What Is Climate? Is It Changing?
By Paul Homewood
https://rclutz.wordpress.com/2015/10/26/what-is-climate-is-it-changing/
A thought provoking piece from Ron Clutz:
Thanks Arnd for another provocative comment.
EXXON, as many others, deserve no regret when „charged with all kinds of misdoing with respect to climate science“. EXXON’s fault is not strongly opposing a meaningless language with regard what ‘climate’ is.Full Comment is here:
Dr. Bernaerts raises a number of issues and goes into some depth at his website, especially this page.
I am prompted by this to respond with three points.
1. Climate Alarmism Depends on Equivocation
There is something like a lawyer’s frustration in Dr. Bernaerts’ writing about climate. It is customary in a legal document for the first section to define all the terms, and then in later sections to respect those definitions in making arguments. He is right to criticize climate science for lacking such discipline.
Going further, it can be said that the anti-fossil fuel movement is built upon equivocation. That is a fallacy in which the meaning of a word changes in the course of a logical argument, so that a change of subject occurs in a hidden way. Alarmists frequently refer to CO2 as “carbon pollution” when the harmless trace gas is essential to life in the biosphere. A slight change of ocean pH toward 7.0 is called acidification. And so on with assertions that climate will cause all kinds of catastrophic weather: extra rain in wet places, drought in dry places, melting glaciers, sea level rises, destructive storms, etc. Much is made of the “greenhouse gas effect” to raise concerns about CO2, without acknowledging that H2O is by far the most important IR active gas in the atmosphere.
Without obfuscation, there would be no cause for alarm or for 40,000 people to gather at the Paris COP.
Comments are closed.
NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
The problem here is that Ron (like most of us who contribute to this blog) are believers in logical argument and deciding what we find credible.
Religious fervour has never allowed the facts to get in the way of saving the “sinners” from themselves. Paris is getting very close!
“equivocation” a fancy word for deception and lying.
People who want to return to the dark ages prior to the use of fossil fuels have a mission to radically reduce the population of the world…Same old end game that’s been a progressive goal since Margaret Sanger. The middle class of the US and Europe is the obvious victim as life prior to coal fired engines was short and brutal without any personal freedom.
Every government in history has grown until it reached tyranny, and the US is no exception. If you want to force others to do what you want, you pay politicians to cover for you. The politicians are the ones with the biggest guns….
Fortunately for most of the world, the people in government haven’t turned into paid shills for the idiots, so if they succeed in destroying affordable energy in the US and Europe, people will migrate to China, Latin America and Africa which may become the shining stars economically in the last half of this century.
It seems Dr. Bernaerts struggles with this question since long, writing a letter to the Editor of NATURE 1992, “Climate Change”, Vol. 360, p. 292; http://www.whatisclimate.com/1992-nature.html:
“SIR – The Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro and the earlier struggle for a Convention on Climate Change may serve as a reminder that the 1982 Convention on the Law of the Sea has its tenth anniversary on 10 December. It is not only one of the most comprehensive and strongest international treaties ever negotiated but the best possible legal means to protect the global climate. But sadly, there has been little interest in using it for this purpose. For too long, climate has been defined as the average weather and Rio was not able to define it at all. Instead, the Climate Change Convention uses the term ‘climate system’, defining it as “the totality of the atmosphere, hydrosphere, biosphere and geosphere and their interactions”. All that this boils down to is ‘the interactions of the natural system’. What is the point of a legal term if it explains nothing? For decades, the real question has been who is responsible for the climate. Climate should have been defined as ‘the continuation of the oceans by other means’. Thus, the 1982 Convention could long since have been used to protect the climate. After all, it is the most powerful tool with which to force politicians and the community of states into actions. Arnd Bernaerts”……..
Earth is dynamic, not static. Therefore, climate is always changing. Apparently such earth science is no longer being taught in school. Continents have moved, smacking into each other and raising mountain ranges which cause interior areas to become deserts. Then they tear apart and continue on with great climate changes. During the Carboniferous Period when the coal swamps were going strong, sucking up all that CO2, and dinosaurs becoming a force, the super-continent, Pangea, had glaciers at the southern latitudes and hot swamps near the equator.
Several years ago, a climate hand-wringer wailed that further polar melts would lead to flooding of the interior around the Mississippi River. I was able to inform them: “been there, done that–it is known as the Mississippi Embayment.” It existed as a large bay in the Cretaceous through early Cenozoic. The bay covered areas southern central US, including parts of Illinois, Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas.
This article just came in via The Daily Signal: “Lawmakers Probe Taxpayer-Funded Academic Who Wants Obama to Prosecute Climate Change Skeptics.” The House of Representatives is looking into those taxpayer-funded college professors who are calling for RICO to be used against other scientists who “deny” man-caused global “climate change.” It is about time. To quote Frank Loesser after Pearl Harbor: “Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition.”
http://dailysignal.com/2015/10/26/lawmakers-probe-taxpayer-funded-academic-who-wants-obama-to-prosecute-climate-change-skeptics/?
Interesting post and ideas! Here is a blog where I found a post on weather and climate- http://oceansgovernclimate.com/weather-and-climate-do-they-know-what-they-are-talking-about/ – I suggest you to take a look, since there are many persons (including some scientists, politicians, business men) that do not make the difference between climate and weather.