Wood Romances

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 graph of expected temperature changes from 8 am to10 am, from sunrise to afternoon, January to July, etc for various cities. I think it's fairly easy to show that Wielicki is being dishonest here, since he also flatly contradicts this claim. But before showing him contradicting this claim, let's explain Wielicki's horrible logic. In effect, he's making the simple mistake of confusing local diurnal and seasonal temperature changes with global climate change. When the global mean becomes 2°C warmer, the distribution of temperatures locally and globally also changes, making what used to be extreme heat far more common. In another post, I document that there has been a 220x increase in frequency  of extreme summer heat in NH land temperatures with respect...

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...