BEST, NOVIM and the other solution

Recently there has been much discussion about Dr. Richard Muller and his recent testimony before congress. When the public discussion of the BEST organization began  I posted a couple quick investigations that I did on the group behind BEST, the Novim Group.

When I found out that Anthony Watts as well as other individuals I highly respect were involved I pretty much dropped the matter, though I have always had my suspicions. As a lead into what I am about to post I wish to re-post some of the concerns I had from the original post:

This Berkley Earth Surface Group is part of the Novim Group. It appears based on a quick review of their literature that they are very much into Geo-Engineering. In fact  in a linked PDF which is described as a Novim Overview their Executive Director Michael Ditmore is quoted:

 .... When it comes to climate change, he said, the world doesn’t have time to let politics and innuendo block the best available scientific thinking from reaching the public. 

“The problems are not unsolvable, but we’re running out of time,” Ditmore said.

It seems to me that Mr. Ditmore has already determined in his own mind that man made climate change/global warming is not something to be determined through study of the temperature records but rather an established fact in need of  immediate control.

This was my primary concern about the BEST project, Novim a group whose obvious belief in  AGW as a pending catastrophic crisis was behind the effort to independently determine the historical temperature record. Does that seem a bit odd? It did to me.  Further  the only known actions that I can determine that Novim has taken was a report on geo-engineering feasibility, which I breifly described :

Of perhaps a more important note Jason J Blackstock the lead writer of their paper on geo-engineering is  Senior Fellow for Energy and the Environment at CIGI- Centre for International Governance Innovation, love those international governance organizations. This seems like it would be an important position to put on one's resume which makes one wonder why it was left off of the Novim's web site biography of Mr Blackstock. Especially since he was not only the primary author of their paper but also the Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI) coordinator at COP-15
Among other writings of Mr Blackstock we find this

. Despite mounting evidence that climate change could be more severe and rapid than estimated by the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report (AR4), progress toward globally reducing carbon emissions remains alarmingly slow. Concern over the global failure to act on climate change has been the dominant motivation behind scientists' recent convening of several prominent reviews of geoengineering - the intentional, large-scale alteration of the climate system - as a potential recourse for moderating the impacts of climate change. These scientific reviews (particularly the Royal Society and Novim reports on geoengineering in 2009) found existing geoengineering concepts to be fraught with uncertainties and potential negative side effects, making them unsuitable as an alternative to dramatic emission reductions. Nevertheless, they recommend greatly expanding research, as the risks of unabated climate change could prove far worse than the risks of geoengineering.

It seems that for a group which claims

“Novim doesn’t take a position, doesn’t advocate a policy,” Ditmore said. “We provide a factual basis … so that policy makers can take a strong position on an issue and know that they’re backed up by the science.”

They have taken a very strong position and back an agenda.

So with this in mind I went back and watched Dr Muller's complete presentation again. The first thing you will note from this screen shot at the beginning is the credits for Dr Muller primarily focus on his company:

Dr Muller is a retired professor but he is still very much a businessman which you can check out at the web site for Muller and Associates.  Nothing wrong with that for sure, but always remember that in order to have a business you have to have either a product or a service to sell.
 
 The presentation itself was downloaded onto You Tube by CITRIS , The Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society, I love those organizations that have societies interest as their focus. They generally are closely linked to those organizations that are all for global governance.  The host organization was i4energy  all part of that academic, government, private partnership that California is so famous for.

Let's begin our review at about the  3:00 minute mark. Dr Muller puts up this graph while he goes into a discussion on the importance of cloud cover in the whole global warming debate.

While we stare at this graph for the next few minutes he rightly notes the great uncertainty about the effects of cloud cover in the scientific debate on global warming. He even points out that  "if we were to have a 2% increase in cloud cover we would not have global warming".

All of this leads us in the realist camp to cheer Dr, Muller, because he is pointing out a very important factor which many have been trying to publicize for years.  

However  beginning at around the 4:20 mark  he says : (All emphasis mine)

"if you believe we can get a favor from God by praying, I suggest you pray that cloud cover will kick in because if my evaluation is right when I show you what the problem is and if the global warming models are right, and I think they are very likely right, then we are going to have global warming."

Consider that for a moment. Immediately after explaining the great uncertainty in the hypothesis behind global warming he says he believes the global warming models are right. Not only that, he emphasizes  his belief in those models by suggesting that we pray that they are wrong, why? Well look at that chart that has been plastered on the screen behind him as he speaks.

After this he makes the most remarkable statement:

"Yet there is nobody proposing any solution about what to do about it...."

Now there are many things that can be said about the whole global warming/climate change debate, but the assertion that "nobody is proposing any solution" is not one of them. In fact many would argue, myself included,  that the entire global warming theory was ginned up specifically in order to impose a solution. Which I believe is Dr. Muller's intent is as well, just a different solution.

Is Dr. Muller so uninformed that he has not heard of cap and trade, or carbon taxes, or all the green energy projects being subsidize by governments around the world? Of course he is not that uninformed. Indeed later in the presentation we find exactly how informed he is about the solutions to climate change.

 He goes on to say

"let me show you why I don't think there is any solution ..."

So what Dr. Muller is saying is not that no solutions have been proposed, what he is actually saying is that all the solutions proposed will not work.

And the realist community cheers on their new champion. 

In his presentation he again goes on about the increasing C02 emissions in the world for which as he rightly points out there is no workable solution. This he emphasizes with his next graph:

He now gets into a discussion of the fallacy of the current thinking as expressed by the Al Gore camp. The belief that China and other developing countries have the right to increase emissions and it is the responsibility of the United States to cut back because we are the the primary source of the original problem.

Of course this is an unworkable solution because as has been demonstrated countries will commit economic suicide attempting to unilaterally decarbonize, so the political will to do so is  waning. Which Dr. Muller points out in a discussion about the failed Copenhagen summit, which he jokingly takes credit for due to his WSJ Op-Ed.

He then shows another slide which graphically shows the fallacy of the proposals to reduce GHG as proposed by the Al Gore camp.

And the realist community cheers. Finally someone from the "mainstream" is pointing out the utter nonsense to the proposed solutions being foisted on the world by Al Gore and his progressive ilk.

He drives this point home over and over again with statements such as "So much of what I hear at Berkley are solely  feel good measures"

But always remember as Dr. Muller tears down many of the the alarmist/warmist sacred cows both here and in the rest of the video, he has made it clear what he believes to be true, "if the global warming models are right, and I think they are very likely right" . This is what he believes, in fact he is so concerned that the models are correct that he is asking his audience to pray that the cloud  hypothesis/solution will save us. Let me restate that:

Dr Muller is asking his audience to pray that the cloud  hypothesis/solution will save us, because all of the other solutions are obviously unrealistic.

At one point in his lecture he points to the chart  and reminds the audience that "out here [the future] we are very likely to have a lot of global warming" Why? because he believes in the models, despite everything he says that is critical of the science and the advocacy behind the theory of man made global warming  he believes that it is true and dangerous to our future " I suggest you pray that cloud cover will kick in".

It is at this point in the lecture about eleven minutes in that he starts tearing apart the IPCC....well sort of. He ends his critic with this:

OOPS, he let his true beliefs slip," the temperature rise is in pretty good shape"  A statement which he will shortly contradict.

For the next 15 minutes or so he goes through many aspects of the science behind global warming giving a very critical discussion on much of it. He takes special aim at two of the realist communities villains Al Gore and James Hansen.

  Watching this portion of the lecture one could believe that Dr Muller is making a case against the theory of man made global warming, he is pointing out all the hyperbolic beliefs which are not scientifically accurate. This again however is a complete contradiction from much of what he has previously stated in the lecture. Previously he stated that most of the IPCC research is correct and that the models are probably right. On the one hand he destroys much of the science that points to the effects of global warming while simultaneously maintaining that the science behind global warming is somehow accurate.

Contradictions seem to be Dr Muller's method of operation. As an example during his recent testimony to congress he said:

Prior groups at NOAA, NASA, and in the UK (HadCRU) estimate about a 1.2 degree C land temperature rise from the early 1900s to the present.  This 1.2 degree rise is what we call global warming. Their work is excellent, and the Berkeley Earth project strives to build on it.  

Putting aside the much commented on inaccuracy of the 1.2 degree C claim, he also claims that the existing work by NOAA, NASSA and Had CRU is excellent. So why set up a new study to compete with them? Perhaps because they all have been tainted to various degrees by charges of inaccuracies, bias, shoddy statistical analysis and out and out corruption by no less an authority than..... Dr Muller himself;

The contradictions in Dr Muller's public positions on the science of global warming is obvious. On the one hand he says that virtually all the science flowing from the IPCC and the various proponent individuals and organizations is shoddy yet he believes that the science that underpins it which is the product of those same indviduals and organizations is accurate.

Nowhere is this contradiction more obvious than in the next section of his lecture when the good doctor goes after the  "Hockey Stick" and "climategate".  This is what made Dr Muller an instant hero in the realist community. This portion of the lecture went viral though it only represents 5 minutes of a 52 minute presentation.

He basically destroys the reputation and research of most of  climate science's  most notable super stars and yet he believes the science they promote is sound, amazing.

So that there can be no doubt as to what Dr. Muller believes I will skip ahead here to a the Q&A session of the tape where he answers a question about a future ice age, The question and and answer is not as important as what it shows about Dr. Mullers obvious beliefs about global warming.

He believes that in the near future, "global warming will totally dominate....due to carbon dioxide" which is why the remainder of his presentation (after tearing apart the Hockey Stick) was about energy sources. Which sort of makes sense since this lecture was put on by an organization dedicated to improving energy efficiency, a noble cause.

The presentation rushes to an end with a discussion on energy such as the need for the US to convert to more natural gas use and culminating with this slide:

All, if you believe that man made global warming is a threat, is all too true.

Obviously Dr Muller believes that man made global warming is a threat and that the solutions put forward to date will not suffice to address that threat. He maintains this in spite of his many criticisms of the science underlying global warming. This an extremely contradictory position to maintain and it leads one to question why an obviously brilliant man would hold these contradictory views. I mean really how can someone spend an hour in a point by point discussion on the distortions, inaccuracies, and potential corruption by an entire field of science then say that their conclusion is valid. Does that make sense?

Putting aside the whole contradiction of Dr Muller's beliefs, let's look at the possible solutions if in fact he believes what he just presented. The presentation of energy options which Dr Muller gives is really nothing new, all of it has been gone over in other forums by other people. It is well presented and the challenges against implementing them well defined but again really nothing new. In fact a summary of the presentation would be

*The science behind global warming is shoddy
* Global warming is a threat to our future
*For society to advance we will probably exacerbate the global warming problem
*The current alternatives will probably not solve the problem.

So what are we to do? Left unsaid in all this is the group behind BEST, Novim. And what has Novim's emphasis been on, geo-engineering.

It is not as if anyone actually has to follow through with a geo-engineering solution, particularly not now, when the problem is "in the future". But it might behoove policy makers to consider preparing for such options by doing R&D on geo-engineering should the eventuality arise.

After all the United States did not defeat the Soviet Union by actually nuking them but we certainly did have the capacity to do so by building a strategic defense system second to none.

If you were convinced that global warming was a real possibility but that there was no economically viable way to achieve a reduction in emmision via the Al Gore camp model, what would your only option be?

Prepare to nuke global warming, I know that recently the idea of actually using nuclear bombs to cool the Earth has been presented, but I am speaking figuratively not literally. Nuking global warming in the geo-engineering sense would be all the silly ideas that have been outlined by various people and organizations....such as the Novim Group.

Boy what an out too! Not only do governments not have to destroy their economies, the Greens can still push all their little schemes for alternative energy and we can create an entirely new military geo-engineering industrial complex to defeat the red peril of our time, global warming...well the future global warming. Can you imagine all the cool sulfur dioxide spewing boats that could be built and deployed around the world, just in case the UN ever decided the time had come to save the world.

The current agenda has been discredited, both the scientific institutional entities such as the IPCC, NASA, NOAA etc as well as the solution agenda centered around cap and trade and the degradation of Western Economies as promoted by Al Gore, James Hansen etc.

Time for a new set of players with a new set of tools. BEST and supposedly independent organizations to substantiate the threat and new, less oppressive tools to fight that threat such as geo-engineering.

I really see no reason why companies and institutions such as i4 energy,  Muller and Associates, the Novim Group and a never ending shadow group of organizations, individuals and entities should not lead the way into a better future for planet Earth and mankind....do you?

"I suggest you pray that cloud cover will kick in"