By Dr. John Happs ~
Only a few hundred years ago the majority of people, including scientists, accepted that the Earth was very young and such a belief was essentially driven by the church. In 1541 Martin Luther (1483-1546) argued that the creation of the Earth occurred in 3,961 BCE, whilst Archbishop Ussher (1581-1656), used the Old Testament record to promote what he considered to be a more precise Earth creation date of 23rd October 4,004 BCE and an age of around 6,000 years.
Respected scientists of that time also relied on biblical records to reach conclusions about the age of the Earth. Johannes Kepler (1571–1630) proposed 3,992 BCE as the date of creation whilst Isaac Newton (1642 -1727) essentially agreed, suggesting 4,000 BCE.
Newton was the scientific authority of his day and few would argue against his point of view.
Isaac Newton
Geology was a fledgeling pursuit during the 17th Century, with early field observations being made by Nicolaus Steno (1638-1686). Widely known as the “Father of Stratigraphy.” Steno looked at examples of stratified rock and proposed that all minerals and rocks were deposited from fluids to form a series of horizontal layers, leading to Steno’s Principle of Original Horizontality. He argued that the oldest layers would be at the bottom of any sequence and this became known as the Law of Superposition.
Steno also noted that similar rock formations could be located at opposite sides of some valleys and this became known as the Principle of Original Lateral Continuity.
Dipping Cambrian strata in Death Valley
Despite his excellent field observations, Steno remained a believer in the idea of a Biblical flood that deposited all rocks within Archbishop Ussher’s timeframe.
Noah’s Flood
It wasn’t until later in the 18th Century that church orthodoxy was challenged. George-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon (1707-1788) argued that the Earth was much older than Biblical scholars proposed. Buffon published his book Histoire Naturelle in 1749, describing how the Earth was formed from material ejected during a collision between the Sun and a passing comet.
Comet impacting the sun
Buffon went on to suggest that the Earth was a molten mass after the collision and that it cooled to the point where a large universal ocean formed and then receded, leaving behind the landforms we see today.
Challenging Church dogma with science, not surprisingly led to retribution as Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) found out to his cost when, based on evidence, he argued for a heliocentric universe rather than an Earth-centred system. This resulted in him being brought before the church authorities in 1616 and again in 1633. Galileo was forced to recant and was then placed under house arrest for the remainder of his life.
https://www.history.com/topics/inventions/galileo-galilei
Galileo Galilei
As the French writer and philosopher François-Marie Arouet aka Voltaire (1694-1778) warned:
“It is dangerous to be right in matters on which the established authorities are wrong.”
It wasn’t long before officials at the Sorbonne in Paris where Buffon worked were incensed and complained loudly about Buffon’s ideas that were seen to be:
“Reprehensible and contrary to the creed of the Church.”
George-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon
Buffon was accused of arguing that God did not create any of the landforms such as valleys, mountains and plains. He was threatened with expulsion from the Sorbonne and was forced to recant, saying:
“I abandon everything in my book respecting the formation of the earth, and in general all which may be contrary to the narration of Moses.”
Buffon might have recanted publicly but he never gave up his idea of an older, naturally-formed Earth. He turned to experiments with cooling spheres, made up of different materials and, in 1778, he revised his book and estimated the age of the Earth to be 75,000 years – an order of magnitude greater than the age given by the Church.
This didn’t change the wider thinking about a Biblical creation from a universal flood and a young Earth, championed by Abraham Werner (1749-1817) who was widely acknowledged as the foremost geologist of his time. Werner’s thinking about the origin of the Earth carried a good deal of weight. He was a “Neptunist” and argued that all rocks were precipitated from Noah’s flood.
James Hutton, Father of geology
Arguing against the Neptunists was James Hutton (1726-1797) who entered the University of Edinburgh with his idea of continual processes of weathering, erosion and deposition in a series of long natural cycles. Hutton rejected the Biblical notion of Earth history and saw no need for supernatural intervention or catastrophes.
Hutton pointed to natural forces such as wind, rain, stream-flow, wave-action, volcanism and earthquakes shaping the landscape over a vastly longer period of time than biblical scholars proposed. He pointed to Hadrian’s Wall, constructed by the Romans more than 1,500 years ago with very little change to the wall during that time whilst the creationists were claiming that all landforms, including weathered rock formations, had been produced in the space of a few thousand years.
Hadrian’s Wall with little change in 1,500 years
Financial independence enabled Hutton to develop his ideas through field work and careful observation. He wrote an essay on the Natural History of the Earth, emphasising the slow processes of weathering, uplift and erosion in sedimentary rock formation and the emergence of new land masses.
Hutton returned to Edinburgh in 1767 where he found a city transformed into a vibrant centre for progressive thinking. The Scottish Enlightenment represented a period when intellectuals from various disciplines converged to produce a hot-bed of new ideas. Amongst them were chemist William Cullen (1710-1790); the discoverer of latent heat, specific heat and carbon dioxide, Joseph Black (1728-1799); inventor and mechanical engineer James Watt (1736-1819); philosopher David Hume (1711-1776); sociologist Adam Ferguson (1723-1816); historian William Robertson (1721-1793); printer and publisher William Smellie (1740-1795) who produced the first Encyclopaedia Brittanica; architect Robert Adam (1728-1792); statesman and scientist Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790); Father of Charles Darwin, physician and philosopher Erasmus Darwin (1731-1802); scientist and mathematician John Playfair (1748-1819).
Unfortunately, the University of Edinburgh also employed geologist Professor John Walker (1731-1803) who was very influential in promoting both the biblical age of the Earth and Werner’s Neptunian theory.
However, this was a new era of thinking, involving more rational explanations and experimentation. Scientific facts were about to challenge religious dogma and it was during the 18th century that belief in a young, unchanged Earth was more robustly challenged.
Hutton argued that most rocks and minerals could not be precipitated from a universal ocean since they wouldn’t even dissolve in boiling water. He argued logically that the only way they could ever become liquids was if they were melted at very high temperatures and later cooled and solidified.
The idea of a very ancient molten Earth was emerging.
In 1783 the Royal Society of Edinburgh was formed by Royal Charter and, in1785, Hutton was invited to present his ideas before the Royal Society. Unfortunately, he was unwell at the appointed time so Joseph Black presented Hutton’s paper entitled:
“Concerning the System of the Earth, Its Duration and Stability.”
Rather than speculate about the age of the Earth from the comfort within the walls of the university, Hutton spent much time in the field where his observations convinced him about the way in which rocks are deposited and the enormous amount of time required for Earth processes to produce the structures he observed and described.
Sir Archibald Geikie
Hutton argued that erosion, deposition, earthquakes and volcanic activity were huge natural forces which could impact the Earth’s surface and he was convinced that the Earth was shaped by slow but relatively uniform changes acting over long periods of time. He argued that the forces he was observing and recording in the field were the same forces which had operated over all of time. Hutton’s deduction was echoed by Archibald Geikie (1835-1924) who made the important point that:
“The present is the key to the past.”
Hutton’s views about Earth processes were reinforced by his observations about rock unconformities in places such as Lochranza on the Isle of Arran off the south-west coast of Scotland. Here, he located layered sedimentary rock (Lower Cambrian schist, about 550 million years old) which had been tilted almost vertically before being eroded and later overlain by younger sedimentary rock (Lower Carboniferous sandstone, about 350 million years old).
Hutton’s unconformity at Lochranza, Isle of Arran
The unconformity at Lochranza showed that rock formation was not continuous and that the older layer had been tilted, uplifted and eroded before deposition of the younger rock took place. Of course, Hutton had no idea of the timescale involved in the formation of this exposure although he was confident that it required more than the Biblical time allowance of a few thousand years.
In 1788, Hutton, along with a number of his colleagues, sailed up the Scottish coast in search of further evidence in support of Hutton’s theories of deposition, uplift and erosion over vast periods of time. Hutton was again looking for an unconformity where an erosional surface obviously separated two rocks of different age. He found the perfect example in Scotland near Siccar Point, Berwickshire.
Here he found an unconformity with Silurian greywacke (about 425 million years old) at the base of the cliff, again, with layers in a vertical position. Hutton called this micaceous schistus.
Deposited above the vertical greywacke layers was Old Red Sandstone from the Upper Devonian Period (about 345 million years old):
Hutton’s unconformity at Siccar Point
Hutton had no concept of the actual (absolute) age of the two rocks but he rightly considered that they represented very long separate cycles in time involving deposition, uplift, erosion and further deposition. Hutton was confident that the resulting sequence of greywacke and sandstone at Siccar Point had been formed over an immense period of time. Again, much more time than the 6,000 years allowed by Archbishop Ussher and others. He wrote:
“We find no vestige of a beginning – no prospect of an end.”
Hutton’s interpretation of the Siccar Point sequence was that the rocks beneath the unconformity were deposited horizontally under water and were clearly older than the rocks above them. The older greywacke was folded, uplifted and eroded and later covered by water, followed by further deposition of different sediments and later uplift.
Hutton saw the unconformity as representing a period of time (hiatus) where no rock deposits were preserved and later deposition of sandstone on the erosional surface was followed by uplift. He saw pressure and heat as being an integral part of the process and, in a later lecture he gave to the Scottish Royal Society, he illustrated how stratified rocks initially remained horizontal without “fracture, flexure and contortion.”
Hutton then raised the questions of Earth processes and change over time on an ancient Earth. In 1788 he produced a more detailed paper, published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society. Not unexpectedly, he was met with reviews that were scathing and personal.
In 1789 John Williams published The Natural History of the Mineral Kingdom in which he attacked Hutton’s work whilst defending religious dogma. Williams said:
“The wild and unnatural notion of the eternity of the world leads first to scepticism, and at last to downright infidelity and atheism.”
This vitriolic review was followed by a similar one from the scientist Richard Kirwan (1733-1812) who also vigorously defended religious dogma, writing in the Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy how Hutton was proposing natural cycles of weathering, erosion, deposition and uplift which were:
“Contrary to reason and the tenor of the mosaic (Book of Moses) history.”
Hutton was attacked with ferocity. He was accused of being a blasphemer and atheist, but a new generation of experimental scientists was starting to replace dogma in the sciences with experiment and careful observation. Inevitably, Hutton’s views of an ancient Earth and slow natural Earth processes were eventually vindicated as his old accusers left the scene.
Max Planck
As the German physicist and Nobel Prize winner Max Planck (1858-1947) famously said
“Science makes progress funeral by funeral.”
Here was a clear example of dogma resisting scientific evidence. Such resistance gradually disappears as those who cling to the dogma quietly change their views or they die.
The shift from a belief in a young, unchanging Earth really started in the 19th century when William Thomson (later known as Lord Kelvin, 1824-1907) timed the cooling rate of Earth-like materials with more sophisticated techniques than Buffon used.
William Thomson (Lord Kelvin)
Thomson arrived at an age for the Earth of 98 million years which he later revised down to a lower estimate of 20 million years. Still rather low although Kelvin’s age of the Earth was dramatically greater than the Biblical age.
More geologists were now working in the field and they argued that even 20 million years was still insufficient for the long cycles of erosion, sedimentation, deposition and uplift which they were increasingly observing.
Kelvin’s estimate of 20 million years was wrong because he had no knowledge of heating of the Earth’s interior by radioactive decay so, inevitably, his estimate of the Earth’s age was always going to be too low. Interestingly, Kelvin’s estimate was in conflict with experimental work on sedimentation rates by John Phillips in 1860 which gave an estimated age of 96 million years; erosional rates by Archibald Geike in 1868 gave an estimated age of 100 million years and ocean salt accumulation rates by John Joly in 1899 gave an estimated age of 80-90 million years.
Marie Curie
Even those higher estimates from Phillips, Geike and Joly would still prove to be far too low and this was shown to be the case when radioactivity entered the scene. Henri Becquerel (1852-1908) and his doctoral student Marie Curie (1867-1934) discovered a number of radioactive sources and techniques for estimating the age of the Earth were about to leap forward.
Ernest Rutherford
In 1902 Ernest Rutherford (1871-1937) and Frederick Soddy (1877-1956) demonstrated the exponential nature of radioactive decay with Rutherford suggesting in 1905 that uranium/helium or uranium/lead ratios could be used to calculate the age of the Earth and so the great age of the Earth was about to be revealed.
In 1907, Bertram Boltwood (1870-1927) took a sample of a uranium rich ore and, based on Uranium-Lead dating, calculated an age of 1.64 billion years whilst Rutherford and Boltwood, calculated several rock ages up to 2.2 billion years.
The scientific community was taken aback by this rapid leap from an Earth age that was initially measured in thousands of years, to an Earth that was now, according to Rutherford, Boltwood and Holmes (1890-1965), billions of years old.
In 1911 Arthur Holmes used a more accurate uranium decay rate to determine ages for a Carboniferous rock sample (340 million years) and a Precambrian sample (1.64 billion years). In 1927 Holmes published “The Age of the Earth, an Introduction to Geological Ideas” in which he proposed an Earth age estimate of 2 billion years.
This was a vast increase in age but further careful experimental work was to push the age of the Earth out even further.
World War 2 research into radioactivity led to improvements in instrumentation that enabled more precise identification and measurement of isotope abundance. In 1953 Friedrich Houtermans (1903-1966) re-calculated the age of the Earth as 4.5 ± 0.3 billion years which was in close agreement with Claire Patterson’s (1922-1995) estimate in 1956, from meteorite dating.
Today’s best estimate for the age of the Earth is 4.55 ± 0.05 billion years with ancient rocks from Greenland, Australia, Canada and Africa returning ages between 2.5 and 3.8 billion years.
Rocks found to be between 3.8 and 4.3 billion years old have been located in the Canadian Nuvvuahittuq Greenstone whilst, arguably the oldest material is a zircon mineral found in a metamorphosed sandstone conglomerate from Western Australia, dated at 4.4 billion years old.
Interestingly, the zircon’s oxygen isotopic composition points to water having been on the Earth’s surface at this time.
https://www.australianmining.com.au/worlds-oldest-rocks-found-in-australia/
If a heretic is defined as any person who holds a belief, based on empirical evidence which is in stark contrast to religious dogma or the political preferred view of the time, then all those scientists who embrace the facts and reject the catastrophic anthropogenic global warming dogma might be seen as today’s heretics.
Today’s climate alarmism is not based on facts. It is being driven by politics and the many vested interest groups that stand to gain financially by continuing to promote the nonsense that trace amounts of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is leading to dangerous warming and extreme weather.
Religious proclamations and condemnation, experienced by Buffon and Hutton, are being experienced today by those who dare to say there is no climate emergency.
Cardinal Michael Czerny
Unfounded climate alarmism has come from Cardinal Michael Czerny, a Canadian who heads the Vatican’s development office, saying in 2019:
“The time is over for speculation, for skepticism and denial, for irresponsible populism. Apocalyptic floods, mega droughts, disastrous heatwaves, and catastrophic cyclones and hurricanes have become the new normal in recent years; they continue today; tomorrow, they will get worse.”
And:
“Unchecked climate disruption and environmental degradation would lead to loss of lives and livelihoods, forced displacement, and violent conflict.”
Pope Francis
Pope Francis who, in matters involving Catholic dogma, is seen by many to be infallible when he says that, because of climate change:
“The world is collapsing and may be nearing the breaking point.”
Pope Francis claims that carbon dioxide is highly polluting and that ice sheets are melting at the poles and we are experiencing more extreme weather with floods, cyclones, droughts and sea level rise all leading to our demise if we do not mend our ways. His Apostolic Exhortation says it all:
https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/apost_exhortations/documents/20231004-laudate-deum.html
Linnea Lueken makes the point:
“The Pope’s claims about climate change and market economies are misinformed and flawed. Evidence shows that contrary to the Pope’s assertions extreme weather is not worsening, that current rates of warming are not outside the historical norm, and that there has been no real increased in fluctuations between weather extremes that can be blamed on supposed human-caused climate change.”
Patrick Brown also responded:
“The Vatican notion of science is a very poor model. It turns out that science is not governed by high priests who can authoritatively separate fact from fiction. In reality, the scientific process is decentralized with groups and organizations around the world competing with each other to come up with the best and most complete descriptions of reality.”
And:
“The far left tends to articulate that imminent catastrophe from human-caused climate change is a Scientific fact. Given the perceived legitimacy of science on the left, it is thought to be either insane or evil to question this.”
Justin Welby
The Archbishop of Canterbury displayed his willingness to add to the climate alarmist nonsense. Justin Welby said:
“As global leaders gather at COP27, the world holds its breath. A world which has this year suffered further catastrophic flooding, drought, heatwaves and storms. A world already in crisis. A world which knows that we are perilously near the point of no return.”
And:
“I’ve seen this myself just recently in Australia, whose great wealth is no protection against the flooding in New South Wales. And if it can happen in one of the most prosperous parts of the world, how much more devastating in one of the poorest like South Sudan, where more flooding has led to food insecurity, hunger and malnutrition.”
It’s a pity that Welby didn’t look at Queensland’s history of floodplain inundation in 1841, 1887, 1889 and 1890. The 1893 flood was greater than those experienced previously and led to a government report warning about building on floodplains. This was ignored.
https://saltbushclub.com/?s=floodplains
There was another major Queensland flood in 1908, followed by an extended flood-free period sufficient for the population to become complacent, whilst building and development on the floodplains continued unabated until the next (1931) flood.
Flooding in Australia has been noted since records began. Following the floods across Queensland floodplains in 1974, houses were rebuilt and more buildings added, only to suffer the inevitable later flooding. There were floodplain inundations in Queensland during 2011, 2012, 2013, 2018, 2019 and 2020.
The more recent floods were met, not with expressions of regret for allowing building to continue in these areas, but with the anticipated cries of “global warming” and “climate change” from the media, green zealots, politicians, councils and other vested interest groups.
Even the political/ideological Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) have made clear, there is no evidence for claims of extreme weather as the latest report (AR6) notes:
“There is low confidence that human influence has affected trends in meteorological droughts in most regions..”
And:
“Confidence is in general low in attributing changes in the probability of flood events to human influence…”
And:
“There are regions experiencing decreases (in floods) including…Australia.”
And:
“There is medium confidence that weather conditions that promote wildfires (fire weather) have become more probable…”
And:
“Identifying past trends in TC (tropical cyclones) remains a challenge.”
And:
“The observed intensity of extreme winds is becoming less severe in the lower to mid-latitudes..”
To their shame, many scientists know that embracing unfounded climate alarm will likely lead to more research funding, further publications and their prospects of promotion. Those scientists ignore empirical evidence that refutes hysterical claims about climate doom. Like their “Biblical flood predecessors” they continue to hurl abuse at those scientists who respect the evidence that refutes their alarmist claims.
We have Dr. Michael Mann who takes every opportunity to engage the Australian media in persuading them that dangerous global warming is here and we are all doomed. He continues to tell us, without evidence, that we are now facing more heatwaves, droughts, dramatic sea level rise, species loss, the destruction of the Great Barrier Reef and more of those “unprecedented” wildfires.
Of course, Mann can always count on the media to promote this kind of alarmist nonsense. Mann told reporter Swati Pandey:
“It is conceivable that much of Australia simply becomes too hot and dry for human habitation.”
And:
“Unfortunately we could well see Australians join the ranks of the world’s climate refugees.“
Mann attempted to erase climate history by producing his infamous “hockey-stick” graph, implying that there was no Medieval Warm Period or Little Ice Age and that global temperature was constant until the Industrial Revolution with its industry and carbon dioxide emissions:
Mann, was a Lead Author for the key chapter in the IPCC’s Third Assessment Report (TAR). He was asked to write a temperature summary for that report since Mann could deliver the final message and the IPCC knew exactly what they wanted that message to be. They seized on this and Mann’s “hockey-stick” graph appeared several times in both the IPCC report and the political/ideological Summary for Policymakers that went out to politicians and the media. They published Mann’s “tortured” graph until there was such an outcry from the wider scientific community that the IPCC quietly dropped it.
The media simply ignored this outcome.
A thorough analysis and critique of Mann’s “Hockey-Stick” graph was made by Dr. Stephen McIntyre and Dr. Ross McKitrick in their paper: “Corrections to the Mann et al. (1998) Proxy Data Base and Northern Hemispheric Average Temperature Series.”
They exposed the flaws in the “hockey stick” but this wasn’t appreciated by Mann. Rather than debate the data, Mann acidly wrote of McIntyre in August, 2007:
“I have been talking [with] folks in the States about finding an investigative journalist to investigate and expose [him].”
Dr. Jim Lacey, Professor of Strategic Studies at the Marine Corps War College pointed out:
“Rather than contest McIntyre’s findings with evidence and data, Mann decided that his best alternative was to smear his challenger’s reputation. Skeptics always had to be on the watch for Mann’s spiteful attacks. But what is interesting is that many of his fellow warmists had a low opinion of his work. Despite this, they were slow to criticize Mann – partly because they did not want to give the skeptics any more ammunition, but also because they were afraid of him. As one warmist wrote to Jones, Mann was a “serious enemy” and “vindictive.”
https://www.nationalreview.com/2011/11/scientists-behaving-badly-jim- lacey/
Mann’s use of smear and inuendo are reminiscent of the peevish rhetoric that Buffon and Hutton were met with.
Former Professor of Climatology at the University of Winnipeg, the late Dr. Tim Ball was one of many scientists who were not fooled by Mann’s “hockey stick” graph. He knew that emails leaked from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia showed that other scientists also knew exactly what was going on. Ball was quite explicit in his criticism:
“The argument that global warming is due to humans, known as the anthropogenic global warming theory (AGW) is a deliberate fraud. I can now make that statement without fear of contradiction because of a remarkable hacking of files that provided not just a smoking gun, but an entire battery of machine guns.”
And:
“Carbon dioxide was never a problem and all the machinations and deceptions exposed by these files prove that it is the greatest deception in history, but nobody is laughing. It is a very sad day for science.”
https://www.iceagenow.com/Climategate.htm
Ball, referring to Mann’s position at Pennsylvania State University, famously quipped that Mann:
“belongs in the state pen, not Penn State.”
Mann wasn’t happy with this and, rather than argue the science, he took legal action, filing a libel suit against Ball in the British Columbia Supreme Court in Canada but, in September, 2011, the Canadian court asked for Mann’s data with which the “hockey-stick” graph was produced. Mann refused, stating that “private ownership” blocks any Freedom of Information claim. Mann failed to demonstrate that he had not “massaged” his tree ring proxy data for the past 1,000 years and, after 9 years had passed, Mann’s case against Ball was dismissed by the Hon. Mr. Justice Giaschi on 22nd Aug 2019 in the Supreme Court of British Columbia.
Again, rather than arguing the science, Mann turned his legal sights on author Mark Steyn. In 2015, Steyn wrote:
“My name is Mark Steyn. I am not a scientist. I am an author. My main interest in climate science is that Michael E Mann, the inventor of one of its most notorious artifacts, is suing me for “defamation of a Nobel Prize winner” – a crime that I was not aware existed, especially in his case, as according to the Nobel Institute he is not a Nobel Prize winner. So, I recently edited a book about it called “A Disgrace to the Profession”: The World’s Scientists – in Their Own Words – On Michael E Mann, His Hockey Stick, and Their Damage to Science, Volume One – which I’m proud to say was Number One on the Climatology Hit Parade.”
Steyn added:
“If you’ve not been keeping track of the litigious Mann’s courtroom score card, here’s how it stands after last week’s ruling”
~Mann vs Professor Timothy Ball (British Columbia Supreme Court):
Case dismissed; Mann loses (and has been ordered to pay costs, which the bum and deadbeat has declined to do);
~Mann vs National Review (District of Columbia Superior Court):
Case dismissed; Mann loses;
~Mann vs Competitive Enterprise Institute (DC Sup Ct):
Case dismissed; Mann loses.
https://www.steynonline.com/11508/youre-once-twice-three-times-a-loser
Andrew Dessler
Dr. Andrew Dessler, the director of the Texas Center for Climate Studies at Texas A&M University, appears to be another climate activist. He has embraced climate alarmism without offering any empirical evidence to support his position. He is considered hot-headed and rude as some of his past comments, following the release of the IPCC’s political Summary for Policymakers testify. Here is how Dessler responds to his critics:
“Hey assholes. We’ve been telling you for decades that this was going to happen if we didn’t reduce greenhouse gas emissions. You didn’t listen and now it’s all happening. We hope you’re happy. Enjoy the heatwaves, intense rainfall, sea level rise, ocean acidification, and many other things, you f—ing morons.”
And:
“Who should be madder about calling people who reject climate science ‘climate deniers.’ Climate deniers, because it lumps them in with holocaust deniers? Or Holocaust deniers, because it lumps them in with climate deniers.” (Andrew Dessler, July 18, 2019)
https://www.masterresource.org/dessler-andrew/desperate-dessler-vs-world/
When asked if he would ever debate skeptical scientists, Dessler said: “I won’t debate the science, the science is set”.
In fact, Dessler debated Dr. Steve Koonin and lost decisively:
https://andymaypetrophysicist.com/2022/08/15/the-koonin-dessler-debate/
Robert Bradley says:
“Professor Dessler is certain that man-made climate change will be steep and wreck the ecosphere and economy. He attributes bad motives to those who disagree with him. And he downplays contrary argument and evidence. Sum it up and you get … an angry scientist.”
https://www.masterresource.org/debate-issues/dessler-energy-expert-i/
Robert Bradley adds:
“Mark my words: this professor is eager to model the most extreme scenarios in his scare campaign. And don’t expect him to model the benefits of the human influence on climate (warmer nights, warmer winters, longer growing seasons, CO2 fertilization, etc.). It’s all costs, no benefits.”
And:
“He (Dessler) knows he cannot win a debate with a reasoned critic of climate alarmism/forced energy transformation. Even E-mail exchanges with me leave him vulnerable. “Angry Andy” stoops low to discredit his intellectual opponents, from physical climate science to climate economics to public policy.”
Willis Eschenbach wrote to Dessler, saying:
“Andrew, you are TOTALLY misrepresenting what the IPCC says. In Table 12.12 of Chapter 12, WGI, the IPCC states that there is NO signal of global warming visible in: Frost; Mean precipitation; River flood; Heavy precipitation; Pluvial flood; Aridity; Hydrological drought; Agricultural drought; Ecological drought; Fire weather; Mean wind speed; Severe wind storm; Tropical cyclones; Sandstorm; Dust storm; Snow, glacier, and ice sheets; Heavy snowfall and ice storm; Hail; Snow avalanche; Relative sea level; Coastal flood; Coastal erosion; Marine heatwave; Ocean acidity; Air pollution weather.
Dessler subsequently banned Eschenbach from his website!
When Robert Bradley questioned a number of Dessler’s assertions, the childish and vitriolic response from Dessler was:
“Rob, your question makes zero sense & and I don’t have the patience to deal with people like you. Please crawl back under the rock you emerged from or I’ll ban you from my substack. Seriously: your next comment that displeases me is your last, so make sure it’s a doozy.”
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2023/06/29/andrew-dessler-on-texas-heat-vague-but-exaggerated/
Dessler and Mann’s use of smear and inuendo are reminiscent of the peevish rhetoric and personal attacks that Buffon and Hutton were met with when they challenged the scientific dogma of their day.
Jan Jekielek from the Epoch Times asked Dr. Richard Lindzen, Professor of atmospheric physics:
“Is the science settled?”
Lindzen responded: “Of course not. The minute you hear that the science is settled, you know something is wrong, because science is never settled. When you claim it’s settled, you want to shut off all disagreement, because you don’t have much to present.”
He added:
“Science is always open to questioning. Science depends on questions and depends on being wrong. When you say science cannot be wrong, you’ve choked off science.”
When climate alarmists try to shut down free speech, it is certain that they are pushing some ridiculous idea that will not stand up to scrutiny. When climate alarmists say the debate is over, it is certain that the debate continues and they are losing it.
For those who face hostile comments by continuing to present empirical evidence rather than embracing climate alarmist dogma, they should remember that arguments from authority and dogma are the refuge of religion and have no place in science.
*****
Dr. John Happs M.Sc.1st Class; D.Phil. John has an academic background in the geosciences with special interests in climate, and paleoclimate. He has been a science educator at several universities in Australia and overseas and was President of the Western Australian Skeptics for 25 years.
John has published the following books:
Climate Change: A Politicised Storm in a Teacup.
Climate Change: How Politics and Self-Interests Have Debased Science
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Johnno
Wed 12/27/2023
RE: “To their shame, many scientists know that embracing unfounded climate alarm will likely lead to more research funding, further publications and their prospects of promotion.”
Or in the words of Upton Sinclair, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!”
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petervburrows
Thu 12/21/2023
Thank you, Dr. Happs. Your scholarship is awesome. I’m cranking up my printer. BTW, Pope Francis also plays kissy-face with the Muslims. He’s a disaster.
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