I’m a US citizen, received an Associate Degree in Civil Engineering at Vermont Technical College and a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Arizona in Tucson. Now I live in northern Germany and run a small business with my wife, the owner, that supports industry. I’ve always been a sceptic of the AGW hypothesis, and view myself as a mere spectator in the climate change debate and arena.
As a boy I had a strong interest in meteorology and even dreamed of becoming one for a time. I often read the weather charts and had interest in extreme weather events. I can recall many extreme weather events occurring. That’s why I think what’s happening today is nothing unusual. In fact, if the media stopped hyping it up, most people wouldn’t even notice climate change.
I do believe that the activities of man have a modest impact on the climate and environment, but more through landuse and poor waste management practices respectively. But for the most part, I believe the forces of nature overwhelm anything man puts out.
The focus of public policy and resources ought to be on solving real problems that exist today like water pollution, poverty, mal-nutrition, urban squalor, education, tyranny and so on, and not on thought-up catastrophe scenarios that might or might not come to pass 100 years from now. Too many governments use AGW as an excuse for their policy failures – claiming all problems are due to AGW, and not their own often stupid policies.
This blog allows me to throw in my two cents worth from time to time. I’m not funded by anyone except by my own modest means. I don’t have a tip jar and don’t care to receive anyone else’s money. This is strictly for fun, learning and free speech.
I worked in Tucson a couple years ago.
´had a very good time there. I stayed in small hotel near A-Mountain.
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Reply: Go Cats go! -PG
Thank you for linking to our video regarding EPA’s refusal to allow its own Science Advisory Board to review the greenhouse gas Endangerment Finding. We will provide updates on our website and on YouTube as the case develops.
Hi P. Gosselin,
I’ve followed your comments for several years on other blogs. Nice to see you have one of your own. You have a typo:
“I’m not funded by anyone accept by my own modest means.”
I’m sure you meant to use “except” rather than “accept”.
Thanks. Now fixed.
I guess my thoughts had been still focussed on the issue of accepting money.
It’s amazing to me when I hear Climate Change skeptics talk about the misinformation from those who believe it is happening, that it’s primarily caused by man, and that the consequences will be significant. What would be the motivation for so many scientists, the vast majority of scientists, far more educated and intelligent than either of us, to spread misinformation? Do you believe they’re just stupid? More so than you? Is there some economic benefit for them? Do you discount what all scientists say? Also, give me a break–an engineering degree does not in any way qualify you to be a climate expert. I work with a lot of engineers and you don’t have to be that bright to get an engineering degree, especially from some no-name university. MIT, maybe, but not the ones you attended.
To Wordsmith – from a climate “realist!”
There are many of us out here, not employed by the oil industry or any state for federal governments, with a desire to figure out what is going on under the surface. Why do so many “scientists” cave to the “alarmist” community? They need the grants. The research community has received over $70 B (as in billion) during the past 20 years and of that only $1 B has gone to the “deniers.” We know that science is not consensus. We know that the IPCC, with its various Assessment Reports, was established to suit a broad range of political agendas. The IPCC “peer” review process has always been flawed. It distorts information to suit its agenda. Why are there so many climate alarmist dupes? It is so difficult for scientists, once confronted with the truth, to say “I was wrong!”
wordsmith
23. Dezember 2010 at 18:54
“…an engineering degree does not in any way qualify you to be a climate expert…” and other insults.
If a wordsmith could read, he would see that no such claim was made of being a ‘climate expert,’ quite the contrary.
As to the scientists, Richard Lindzen of MIT, a world-class expert, summed it up: “The important point, however, is that the science that they do that I respect is not about global warming. Endorsing global warming just makes their lives easier….For a much larger group of scientists, the fact that they can make ambiguous or even meaningless statements that can be spun by alarmists, and that the alarming spin leads politicians to increase funding provides little incentive to complain about the spin.”
http://www.heartland.org/events/newyork09/pdfs/lindzen.pdf
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJwayalLpYY
I was reading Joe Bastardi’s cool winter forcast and somehow got linked to this. Keep up the good work. I, also, am one of the stupid engineers–sounds like Wordsmith couldn’t make it. I am on the fence on the warming cycle but I lean towards the world is bigger than us scenario. As for scientists being holy, the newest is where the study published on autism being caused by vaccines, has been found to be fraudulent, the author being paid by a lawyer to produce the report. I feel there are many good scientists and a few bad apples.
I’ve been reading your posts for a while and assumed you were German!
Good boy, keep it up.
Some lovely work here Pierre.
I see the usual ad hom combined with appeals to authority used to tell Mr. Gosselin that he should just shut up. While in general it’s reasonable to give a lot of weight to expert opinion, experts are by no means infallible nor always disinterested.
I don’t happen to be a stock market expert. Bernie Madoff is. But I still regard myself as smart enough to tell you that you should not trust him, and ought to take his advice with a major grain of salt. How arrogant of me!
No matter how smart the scientists, a correct theory ought to have predictive power, and the predictions of the climate alarmists have not shown that they fully understand the climate. I don’t regard the majority as being like Madoff, but just as I still can critically evaluate the advice of a financial guy like Madoff, I can also critically examine the predictions of climatologists in order to judge their credibility.
Just came across this web site and noted the comment by wordsmith. I would ask him does he know what a (so-called) climate scientist understands and what are their attributes. Can Mann who produced the “hockey stick” graph and does not understand statistics be classed as a climate scientist? What about Phil Jones who has “adjusted” the CRU temperature record, lost his data, does no recognise UHI and was a co-author with Wang in a paper which has been called scientific fraud in a peer-reviewed journal? What about Trenberth who has admitted in an email that the radiation window is 66W/m2 and not 40 W/m2 as in his heat balance (in which there is a missing balance of 0.9w/m2) and then in climategate emails mentions that it is a travesty that they can not find the missing heat? Quite clearly he has no idea about heat transfer.
The AGW hypothesis concerns the trace gas CO2 absorbing radiant heat and transfering that to the atmosphere to increase the temperature. I have looked at Climate Science courses at various Universities around the world. No course I have seen teaches thermodynamics, or heat and mass transfer which are engineering subjects. From all the articles and books, I have seen, no climate scientist (including the supposed guru Sir John Houghton and even some who are sceptics) has a full understanding of these subjects. Has anyone seen a reference to the dimensionless Nusselt numbers in any article on climate? Another engineering subject, fluid dynamics, is necessary to understand atmospheric circulation such as jetstreams and currents in the ocean.
I would suggest that only a clever person with a background in engineering can come to grips with the complexity of climate assessment. One such person was the recently deceased Dr Noor Van Andel. He was just starting to put together a theory about the formation and effect of clouds together with the theory of Miskolczi about constant optical density. Arthur Roesch at http://climategate.nl/ has mentioned that researchers in the Nederlands are following up the theory and hope soon to publish a peer reviewed article.