Trenberth et al are wrong in the WSJ
Hand back your science degrees Trenberth et al.
Thirty eight of the worlds top, most consequential climate scientists sought to slap down the Nobel prize winner, astronaut and glitterati of science, and all they could come up with was a logical fallacy and a single paragraph of incohate, innumerate, and improbable evidence. It’s hand-waving on stilts.
Is that the best they can do?
Trenberth and co try to rebut No Need to Panic About Global Warming, but those 16 eminent scientists quoted evidence and pointed out major flaws in the assumptions of the theory. They described forms of scientific malpractice, and called for open debate. In comparison, the 38 climate “scientists” offered hardly more than argument from authority, “Trust Us: We’re Experts” they said as if the lesser beings, who were mere Professors of Astrophysics, Meteorology, and Physics, were too stupid to know the difference between a doctor and a dentist. I mean, sure the 16 skeptics could be wrong, but if the evidence is so overwhelming, why can’t the 38 experts find it?
Q: What kind of doctor is a scientist who can’t reason?
A witchdoctor.
This article does a good job of highlighting points where the science stops and the activism pretends to science. For that, I especially like the warmist attempt at rebuttal: “And computer models have recently shown that during periods when there is a smaller increase of surface temperatures, warming is occurring elsewhere in the climate system, typically in the deep ocean.” Computer models are not observations, nothing is “shown” in the scientific sense of that word, and there is no scientist – only a wizard behind a curtain.
It is obvious that Trenberth and company highly approve of themselves and feel very good about what they are doing. If they have to appeal to their own authority to save the planet then it is OK. Only they the annointed few can truely understand and it is up to the lesser people to blindly accept their climate tyranny.
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.” — C. S. Lewis (1898 – 1963)
On the other hand, calling them witchdoctors gives them to much credit. Patients of a witchdoctor can be healed by the placebo effect. The Earth cannot be healed by computer models that are garbage.