Climate Change Debate – Politics, False Consensus, Questionable Science & Some Questions
“In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual.” – Galileo Galilei
“The debate is settled. Climate change is a fact” – Barack Obama
There is a certain purity to science. The Scientific Method – elegant in its simplicity and maddening in its application – lays down the path to knowledge:
- Make an observation.
- Ask a question.
- Form a hypothesis or testable explanation.
- Make a prediction based on the hypothesis.
- Test the prediction.
- Iterate: use the results to make new hypotheses or predictions.
“What we know here is very little, but what we are ignorant of is immense.” – Pierre Laplace
But the debate is never settled. Science is never settled.
Ironically, taken out of context, part of Obama’s statement on Climate Change is essentially correct. Climate Change is a fact. Our climate has been changing for billions of years. And it’s a staggeringly complex system with an enormous number of inputs – some of which we may not even know of. But exactly how it is changing – and how it will change – is something that is currently beyond our grasp. Anyone who tells you otherwise is either lying or is misinformed.
I absolutely believe in Climate Change. We have concrete geological evidence of its existence. But I don’t know if we are currently undergoing Global Warming – the current data shows a plateau in temperatures for the last twenty years. If we are undergoing Global Warming, I have no idea by what degree, nor how long or short the cycle. I do not know the magnitude of human generated influences nor their direct impact on our climate. I believe that human generation of large amounts of carbon dioxide cannot be good for our species but I don’t know or understand the true impact of doing so. I suspect undersea volcanic activity plays a large role in climate change but I have no idea of accuracy, nor scale or direction. In short, I simply don’t know. Nor, I suspect, does anyone with any degree of certainty.
I believe that our global climate is far too complex to successfully model with our current level of scientific understanding.
I live in Southern California – a place where if you say the words ” it will be sunny and warm” you will be right about 80% of the time. And still, forecasters get the local weather wrong with uneasy frequency. I’m talking about daily forecasts – let alone the weather a couple weeks out. Yet, one risks being labeled a “climate denier” – if they do not believe that we have a realistic understanding or comprehensive grasp of our global climate’s long-term predictability.
“But in introducing me simultaneously to skepticism and to wonder, they taught me the two uneasily cohabiting modes of thought that are central to the scientific method.” – Carl Sagan
Ok. For those doing the labeling, I make a small request. Please answer a few quick questions – some raised by scientists smarter and more trained than I, and we can simply move on:
Why did the warming trend between 1978 and 1998 essentially stop – despite computer climate model predictions of steady warming?
How sensitive is the climate to increased carbon-dioxide levels?
What feedback mechanisms exist that can increase or decrease that sensitivity?
Why did
periods of high carbon-dioxide levels earlier in Earth’s history result
in temperature levels both above and below the average?
Why do the 55 different models used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) differ
in their descriptions of the past century’s global average surface
temperature by more than three times the entire warming recorded during
that time?
Why does the IPCC use 55 different models – models that each encompass many other differing factors as well?
Why have the IPCC models been consistently wrong in their predictions – and why have they always generated overstatements in predicted temperature movements?
How often have the IPCC models changed, what were the changes, why were they changed and when did they change?
Why are the
IPCC reports and models based on thousands of research papers whose
conclusions have never been independently verified?
Why do the models describe the shrinking of Arctic sea ice, but fail to describe comparable growth of Antarctic sea ice?
Why is the
rate of global sea-level rise the same as what we observed 70 years ago –
about one foot per century – and why aren’t IPCC models able to
account for this?
Why do the
models predict that the lower atmosphere in the tropics will absorb much
of the heat of the warming atmosphere when no such area has been found –
although the weather stations have been quietly moved – and resulting
temperatures revised?
Why is it
that today’s best estimate of the sensitivity induced by a hypothetical
doubling of carbon-dioxide concentration (between 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit
and 8.1 degrees Fahrenheit) is no different, and no more certain, than
it was 30 years ago?
How do we
acknowledge the interactions and influences of the ocean’s impact on
variabilities when we do not know or understand the level of undersea
volcanic activity and resulting carbon dioxide (warming) and aerosol gas
(cooling) emissions?
Why do the
models deal with fluid dynamics of the atmosphere and oceans, while
ignoring the effects of biology – of vegetation and topsoil?
Why can no one accurately answer what rough percentage of historical warming has been generated by human activity?
I will eagerly await answers to these few nagging questions.“Truth has nothing to do with the conclusion, and everything to do with the methodology.” – Stefan Molyneux
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is the leading international body for the assessment of climate change. It was established by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) in 1988 to provide the world with a clear scientific view on the current state of knowledge in climate change and its potential environmental and socio-economic impacts. The IPCC reviews and assesses the most recent scientific, technical and socio-economic information produced worldwide relevant to the understanding of climate change. IPCC does not conduct any research nor does it monitor climate related data or parameters.
I encourage you to visit the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) data section and read some of the actual reports. When you do so, please make sure to examine the footnotes. I highlight just a few:
“Temperature change is reported for the year 2100, which is not directly comparable to the equilibrium warming reported in WGIII AR4
[Working Group III – Assessment Report 4]. Temperature change in 2100
is provided for a median estimate of the MAGICC [Model for the
Assessment of Greenhouse Gas Induced Climate Change] calculations, which
illustrates differences between the emissions pathways of the scenarios
in each category. The range of temperature change in the
parentheses includes in addition the carbon cycle and climate system
uncertainties as represented by the MAGICC model. The temperature data compared to the 1850–1900 reference year was calculated by taking all projected warming relative to 1986–2005, and adding 0.61 °C for 1986–2005 compared to 1850–1900.”
“The assessment in this table is based on the probabilities calculated for the full ensemble of scenarios in WGIII [Working Group III] using MAGICC and the assessment in WGI [Working Group I] of the uncertainty of the temperature projections not covered by climate models. Hence, the likelihood statements reflect different lines of evidence from both WGs.”
“The likelihood statements are indicative only,
and follow broadly the terms used by the WGI SPM [Summary for
Policymakers] for temperature projections: likely 66–100%, more likely
than not >50–100%, about as likely as not 33–66%, and unlikely 0–33%.
In addition the term more unlikely than likely 0–<50% is used.”
“Scenarios
of how the future might evolve capture key factors of human development
that influence GHG [Greenhouse Gas] emissions and our ability to respond
to climate change. To this end, it [IPCC] has collected a database of more than 1200 published mitigation and baseline scenarios. In most cases, the underlying socio-economic projections reflect the modelling teams’ individual choices about how to conceptualize the future in the absence of climate policy. The baseline scenarios show a wide range of assumptions about economic growth
(ranging from threefold to more than eightfold growth in per capita
income by 2100), demand for energy (ranging from a 40 % to more than 80 %
decline in energy intensity by 2100) and other factors, in particular the carbon intensity of energy.”
“The reproducibility of published experiments is the foundation of science. No reproducibility – no science.” – Moshe PritskerWhat becomes very clear while wading through these reports is that they comprise a series of assumptional layers – all built on the other. Initial research papers are compiled. They are accepted. Assumptions are made and built into highly complex and varying models. The variables at play are simply baffling in their sheer numbers. And they all lie on top of the other. Donna Laframboise of the Global Warming Policy Foundation summed this up in her paper, Peer Review – Why Skepticism is Essential:
“Reproducibility
is the backbone of sound science. If it is infeasible to independently
evaluate the numerous assumptions embedded within climate model
software, and if third parties lack comparable computing power, a great
deal of climate science would appear to be inherently non-reproducible.
The world is currently spending billions on measures intended to combat
humanity’s allegedly significant role in climate change. The IPCC tells
us this is prudent and necessary. But IPCC reports are based on
thousands of research papers whose conclusions have never been
independently verified. If half of published, peer-reviewed papers ‘may
simply be untrue’, half of the papers cited by the IPCC may also be
untrue.”
“Consensus is the business of politics. In science consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results.” – Michael Crichton“97% of Scientists agree: #climate change is real, man-made and dangerous” – Barack Obama
The 97% Consensus figure came from a study of peer-reviewed papers by John Cook titled Quantifying the Consensus on Anthropogenic Global Warming in the Scientific Literature. While the 97% figure is widely quoted, the underlying methodology is less well known. Here is a quote from Mr. Cook himself:
“66.4% of
abstracts expressed no position on AGW [Anthropogenic (man-made) Global
Warming], 32.6% endorsed AGW, 0.7% rejected AGW and 0.3% were uncertain
about the cause of global warming. Among abstracts expressing a position
on AGW, 97.1% endorsed the consensus position that humans are causing
global warming.”
Give that quote a quick re-reading. Two-thirds of scientists expressed no opinion on human contribution to global warming. They were then excluded from the results.
The remaining one-third was then taken to arrive at the 97% figure.
This is how the first 97% rate of scientific agreement was arrived at.
Cook then asked those scientists who had expressed no opinion or
position to do so. About 15% of these scientists responded to Cook’s
invitation (1,189 authors self-rated 2,142 papers) with the net result
that 62.7% (1,342) of these second-round responders affirmed the global
warming consensus question. 35.5% (761) of responders again stated they
had no opinion. 1.8% (39) rejected the hypothesis. The responders who
stated they held no opinion were once again excluded. So Cook took only
those respondents who had answered in the affirmative (1,342) and the
negative (39) and therefore again came up with 97.2%. Cooke started with
12,000 papers, excluded the vast majority of them as the authors
refused to take a position, and ended up with 1,381 papers which he used
to reach his 97% Consensus Figure. That equates to 11.5% of papers from
the original starting number.It gets worse. Note that there were 1,189 authors but 2,142 papers. Given that Cook excluded “no opinion” statements – from the 15% subset who actually responded – he was by definition double-counting authors who had generated multiple papers. Finally, the criteria by which Cook achieved his classifications was lacking in scientific clarity – or honesty. To be counted as affirming the global warming consensus question, scientists only needed to agree that “carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas and that human activities have warmed the planet to some unspecified extent”. That’s it. If, as a scientist, you agreed that human activity had some portion – any portion – of responsibility for global warming you were included in the 97% consensus. I’m shocked the figure wasn’t 100%.
Needless to say, the much-touted figure of 97% is not only wildly over-stated – it is meaningless.
“There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics.” – Mark Twain
According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA); “2016 became the warmest year in NOAA’s 137-year series. Remarkably, this is the third consecutive year a new global annual temperature record has been set.”
Except this isn’t exactly true. Although you have to look for it, the margin of error for the NOAA report is ±0.15 °C.
2016 was 0.94°C above the long-term average, while 2015 was 0.90°C above the long-term average. This represents a difference of 0.04°C between 2016 and 2015. The margin of error is ±0.15 °C – or 4 times larger than the measured temperature differential. Stated inversely, the difference in temperature between 2016 versus 2015 was a mere one-quarter of the margin of error.
Using proper statistical measurement, 2016 and 2015 were tied for the warmest year.
I now direct your attention to the 12 Warmest Years table located slightly further down the NOAA Report. This table lays out the ranking and temperature increase (anomaly) for the 12 warmest years, relative to the long-term average of the period 1880 to 2016. Please recall that the statistical margin of error is ±0.15°C. When adjusted for statistical error an interesting observation is made.
The years 1998, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2010, 2012, 2013 and 2014 are all tied for second warmest year.
The period that annual temperatures are measured against spans 1880 to 2016 – or 137 years. Consider the level of technological sophistication and advancement that has occurred over that timeframe. Also note that the NOAA is famous for adjustments of its temperature data set – mysteriously in ways that always – and I do mean always – increase the case for Global Warming. I don’t know about you, but I am skeptical over the idea of accepting temperature data from 100 years ago as being accurate to within 1/100 of a degree. But that is exactly what they ask us to do.
Of further consideration is data from our oceans, which hold most of the climate’s heat and strongly influence the atmosphere. Accurate, widespread and reasonably precise readings of ocean temperatures have only been available to us for the past few decades.
Scientific truth by consensus has had a uniformly bad history – David Douglass
Then we have the issue of data revision. The Wall Street Journal caught something interesting in historical NOAA data. According to them, temperatures for the years 2005 and 2010 were exactly tied in 2010, but now 2010 is listed as slightly warmer at 0.70°C versus 2005 at 0.66°C, just enough to impart an upward slope to any graph that ignores statistical uncertainty. When and why was temperature data for 2010 changed? And why was it only known if one had maintained their own historical copies of older data?
There are numerous examples of this type of data adjustment activity. In a lengthy piece by Bob Tisdale and Anthony Watts, they note the following:
“The
original version of the NOAA ERSST.v3 [Extended Reconstructed Surface
Sea Temperature] data included satellite data when they were first
released in 2008, but the satellite data were removed before the dataset
became “official”. The revised dataset was renamed ERSST.v3b. It is
ERSST.v3b that Karl et al. are calling the “old” data. But we can learn
something very interesting if we compare NOAA’s ERSST.v4 (new) and
ERSST.v3b (old) data during the satellite era. The warming rates are the
same. But the new data show a much higher warming rate during the
“hiatus” periods [2000-2014], and that means to manufacture warming
during the hiatus, NOAA adjusted the pre-hiatus data downward. If we
subtract the ERSST.v3b (old) data from the new ERSST.v4 data, we can see
that that is exactly what NOAA did.”
In another instance the NOAA adjusted their use of ocean temperature readings by
putting more weight on certain ocean buoys, adjusting ship-based
temperature readings upward, and slightly raising land-based
temperatures. The NOAA noted that adjusted ship-based temperature data
“had the largest impact on trends for the 2000-2014 time period,
accounting for 0.030°C of the 0.064°C trend difference.” and that “buoy
offset correction contributed 0.014°C… to the difference, and the
additional weight given to the buoys because of their greater accuracy
contributed 0.012°C.”That ship-based data had the largest upward impact on temperature trends should hardly be surprising. As noted in A Review of Uncertainty in In Situ Measurements and Data Sets of Seas Surface Temperature “during the collection and hauling, the temperature of the water sample can be modified by the combined actions of latent and sensible heat transfer and the warmth of the Sun. Even in the best conditions, an accurate measurement requires diligence”…”measurement errors that accrue in this data owing to the fact that a ship’s infrastructure conducts heat, absorbs a tremendous amount of the sun’s energy, and vessels’ intake tubes are at different ocean depths.” The article continues, “measurements made by ships, which were largely ERI measurements in their study period, were on average warmer than nearby drifting buoy observations made nearer to the surface”. The article argues against the use of data collection in this manner yet this is precisely what the NOAA did. They took “good” data collected from buoys and replaced it with “bad” data from ships. You can find an expose on this topic here.
There many such examples. I have no doubt there exists numerous valid – and scientific – reasons why this is done. But I question why the data always seems to be revised in a way that continues to increase the Global Warming case. I would expect that, statistically speaking, a certain portion of adjustments would result in the opposite effect. This rarely, if ever, occurs.
Contrast the report by the NOAA that I linked above, with this release titled 2016 – One of the Two Warmest Years on Record by the UK Met Office. Although firmly in the Global Warming camp, the Met states the statistical margin of error right up front.
“The global temperature series shows that 2016 was 0.77 ±0.1 °C above the long-term (1961-1990) average, nominally a record since at least 1850. For comparison, 2015 was 0.76 ±0.1 °C above the long-term (1961-1990) average.”
Again, note that the Met’s margin of
statistical error is ±0.1°C. The difference in measurements between 2016
and 2015 using the Met’s reported numbers was 0.01°C. The difference in
temperatures between 2015 and 2016 is 1/10th the actual margin of error. The report also acknowledges that 2016 – a strong El Nino year – actually came in at the lower end of the predicted range:
“A
particularly strong El Niño event contributed about 0.2C to the annual
average for 2016. The estimated figure of 0.77°C ±0.1 °C above the
long-term (1961-1990) average is within the predicted range from the Met
Office annual average global temperature forecast for 2016, which said
‘the global mean temperature for 2016 is expected to be between 0.72 °C and 0.96 °C above the long-term (1961-1990) average’.”
Away from highlighting similar results
to 2016 temperature readings when accounting for margin of error, I
would like to note the obvious. The absolute measures taken by two
differing – but widely accepted as highly credible – sources, generates
two differing sets of data. They are close. But they are not the same.
Annual temperatures vary by measuring center. And the NOAA’s numbers are
higher.“Science is never conducted as a popularity contest, but instead advances through testable, reproducible, and falsifiable theories.” – Michio Kaku
In 2009, there was a hacking (the Russians did it – kidding) of emails from the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit (CRU) in the UK. As noted by The Telegraph, “Philip Jones, the CRU’s director, is in charge of the two key sets of data used by the IPCC to draw up its reports. Through its link to the Hadley Centre, part of the UK Met Office, which selects most of the IPCC’s key scientific contributors, his global temperature record is the most important of the four sets of temperature data on which the IPCC and governments rely.”
Some interesting comments were released in the hack – dubbed Climategate:
“I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature
trick of adding in the real temperatures to each series for the last 20
years (i.e. from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline.”
– Phil Jones, Dir of CRU email to Michael Mann, director of Penn
State’s Earth System Science Center, Keith Briffa, Ray Bradley, Malcolm
Hughes and Tim Osborne
“I know there is pressure to present a nice tidy story
as regards ‘apparent unprecedented warming in a thousand years or more
in the temperature proxy data’ but in reality the situation is not quite
so simple. We don’t have a lot of temperature proxies that come right
up to today and those that do (at least a significant number of tree
proxies) have some unexpected changes in response that do not match the
recent warming. I do not think it wise that this issue be ignored in the
chapter. I believe that the recent warmth was probably matched about 1000 years ago.” – Keith Briffa email to Mike Mann, Phil Jones, Tom Karl, and Chris Folland
“What if climate change appears to be just mainly a multi-decadal natural fluctuation? They’ll kill us probably…” – Paleoclimatologist Tommy Wilson on how to respond to Steve McIntyre and ClimateAudit
“The two
MMs [Stephen McIntyre and Ross McKitrick – two data fact checkers] have
been after the CRU station data for years. If they ever hear there is a
Freedom of Information Act now in the U.K., I think I’ll delete the file
rather than send to anyone. . . . We also have a data protection act,
which I will hide behind.” – Phil Jones email to Michael Mann
“Mike, Can
you delete any emails you may have had with Keith [Briffa] re AR4 [IPCC
Fourth Assessment Report]? Keith will do likewise. . . . Can you also
email Gene and get him to do the same? Keith will do likewise . . . can
you also email Gene [Wahl] to do the same . . . We will be getting
Caspar [Amman, of the U.S. National Center for Atmospheric Research] to
do likewise.”” – Phil Jones email to Michael Mann
“I have deleted loads of emails” – Phil Jones, Dir of CRU email to Michael Mann
“I am very
sorry to report that the rest of the databases seems to be in nearly as
poor a state as Australia was. There truly is no end in sight. . . . We
can have a proper result, but only by including a load of garbage!”
– computer programmer email regarding the CRU’s temperature database
“Try and
change the Received date! Don’t give those skeptics something to amuse
themselves with.” – Phil Jones email to Eugene Wahl of the NOAA
“The FOI
[Freedom of Information] line we’re all using is this, IPCC is exempt
from any countries FOI—the skeptics have been told this. Even though we .
. . possibly hold relevant info the IPCC is not part of our remit
(mission statement, aims etc) therefore we don’t have an obligation to
pass it on.” – Phil Jones email to Gavin Schmidt of NASA’s Goddard
Institute for Space Studies
“I think we
have to stop considering ‘Climate Research’ as a legitimate
peer-reviewed journal. Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues in the
climate research community to no longer submit to, or cite papers in,
this journal. We would also need to consider what we tell or request of
our more reasonable colleagues who currently sit on the editorial
board.” – Michael Mann email to multiple recipients (Climate Research
had published several articles challenging aspects of the anthropogenic
theory of global warming)
“Why should
I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find
something wrong with it.” – Phil Jones email to Australian scientist
Warwick Hughes
Now that you have read the quotes from
the emails I will again highlight the University of East Anglia’s
Climate Research Unit’s (CRU) importance to the very foundations of
IPCC’s Climate Models and subsequent reporting:
“Philip
Jones, the CRU’s director, is in charge of the two key sets of data
used by the IPCC to draw up its reports. Through its link to the Hadley
Centre, part of the UK Met Office, which selects most of the IPCC’s key
scientific contributors, his global temperature record is the most
important of the four sets of temperature data on which the IPCC and
governments rely.”
The Independent Climate Change E-mails Review,
commissioned and paid for by the University of East Anglia, exonerated
the University of East Anglia of any wrongdoing as regards the emails. A
Penn State University investigation reached the same conclusion. Both
institutions receive tens of millions in federal global warming research
funding. Between 2000 and 2006 Mr. Jones was the recipient (or
co-recipient) of some $19 million worth of research grants.The House of Commons’ Science and Technology Committee reached a different conclusion. “The leaked e-mails appear to show a culture of non-disclosure at CRU and instances where information may have been deleted to avoid disclosure.” No action was taken.
In total, five formal investigations were undertaken – three in the UK, one in North America at Penn State and one internationally for the IPCC. No actions were taken other than to recommend procedural changes. The IPCC investigation was led by the Inter Academy Council (IAC) – a UN group designed to act as a public relations panel for national academies of science. It was commissioned by the IPCC to investigate their procedures. It was limited because of previous conflicting connections with IPCC Chair, Rajendra Pachauri. The IPCC itself was established by the UN.
A damning independent, lengthy and detailed report was issued by the Global Warming Policy Foundation – authored by Andrew Montford with a foreword by Lord Turnbull titled The Climategate Inquiries. In it they make comment on the IPCC:
“While the
IPCC presents itself as a synthesis of the work of over 2,000 scientists
it appears that in practice it is a process in which a much smaller
number of scientists, whose work and careers are intertwined, dominate
the assessment and seek to repel those who are situated elsewhere in the
spectrum of scientific opinion. There is no transparent process for
selection of participants in the assessments. Its handling of uncertainty is flawed and outcomes that are highly speculative are presented with unwarranted certainty.”
Lastly, it should be noted that Michael
Mann – one of the primary participants in Climategate – was one of the
primary creators of the famous – and discredited – Hockey Stick graph
showing a sudden and drastic temperature acceleration. His work on this
matter was used extensively in the IPCC’s Third Report Assessment. Al Gore used this data in his movie An Inconvenient Truth.The scientist imposes only two things, namely truth and sincerity, imposes them upon himself and upon other scientists – Erwin Schrodinger
As I noted the other day, we are spending an immense amount of money on Climate Change. The OMB says we have spent $77 billion domestically between 2008 and 2013. The Federal Climate Change Expenditures Report to Congress noted direct federal spending of $22 billion in 2013. The Climate Change Business Journal estimates the total global Climate Change Industry encompasses $1.5 trillion per year in total expenditures. That’s as much as is spent globally for online shopping.
I am now going to repeat a statement I made towards the start of this piece. I absolutely believe in Climate Change. We have concrete geological evidence of its existence. But I don’t know if we are currently undergoing Global Warming – the current data shows a plateau in temperatures for the last twenty years. If we are undergoing Global Warming, I have no idea by what degree, nor how long or short the cycle. I do not know the magnitude of human generated influences nor their direct impact on our climate. I believe that human generation of large amounts of carbon dioxide cannot be good for our species but I don’t know or understand the true impact of doing so. I suspect undersea volcanic activity plays a large role in climate change but I have no idea of accuracy, nor scale or direction. In short, I simply don’t know. Nor, I suspect, does anyone with any degree of certainty.
Honesty and transparency are two hallmarks of science. Reproducibility of results is paramount. But we seem to be seeing little of this in the ongoing – and highly politicized – debate over Global Warming. I was skeptical over the near hysteria on the topic when I started this project. The seeming one-sidedness and lack of open debate on what is clearly an immensely complex topic was exactly the reason I decided to take a hard look into the matter. What I found was more alarming than anticipated. It led me to question virtually all the results put forth by the IPCC. The IPCC models lack transparency, are built on assumptional layers of potentially flawed data, are subject to ongoing data revision, and have failed to demonstrate predictive ability. The IPCC, as an organization and in its results, is clearly subject to intense politicization – in their operations, in their creation and collection of data – and in the dissemination of that data through their published conclusions. Yet we spend billions – even trillions – as a result of the published results.
“Science has an unfortunate habit of discovering information politicians don’t want to hear, largely because it has some bearing on reality.” – Stephen L. Burns
I am hopeful that as we transition through a new administration we may be able to engage in a more open – and honest – discussion of the topic. One free from Political Correctness and more inclusive of the honest endeavor of science. I don’t have a vested interest or hidden agenda in my discussion on Climate Change. But I most surely have an interest in truth. As a citizen I have a vested interest in honest results and honest discussion. If our climate is truly warming I want to know the facts and I want to know what I can do about it.
What I want is unbiased, scientific research free from political manipulation. If I can get these things I will gladly take the answers. Whatever they may be.
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