inches, that it's definitely true. So why bother to stamp so aggressively on the one foolish documentary-maker - who clearly must be as mad as a snake - who steps out of line?
I think viewers may also have wondered (reasonably) why the theory of global warming has not been subjected to this barrage of critical scrutiny by the media. After all, it's the theory of global warming, not my foolish little film, that is turning public and corporate policy on its head.
The apparent unwillingness of Jones and others at the ABC to give airtime to a counterargument, the tactics used to minimise the ostensible damage done by the film, the evident animosity towards those who questioned global warming: all of this served to give viewers a glimpse of what it was like for scientists who dared to disagree with the hallowed doctrine.
Why are the global warmers so zealous? After a year of arguing with people about this, I am convinced that it's because global warming is first and foremost a political theory. It is an expression of a whole middle-class political world view. This view is summed up in the oft-repeated phrase "we consume too much". I have also come to the conclusion that this is code for "they consume too much". People who believe it tend also to think that exotic foreign places are being ruined because vulgar oiks can afford to go there in significant numbers, they hate plastic toys from factories and prefer wooden ones from craftsmen, and so on.
All this backward-looking bigotry has found perfect expression in the idea of man-made climate disaster. It has cohered a bunch of disparate reactionary prejudices (anti-car, anti-supermarkets, anti-globalisation) into a single unquestionable truth and cause. So when you have a dig at global warming, you commit a grievous breach of social etiquette. Among the chattering classes you're a leper.
But why are the supporters of global warming so defensive? After all, the middle classes are usually confident, bordering on smug.
As I found when I examined the basic data, they have plenty to be defensive about. Billions of dollars of public money have been thrown at global warming, yet the hypothesis is crumbling around their ears.
To the utter dismay of the global warming lobby, the world does not appear to be getting warmer. According to their own figures (from the UN-linked Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), the temperature has been static or slightly declining since 1998. The satellite data confirms this. This is clearly awkward. The least one should expect of global warming is that the Earth should be getting warmer.
Then there's the ice-core data, the jewel in the crown of global warming theory. It shows there's a connection between carbon dioxide and temperature: see Al Gore's movie. But what Gore forgets to mention is that the connection is the wrong way around; temperature leads, CO2 follows.
Then there's the precious "hockey stick". This was the famous graph that purported to show global temperature flat-lining for 1000 years, then rising during the 19th and 20th centuries. It magicked away the Medieval warm period and made the recent warming look alarming, instead of just part of the general toing and froing of the Earth's climate.
But then researchers took the computer program that produced the hockey stick graph and fed it random data. Bingo, out popped hockey stick shapes every time. (See the report by Edward Wegman of George Mason University in Virginia and others.)
In a humiliating climb down, the IPCC has had to drop the hockey stick from its reports, though it can still be seen in Gore's movie.
And finally, there are those pesky satellites. If greenhouse gases were the cause of warming, then the rate of warming should have been greater, higher up in the Earth's atmosphere (the bit known as the troposphere). But all the satellite and balloon data says the exact opposite. In other words, the best observational data we have flatly contradicts the whole bally idea of man-made climate change.
They concede that CO2 cannot have caused the warming at the beginning of the 20th century, which was greater and steeper than the recent warming. They can't explain the cooling from 1940 to the mid-'70s. What are they left with? Some mild warming in the '80s and '90s that does not appear to have been caused by greenhouse gases.
The whole damned theory is in tatters. No wonder they're defensive.
The man-made global warming parade, on one level, has been a phenomenal success. There isn't a political party or important public body or large corporation that doesn't feel compelled to pay lip service. There are scientists and journalists (a surprising number) who have built careers championing the cause. There's more money going into global warming research than there is chasing a cure for cancer. Many important people and institutions have staked their reputations on it. There's a lot riding on this theory. And it has bugger-all to do with sea levels. That is why the warmers greeted my film with red glowing eyes.
Last week on the ABC they closed ranks. They were not interested in a genuine debate. They wanted to shut it down. And thousands of wonderful, sane, bolshie Australian viewers saw right through it.
God bless Australia. The DVD will be out soon.

• CO2 certainly affects global warming -to a small degree! Water vapour affects it significantly more. The Sun dominates the scene, however. IPCC doctrine overlooks the fact that Earth's surface temperature changes over past half million years or so, from Vostok Ice-Core analyses, are strongly asymmetrical, and that the dominant underlying mechanism cannot therefore be repetitive changes in the Earth's orbit, which would be predominantly symmetrical, akin to simple harmonic motion (the Milankovitch theory)in order to return the orbit close to its present form without making it unstable. The only other simple explanation of the cyclic solar energy changes sufficient to yo-yo the Earth's surface temperature through the 13 degree C observed range is that the Sun is a variable star with a total range of about 20% in its output. A plausable explanation for this is that the Sun, with its enormous gravitational field, sweeps up interstellar hydrogen and deuterium to feed its thermonuclear core during Earth's glacial periods when its output is low, then spurts into increased activity once it has thus gorged itself, every 100,000 years or so. This period varies according to the density of interstllar matter it encounters on its way around our Milky Way Galaxy. During its more active phase, radiation pressure increases dramatically to overcome gravity, so that hydrogen accretion is inhibited, until the 'digestion process' is completed and the energy output declines. The process then starts all over again. This is a characteristic of thermo-nuclear reactions, which are stage-wise and highly sensitive to isotopic cocentration and temperature, being easiest with the tritium-helium stage, more difficult with the deuterium-helium stage, and most difficult (i.e., needing the highest temperatures) with the extreme hydrogen-helium stage. Such a mechanism would be consistent with the observed asymmetry of the ice-core analyses. Why does the IPCC persistently ignore this aspect? Could it be that, like the UK's Royal Commission on Environmental Polution in its 22nd report, 'Energy - the Changing Climate', it has no-one aboard to voice simple astronomical questions? No sane person would ever question the existence of climate change: we have evidence all around us for that! But to try to pin all of it onto carbon dioxide increases due to mankind's actions is ludicrous, belying established thermodynnamic logic which underpins 'greenhosue gas' theory! One can show that a reduction in level from the present 380 ppmv or so to the pre-industrial age 280 ppmv interglacial maximum could reduce global mean surface temperature by only about 1/4 degree C. Similarly, allowing CO2 levels to rise to about 600 ppmv at most - since logistical and cost factors wouldn't let our extravagance reach beyond this - would only push this temperature another 1/4 degree C above its present level (of around 15 degree C.), assuming constant solar energy input throughout. Let's have some common-sense unbiased debate before we all go overboard on carbon footprinting!
  
  Rod.Taylor

  on May 16, 2008

  at 12:16 PM

  Report this comment
• There's no such thing as peak oil either. Robert Hirsch was paid off, and the ipcc is clever coup masterminded between the most developed countries of the world.
  
  Aaron

  on May 09, 2008

  at 08:34 PM

  .tips4you.in
• The flora of Earth can absorb a thousand times the carbon that humanity releases to the air. If global warming occurs, it should be shown the sun and volcanic activity is the problem. The sun has been radiating more the last 100 years, and volcanic activity has increased. Politics have steered the blame toward each other so we blame our neighbors, and of course the money that can be made on all this.
  
  Larry

  on May 05, 2008

  at 02:09 AM

  Report this comment
• One large volcanic eruption can spew more garbage into the atmosphere than an entire year's worth of auto emissions and factory smokestacks. Sorry, but I don't think we should give up cars or factories and return to the stone age. The earth has been warming and cooling for four billion years, and mankind shouldn't be so cocky as to think it can predict the next 100 years of weather, let alone control it. Has anyone noticed that the alarming period of "global warming" represents the years after the fall of the Soviet Union, after which many of their weather-reporting stations were shut down due to budget concerns? Hmmm, remove Siberia's temperatures from the global averages and what do you thnk you'll get? Those computer "models" relied on by the Gore-istas don't take into affect cloud cover, sun-spots, El Nino currents, and on and on. You may as well buy a game called "Sim Earth" from the local software store. Sorry, but I don't think anyone really knows what the temperature was when Columbus landed in the Americas, and no one knows what it will be in 2015 either. Even if it is 3 degrees warmer, global food production will skyrocket as a result. But, in the end, Gore's gimmick may be brilliant. He cons the media into believing him (which isn't too difficult, considering they are mostly left-wing lunkheads anyway). And, of course, he already has liberal academia behind him. Then, REGARDLESS of what happens with the weather - global warming is conveniently blamed. An earthquake in Chile? Must be global warming. A typhoon off India? Must be global warming. A cold spell in Florida? Oh, that also must be global warming! A midwestern farmer shoots his family and kills himself? Aw, chalk that up to global warming as well. It can only help the cause. And there's only one solution, of course: world-wide socialism, with Al Gore and his leftists controlling EVERYTHING in their altruistic desire to save us all from ourselves! Those of you who believe the media global warming scares may do well to recall how they said we were all going to die from AIDS and bird flu. There are a TON of books refuting Gore's hypotheses. I've read a few clunkers, but most convinced me that my original global-warming theory skepticism was well-founded. Read and learn. Question the MOTIVES of the doomsayers. And follow the MONEY TRAIL.
  

• Before anyone can prove humans are causing climate change, they must deal with the basic and proven figures. The figures below are in accordance with the U.S. Department of Energy, but also accord with the figures of other accredited institutions (regardless of what side of the debate they are on) - In fact, I have been unable to find any variation of these figures sufficient to have any effect on the conclusion (you can confirm the figures I have used at: link - the website includes accredited references for the figures which you can follow up (as I did)). The figures show UNEQUIVOCALLY: Of the 100.00% of Greenhouse Gases affecting the earth's climate; 99.72% are naturally occuring and beyond the influence of humans; and, 0.28% are the result of ALL human activity. That means humans are responsible for less than one third of one percent of greenhouse warming! Now, imagine if we all reach the Kyoto target for "Annex 1" countries of 5.2% reduction. That would alter the greenhouse effect by one seven-thousandth! Some very naughty people are telling “porkies”… and some very stupid people are believing them.
  
  Matt Bannan

  on September 18, 2008

  at 01:50 AM

  
  
• Of Course we have Climate Change!! this world has always changed over the past zillion years but are we, the human race, causing it now?,I find that difficult to believe. Its a very good method for all the incompetent politician's to try to deflect the attention from their c--k-ups and raise more and more taxes to fund their second/third home purchase and furnishing.
  
  John Symon

  on August 09, 2008

  at 11:40 AM

  
  
• Hi all well i reckon our climate has changed since i was a child however so have i , my judgement and interpretation of things. I remember how Big things were now they are little. The climate is and has always on this planet constantly changed i reckon the ice age has just finished YOU F******g MPS you like our money from so called Green Taxes I have a one Question do you believe in the bible and God ,really like you pretend in your speaches. Im not mocking religion please dont misunderstand me how ever the book of revelation tells us all how the earth ends so practice what you preach
  

---

Blogging Tips - 4 Tips To Increase Dramatically Traffic To Your Blog

 Every internet marketer knows that blog can be great for getting high listing in search engines. Search engine spiders love blogs because of fresh content they provide. In this article I would like to share with you top blogging tips to increase traffic to your site from today!

1. Social bookmark sites - anytime you add new post to your blog, bookmark this page to social bookmark sites. You can use sites like onlywire or socialmarker to add faster to all top social bookmark sites. Your posts will gain more backlinks, also additional traffic and better and faster listing in search engines. Always remember to add to top sites: Digg, Redit, Delicious, StumbleUpon and Propeller. If you will participate in these sites, add many bookmarks, comment on other people’s bookmarks, your own bookmarks will be more valuable. In this ways you will be able to gain more traffic.
2. Social network - another blogging tips that can bring you good traffic is to create profile in Myspace, Facebook, Direct Matches, Yuwie. There is special section called bulletins. When you will write new post you can send link to it. Depends on how many friends do you have in your profile, you will get more additional traffic. In some social network sites like Yuwie you can also add rss feed to your profile, so when someone will visit your profile, will see links to your last posts.
3. Optimize you blog posts - make a full use of search engine optimization to your blog. This blogging tip is very important. You will benefit from your optimized blog after time. That’s why it’s a key to start to optimize your blog as soon as possible. Find few keywords and 1 main one and repeat it in your blog titles, posts. Also gain backlinks from other sites using in anchor your keyword.
4. Next blogging tip I want to stress to you is to spread your rss feeds to different blog directories. Remember to ping your bog every single update. Add to pingomatic. Make Squidoo and Hubpages pages and include your rss feeds. It will automatically update rss feeds when you will update your blog. It’s really powerful, the more backlinks the better results.

Mars global warming on mars Hints at Solar, Not Human, Cause for Warming, Scientist SaysKate Raviliousfor National Geographic News
February 28, 2007Simultaneous warming on Earth and Mars suggests that our planet's recent climate changes have a natural—and not a human-induced—cause, according to one scientist's controversial theory.
Earth is currently experiencing rapid warming, which the vast majority of climate scientists says is due to humans pumping huge amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. (Get an overview: "Global Warming Fast Facts".)

Enlarge Photo

Printer Friendly
Email to a Friend
What's This? SHARE Digg StumbleUpon Reddit RELATED Climate Change Predictions Not Exaggerated, Analysis Says (February 1, 2007) New Mars Pictures Show Signs of Watery "Aquifers" (February 16, 2007) Photo Gallery: Global Warming Mars, too, appears to be enjoying more mild and balmy temperatures.
In 2005 data from NASA's Mars Global Surveyor and Odyssey missions revealed that the carbon dioxide "ice caps" near Mars's south pole had been diminishing for three summers in a row.