Marc Sheppard, a “software engineer and data analyst” and thus no more a scientist than I am, was recently given the privilege to spew his nonsense at the American Thinker web site (American Thinker). He compiles an impressive number of falsehoods and deceptive claims. Let’s take on a few of them so that, on the off chance someone stumbles upon this blog, there will be some record of his stupidity.

First, he bemoans the fact that it’s roughly 10 years since the so-called Climategate affair and yet people still haven’t given up on the ideas of climate change and anthropogenic global warming. His tactic here is partly the old one of repeating a lie in order to foster its acceptance, and thus he refers to “evidence of lying, cheating, and exaggeration.” Sheppard obviously ignores the conclusions of several investigations that cleared the people he is accusing of scientific deception. He just plunges on, trying to give the impression that his view—though it is in fact the false, deceptive one—was proven 10 years ago. To see how wrong he is, just look up those investigations or, better yet, read through the stolen emails yourself. You will find no sign of any conspiracy to lie about climate science.

He tries the same trick when he says that it’s false to claim there is a scientific consensus. He offers no evidence to support his view. He just says that those who have been paying attention “know” that there’s no consensus. And then he quotes Roy Spencer, one of the few people (and there are only a few) in the climate science world who consistently sides with the skeptics or deniers (what Sheppard likes to call “realists”). Unfortunately, Spencer’s statement is filled with nonsense. It deserves some detailed destruction. First, here’s the quote:

The belief in human-caused warming exceeding a level that what would be relatively benign, and maybe even beneficial, is just that – a belief.  It is not based upon known, established, and quantified scientific principles.  It is based upon the assumption that natural climate change does not exist.

Spencer makes two false claims here, both of them directly targeting the thousands of hard-working, serious climate scientists. First, he says the “belief” that human-caused warming might be harmful is only a belief, not something based on “known, established, and quantified scientific principles.” Should we actually believe that the work of thousands of scientists over the last few decades in climate-related research has not involved known, established and quantified scientific principles? How preposterous. But Spencer goes further and claims that these scientists also assume “natural climate change does not exist.” This again is a preposterous and false claim. Scientists have studied evidence of past climate and have clearly demonstrated it changes. Also, one main strand of climate studies is the attempt to determine to what extent “natural” (that is, non-human) factors are currently affecting climate and to what extent human factors, such as added CO2, are affecting the climate. One of the clear results of such studies is that the changes observed in the last 50 years cannot be accounted for by “natural” causes alone, but can be understood in the context of human activity.

Spencer exhibits the common denier argument that we can blame the current warming on natural factors. Yet what you never get from these deniers or skeptics is a clear, detailed explanation based on “known, established and quantified scientific principles” showing what specific factors or forces are changing the climate. They just wave their magic wand of “natural change” and think they are done.

Sheppard also tries to attack the notion of climate change as “settled science.” He relies on the essentially meaningless platitude that science is never settled. This is meaningless because it is a true statement that provides no value. While it is true that there is always the possibility of new discoveries and theories that will change our current understanding, it is also true that there are vast tracts of the scientific realm that are considered “settled science” with good reason. We don’t repeatedly experiment to see if an apple will fall to the ground due to gravity. There is no point. That part of the science of gravity is settled. That doesn’t mean we don’t try to understand gravity—there is much to learn there—but some basics of it are absolutely settled.

Sheppard shows his muddled thinking by using a false analogy to attempt to make his point about science never being settled. He claims that if we had considered computer science settled many decades ago we would still be trying to use vacuum tubes in computers. Here he is confusing technology with science, or the ability to craft or fabricate with the knowledge or theory behind computers. In the case of climate science, there is a consensus on key ideas, the science is in fact settled on how CO2 works in the atmosphere, on how much CO2 humans have added, on how much the global temperature has increased since the time of the Industrial Revolution, and on an on. Yes, there is more to learn about what is a highly complex system, but we’re simply not going to learn that increased CO2 doesn’t cause warming, and that that warming will have other effects, some of them negative, on human civilization.

His attack on the idea of a scientific consensus on climate change is equally clueless. He cites the infamous Global Warming Petition Project or “Oregon petition”, a list of about 32000 signatories who deny the idea of anthropogenic climate change or that it would have bad effects. The signatories include very few climate scientists and the number is, in comparison to the total number of scientists in the United States, a small number. He’s trying to argue for his own “minority report” consensus based on numbers, but wants to deny the overwhelmingly larger numbers of scientists who support the current climate change science. (https://www.huffingtonpost.com/kevin-grandia/the-30000-global-warming_b_243092.html)

Sheppard’s last major argument against AGW is his claim that the temperature fluctuations of at least the last 150 years can be attributed to the PDO or Pacific Decadal Oscillation. However, while it is true that the peaks and valleys of the temperatures show an oscillation that matches that of the PDO, there is an overall trend in the temperatures that Sheppard ignores. Each peak in the temperature graph is higher than the previous one. And, no, there has been no cooling recently. Temperatures continue to be at or near records. Just because we don’t have a new record every year does not mean that global warming has paused. As explained at Skeptical Science, “Natural oscillations like PDO simply move heat around from oceans to air and vice-versa. They don’t have the ability to either create or retain heat, therefore they’re not capable of causing a long-term warming trend, just short-term temperature variations.  Basically they’re an example of internal variability, not an external radiative forcing.” And also: “One way to test this skeptic theory is to plot the Global Temperature Anomaly alongside the PDO Index ….  What we find is that although the PDO index appears to influence short-term temperature changes, global temperatures have a distinct upward trend, while the PDO Index does not. “

Sheppard succeeds in hitting many of the typical nutjob denier memes. When you encounter other deniers of climate science, see how many of these approaches are present.

• Rely on some of the very few people with a climate science background who take “lukewarmist” or even denial perspectives. There aren’t many that fall in this category so you will repeatedly see names such as Roy Spencer, Richard Lindzen, Judith Curry, Willie Soon, John Christy, Roger Pielke Jr., and Sallie Baliunas.
• Try to counter the overwhelming evidence of a scientific consensus by referring to the laughably inept “Oregon” petition or cite the meaningless idea that “science is never settled.” Actually, with many scientific ideas, there comes a time when further proof simply is not needed and is a waste of resources. It is to that point with the idea that human activity is changing the climate. Now we need to move on past that general idea to more research on how that change occurs, how it can be reduced, and how we can more accurately predict future changes.
• Refer to the ClimateGate affair as something that actually proved malfeasance on the part of scientists though several investigations showed that nothing of the sort occurred. In other words, show no skepticism whatever toward ideas you like.
• Whine about the climate scientists demonizing the deniers as “deniers” and at the same time call the climate scientists frauds, liars, cheaters, and alarmists.
• Misunderstand climate science, and thus erroneously blame the PDO for warmer temperatures. Note how often so-called skeptics will come up with various notions of what is really causing global warming, but none of their ideas ever pan out. And it’s not that their ideas receive no attention from scientists. Rather, if you examine the research, you will find careful, thorough explanations of why the PDO, or cosmic rays, or solar cycles are not the correction explanation.

Sheppard apparently would rather be called a “skeptic” or even a “realist” but there is a huge impediment to using those terms for such as he: he is not skeptical of his own explanations and he does not understand the reality of climate science.