NPOs
Problems
Research
Solutions
Solvers
Users


And How They Relate to Global Warming

Some Comments by Howard Johnson

PROBLEMS AND THEIR FALLOUT

Dealing with the Global Warming Crowd

I start with these definitions so the reader will better understand the basis for my conclusions.
Non profit organization: abbreviated as NPO, also known as a not-for-profit organization, is an organization that does not distribute its surplus funds (that nasty word, profits) to owners or shareholders, but instead uses them to help pursue its goals. It can, and usually does also own and operate property including buildings, equipment and vehicles. Employees of NPOs receive salaries and other compensation, often quite substantial.

Problem: a question raised for inquiry, consideration, or solution - an intricate, unsettled question - a source of perplexity, distress, or vexation - a difficulty in understanding or accepting.

Research: careful or diligent search - studious inquiry or examination; esp: investigation or experimentation aimed at the discovery and interpretation of facts, revision of accepted theories or laws in the light of new facts, or practical application of such new or revised theories or laws - the collecting of information about a particular subject.

Solution: an action or process of solving a problem - an answer to a problem - a bringing or coming to an end or into a state of discontinuity.

Solver: one who solves a problem or brings it to a successful solution.

User: one who uses others, in many instances for their own personal benefit..

Problems, and the methods used to deal with them, are as varied as are the thoughts and ideas of individual humans. Someone once said that if you could adequately define a problem it would almost certainly lead to a conclusion and thus to a solution. The very word problem, however, implies the unknown.

Everyone deals with problems, usually on a daily basis. Problems can be divided into two types: those that have solutions and those that do not. Knowing the difference, and in which of the two categories a problem belongs is a problem in itself. For less than obvious reasons different people and different groups deal quite differently with problems. While the specific approach is not the purview of this writing, there are generally two very different classes of how to deal with any problem.

Some view a problem as something to be solved so that it is no longer a problem, while others view the same problem as something to be maintained, nurtured and kept alive without solution for their own purpose. To the latter group, any solution is to be avoided at all costs as that would end the usefulness of the problem to their purposes.

In general, engineers, contractors, business people, those in industry, and even individual entrepreneurs—all private sector people—deal with problems using the first method. They work hard at finding a viable and usually profitable solution, and move on to other things once it is solved. The result is all of the marvelous technologies and the organizations that developed and manufactured them that have so improved and extended our lives. To these people, a problem is something to be solved. Their attitudes about solutions to problems created the industrial and technological revolution that has resulted in everything from ipods to space missions to providing safe foods for billions of humans.

The other group who do not want solutions want every problem to go no forever without solution. Why? Consider the politician. Every problem is viewed as a weapon with which to bludgeon political opponents, or obtain money. Should such a problem be solved it would remove a valuable tool from his or her political arsenal. That’s why politicians are problem users and not problem solvers. Politicians love unsolvable problems, especially those they can use to impose taxes. Global warming is a classic example that is trumpeted in the main stream media on a daily basis. It has become a huge financial boon for some and a ticket to power for others.

Government bureaucrats are another large group who do not want solutions to their problems Consider this situation: a government agency has a small department that is dealing with a specific problem. As manager, part of your compensation is determined by how big a budget you can get for your department. One of the workers in the department comes to you with the perfect solution to the problem—problem solved, no further need for the department to exist. You have a choice. The obvious is to implement the solution, dissolve the department, and look for another job. Is this what happens? Not on this planet. The more likely scenario is that you thank the employee and then transfer him to another department as far from yours as possible. You then destroy all records of the solution and go back to business as usual.

This brings us to another group that will avoid any solution at all costs. These are government and university research organizations, particularly those that vie for grants mostly provided by the US government. As long as the problem has legs it will be used to obtain grant money to fund the group’s research. Should the problem the group is dealing with be solved, there is no longer a need for the group to exist so it will be disbanded, the grant will be cancelled, and the group members will lose their jobs, right? Well . . . not always, especially if it is a government or government sponsored research organization. These groups are like the mythical Hydra, chop off one head and two more appear. An in-depth examination of government records will unearth many groups and committees whose usefulness ceased long ago, often as far back as horse and buggy days. These groups continue to have their budgets increased every year thanks to a Congress enamored of base line budgeting and pork barrel projects for their districts or states. Every once in a while someone discovers one of these dinosaurs and blows a whistle. If it would happen to be a Congressman, whatever he discloses had better not be of benefit to his district or his opponent will use it to cream him in the next election.

Even in universities it is difficult to get a research group disbanded once they have successfully run the grant committee gauntlet. Politics plays a huge part even there. I had an email exchange with a friend, a member of one of my Internet writers critique groups, who is a professor at a European university. For a short time he was a member of one research group. He left in disgust after discovering the purpose of the group had long ago ceased to exist and that their sole purpose seemed to be in writing grant requests so they would not be disbanded. Of course, it really wasn’t quite that simple.

My friend’s expertise and main pursuit was research on the effects of increased atmospheric carbon dioxide on European plants and specifically crop plants. He kept getting refused new government grants until he changed the name of his research. He changed the title of his grant request from what previously was, The Beneficial Effects of Increased Atmospheric Carbon-dioxide on European Crop Plants, to the infinitely more politically correct, The Deleterious Effects of Increased Atmospheric Carbon-dioxide on European Crop Plants. He said he also changed a few of the sub headings in a similar fashion and his grant came through. His research had not changed, his conclusions had not changed and with just a few insignificant revisions to parts of his conclusions, he published his results, some of which I included in my book, Energy, Convenient Solutions.

I could list other example, but I’m sure you can see the basic differences between the two groups. The group who do not want problems solved are probably in the minority in universities, but I will wager they represent a majority in government research organizations and in many of the so called “Think Tanks” that have sprouted up all over. I have two examples of why I believe this to be true. At least thirty years ago, I was flying to Chicago from Des Moines Iowa. I struck up a conversation with the man seated next to me who just happened to be the Postmaster of Chicago. He was a man in his mid sixties who informed me he was about to retire. Then he told my why he was glad he was retiring and getting out of the Post office.

It seems he and several of his subordinates had developed a new training program to help low income, entry level employees, primarily minorities, get training so they could work for the Post Office. This was done at the request of the head of the post office in Washington. Their pilot program was started with twenty applicants that were not required to take any tests. In fact, some of them could not even read. The program was a four week intensive training given by Post Office employees. The trainees were paid the same as entry level jobs during their training. At the end of the program they were each given the standard Post Office test for the jobs they were to do. Eleven passed and went to work. At this time eleven new applicants were added to the nine that did not pass and the entire group went through the training process.

Again they were given the standard employment test. Seven of the new people and four of the ones who went through twice passed and went to work. Once more there were nine left who would retake the training. The program called for applicants to be let go at the end of the third training period if they did not pass the tests. This time only four of the new people passed along with two of the second timers. That meant that only six new applicants could be accepted. At the end of the third training period, two of the new applicants passed along with one of the repeaters. Those who had taken the third training and still couldn’t pass were released. At the end of the next program five more were released. At this point someone, the Postal Workers Union or the NAACP, or the ACLU, I don’t remember who, but one of those filed a suit to force the post office to keep all trainees in the program until they were able to pass the test

The results were obvious. The program was soon filled with individuals who would never be able to pass the test and thus became permanent non working employees. At the time of our flight, the program had been disbanded. The Postmaster was terribly disappointed saying, “Our program really worked and was provided jobs for a few who were otherwise considered unemployable. We were about to expand it when those lousy people got in and messed it up. Now we are again without a training program for these special entry level people. They are the ones who ultimately suffered.”

As far as I know those twenty non working employees could still be there, doing nothing and drawing a government paycheck. Remember this was more than thirty years ago so my numbers may not be on the money and I’m sure his words were different from my quotes, but the story itself is quite true.

The politically correct global warming story has such force it has gotten to the point where most of the news media and most university people treat it as a scientifically proven fact. This is nonsense. It s nothing but consensus science driven and tilted by politics and the lure of money—lots of money. The really sad part of this whole thing is the polarization it has brought about in the otherwise and usually objective scientific community. If you question any aspect of the global warming mantra you will be ridiculed (as I have been) called names (as I have been) and ostracized. (They can’t do that to me) Witness what happened to Dr. Judith Curry, head of the School of Atmospheric Sciences of Georgia Tech. Just because she will not condemn 100% of those who question the efficacy of the IPPC, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, she has been the subject of many verbal attacks. To my great admiration, she has not backed down. She has accused the IPCC of, “corruption” and says, “I’m not going to spout off and endorse the IPCC because I don’t have confidence in the process.” This was before the Climategate email revelations of doctored computer simulations.

She has been jeered, insulted and otherwise badly treated, just because she doesn’t knuckle under to the pressures of the church of global warming. Incidently, she’s not a denier, just a questioning skeptic, as am I, who would like a whole lot more proof. I looked into what she is asking and her questions are virtually the same ones I have been asking. Where is the hard science, the physics and chemistry, that proves global warming from carbon-dioxide is as real as proponents of the theory say it is.

I am reminded of one of my favorite quotes from Peter Abelard, “By doubting we are led to inquire. By inquiring we learn the truth.” Apparently the global warming crowd will tolerate no doubting or inquiring from anyone, even highly qualified scientists. I do not believe that is even a remotely scientific attitude. Good science welcomes doubters and questioners. As a matter of fact, the entire basis of science, the scientific method, is based on repeated and thorough questioning. The idea that consensus science (the opinions of a number of scientists) is superior to hard science (math, physics, chemistry) is ludicrous. It goes against the grain of all true scientific facts, and in truth, the opposite is always true. Hard science always trumps consensus science. This does not mean that consensus science is wrong or is not a valuable tool. It merely means that it is a consensus of a group of scientists, a group that could even be a minority of scientists.

This is my interpretation from a rather pointedly unflattering and somewhat misleading article about Dr. Curry in the November 2010 issue of Scientific American. The title, Climate Heretic, is insulting. There is a full page photo of Dr. Curry opposite the title page that is also less than flattering. The only reference to her well earned title is the following on the first paragraph. “For most of her career, Curry, who heads the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology, has been known for her work on hurricanes, Arctic ice dynamics and other climate related topics. But over the past years or so she has become better known for something that annoys, even infuriates many of her scientific colleagues. (She refuses to go along with the crowd like a sheep.) Curry has been engaged actively with the climate change skeptic community, largely by participating on outsider blogs such as Climate Audit. The Air Vent and The Blackboard. Along the way, she has come to question the science, no matter how well established it is.”

In typical misleading fashion, Scientific American printed a version of the “hockey stick” temperature showing best guess temperatures from 1000 CE to the present. Since the “little Ice Age” began around 900 CE, well before the dates on the graph, this version, commonly used to illustrate how temperatures have risen in recent years, gives an extremely erroneous picture. If you compare it with a similar graph starting say 10,000 BC, a very different picture appears. It is quite plain from the expanded data that current global temperatures are considerably lower than those during the medieval warm period from 200 CE to 900 CE and even warmer at several times since the last ice age. Why is it that global warmers never refer to this data and will certainly not show these graphs?

The author of the article is one I consider to be a dedicated member of the fundamentalist church of global warming, a political hack writer. His name is Michael D. Lemonick and he was a long time far left science writer for Time magazine. He now writes for Climate Central, a nonprofit, nonpartisan climate change think tank. (I about choked on that oxymoronic description, nonpartisan indeed) It’s one of the hundreds of usually non profit organizations that have sprung up to feed on the leavings from the global warming fantasy promoters. The Internet is loaded with them, all soliciting donations for their noble purpose. They may be non profit, but I’ll wager their principals receive a hefty paycheck along with many perks. Many NPOs have highly paid executives who fly around in private jets. (Like Nancy Pelosi who’s NPO was Congress) NPOs can offer all the perks of any profit making corporation for their owners and employees. The only thing different is they don’t pay their owners in dividends, they simply pay them in salary and benefits.

OK, so I rambled about. I just wanted to share some realities from the wonderful world of liberalism.

The following is a response to the article on Dr. Curry from one Climatologist

10/23/2010

This article completely neglects to mention the enormous amounts of grant money being shoveled into "climate studies." $Billions every year are handed out by the federal government, with much more payola coming from shadowy, politically oriented NGOs that are often at odds with honest science.

Big money corrupts, as can be seen throughout the Climategate emails, where journals are threatened and blackballed, and journalists and FOI officers are corrupted, and professional careers are ruined, simply for not toeing the alarmist line. The mainstream climate clique has both front feet in the public grant trough, and it brazenly shoulders aside scientific skeptics (the only honest kind of scientists, according to the scientific method).

Dr Curry has taken a brave stand, breaking ranks with the current orthodoxy. She is a finger to the wind, indicating a sea change in the public's growing awareness of the fact that there is zero credible evidence showing that the rise in CO2 has been harmful while there is solid, testable, empirical evidence showing that the rise in CO2 has been beneficial, such as increasing agricultural production in a world that needs more food.

The IPCC has become entirely self-serving since AR-1. It is now much more interested in protecting its grant gravy train than in allowing skeptical scientists to be a part of the process. It took knowledgeable outsiders to debunk Michael Mann's hockey stick chart; the iconic poster of the IPCC.

In retrospect, the scientific establishment should have promptly sounded the alarm when it was claimed in MBH98-99 that the planet's temperature was essentially unchanging over many centuries. Instead, the Mann et al. attempt to erase the MWP and the LIA was unquestioningly accepted, at least publicly, due to the immense flow of grant money at stake. Further, the IPCC still continues to avoid the scientific method, instead protecting its catastrophic AGW hypothesis from any and all attacks by skeptical scientists, when it is the duty of scientists to falsify hypotheses.

But the cracks in the defenses of the climate alarmists are widening. Taxpayers are disgusted with the unaccountable hand over fist money grabbing by a completely unaccountable UN/IPCC. As the public becomes more aware of how the system is being gamed at their expense, push back is increasing. And it will continue to escalate.

End of response

You see, I’m not the only one. Increasing numbers of people are asking all kinds of probing and even embarrassing questions of climate alarmists.

Oh yes, here are some graphs you might find interesting:

It is interesting to note that the high point in both of these graphs are based on tree ring data, not actual temperature data. The cause of this explosive growth has been well documented to be the increase in atmospheric CO2 which has been found to greatly increase plant growth including trees. This holds true almost without regard for temperature so tree ring data is totally useless as a measure of ambient temperatures. You will note that the black line for tree ring growth is only shown for the last 150 years. If it were shown for the full thousand years, it’s irregular meanderings would prove it to be totally meaningless as an indicator of temperature.

This is the IPCC hockey stick graph shown in an accurate scale. Compare it with the same period shown on the graph on the previous page. Notice only one line, the black one goes up sharply at the end. This line represents tree ring growth that the IPCC uses erroneously to show temperatures. It is just one of the eight types of temperature estimates shown, and is highly unreliable.

This is the IPCC temperature graph before Michael Mann published his hockey stick graph and report that completely ignored the Medieval warm period, the Little Ice Age, and the effects of increased atmospheric CO2.

For more information on the hockey stick graph goto:
http://www.john-daly.com/hockey/hockey.htm

It is very probable that the CO2 variation follows the average temperature rather than the other way around.

Global Warming - ACS - excerpt - 12-29-07 +new http://glowarmacs.blogspot.com
Edit, change photo and update to ECS

Global Warming and the Gulf Stream Facts & Facts http://hjgulfstream.blogspot.com
Add graphs

Global Warming and Earth Hour http://hjglobalwarming.blogspot.com