Wood Romances

Frequently I see contrarians confuse local and global temperatures in such a way that they end up contradicting themselves. The contradictions goes like this - on the one hand they say global warming can't be a problem because a small amount of glo. warming is no different than the change in temperature over a small portion of the day, and nobody would notice this small change anyway. But then they also say that during the Little Ice Age, climate was so much worse than it is today, including wide spread famines, frozen rivers, puritans burning witches, etc. Given that the LIA was only a couple degrees colder than today, this directly contradicts their claims about the effects of a couple degrees of global warming. I'll document an example of this below.  On September 6 , Matthew Wielicki posted a claim on X that global warming isn't a problem because 2°C warming by 2100 is "about the temperature change from 8am to 10am in most major cities." He then showed a gra...

You often hear contrarians repeating mantras about there being "no consensus in science" or that "science is never settled," two related claims that I take to be nearly synonymous. Many examples could be given, but I'll offer a few (with links to the source so you can check up on me): "There is no consensus science. Consensus is group-think and is very dangerous in science. During the Little Ice Age, there was a consensus that witches caused bad weather, and so climate justice resulted in witch killings."  ( John Shewchuk ) "There is no consensus in science … science is about facts" ( John Coleman ) "Science is never settled." ( Matthew Wielicki ) "The minute you hear the science is settled, you know something is wrong. Science is never settled." ( Richard Lindzen ) It's common enough that sometimes you see it dressed up in pretty memes, like this one with a quote from Michael Crichton. I haven't decided yet if i...

Another common contradiction I see among contrarian influencers is that observational data are manipulated to fit a global warming agenda that comes solely from fudged climate models that simultaneously predict far too much warming than observational data. Let's write this as two statements that make the contradiction even more obvious, where:      A = Model Predictions      B = Observational Data      C = Climate Scam Agenda  The contradiction can be stated in at least two ways. In the simpler statement, A = B and A ≠ B: Observational data are manipulated to agree with model predictions. Models are fudged to predict far more warming than is warranted from observational data.  The logic can sometime be stated in a way that is slightly more complex. Here's another wording of the same contradiction. In this case A = C and B = C (so A = B) and A ≠ B: Model predictions are fudged and observations are fabricated to agree with...

How Increasing CO2 Affects Radiative Forcings and GMST If you pay enough attention to contrarian climate influencers, you may begin to notice how frequently they flat out contradict themselves . I think they hope that as long as they are careful to word contradictory claims in sufficiently different ways without saying both within the same minute or so, you won't notice. So I thought it might helpful to expose some of these contradictory claims. I'll start with my personal favorite: CO2 concentrations are both low/starved and high/saturated. This contradiction appears to be particularly common among those who speak for the CO2 Coalition , like William Happer, John Shewchuk and Gregory Wrightstone. You can find these influencers and propagandists saying both of the following: CO2 concentrations are so how that the planet is starved of CO2. We're in a "CO2 famine." CO2 concentrations are so high that its effect is "saturated" in the atmosphere. These are c...