Dooms that Failed: Resource Scarcity; Overpopulation; Climate Catastrophe

Doom and utter devastation tend to get one's attention. The human mind is programmed to home in on signs and portents of doom or catastrophe. Clever con men have taken advantage of this tendency for millenia, for purposes of profit and power. Modern times are no exception.

Here is a short list of failed predictions of doom -- many of them coming from people who might otherwise be considered respectable and reliable (h/t WUWT):

 In 1865, Stanley Jevons (one of the most recognized 19th century economists) predicted that England would run out of coal by 1900, and that England’s factories would grind to a standstill.
    In 1885, the US Geological Survey announced that there was “little or no chance” of oil being discovered in California.
    In 1891, it said the same thing about Kansas and Texas. (See Osterfeld, David. Prosperity Versus Planning : How Government Stifles Economic Growth. New York : Oxford University Press, 1992.)
    In 1939 the US Department of the Interior said that American oil supplies would last only another 13 years.
    1944 federal government review predicted that by now the US would have exhausted its reserves of 21 of 41 commodities it examined. Among them were tin, nickel, zinc, lead and manganese.
    In 1949 the Secretary of the Interior announced that the end of US oil was in sight.
    Claim: In 1952 the US President’s Materials Policy Commission concluded that by the mid-1970s copper production in the US could not exceed 800,000 tons and that lead production would be at most 300,000 tons per year.
    Data: But copper production in 1973 was 1.6 million tons, and by 1974 lead production had reached 614,000 tons – 100% higher than predicted.
    Claims: In 1968, Paul R. Ehrlich wrote The Population Bomb and declared that the battle to feed humanity had been lost and that there would be a major food shortage in the US. "In the 1970s ... hundreds of millions are going to starve to death," and by the 1980s most of the world's important resources would be depleted. He forecast that 65 million Americans would die of starvation between 1980-1989 and that by 1999, the US population would decline to 22.6 million. The problems in the US would be relatively minor compared to those in the rest of the world. (Ehrlich, Paul R. The Population Bomb. New York, Ballantine Books, 1968.) New Scientist magazine underscored his speech in an editorial titled "In Praise of Prophets."

    Claim: "By the year 2000 the United Kingdom will be simply a small group of impoverished islands, inhabited by some 70 million hungry people ... If I were a gambler, I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000." Paul Ehrlich, Speech at British Institute For Biology, September 1971.

    Claim: Ehrlich wrote in 1968, "I have yet to meet anyone familiar with the situation who thinks India will be self-sufficient in food by 1971, if ever."
    Data: Yet in a only few years India was exporting food and significantly changed its food production capacity. Ehrlich must have noted this because in the 1971 version of his book this commented is delted (Julian Simon, The Ultimate Resource, Princeton: Princeton Univesity Press, 1981, p. 64).
    The Limits to Growth (1972) – projected the world would run out of gold by 1981, mercury and silver by 1985, tin by 1987, zinc by 1990, petroleum by 1992, and copper, lead and natural gas by 1993. It also stated that the world had only 33-49 years of aluminum resources left, which means we should run out sometime between 2005-2021. (See Donella Meadows et al., The Limits to Growth: A Report for the Club of Rome's Project on the Predicament of Mankind. New York: New American Library, 1972.
    Claim: In 1974, the US Geological Survey announced “at 1974 technology and 1974 price” the US had only a 10-year supply of natural gas.
    Data: The American Gas Association said that gas supplies were sufficient for the next 1,000-2,500 years. (Julian Simon, Population Matters. New Jersey: Transaction Publications, 1990): p. 90.

Population and Poverty

    In the mid 1970s the US government sponsored a travelling exhibit for schoolchildren titled, "Population: The Problem is Us." (Jacqueline Kasun, The War Against Population, San Francisco: CA, Ignatius, 1988, p. 21.)
    In 1973, Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart's vote in Roe v. Wade was influenced by this idea, according to Bob Woodward and Scott Armstrong: "As Stewart saw it, abortion was becoming one reasonable solution to population control" (quoted in Newsweek of September 14, 1987, p. 33.).
    In 1989, when the US Supreme Court was hearing the Webster case, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor brought the idea of overpopulation into a hypothetical question she asked of Charles Fried, former solicitor-general, "Do you think that the state has the right to, if in a future century we had a serious overpopulation problem, has a right to require women to have abortions after so many children?"
   World Bank president Barber Conable calls for population control because "poverty and rapid population growth reinforce each other" (Washington Post, July 16, 1990, p. A13)
    Prince Philip advises us that "It must be obvious by now that further population growth in any country is undesirable" (Washington Post, May 8, 1990, p. A26)
    37 Senators wrote President Bush in support of funding for population control (Washington Post, April 1, 1990, p. H1)
    The Trilateral Commission and the American Assembly call for reduction in population growth (U. S. News and World Report, May 7, 1990)
    Newsweek's year-ending cover story concluded that "Foremost of the new realities is the world's population problem" (December 25, 1990, p.44)
    The president of NOW warns that continued population growth would be a "catastrophe" (Nat Hentoff in the Washington Post, July 29, 1989, p. A17)
    Ted Turner (Atlanta Journal Constitution, Wed. Dec. 2, 1998) in an address to the Society of Environmental Journalists in Chattanooga - blamed Christianity for overpopulation and environmental degradation, and argued that the people who disagree with him are "dummies." He stated in part, "The Judeo-Christian religion says man was given dominion over everything, and his salvation was that he was to go out and increase and multiply. Well, we have done that ... to the point where in Calcutta, it’s a hellhole. So it's not an environmentally friendly religion."
    Ellen Goodman laments "People Pollution" (Washington Post, March 3, 1990, p. A25)
    Herblock cartoon shows that the U. S. neglecting the "world population explosion" (Washington Post, July 19, 1990, p. A22)
    Hobart Rowen likens population growth to "the pond weed [which] grows in huge leaps" (Washington Post, April 1, 1990, p. H8).
    A Newsweek "My Turn" suggests giving every teen-age girl a check for up to $1200 each year that she does not have a baby "in order to stop the relentless increase of humanity" (Noel Perrin. "A Nonbearing Account", April 2, 1990, p. 9).

Climate Change     Claim Jan. 1970: "By 1985, air pollution will have reduced the amount of sunlight reaching earth by one half." Life Magazine, January 1970. Life Magazine also noted that some people disagree, "but scientists have solid experimental and historical evidence to support each of the predictions."
    Data: Air quality has actually improved since 1970. Studies find that sunlight reaching the Earth fell by somewhere between 3 and 5 percent over the period in question.   Claim April 1970: "If present trends continue, the world will be ... eleven degrees colder by the year 2000. This is about twice what it would take to put us in an ice age." Kenneth E.F. Watt, in Earth Day, 1970.
    Data: According to NASA, global temperature has increased by about 1 degree Fahrenheit since 1970.
   Claim 1970: "In ten years all important animal life in the sea will be extinct. Large areas of coastline will have to be evacuated because of the stench of dead fish." Paul Ehrlich, speech during Earth Day, 1970.

    Claim 1972: "Artic specialist Bernt Balchen says a general warming trend over the North Pole is melting the polar ice cap and may produce an ice-free Arctic Ocean by the year 2000." Christian Science Monitor, June 8, 1972.
    Data: Ice coverage has fallen, though as of last month, the Arctic Ocean had 3.82 million square miles of ice cover -- an area larger than the continental United States -- according to The National Snow and Ice Data Center.

    Claims 1974: "... when metereologists take an average of temperatures around the globe they find the atmosphere has been growing gradually cooler for the past three decades. The trend shows no indication of reversing. Climatological Cassandras are becoming increasingly apprehensive, for the weather aberrations they are studying may be the harbinger of another ice age. Telltale signs are everywhere--from the unexpected persistence and thickness of pack ice int eh waters around Iceland to the southward migration of a warmth-loving creature like the armadillo from the Midwest. When Climatologist George J. Kukla of Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Geological Observatory and his wife Helena analyzed satellite weather data fro the Northern Hemisphere, they found that the area of ice and snow cover had suddenly increased by 12% in 1971 and the increase has persisted ever since. Areas of Baffin Island in the Canadia Arctic, for example, were once totally free of any snow in summer; now they are covered year round."
    Later in the article, "Whatever the cause of the cooling trend, its effects could be extremely serious, if not catastrophic. Scientists figure that only a 1% decrease in the amount of sunlight hitting the earth's surface could tip teh climatic balance, and cool the planet enough to send it sliding down the road to another ice age within only a few hundred years."     Source: "Another Ice Age," Time Magazine, June 24, 1974. 
    Claim 1989: "Using computer models, researchers concluded that global warming would raise average annual temperatures nationwide two degrees by 2010." Associated Press, May 15, 1989.
    Data: According to NASA, global temperature has increased by about 0.7 degrees Fahrenheit since 1989. And U.S. temperature has increased even less over the same period.    Claims: "Britain's winter ends tomorrow with further indications of a striking environmental change: snow is starting to disappear from our lives."
    "Sledges, snowmen, snowballs and ... are all a rapidly diminishing part of Britain's culture, as warmer winters--which scientists are attributing to global climate change--produce not only fewer white Christmases, but fewer white Januaries and Februaries."
    "London's last substantial snowfall was in February 1991." "Global warming, the heating of the atmosphere by increased amounts of industrial gases, is now accepted as a reality by the international community."
    According to Dr. David Viner, a senior research scientist at the climatic research unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia, within a few years "children just aren't going to know what snow is" and winter snowfall will be "a very rare and exciting event." Interviewed by the UK Independent, March 20, 2000.     "David Parker, at the Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research in Berkshire, says ultimately, British children could have only virtual experience of snow."
    See "Snowfalls are now just a thing of the past." The Independent. March 20, 2000.
    Data: "Coldest December Since records began as temperatures plummet to minus 10 C bringing travel chaos across Britain." Mailonline. Dec. 18, 2010.

    Claim: "[By] 1995, the greenhouse effect would be desolating the heartlands of North America and Eurasia with horrific drought, causing crop failures and food riots ... [By 1996] The Platte River of Nebraska would be dry, while a continent-wide black blizzard of prairie topsoil will stop traffic on interstates, strip paint from houses and shut down computers." Michel Oppenheimer and Robert H. Boyle, Dead Heat, St. Martin's Press, 1990. Oppenheimer is the Albert G. Milbank Professor of Geosciences and International Affairs in the Woodrow Wilson School and the Department of Geosciences at Princeton University. He is the Director of the Program in Science, Technology, and Environmental Policy at the Wilson School. He was formerly a senior scientist with the Environmental Defense Fund, the largest non-governmental organization in the U.S. that examines problems and solutions to greenhouse gases.
    Data: When asked about these old predictions Oppenheimer stated, "On the whole I would stand by these predictions -- not predictions, sorry, scenarios -- as having at least in a general way actually come true," he said. "There's been extensive drought, devastating drought, in significant parts of the world. The fraction of the world that's in drought has increased over that period."
    However, that claim is not obviously true. Data from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center show that precipitation -- rain and snow -- has increased slightly over the century._Dooms that Failed

This is just a hint of all the failed predictions of doom over the past few decades. Remember: While there is certainly a sucker born every minute, there is also a grifter born at least every few minutes. The cleverest grifters take advantage of a sucker's gullibility in order to become rich and powerful -- and sometimes popes and presidents.

Matt Ridley: Apocalypse Not

Ronald Bailey: Remembering Peak Oil Madness

Environmentalists' Wild Predictions

Doomsday Prophecy for Environmentalists

Coping When the World Doesn't End

Peter Glover: Ehrlich, False Prophets, . . .

A Few of the Last Chances to Save the World

Greenland Is Still Too Cold for the Vikings

Around the time the Vikings disappear from the island’s archaeological record, temperature appears to have plunged. _Source

The Vikings had things very nice in Greenland for a few hundred years, during the medieval warm period -- a warm period just as warm or warmer than modern times. It was so warm during that time, that the Vikings were able to grow barley, for beer.

Spiegel.de

We know that the little ice age cooled the Greenland climate to a point where the Viking's traditional foods and livestock were more difficult to grow. But were there other reasons why the Vikings packed up and went back to Iceland?

When settlement began in the early 11th century, only between 20 and 30 percent of their diet came from the sea. But seal hunting played a growing role in the ensuing centuries. "They ate more and more seal meat, with the animals constituting up to 80 percent of their diet in the 14th century," explains team member Jan Heinemeier, a dating expert from the University of Aarhus, in Denmark.

His fellow team member Niels Lynnerup, an anthropologist and forensic scientist at the University of Copenhagen, confirms that the Vikings of Greenland had plenty to eat even as the climate grew colder. "Perhaps they were just sick and tired of living at the ends of the earth and having almost nothing but seals to eat," he says.

The bone analyses show that they rarely ate meat from their own herds of livestock. The climate had become harsher on the island starting in the mid-13th century. Summer temperatures fell, violent storms raged around the houses and the winters were bone-chillingly cold. For the cattle that had been brought to Greenland, there was less and less to eat in the pastures and meadows along the fjords.

On the smaller farms, cattle were gradually replaced with sheep and goats, which were easier to rear. The isotope analyses show that pigs, valued for their meat, were fed fish and seal remains for a while longer but had disappeared from the island by around 1300...

...if it wasn't starvation or disease, what triggered the abandonment of the Greenland settlements in the second half of the 15th century? The scientists suspect that a combination of causes made life there unbearable for the Scandinavian immigrants. For instance, there was hardly any demand anymore for walrus tusks and seal skins, the colony's most important export items. What's more, by the mid-14th century, regular ship traffic with Norway and Iceland had ceased.

As a result, Greenland's residents were increasingly isolated from their mother countries. Although they urgently needed building lumber and iron tools, they could now only get their hands on them sporadically. "It became more and more difficult for the Greenlanders to attract merchants from Europe to the island," speculates Jette Arneborg, an archeologist at the National Museum of Denmark, in Copenhagen. "But, without trade, they couldn't survive in the long run." _Spiegel.de

The Spiegel article above cites archaelogical research that suggests that the abandonment of Greenland was more of a tactical retreat than a "dieoff." The young women had long since been packed off for greener pastures, there were no more babies, and toward the end of the colony, it was apparently only the die-hard old cobbers who remained.

It is only relatively recently that the glacial ice has melted back to allow a better examination of crops and wild forage and forest that grew on the edge of Viking settlements. In other words, Greenland is just now recovering from the icy ravages of the deep freeze conditions of the Little Ice Age.

In the final phase, it was young people of child-bearing age in particular who saw no future for themselves on the island. The excavators found hardly any skeletons of young women on a cemetery from the late period.

...In addition, there was a rural exodus in their Scandinavian countries at the time, and the population in the more remote regions of Iceland, Norway and Denmark was thinning out. This, in turn, freed up farms and estates for returnees from Greenland.

However, the Greenlanders didn't leave their houses in a precipitous fashion. Aside from a gold signet ring in the grave of a bishop, valuable items, such as silver and gold crucifixes, have not been discovered anywhere on the island. The archeologists interpret this as a sign that the departure from the colony proceeded in an orderly manner, and that the residents took any valuable objects along. "If they had died out as a result of diseases or natural disasters, we would certainly have found such precious items long ago," says Lynnerup. _Spiegel.de

Lately, it is beginning to warm up again on Greenland -- although cattle and barley growers have been slow to jump at the opportunity to put in new herds and crops there.

Perhaps Greenland is still just too cold -- even for the Vikings and Vikings at heart.

Behind the Scenes of The Green Doomer Eco-Fascist Cult

This article was previously published on Al Fin Energy blog

Green doomer eco-fascist cultists all follow similar guidelines: Slash the human population of the planet, although they themselves are unwilling to go first.. Blame free markets and western civilisation for most of the world's problems. Eschew all viable forms of large-scale energy in favour of those which are exorbitantly expensive and innately unreliable. Hate advanced technology, and want to push the world toward primitive lifestyles and global poverty. They are essentially anti-individual and pro-collective.

Members of any doomer cult will recognise the litany, whether from the climate change catastrophe cult, the peak oil doomer cult, the overpopulation doom cult, the global pollution doom cult, the biodiversity doom cult, etc.

Here is more from one of the horses' mouths:

This is Finnish writer Pentti Linkola — a man who demands that the human population reduce its size to around 500 million and abandon modern technology and the pursuit of economic growth — in his own words.

He likens Earth today to an overflowing lifeboat:

What to do, when a ship carrying a hundred passengers suddenly capsizes and there is only one lifeboat? When the lifeboat is full, those who hate life will try to load it with more people and sink the lot. Those who love and respect life will take the ship’s axe and sever the extra hands that cling to the sides.

He sees America as the root of the problem:

The United States symbolises the worst ideologies in the world: growth and freedom.

He unapologetically advocates bloodthirsty dictatorship:

Any dictatorship would be better than modern democracy. There cannot be so incompetent a dictator that he would show more stupidity than a majority of the people. The best dictatorship would be one where lots of heads would roll and where government would prevent any economical growth .

We will have to learn from the history of revolutionary movements — the national socialists, the Finnish Stalinists, from the many stages of the Russian revolution, from the methods of the Red Brigades — and forget our narcissistic selves.

A fundamental, devastating error is to set up a political system based on desire. Society and life have been organized on the basis of what an individual wants, not on what is good for him or her.

As is often the way with extremist central planners Linkola believes he knows what is best for each and every individual, as well as society as a whole:

Just as only one out of 100,000 has the talent to be an engineer or an acrobat, only a few are those truly capable of managing the matters of a nation or mankind as a whole. In this time and this part of the World we are headlessly hanging on democracy and the parliamentary system, even though these are the most mindless and desperate experiments of mankind. In democratic coutries the destruction of nature and sum of ecological disasters has accumulated most. Our only hope lies in strong central government and uncompromising control of the individual citizen.

_azizonomics.com

H/T Zerohedge

This fellow is not actually so extreme, for a green. He may be a bit more honest and open about his convictions than most, but that is changing. Even the WWF -- which has written many of the supporting "studies" for the IPCC climate change reports -- has come out in support of policies which would ultimately result in a large scale human dieoff.

Is this also the face of the peak oil doomer cult? Certainly you find a lot of peak oil cult wankers fixated on doom porn, compulsively getting their doom fix whenever possible. It would be easy to assume that they actually want to see suburbia burning, that they would like to see the end of civilisation as we know it.

Not that most of the incompetent athols would survive very long after such an event. More: Europe as the canary in the coal mine

Early dissent among former believers in the CAGW orthodoxy and carbon hysteria warming cult

Did Gigantic Phartosaurs Devastate the Mesozoic Climate?

The following piece was previously published on Al Fin Potpourri blog

UK climate scientologists scientists have discovered that huge dinosaurs -- nicknamed "phartosaurs" -- may have produced enough methane by flatulence to tip the balance of the mesozoic climate into catastrophe.

Baby Phartosaurs in Various Stages of Hatching

Like huge cows, the mighty sauropods would have generated enormous quantities of methane. Sauropods, recognisable by their long necks and tails, were widespread around 150 million years ago.

They included some of the largest animals to walk the Earth, such as Diplodocus, which measured 150 feet and weighed up to 45 tonnes.

Scientists believe that, just as in cows, methane-producing bacteria aided the digestion of sauropods by fermenting their plant food.

''A simple mathematical model suggests that the microbes living in sauropod dinosaurs may have produced enough methane to have an important effect on the Mesozoic climate,'' said study leader Dr Dave Wilkinson, from Liverpool John Moores University.

''Indeed, our calculations suggest that these dinosaurs could have produced more methane than all modern sources - both natural and man-made - put together.''

The research is published today in the journal Current Biology. _Telegraph_via_WUWT

This "phartosaurus hypothesis" is still in its preliminary stages, although it is as well supported as any other catastrophic theories or models of climate put forward by IPCC climate scientologists scientists up until now.

One must admire the brilliance of the keen minds capable of dreaming up modeling such clever hypotheses.

By the way, how long is it going to take Steven Spielberg to grow some of those giant phartosaurs, as food livestock? Imagine how many hungry people could be fed around the world from just a small herd of domesticated phartosaurs! Hurry up, Steven. There are hungry people out there!

Peter Gleick is Apparent Author of FakeGate, Confesses to Fraud

Peter Gleick has confessed to the fraudulent obtaining of private documents from the Heartland Institute think tank, and of subsequently disseminating them to avowed enemies of Heartland. He claims to have done this out of frustration at his inability to utterly defeat the enemies of the climate orthodoxy by legitimate means, or something to that effect.

One way or the other, Gleick’s use of deception in pursuit of his cause after years of calling out climate deception has destroyed his credibility and harmed others. (Some of the released documents contain information about Heartland employees that has no bearing on the climate fight.) That is his personal tragedy and shame (and I’m sure devastating for his colleagues, friends and family). _Revkin NYT (who himself is "involved" in this escapade and who may have deleted online materials in an attempt to limit his personal legal risk)

Gleick is refusing to admit to authorship of the fake memo, which is written in a unique style curiously similar to Gleick's own writing (see Steven Mosher comments here, here, here and here). I suspect that much more will be said about Mr. Gleick's personal standards of honesty in the days to come -- perhaps even in a court of law.

Gleick has been an outspoken advocate of the catastrophic view of climate change, and has been vocally impatient -- and often abusive -- at anyone who wishes to take a more cautious and careful approach in the interpretation of the scientific data.

Here are more reports on this development:

Climate Audit: Peter Gleick confesses

Watts Up With That Breaking: Gleick Confesses

Tom Nelson: Regarding Gleickgate and much more

Climate Depot coverage

It is likely that the fallout from Gleick's egregious contretemps will grow to greater significance over the next several days.

Stay tuned to Tom Nelson, Anthony Watts, and Steve McIntyre for more.

FakeGate: Peter Gleick Associated w/ Fake Memo?

In the ongoing climate wars, a memo dump from sceptical think tank Heartland Institute was performed by Desmogblog recently, in an attempt to discredit the climate sceptic group. Unfortunately, desmogblog's memo dump included one particularly inflammatory memo which turns out to be a total fake.

There has been a great deal of discussion online regarding the possible author of the fake memo, and at this time the consensus appears to be centered on outspoken alarmist Peter Gleick. Bishop Hill has more.

It is not clear whether Gleick was associated with the memo dump of the illegally obtained materials, whether or not he is the author of the fake memo.

It is interesting how quickly the speculation over the authorship of the fake memo has overshadowed the intended effect of the memo dump. The only controversial memo in the bunch was the faked one. The rest of the material is so humdrum, it probably drove the data thief to forgery! ;-)

Here is where Heartland stacks up against other groups who finance climate research and public relations (via JoNova):
…

Entity	USD
Greenpeace	$300m	2010 Annual Report
WWF	$700m	” ($524m Euro)
Pew Charitable Trust	$360m	2010 Annual Report
Sierra Club	$56m	2010 Annual Report
NSW climate change fund (just one random govt example)	$750m	NSW Gov (A$700m)
UK university climate fund (just another random govt example)	$360m	UK Gov (£234 m)
Heartland Institute	$7m	(actually $6.4m)
US government funding for climate science and technology	$7,000m	“Climate Money” 2009
US government funding for “climate related appropriations”	$1,300m	USAID 2010
Annual turnover in global carbon markets	$120,000m	2010 Point Carbon
Annual investment in renewable energy	$243,000m	2010 BNEF
US government funding for skeptical scientists	$ 0

These are annual turnovers or annual budgets

__Source: Jo Nova

Heartland's contribution to the climate debate is just a small drop in a large bucket, money-wise. But that small drop seems to be having an out-of-proportion effect, if the lengths to which opponents are willing to go to discredit the organsation are any judge.

All of this must be particularly frustrating to climate alarmists and carbon hysterics, in light of recent findings that the global climate has not significantly warmed over the past decade, glaciers in the Himalayas do not appear to be melting, and global sea levels appear to have actually dropped!

Carbon hysterics seem to have fewer and fewer solid supports in their righteous cause and crusade to overturn the world order. No wonder they are so frustrated!

As always, Tom Nelson and Anthony Watts are on the story.

BTW, the comment thread following this blog entry by Lucia is an excellent study in the power of the internet to ferret out the truth of a matter, when people really try. The entry begins at the start of the desmogblog memo dump, and comments proceed from there. Kudos to Steven Mosher for his detective work leading to Gleick as suspect #1 for authoring the fake document.

Rethinking Climate Doom in Germany: Chaos in Climate Camp

One of the fathers of Germany’s modern green movement, Professor Dr. Fritz Vahrenholt, a social democrat and green activist, decided to author a climate science skeptical book together with geologist/paleontologist Dr. Sebastian Lüning. Vahrenholt’s skepticism started when he was asked to review an IPCC report on renewable energy. He found hundreds of errors. When he pointed them out, IPCC officials simply brushed them aside. Stunned, he asked himself, “Is this the way they approached the climate assessment reports?”

Vahrenholt decided to do some digging. His colleague Dr. Lüning also gave him a copy of Andrew Montford’s The Hockey Stick Illusion. He was horrified by the sloppiness and deception he found. Persuaded by Hoffmann & Campe, he and Lüning decided to write the book. Die kalte Sonne cites 800 sources and has over 80 charts and figures. It examines and summarizes the latest science. _No Tricks Zone

Germany's climate community is in turmoil as one of its leading leftist environmentalists is vocally rejecting the IPCC climate orthodoxy in a new bestselling climate expose', Die Kalte Sonne.

Germany’s Top Environmentalist Turns Climate Sceptic, saying

“I couldn’t take it any more. I had to write this book.”

Doubt came two years ago when he was an expert reviewer of an IPCC report on renewable energy. “I discovered numerous errors and asked myself if the other IPCC reports on climate were similarly sloppy.”

“THE CO2 LIES … pure fear-mongering … should we blindly trust the experts?”

That’s what Germany’s leading daily Bild (see photo) wrote in its print and online editions today, on the very day that renowned publisher Hoffmann & Campe officially released a skeptic book – one written by a prominent socialist and environmental figure.

This is huge. More than I ever could have possibly imagined. And more is coming in the days ahead! The Bild piece was just the first of a series.

Mark this as the date that Germany’s global warming movement took a massive body blow. _WattsUpWithThat

SPIEGEL: You are an electric utility executive by profession. What prompted you to get involved in climatology?

Vahrenholt: In my experience as an energy expert, I learned that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is more of a political than a scientific body. As a rapporteur on renewable energy, I witnessed how thin the factual basis is for predictions that are made at the IPCC. In one case, a Greenpeace activist's absurd claim that 80 percent of the world's energy supply could soon be coming from renewable sources was assumed without scrutiny. This prompted me to examine the IPCC report more carefully.

SPIEGEL: And what was your conclusion?

Vahrenholt: The long version of the IPCC report does mention natural causes of climate change, like the sun and oscillating ocean currents. But they no longer appear in the summary for politicians. They were simply edited out. To this day, many decision-makers don't know that new studies have seriously questioned the dominance of CO2. CO2 alone will never cause a warming of more than 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) by the end of the century. Only with the help of supposed amplification effects, especially water vapor, do the computers arrive at a drastic temperature increase. I say that global warming will remain below two degrees by the end of the century. This is an eminently political message, but it's also good news.

SPIEGEL: You make concrete statements on how much human activity contributes to climatic events and how much of a role natural factors play. Why don't you publish your prognoses in a professional journal?

Vahrenholt: Because I don't engage in my own climate research. Besides, I don't have a supercomputer in my basement. For the most part, my co-author, geologist Sebastian Lüning, and I merely summarize what scientists have published in professional journals -- just as the IPCC does. The book is also a platform for scientists who apply good arguments in diverging from the views of the IPCC. The established climate models have failed across the board because they cannot cogently explain the absence of warming.

SPIEGEL: You claim that the standstill has to do with the sun. What makes you so sure?

Vahrenholt: In terms of the climate, we have seen a cyclical up and down for the last 7,000 years, long before man began emitting CO2 into the atmosphere. There has been a warming phase every 1,000 years, including the Roman, the Medieval and the current warm periods. All of these warm periods consistently coincided with strong solar activity. In addition to this large fluctuation in activity, there is also a 210-year and an 87-year natural cycle of the sun. Ignoring these would be a serious mistake …

SPIEGEL: … but solar researchers are still in disagreement over whether the cycles you mention actually exist. What do you think this means for the future?

Vahrenholt: In the second half of the 20th century, the sun was more active than it had been in more than 2,000 years. This "large solar maximum," as astronomers call it, has contributed at least as much to global warming as the greenhouse gas CO2. But the sun has been getting weaker since 2005, and it will continue to do so in the next few decades. Consequently, we can only expect cooling from the sun for now. _DerSpiegel

We are supposed to be willing to relinquish control of our economies and our lives to a cabal of fudgy computer modelers and their kleptocratic bureaucracies. We are supposed to risk the backbone of industry -- energy and power -- on green schemes of big wind and big solar, which are clearly unable to reliably and affordably support modern power grid demands. We are supposed to be willing to hand over hundreds of billions of dollars for "climate reparations" to the third world on the basis of little more than hand-waving and bombastic claims of doom. And we are supposed to do all that based on faith in people who consistently refuse to provide transparency into their methods and data.

More people are waking up. In the end, it is likely that there will be a reckoning.

More

The cracking climate consensus

Climate Dissent: The Climate Debate Continues

J. Scott Armstrong, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, and a leading expert in the field of professional forecasting, believes that prediction attempts are virtually doomed when scientists don’t understand or follow basic forecasting rules. He and colleague Kesten Green of Monash University conducted a “forecasting audit” of the 2007 IPCC report and “found no references…to the primary sources of information on forecasting methods” and that “the forecasting procedures that were described [in sufficient detail to be evaluated] violated 72 principles. Many of the violations were, by themselves, critical”. _Forbes

CLOUDs Over Climate Science (via AT)
A new peer reviewed paper from Lindzen and Choi keeps the focus on the critical "climate sensitivity parameter." If the climate models have exaggerated climate sensitivity, their projections will be worse than useless.

...the climate sensitivity for a doubling of CO2 is estimated to be 0.7 K (with the confidence interval 0.5K – 1.3 K at 99% levels). This observational result shows that model sensitivities indicated by the IPCC AR4 are likely greater than than the possibilities estimated from the observations.

...This modest warming is much less than current climate models suggest for a doubling of CO2. Models predict warming of from 1.5°C to 5°C and even more for a doubling of CO2 _

The paper discusses the relevance of a lower climate sensitivity than models are currently using. (Full study here)

The upcoming Lindzen-Choi paper follows closely on a recent paper from Spencer and Braswell, which -- using satellite observations -- calls into question other assumptions used by climate modelers. Another recent paper suggested that the most popular computer climate model exaggerates warming by 67%.

A PDF report on today's Global Warming Policy Foundation website traces the history of increasing alarmism and obfuscation of the limitations of climate models by the IPCC and IPCC - affiliated climate researchers. As politics, ambition, and greed became more closely tied to the "cause" of global warming catastrophe, self-interested collective bias came to replace objective scientific judgment more frequently (PDF). (More on the downward evolution of IPCC standards here)

Massive redistribution-of-wealth schemes have somehow become tied to the global warming agenda at the highest levels of government and inter-government. Literally $trillions are on the table in this high stakes game of faux environmental poker. And yet the basis of all of this hoopla! -- alarmist climate models -- are seemingly not ready for prime time. What is worse, the very ground-level data which is fed into climate models is unreliable.

The advanced world is in a twin quagmire of debt and demography. To any objective observer, this would be the worst possible time to commit struggling economies to an grand absurdist gesture based upon little more than "garbage in -- garbage out" computer models.

This would be a good time to take a look at your political leaders, and how they are likely to play this high stakes poker game as it approaches the end-stage. Choose well.

Remember -- Even the IPCC once admitted that it was impossible to accurately predict future climate states:

“In climate research and modeling, we should realize that we are dealing with a coupled non-linear chaotic system, and therefore that the long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible.” _IPCC 2001 PDF_via_Forbes

More: The US National Institue of Standards and Technology says that we need to get a lot better at measuring greenhouse gases -- and their sources and sinks. (NIST workshop report available here) Without better observations and measurements over the full range of climate related parameters, climate models are no better than an academic circle jerk.

In a Climate Where Science is Being Raped by Political Correctness, Can the Scientific Method Be Restored?

The video above, "Restoring the Scientific Method," is taken from the recent 6th International Conference on Climate Change. Follow this link to all the videos from that conference. (via Anthony Watts) The ICCC was instituted to provide a forum where an open exchange of information regarding issues of climate could be exchanged, without regard to political correctness.

But climate is just one small -- albeit multidisciplinary -- area where science is engaged. Political bias distorts outcomes from a wide array of topics where political correctness has taken an interest in science. Of course, none of the other politically hot topics in science have declared their intention to take over the advanced world's economies and industries, as climate science politics has done. So climate clearly warrants citizen oversight on a large scale.

But if science can be distorted and prostituded in the area of climate, it can be hired out to powerful interests in other areas as well. Scientific misconduct and outright fraud appears to be more common than previously thought, in the age of a growing dependency on government for research funding.

In Hitler's Germany, science was bent to do the will of the Fuhrer, to prove the superiority of "the master race." In Stalin's USSR, science was perverted to prove the superiority of the socialist system. Dissenting (honest) scientists were sent to the Gulag or worse.

In the modern world of government-financed science, groupthink in both funding agencies and in laboratories plays a powerful part. If the scientist does not play to the prevailing expectations of the financing agency and the power-clique controlling scientific publishing, he may lose his grant, his lab, his ability to publish, and his livelihood. Scientists generally understand the rules that must be obeyed to get along.

That is why it is so fascinating when scientists are willing to go against the prevailing winds -- because that is when scientific revolutions and paradigm changes tend to happen.

Most scientists willing to publicly go against the climate orthodoxy of doom, are retired from active grant-seeking and publication in journals. With nothing to lose, they are free to speak out. But a few active and outspoken climate researchers are beginning to speak out against the closed and closed-minded nature of the orthodoxy. As the influence of these brave persons grows, the ability to restore the scientific method to climate studies at large also grows.

Can you think of some other areas where political correctness prevents or obstructs the open examination and discussion of scientific issues? These are the things that one rarely sees in the media. They are things that most persons have been conditioned not to mention or discuss. They are those things and ideas which must not be named.

But ideas do tend to get around in the era of tweets, social media, and new technologies.

Always focus on falsifiability, when looking at a scientific theory or idea. How could you prove it wrong? What near-term predictions can you make based upon the theory? If your predictions are set to fall on the year 2100, how can that "science" be called falsifiable in the year 2011?

Fake science avoids the risk of being tested. Fake science tries to shut down debate, using underhanded tactics and means. Fake science hides in a faux consensus, ignoring the fact that true science is not about taking votes to reach a final conclusion, or reaching a final, beyond-debate agreement in committee.

Why the Obama / Gore Carbon Hysteria Orthodoxy Is Wrong

A short 9 minute video based on the scientific findings of climatologist Roy Spencer, explaining why the IPCC climate orthodoxy and associated media / political carbon hysteria is turning out to be wrong. More at WUWT

According to the Greenland ice core charted above, temperatures were warmer 1,000 years ago, and warmer yet 2,000, then 3,000 years ago etc. CO2 levels have also been significantly higher in the past, particularly during some of the Earth's most prolific evolutionary eras.

It has been profitable for scientists and faux environmentalists to jump on the climate alarmist bandwagon. It was easy to fool the politicians, academics, and government funding agency bureaucrats -- and particularly easy to fool "science journalists" -- causing them all to panic.

Thanks to Obama administration suppression of coal, offshore oil & gas, nuclear power, and opposition to expanded use of Canadian oil sands, the US almost toppled into a state of energy starvation -- saved only by the fortuitous rise of the shale oil & gas industry. And the Obama administration is even trying to shut down shale fracking, behind the scenes! How stupid is that?

Healthy economies need energy. Lots of energy. When a US president bases his energy policy on a pseudoscientific theory of carbon hysteria, the entire nation suffers.

Politically Correct Delusions and Madnesses of Crowds

The fates of modern democratic societies are dependent far more upon the behaviour of crowds -- or the mob -- than most citizens would like to believe. Popular culture is determined by mob tastes and preferences, and the often unpredictable behaviour of mobs on election day is bemoaned by leaders of all political parties -- at one time or another. Mob behaviours are guided by mob beliefs, which are as often as not, delusional. Here is a good example of a modern popular delusion from Princeton Physics Professor William Happer:

I want to discuss a contemporary moral epidemic: the notion that increasing atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases, notably carbon dioxide, will have disastrous consequences for mankind and for the planet. The “climate crusade” is one characterized by true believers, opportunists, cynics, money-hungry governments, manipulators of various types—even children’s crusades—all based on contested science and dubious claims.

...We need to be vigilant to keep our land, air, and waters free of real pollution, particulates, heavy metals, and pathogens, but carbon dioxide (CO2 ) is not one of these pollutants. Carbon is the stuff of life. Our bodies are made of carbon. A normal human exhales around 1 kg of CO2 (the simplest chemically stable molecule of carbon in the earth’s atmosphere) per day. Before the industrial period, the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere was 270 ppm. At the present time, the concentration is about 390 ppm, 0.039 percent of all atmospheric molecules and less than 1 percent of that in our breath. About fifty million years ago, a brief moment in the long history of life on earth, geological evidence indicates, CO2 levels were several thousand ppm, much higher than now. And life flourished abundantly.

Now the Environmental Protection Agency wants to regulate atmospheric CO2 as a “pollutant.” According to my Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary, to pollute is “to make or render unclean, to defile, to desecrate, to profane.” By breathing are we rendering the air unclean, defiling or desecrating it?

...As far as green plants are concerned, CO2 is not a pollutant, but part of their daily bread—like water, sunlight, nitrogen, and other essential elements. Most green plants evolved at CO2 levels of several thousand ppm, many times higher than now. Plants grow better and have better flowers and fruit at higher levels. Commercial greenhouse operators recognize this when they artificially increase the concentrations inside their greenhouses to over 1000 ppm.

...We would be perfectly healthy in a world with little or no atmospheric CO2—except that we would have nothing to eat and a few other minor inconveniences, because most plants stop growing if the levels drop much below 150 ppm. If we want to continue to be fed and clothed by the products of green plants, we can have too little CO2.

The minimum acceptable value for plants is not that much below the 270 ppm preindustrial value. It is possible that this is not enough, that we are better off with our current level, and would be better off with more still. There is evidence that California orange groves are about 30 percent more productive today than they were 150 years ago because of the increase of atmospheric CO2.

...A rare case of good correlation between CO2 levels and temperature is provided by ice-core records of the cycles of glacial and interglacial periods of the last million years of so. But these records show that changes in temperature preceded changes in CO2 levels, so that the levels were an effect of temperature changes. This was probably due to outgassing of CO2 from the warming oceans and the reverse effect when they cooled.

...The earth’s climate has always been changing. Our present global warming is not at all unusual by the standards of geological history, and it is probably benefiting the biosphere. Indeed, there is very little correlation between the estimates of CO2 and of the earth’s temperature over the past 550 million years (the “Phanerozoic” period). The message is clear that several factors must influence the earth’s temperature, and that while CO2 is one of these factors, it is seldom the dominant one. _WUWT

Full article by Professor Happer at First Things

Another popular delusion of politically correct crowds is a strong belief in the desirability of replacing modern coal, gas, and nuclear power plants with wind and solar power.

Mass delusions do not require reason or logic to gain converts. They only need to project the view that "everyone knows that ..." "every schoolboy knows ..." or "everybody believes that ..." This false sense of security in perceived numbers of believers has taken in a huge number of pseudo-intellectuals within the academy, in journalism, in politics, and in popular media and entertainment. All the better to project the delusion of universal belief.

In hindsight, such delusional madnesses are quite clearly absurd and without rational foundation. But when one is living through the delusion, the primeval instincts of the species hold sway.

Basic Reading on crowd behaviour:

Gustave le Bon: The Crowd
Charles Mackay: Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds
Both titles above are also available for download at the Gutenberg Project

More on Gustave le Bon from Against Politics

23 May 2011 More: The increasingly rowdy and violent mobs known as government unions should be seen a particularly ominous portent for the future, to anyone who cares about freedom and independent action.

A Return to "Snowball Earth"

via NextBigFuture
The natural state of most planets is cold, very cold. Planet Earth owns some prime orbital real estate near its sun, but even so it has experienced periods of Snowball Earth, when virtually the entire planet was covered with snow and ice. If humans are not careful how they approach the chaotic issue of Earth's climate, they could very well push the planet back toward that strange and very cold attractor. Here is one way it could be done:

HIGH-FLYING BLIMPS, based on existing protoypes, could support a hose no thicker than a fire hose (above) to carry sulfur dioxide as a clear liquid up to the stratosphere, where one or more nozzles (below) would atomize it into a fine mist of nanometer-scale aerosol particles.

The cost to construct a Stratospheric Shield with a pumping capacity of 100,000 tons a year of sulfur dioxide would be roughly $24 million, including transportation and assembly. Annual operating costs would run approximately $10 million. The system would use only technologies and materials that already exist—although some improvements may be needed to existing atomizer technology in order to achieve wide sprays of nanometer-scale sulfur dioxide particles and to prevent the particles from coalescing into larger droplets. Even if these cost estimates are off by a factor of 10 (and we think that is unlikely), this work appears to remove cost as an obstacle to cooling an overheated planet by technological means. _NextBigFuture

Remember the idea of using "near space" as a waystation to Earth orbit? The type of lighter-than-air craft involved are very similar. One big difference between the two schemes is that the climate repercussions of massive cooling of the planet could lead to the dieoff of billions of humans, due to widespread crop failure.

A similar geoengineering climate scheme involves the use of stratospheric mirror-balloons to reflect any unwanted solar radiation back into space. The mirror-balloons -- unlike the sulfur dioxide aerosols -- would be controlled so as to block sunlight, allow the sunlight through, or to focus sunlight on a particular area of land surface, ocean, or atmosphere. The weapons potential of the mirror-balloon geoengineering scheme should be obvious.

Human scientists barely understand the salient mechanisms of Earth's chaotic climate. Certainly stratospheric water vapour concentration is also likely to be extremely important in the overall scheme of climate.

But once humans begin to actively interfere with the radiative balance of Earth on a grand scale, they risk pushing the scale toward a catastrophic ice age, which would be incalculably worse for the human population of the planet than any realistic temporary warming scenario from anthropogenic greenhouse gases.

People are getting de-sensitised by the constant doom-and-gloom predictions from faux environmentalists and climate pseudo-scientists. Particularly when many of these predictions are decades old, and no closer to coming true than when they were originally published or proclaimed. The IPCC in particular is losing credibility by the day.

But the momentum from all the decades of carbon hysteria and faux environmental doom will take time to dissipate. Many academics, journalists, and other slow thinkers will take years or decades to die off -- or wise up to the obvious fact that their most closely held beliefs are not supported by the evidence or the passage of time.

The SO2 injection scheme pictured at top is a good example of a "file it and forget it" idea. Anyone who wants to push the planet into an ice age so as to trigger a massive human dieoff.orgy may want to pursue the idea further, however.

Oceans: More Complex and Resilient than We Know

Wiki
Popular culture is soaking in the dogma that "humans are killing the oceans" and "man is destroying the planet." But science is so abysmally ignorant about what is actually happening in the seas and on land, that the faux environmentalist message of doom is based upon a blooming ignorance, and little else.

Take a recent declaration of "plankton apocalypse" by researchers from Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia. Faux environmentalists seized on the single, unsubstantiated report as confirmation that the end of the world is near. More knowledgeable and intelligent persons knew -- or at least sensed -- that the Dalhousie report was hagwash. And so it seems to have been. Much of modern published "science" dealing with the environment and climate is unmitigated hogwash, albeit politically correct.

But there is much valid and valuable science to be learned from the oceans, if one can work objectively and without prejudicial biases.

Physorg

"The big mystery about bacteria is what they are doing in nature," Whitman said. "The organisms metabolize compounds for their own needs. We need to understand what they are getting out of it to understand what it means for the ocean, and now it will be possible to look at the environmental importance of this process and how it's regulated." That will help to answer the "why" of the two sulfur fates. _Physorg

Notice that the U. of Georgia scientists are microbiologists -- not "climatologists." Although the microbiologists link their study to climate -- for reasons of funding among others -- their results help to expose the abysmal ignorance of climate "science" with regards to the oceans and cloud formation.

SeaFriends

Scientists have discovered that marine diatoms, tiny phytoplankton abundant in the sea, have an animal-like urea cycle, and that this cycle enables the diatoms to efficiently use carbon and nitrogen from their environment.

The researchers, from the J. Craig Venter Institute (JCVI) and other institutions, published their findings in this week's issue of the journal Nature.

The team, led by lead author Andrew Allen from JCVI and co-author Chris Bowler, Institute of Biology, Ecole Normale Supérieure, Paris, believes that the cycle could be a reason for the domination of diatoms in marine environments, especially after upwelling events--the upward movement of nutrient rich waters from the deep ocean to the surface.

In response to ocean upwelling, diatoms are able to quickly recover from prolonged periods of nutrient deprivation and rapidly proliferate. _Physorg

NatureHere again, we see a significant finding that relates importantly to global carbon balance, ocean phytoplankton levels, and atmospheric oxygen levels. How many other momentous and paradigm-changing discoveries are waiting for humans to discard their politically correct prejudices in order to better perceive the reality of the universe?

Taken from an earlier posting at Al Fin the Next Level

Congratulations to Anthony Watts: Best Science Blog 2100 WUWT!

WUWT Best Science Blog
Watts Up With That has won the 2011 best blog award in the category of "Science." The award is called the "Bloggie", perhaps in imitation of the Emmy or the Grammy. Regardless, it is a distinct honour, and one that is well-deserved by Anthony Watts and his team.

Anthony Watts first became well-known in the blogosphere with his vitally important "Surface Stations" project, to determine the quality and validity of the important climate data being collected by the large network of USHCN surface stations. This data becomes the raw material for climate models -- which could easily determine the fate of $trillions of government spending and redistribution in the not-so-distant future.

From there, Watts founded the "Watts Up With That?!" blog, which has rapidly grown to the most popular source for high quality dispassionate and sceptical information regarding the global warming political and quasi-religious movement.

I’ll simply say “thank you dear readers”, and leave it at that. I also owe thanks to the many moderators and guest bloggers that make WUWT what it is. You are winners too.

I have a temporary badge up, a permanent one follows when they have it all completed. The main page here http://2011.bloggi.es should have the announcement soon – Anthony _WUWT

The award is well deserved. Here's hoping for many more of the same in the future.

The result of the conscientious efforts of bloggers such as Anthony Watts, Roger Pielke Sr., and Steve McIntyre is a turning away from a politicised carbon hysteria, back toward a more honest science of climate -- at least in some circles.

The jury is still out on other attempts at increased transparency in climate studies.

The Natural Chaos of Climate

Earth's climate is driven by ongoing cycles on many levels. When natural resonant cycles overlap -- at whatever level -- they can contribute to a chaotic pattern.

When the overlap starts, many higher-order resonances are also involved so fairly large areas of phase space have their tori destroyed and the ensuing chaos is "widespread" since trajectories are now free to wander between regions that previously were separated by nonresonant tori. _Wolfram

We begin with a pictorial overview of the natural components of climate -- sun, ocean, land, atmosphere, volcanoes, ice & snow, living organisms -- all of which appear to be subject to periodic cycling of various types, with potentially chaotic overlap.

Volcanoes can exert very strong influences on climate. It appears as if volcanic activity can occur at widely separated locations almost simultaneously, due to underlying geologic activity. Whether or not such tectonic movements occur "cyclically," the impact of such large scale volcanic activity can easily contribute to a naturally chaotic climate.

Natural ocean oscillations are thought to be driven by periodic solar variation, pictured below. These ocean oscillations such as El Nino (PDF) drive cycles of atmospheric heating and cooling, cycles of ice & snow, and strongly influence populations of living organisms worldwide.

Solar variation influences the size of the heliosphere, and determine the extent of galactic cosmic ray infiltration into the solar system and Earth's climatic system. This cyclic variation of cosmic ray bombardment on Earth's atsmosphere is thought to influence the amount of cloud formation in the atmosphere, which influences planetary ensolation and radiative heat balance.

The Milankovich orbital cycles occur with different periodicity in the tens of thousands of years, creating overlapping resonances with potential chaotic results on climate.

Another multi-thousand year orbital cycle which could easily influence global climate, is the slightly varying angle of Earth's solar orbit to the ecliptic. As the planet falls slightly below the plane and risis slightly above the plane of the ecliptic -- over tens of thousands of years -- the thickness of intervening dust between Earth and Sun varies. This periodically alters the ensolation of the Earth's system. Such cycles may have subtle effects, but in combination with other overlapping resonances, these overlapping effects may push the system into a chaotic result.

The image above illustrates the heliosphere, which can expand and contract according to the Sun's periodic activity. The fluctuating heliosphere is an important line of defense against galactic cosmic rays -- which are very likely to influence Earth's climate.

The Solar system is passing through an enormous interstellar cloud, which may or may not have an influence on climate. But it is a rather fascinating topic all the same.

Understanding natural chaos in climate is a crucial matter for policy-makers, who must determine the fate of US$trillions of future spending of tax dollars.

For science to provide the greatest benefit to those who fund it, it must focus upon genuine problems which need to be solved. As long as scientists have open, sceptical minds, they are more able to look at problems from varying perspectives -- from the close-in small picture, to the far-out big picture.

The last thing that tax-paying humans need is for their tax-paid scientists to fly off on a narrow tangent which ignores the larger picture. That would be a very wasteful tragedy.