Skeptics Score at Climate Change Conference
Be still my beating heart. There is hope for honest science, even in the gruesome Age of Algore. But only if we really grasp what’s happening with the Global Horror Picture Show these days. The biggest danger to good science is that rational skeptics will continue to be outgunned by the fear peddlers: A big lie can go around the world before the truth can get its boots on. The fear merchants just have to make up new scares faster than they can be knocked down, and honest scientists will always get there too late. Thoughtful skepticism takes thought. New alarmist scenarios can be made up by science fiction scribblers on an assembly line. It’s the Nazi panzers against the Polish cavalry. Sure it’s heroic, but it’s not really a contest.
So here’s the good news. The skeptics are winning against the global warming mythogogues. The polls show a drop in public faith in the global warming meme. Last week a stellar skeptics’ conference was held in New York City and the New York Times actually covered it — in its usual bitchy fashion, but they decided to cover it anyway. There are many excellent talks at this website, notably by Viscount Monckton, Margaret Thatcher’s former adviser, who provides a truly elegant and devastating deconstruction of the infamous IPCC “consensus statement” — done for the bureaucrats, by the bureaucrats, and of the bureaucrats. Any real scientific analysis and debate was left out of the IPCC statement, and Lord Monckton simply shoots it out of the water with a satisfying bang. Others like Fred Singer and Richard Lindzen were there as well, and you can listen to their presentations online. They are heroes.
But that’s not why I think the skeptics are winning. The rational skeptics are winning because the global warming crowd has simply dropped the two words “global warming” from its vocabulary. No more official global warming! This is like the old Soviet Communist Party. You have to analyze not just what’s said but what’s not said. You have to look to see who has been airbrushed out of the pictures of the Politburo waving on top of Lenin’s tomb watching the May Day parade. And “global warming” has disappeared from respectable scientific discourse. Only the elementary school teachers of the world will keep teaching about global warming, because their lesson plans are already written, and they’re a little slow on the uptake.
Somehow it’s all morphed into climate change.
What’s “climate change?”
It’s a scientific surrender by the Algore-James-Hansen Planetary Fear Brigade. No more global warming, folks. Nothing to see here. Move along, move along.
But it’s a silent surrender, so millions of readers of the New York Times will never notice a thing. Al Gore just has to drop one solitary slide from his infamous PowerPoint lecture. James Hansen just needs to pretend that all those horrific mistakes over at the NASA Climate Playstation Center were tiny computer glitches. Anybody can make an honest mistake, right? And they always fixed the published data after they were caught — I mean, after the errors were called to their attention. That’s what honest scientists do.
(Funny thing, though, how those glitches always favored the global warming faith?)
Still, real scientists have to use words with precision, and when all the big science journals change the words “global warming” to “climate change,” all at the same time, you know somethin’s up.
It is. The real scientists have simply, silently acknowledged that the skeptics were right all along, as a child of six might have figured out. And since everybody knows that “climate change” has been going on for a half billion years, it’s sure to keep happening. Now there’s a solid scientific prediction for you.
Nobody can object to “climate change.”
Burn the hieratic BURN HIM!!!!… wait don’t burn him that releases to much CO2… Drown the hieratic DROWN HIM!!!! Al-gore DEMANDS IT.
I suggest everyone’s climate-change @sses invest in flannel underwear.
Just sayin’.
It’s funny how they use “science” as the justification for the acts they do that will eventually lead to tyrrany. This tyrrany will then stop science practically in its tracks, as it always does. There was a reason for Lysenko-ism. A tyrrany can never tolerate true intellectuals. They are the greatest danger to continued power. Pseudo-intellectuals will continue to provide propoganda, however.
Whatever the global warming nuts may claim as their motive, a love for planet Earth surely cannot be one of them. Here’s how I know:
Imagine someone you love is critically ill in hospital and you’ve been told to expect the worst. After suffering hours of the most unbearable despair and grief, a doctor comes into the room and tells you that there’s a chance they got their diagnosis wrong and if so, your loved one will actually be OK.
If your reaction to this news is to leap into the air with joy and to thank the doctor from the bottom of your heart, we can safely assume that you really love that person and want them to live.
If on the other hand your reaction is of denial and anger, if you call the doctor names and refuse to hear the alternative diagnosis, if you throw a tantrum and accuse him of being a ‘denier’ then we can safely assume that the recovery of your loved one is not an outcome you’re hoping for.
And so it is with the climate fanatics. They ignore every piece of evidence which refutes their doomsday diagnosis. They scream at ‘deniers’ and call them ‘evil.’ They give every impression that they’re relishing the thought of ecological disaster. They despise anyone who so much as thinks about spoiling their fun by giving the Earth a clean prognosis.
A love of planet Earth? I really don’t think so.
With respect to your link “at this website”, it leads to the 2008 conference, not the 2009 one. I am a proud denier and I can hardly wait for the proceedings of the 2009 conference to be presented on the web.
Good Point Jason.
They want to be right and chant ‘We told you so – We Won’ far more than they want the earth to be OK. In fact, most of them would Rather (pun on phonies) have climate disaster than even have to admit being wrong about anything.
I have always seen the climate hysteric movement as a giant Trojan Horse filled with tax collectors and socialists.
And should they seize full power, that would be the signal for an internal war between the Goregoyles and the Hansenites. With the material Gorist followers saying we can survive as long as you commoners ‘get your indulgences here – on sale now’ and the nutcase Hansenites running around in circles squawking the ‘climate is falling run for the hills’. I think like the Stalinists the Goregoyles would win.
The “global warming”-cum-”climate change” fanatics have been demanding a de-evolution of our civilization to a Neolithic agrarian socialist/feudalist state, under their “benign, enlightened” rule, for nearly four decades now. And whether they were painting the cause of our impending doom as a coming ice age, a global meltdown, or an invasion of two-inch-long robotic bees from Mars, they invariably insisted that there was one, and only one, solution- the total abolishment of technological civilization, and democracy along with it.
When multiple and divergent weather-related phenomena are all claimed to be caused by the same primary cycle, those making the claims are either scientific ignoramuses, or simply liars. Because that’s not how weather works. Ask any actual meteorologist. Ditto any licensed commercial pilot- they have to study and be vetted in meteorology, too.
When the same political “solution” is put forward as the “cure” for such spurious and divergent “syndromes”, you can be sure that it is the political “solution” that is the prime desideratum- the “syndromes” are nothing more than excuse to enact it. This is as true of “climate change” as it was of Germany and Japan’s multiple “reasons” for starting World War Two. Then as now, the bottom line is that those promulgating the lies want power, and don’t care how they get it, or who else gets hurt in the process.
As for the present state of the debate from the “If We Don’t Act Now We’re All Gonna Die” contingent, I’m reminded of an old criminal defense attorney’s axiom;
If you don’t have the witnesses, bang the evidence.
If you don’t have the evidence, bang the witnesses.
If you don’t have either one, bang the table.
The $400 million that The Exalted One is about to hand the would-be Napoleons of the “climate change” crowd will buy a truly awesome amount of table-banging.
clear ether
eon
Your writing in ironical vein about the Gore horde seems to me like smirking at the axe-swinging Huns before they take your head off.
All polls show that the indoctrination has taken firm hold of the majority of Americans and Europeans. You don’t joke about present danger.
The time has long passed when earnest commenters should raise their cudgels against the academics, the pols, the appropriators and the pseudo-scientists with hard proposals of impeachment and criminal suit for defrauding the Treasury.
My guilt for being born human is almost unbearable…
Climate change is real, it’s been going on for millions of years NATURALLY.
Libs are all about natural and nature, right?
Can we drop the moniker “skeptics”? It implies that the opponents are just in need of a little more convincing. How about “true scientists”?
Class Clown
if only we had stayed monkeys,
http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2009/03/09/chimp-stones.html
The article reminded me of an interview with Timothy Wirth when he was Undersecretary for Global Affairs at the State Department in the first Clinton administration. He was a neotiator for Kyoto among othe things. At that time global warming was not yet canonical and a reporter asked him somethng like, “what if the argument for global warming is wrong?” Wirth blurted out that it didn’t matter whether the science was right or not, global warming allowed the administration to implement policies they wanted to pursue anyway.
I am writing from memory. I couldn’t find the citation or his precise wording.
Maybe so but the enviros will lose much credibility as the man caused global warming claim dies. After all, they were proposing changes to our way of life akin to those caused by revolution. And we should never forget to remind them of their foolishness.
Algore and the rest of the anthropogenic “climate change” bunch are today’s Luddites. Their real goal is the suppression of free markets, the limitation of personal liberties, more central control of everything (light bulbs, temperatures in our homes), reduced growth of population and the economy, and ultimately a change in our form of government.
If GW is that dangerous, how come half the population in Florida haven’t died by now? Just asking!
The climate change / global warming part of this piece is just wrong.
“Climate change” is not a replacement for “global warming”. “Climate change” is the consequence of global warming.
Global warming is an increase in the AVERAGE surface temperature of the earth. Science journals aren’t talking about that anymore because science has moved on to the more dificult and more important task of looking at he consequences of global warming as expressed through climate change.
When I read PJM articles on AGW I am reminded of soldiers who don’t know the war is over hiding on an Pacific island (an Island of their own ignorance!). Because, you know, when OIL COMPANY scientists agree that AGW is a good theory it really is time to stop pretending that there isn’t a scientific consensus.
I will restore science to its proper place. Science exists to serve me. You uppity science nerds like Galileo and Lindzen need to be banished to your proper place – in my service.
Roy M is clearly today’s PJM luddite. How can his and Al Gore’s prescient wisdom be questioned? Science has moved on you cretinous heretics! There IS concensus!! The discussion is over!! We won!! Now simply accept what we tell you or it will be to the camps with you, you ignorant bastards!
So transparent. So comical. So scary. You are succinctly correct at #15 Morry. But still, they allow these people to both vote and breed and that is how we got Barack Obama and our present march back to the Dark Ages. Disgusting.
Consensus isn’t science, consensus is politics. By the way, “global warming” stoped in 1999. It is actually global cooling now. Just as the climate pattern has behaved as far back as we can determine.
Roy M….
‘Climate Change’ is a term now used to avoid the fact that the earth is not warming in a way that the alarmists are trying say it is.
The earth is 75 percent water and the data that the climate scientists are using is land based so 75% of the data is missing.
Satellite data which measures 100% of the globe do not support the conclusions put forth previously!
The real problem with the data is water vapor. Scientists have no way to quantify or predict the effects of water vapor on earth’s temperature!
This is not settled science at all!
Climate change is as used today is a political term used to attempt to make policy without facts to back up what they are trying to do!
Everytime it’s cold in Vegas, the right-wing science-phobes trot out something like, “Woo-hoo! Yep, that global warming sure is heatin’ things up!”
Remember that when it’s 122 degrees in Dallas this summer. Tell me then that, “actually the Earth is cooling.” Not to worry, though, if it gets hot enough maybe Texas will spontaneously combust and you won’t have to actually follow through with that whole secession thing. The Right’s good at that . . . not following through.
In the meantime, we’ll continue our evil plot to control the world type by suggesting a different type of light bulb. (If you ever wondered what the definition of “paranoia” is, that’s it.)
Jason’s point is pretty good, and we should all take step back and not make it so complicated. Of course the purported science of AGW is fraudulent. You have to be a scientist to be interested in science. In the end the rise and fall of AGW will show one thing clearly to history — it is not about science at all, of course. My theory is that it has more to do with the fact that the ultra-liberal type of psychology/philosophy is slowly gaining influence as the passive advantages of western civilization increasingly protect expanding numbers of the weak, including those with malignant mental dispositions.
These people are at heart all simply socialists, communists, collectivists, and secular authoritarians. And first-rate narcissists. Plain and simple. They hold themselves to be more intelligent than others, enough so to honestly believe they can and should prescribe solutions for the better living for all humans. As civilization has become sufficiently advanced and healthy that wussy leftists and academics are coddled and protected from harm, they increasingly proceed in attempts to exercise a will-to-power that they could never have gained by the force and brutality that would have been necessary to achieve such influence and control in prior human history (although when someone sufficiently sociopathic comes along, say, Che Guevarra, they are immensely attracted to the exercise of brutality and strength in support of their causes). It’s not unlike radical muslim terrorists whose strategy depends on taking advantage of the civil liberties they detest — it’s parasitic and viral.
These people are anti-free-market, anti-capitalist, and anti-freedom. They will cling to any and all purported ’causes’ that enable this fundamental manner of thinking. They seek the cover of causes that are perceived by the average Joe to be worthy. Witness Greenpeace — founded by conservationists, but ruthlessly taken over by anti-capitalists such that environmentalism and conservationism have become entirely separate pursuits, one practical, the other political. Witness their hatred of religion — not because it is the antithesis of science (which it most assuredly is not), but because it is a competing faith to their political authoritarian aspirations that must be eradicated.
AGW is simply one of many manifestations of liberal psuedo-intelligentsia attempts to convert society into one that they and like-minded individuals can control. It is really that simple, and their own psychological predispositions are the root cause. They are the kid from class who was picked on — the one who instead of developing a spine and learning to value standing up for himself, instead became so warped that he first sought protection from torment and then later, bitter revenge. They are Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris. They are resentful of others for their own shortcomings. And they most assuredly should never be making decisions.
The shamans of the village burned the herbs, augured the chickens, sacrificed the virgins and foretold the future for a price. Exactly what has changed?
Congratulations “one of my own”! You have appeared here and elsewhere at PJM enough times to convince all of us that: A.) while you offer nothing of value, B.) you do accurately showcase that half of the population that is below average.
Roy my Boy,
You have made my point better than I could have. Real science has not “moved on” on any topic whatsoever. Einstein’s theory of General Relativity is still under evaluation (and will always be). Real science invites conflicting assessments so as to continually refine understanding. With almost no exceptions – every scientific conclusion that has ever been branded with the label “Absolute permanent truth” has been later been proven wrong.
There are four key issues with the “Global Warming as absolute truth”.
1. There is a lot of valid conflicting data. I have seen data that shows us to be in a multi decade cooling trend. I have seen studies that show that not only is there not now man made world wide temperature increases caused by carbon based green house effects – but it isn’t possible. If the total output of the world was focused on changing the planet’s temperature – it couldn’t be done. I don’t claim any of this stuff is “absolute truth” but there is still much to understand.
2. Many global warming true believers (like Al Gore) have ulterior motives. They claim that the threat of “global warming” requires actions that they would support anyway.
3. Here is the biggie. Global warmers (like you Roy) will brook no dissent. You say “science has moved on. Anyone with conflicting opinions or data is gratuitously dismissed as a “denier”. This – all by it self illustrates that the belief in global warming is not a “conclusion” based on data and logic – it is an article of faith – not to be challenged.
GDT
eon, your post was better than the article
Every time it’s 122 degrees in Dallas we left-wing science-phobes trot out something like, “Woo-hoo! Yep, that global warming sure is heatin’ things up!”
But when it freezes in Vegas we never say that “actually the Earth is cooling.”
In the meantime, we’ll continue our evil plot to control the world by mandating a different type of light bulb.
And then once everyone has adopted our new evil lightbuld we’ll ban them because they use deadly heavy metals.
Skip (No. 11) is correct: this is not a debate between scientists and skeptics, it’s a debate between cultists and scientists. The scientists realize that carbon dioxide levels lag temperature levels, and they know that the famous “hockey stick graph” Algore employed to terrify people into bending their knees to him is a deliberate hoax.
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2008/8/11/caspar-and-the-jesus-paper.html
Roy M. a good theory, emphasis on theory. but maybe a touch too much focus on CO2. But that is convenient politically. Remember, the science is done and the verdict is in. I know because I read it in the Times. Computer models are only as good as the assumptions made in their design. The greenhouse effect is pretty much indisputable in my mind. I really don’t believe that the consensus has any understanding of the resilience of this planet.
Anyway, Obama told me change was good.
I always liked Michael Crichton. This speech in particular rings true to me. (based on my own education)
http://www.crichton-official.com/speech-complexity.html
Thanks for the bishophill reference Benson. I hadn’t seen this paper yet. The deliberative nature and dishonesty of the fraud is mind-boggling.
deliberate not deliberative
6. Friendly Girl:
They want to be right and chant ‘We told you so – We Won’ far more than they want the earth to be OK. In fact, most of them would Rather (pun on phonies) have climate disaster than even have to admit being wrong about anything.
Actually I think it goes further than GW-nuts simply wanting to be right.
If you’ll notice, the vast, vast majority of global warming alarmists are of a leftist persuasion. It takes a startling act of evasion to deny this. We have to consider what it is about the leftist mindset that attracts them to such causes.
It most certainly is not a love of the Earth, as I argued above. But nor can it be a love of humanity. This is evident by a simple appraisal of the causes and goals of the left throughout history. Despite capitalism being responsible for the most significant quality of life gains in history (the exponential explosion of the human population since the Industrial Revolution is irrefutable proof of this), their central cause remains as it has always been – the destruction of capitalism. Their alternative? An ideology which has never once in history been able to create conditions conducive to human prosperity; an ideology which was responsible for the brutal deaths of over 110 million innocent civilians in the 20th Century. Actually much more than this, if you widen the tally to include the victims of all kinds of collectivism, including Nazism (National Socialism).
So they don’t really love Earth and they don’t really love humanity. But what they do love is a crusade which acts as a platform on which to promote themselves as ‘caring’ and on which to simultaneously express all of their deep seated hatred of and seething jealousy toward anyone else’s success and enjoyment of life. It’s the prosperity of free thinking individuals they’re after – but they don’t want you to see them that way. So they disguise this hatred as a love of humanity. It’s what Ayn Rand called the “hatred of the good for being the good.”
The global warming movement is an excuse for them to don their superhero costumes and their little plastic swords and save the world from those nasty brutes who have ideas, invest money and make a profit. Anyone who interferes with their role playing is automatically ‘evil’ and ‘part of the problem.’ It’s also an exercise in collective back slapping, an indulgence in the phony left wing premise that they’re part of a higher plane of consciousness and morality which the rest of us just don’t understand. Anyone who’s ever read a liberal rag like the New York Times on a regular basis will recognize this sanctimonious attitude immediately.
Leftists operate mainly on the level of emotion and feeling – and the emotions they operate on are immature and infantile to begin with. For instance, have you noticed how often the left uses the words ‘hate,’ ‘hater’ to describe those who disagree with them? This is the emotional residue of early adolescence, in which anyone who frustrated their whims must surely have ‘hated’ them. “No, you can’t go to Millie’s party.” Why do you hate me? “No, you can’t have a new pair of sneakers like your friends.” Why do you hate me? Most of us, with maturity, come to learn that ‘hatred’ is generally not the motive behind those who won’t submit to our whims and opinions. To the average leftist however, hatred remains the sole motive of everyone who opposes them throughout their entire lives.
And so it is with the global warming brigade. It’s made almost entirely of leftists on a crusade the real motive of which is not to save the planet or to save humanity, but to attack everyone who opposes them and everyone who achieves material prosperity without the approval and permission of the collective.
I’ve said this once before on another blog. AGW will bequeath one thing to us a better climate science. Alchemy is to chemistry what AGW will be to climate science.
#31 bear – Excellent link. This puts into words my instinctive appreciation of Liberal thinking: It’s too simplistic. Complexity theory. I like it.
To me it explains why government screws things up, because they try to control instead of manage.
It explains why so many businesses fail. People think it’s straightforward, but in reality, businesses are complex things. Those who can think in complex fashion, succeed. Those who can’t, fail.
It explains why I’m a good father, because I think in complex fashion. I manage, not control. I know when to intervene. I use overall principles for reference, and know when they apply, and act at that moment.
I could go on and on. I like it. Thanks for that link.
@Roy M:
Roy M is right, but not the way he means it. The clear meaning of the term “climate change” is ANY change in climate.
The use of it to mean “global warming” or “global warming effects” is just Orwellian word-play.
There was an article in the recent Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society on how “climate change” will increase kidney stone incidence in America”.
Odd use of the word. Does that mean that any climate change will have this effect? Nope… the text of the article is obviously about warming.
BTW, this is also an example of the trend to take any possible negative phenomenon and tie it to “climate change.” It helps when seeking grants and it helps get attention when published.
PS – original article was in PNAS. A link on the subject is http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/07/climate-change.html .
Jason-
Excellent summation- you targeted the proper vein of bile in the leftist (adolescent) mindset. It’s really the hatred of humanity – and by extension, the self- that gives rise to such thinking. AGW religion is just another, more modern iteration of the same kind of baloney foisted on the “intellectual” class since Rousseau started pining for the days of natural, primitive man and his moral superiority over his debased, corrupt and generally evil contemporaries.
The climate of the Earth has been changing ever since the Earth came into existence, about 4.5 billions years ago, I believe. The Earth is now in an interglacial period of a cycle of 20,000 years, dependent on changes in the Earth’s orbit around the sun. The last Ice Age ended about 10,000 years ago, and the next will occur in 10,000 years.
Back in the day, there was a (pretty lame) TV Mini Series called “V” in which aliens came and used propaganda to put scientists in Concentration Camps… or some such… it seems, seriously, like reality has been imitating art. Regarding the story, I’d say: don’t get your hopes up. Idiot Boxes all over America are filling empty skulls full of mush, young and adult alike, with climate change tripe…
Jason,
Brilliant analysis. The only thing I would change in your original story is that what the alarmists really want is for all doctors to die and the entire medical profession to wither away. Only then, when man is back in a pristine state of equilibrium with nature qua nature, when we have been reduced to our hunter gatherer roots, will they be satisfied. Their philosophical roots are manifestly anti-technology, anti-progress, and ultimately anti-man.
“Climate change” is when it’s hot at the North Pole, cold at the equator, wet in the deserts and dry in the rain forests. When that happens, call me; then I’ll think about getting worried.
Say something long enough, and often enough, and
it will be believed. Good heavens, I just quoted Goebbels, and he was right.
Just like Khrushchev when he said, “Politicians
are the same the world over, they promise a bridge even where there is no water”.
Or, Chairman Mao when he said that politics is war without blood, and war is politics with blood.
I guess, even a blind squirrel can find a nut.
For anyone wanting a bit of brain exercise on the subject of climate try my series of articles published over the past year which, I hope, represents the most realistic verbal description of climate matters currently available:
http://climaterealists.com/news.php?tid=37
Good deconstructions of the Global Warming Elmer Gantrys. If they believe their “faith-based” “SCIENCE”, why is socialist pollution “good” pollution? Why are “trade plans” (Oil for Food Writ Large) not corrupt to the core? Why must poor peoples accept no standards so their masters can pocket the trade receipts? The GW croud are the Medicis selling indulgences, and the science cummunity is in dire need of “A Man For All Seasons”, to stop the Inquistion “consensus” of witch burners.
The late Michael Crichton nailed it in “State of Fear.”
Does anyone who went to school in the 70′s remember the impending ice age? Was the scientific methodology to determine it’s impending return the same as GW/CC? Jason is correct in his summation of these leftist “intellectuals”. They only use cherry picked “facts” that support their views and will manufacture evidence as needed to further the “cause”.Rousseau,Marx,Tolstoy were all proven liars and hypocrites. Huge ego’s and dishonesty are the one thing that every “intellectual” has in common. The book Intellectuals by Paul Johnson explains this mindset in detail.
This year’s winner of the Weblog Award for “Best Science” site was a climate site, run by a meteorologist, Anthony Watts:
http://wattsupwiththat.com
It is a site devoted to global warming/climate issues. Unlike the George Soros-funded Realclimate site [which it beat in the Weblog Awards voting by 10 - 1; sorry about that, George], WattsUpWithThat takes a skeptical view of Al Gore’s and the UN/IPCC’s money-grubbing globaloney.
Lots of folks with advanced degrees in the hard sciences contribute. It’s worth checking out, and the comments skeptical of baseless climate alarmism are similar to the comments made here.
Nuke the baby gay whales for jesus!
Mark Twain said it best: “There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.”
I also noticed another quote of Mark Twain’s contained in this article, although it was modified a bit and wasn’t cited:
“A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.”
The fanatics see a bright future in a carbonless world. Of course it will be carbonless for some, but not for all. No doubt we shall soon see a push for carbon cap and trade, whereby certain special people get to make a lot of money by convincing the rest of us that carbon, the essential building block of all life on earth, is bad. Cromwell was once cautioned by a close friend, “For the love of God, Oliver, consider you may be wrong!” William Rutherford, in a paper to the Royal Society, once calculated the time of life on earth by assuming the sun was composed of the finest Welsh coal. Rutherford had the grace to add that the calculation depended on further information about the nature of the sun. Chesterton famously remarked that a man who does not believe in God does not believe in nothing, he believes in anything. And that is where we now are. The global warming alarmists have no inclination to consider they may be wrong. The global warming people are convinced, despite the history of cooling and warming cycles, despite the science, that Western man and Western civilization are destroying the planet, and so therefore Western man and Western civilization must be destroyed. How did we come to this?
Alarmists say the USA is harming
Earth and little people everywhere
Adding to that awful global warming
Far more than our natural global share
Carbon is the real time big time villain
Carbon’s got to go the creatures say
Anybody caught by Feds while spillin’
The stuff into the air will surely pay
But there’s a way to keep that old pollution
From making all your profits fall and fade
All you need is formal absolution
By buying into that neat cap and trade
Here is how it works, it’s really easy
You just buy credits from the comp’ny store
Don’t worry if you feel a little queasy
To learn the company’s owned by one Al Gore
We’ve got to clean the atmosphere in some way
We’ve got to have clean air and all that stuff
So what if little people lose their payday
You know some people always have it rough
The upside to it is the ones we do please
Envirowhackos and their loopy crowd
Are happy to collect and spend the new fees
What’s more our sacrifice sure makes them proud
To think the USA now takes the world lead
In shutting down our fact’ries and our work
To stop the Warming’s awful frightful warp speed
They’re proud to see that none of us will shirk
In the big fight ‘gainst cigarettes and whalers
We’re all on board to save good planet earth
From all us fascist CO2 exhalers
Who started breathing shortly after birth
I have been saying it since the first time I heard the term “global warming”, your either coming into an ice age or coming out of one. It is arrogant to think otherwise.
It was just too much to believe that science had advanced so much that they could predict the climate, when they couldn’t reliably predict the weather, beyond 72 hours. Who are they trying to kid? This gloom and doom stuff is useful for politicians who want to change political climates, not so much for the rest of us. I don’t have much in the way of a personal stake in our energy being supplied by coal, nuclear, and oil. But I sure have a huge stake in energy being reliable there via SOME means, and so do six billion others. Okay, let’s go cleaner and greener, but let’s keep the dirty stuff on tap, just in case. The dirty World economy in 2009 keeps six billion plus alive, The World ecomomy in clean 1750 would starve us all.
LennyB @23
Best analysis of the process that has taken hold of our country and civilization to this point. I could not have stated it better. The only thing I would add: the carbon tax/cap and trade is a naked attempt by Maurice Strong and George Soros to lay the United States low – to rape the financial wealth of this nation until is is a Third World country. The science may be discredited, but the political forces are now in motion to rob us blind and destroy our economy. Anyone who believes that we are going to be rescued by “green jobs” is mentally retarded.
CO2 is not and never was a pollutant. This egregious insult to true science has been foisted on us by people who, I suspect, do know the truth just as we know it. But they don’t care, because they have a plan in mind and now they have the power to ram it right up our poop chutes.
While on the subject of CO2, one would do well to look at the charts of the core sampling data from the polar regions. I don’t have a link to it, but having read the articles and seen a documentary on it, one is struck by the fact that there have been periods in earth history when CO2 levels were astronomically higher than they are right now, and some of those occurred during very cold periods! Nature, not man, made it all happen.
But the lemmings are still being lured over the cliff…
I tell you environmentalism is a religion. And, no matter what they say, religions are all about the collection plate. So, hold on to your wallets folks. Just my opinion, of course.
This thread is a gold mine of facts…and literally inspiring, to boot. Science and reason are not dead, after all!
Of all the stupid jammy articles on global warming, this has to be the stupidest–a combination of wishful thinking, denial, and incoherent conspiracy theory. Way to go!
#22 one of my own,
Have you ever tried those light bulbs? They produce such poor lighting that you have to replace an old 60W bulb with a new 75-100W in order to get the same light. They don’t last longer either. So soon we will all be paying 4 times as much for a bulb that isn’t even as good. I thank the mindless left-wing-crisis-mongers in the government for just another fine mess.
60-Jim. Also, don’t break one. You’ll need a Haz-Mat team to clean your house because of the mercury in them.
Jason, You are a very thoughtful, intelligent person.
Fred
Lemmings don’t need a reason to go over the edge.
Sorry, Boris. You’re going to have to do a LOT better than that, if you ever want to come to any of my awesomely awesome events, and bask in my awesome awesomeness.
60 Jim Baker . . . Let me try this one more time . . . IT’S NOT ABOUT THE LIGHT BULBS!
The change in terms from global warming to climate change is much akin to the change in terms from ‘creationism’ to ‘intelligent design’. All four concepts are scientifically fraudulent.
one of my own,
So tell me what it is all about then, smart guy. There is not a shred of evidence that global warming is man made. There is not even global warming for the last 11 years. The earth is, and has always been on a long term cooling trend because the sun is slowly losing heat. We oscillate between ice ages and warm intervals. We are in a warm interval. Yes, it could get warmer and yes it could get cooler, we just don’t know. Yes, the seas could rise some if it gets warmer. Either way, there won’t be any climate catastrophe until the next ice age or the next large meteor strike. This is basic geology. For now, I WORRY ABOUT THE DAMN LIGHT BULBS and the attempts to foist them on me in the name of saving the environment, whatever that concept is. What year was it that our environment was in total harmony? How can you know how messed up it is if you don’t have a clue what is not messed up? More simply, do you ever wonder how they know they are selling medium, large and giant size drinks at the McDonald’s, when they don’t have a small drink? Environmentalism has the same problem. That is why I think it takes a religious leap of faith to believe in it. By the way, try to remember to post here again and remind me when when Dallas is 122 degrees.
I recall a similar scientific debate in the early 20th century about the fitness of certain individuals based on physical characteristics, ethniticities, etc. Eugenics was accepted science then, and was applied in every developed country to various degrees, from castrating mentally retarded individuals in the US, to the Holocaust in Nazi Germany. Anybody who tried to criticize the dubious ‘science’ behind the policies was discredited as a ‘denier’, or wound up in the gas chambers themselves.
Dr. Holdren’s attitudes toward skeptics is a very worrisome and nasty turn in a similar direction toward scientific fascism and I am extremely leery that this individual is now in the Obama administration.
67 jim baker . . . I appreciate your histrionic expertise, but there are 6,000 scientists who disagree with your “basic geology.” I think I’ll go with their ideas. No offense.
The climate horror industry, eh. How about that War on Christmas industry? How about that Christianity under Attack industry? How about that WMD industry? Comical to hear Republicans whining about trumped up danger. It just goes back and forth, doesn’t it? The Republicans are hypocrites – the Democrats are hypocrites. The Republicans spend too much – the Democrats spend too much. The Republicans are corrupt – the Democrats are corrupt. I guess the only thing that mattes is who has the power. And who is that? Here’s a hint – it’s not you.
#17
Hey, Roy, why was the warmest year in the last 20, 1998? It has been COLDER every year since. Please explain how that fits into your AGW dogma. Try reading wattsupwiththat.com, has many articles by REAL scientists, as opposed to Hanson’s (who said Earth had 10 years left – 20 years ago.) politicized ilk that left science behind a couple decades ago.
#20
Michael – which totally explains the AGW rush to impose their agenda. People are starting to notice the increase in white stuff.
#21
More than 75% of the data is missing. The AGW predictions may be based upon landbased (and very questionably placed) temperature stations, but they average them out in such a way as to make their non-working models a joke. (i.e. average temperature between SF and Sacramento is one plot point.)
I say non-working, because when they are run backwards to compare to data we have as FACTS, the models don’t come anywhere near reality.
Even NASA (Hathaway, not Hanson – different dept.) is finally starting to admit, our current solar minimum is not typical, and we’ve had a 1% increase in albedo – this is very bad for AGW. (not too good for crop production either.)
40. jw:
The climate of the Earth has been changing ever since the Earth came into existence, about 4.5 billions years ago, I believe. The Earth is now in an interglacial period of a cycle of 20,000 years, dependent on changes in the Earth’s orbit around the sun.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Actually, it’s much more complex than that. It is also affected by our solar systems location in the galaxy, as the arm we are in spirals around. Cosmic rays hitting earth, increase and decrease depending upon where we are and the sun’s magnetic field (currently in a big lull.)
I’d recommend Henrik Svensmarks “The chilling Stars”. It is well documented, and readable to the layman. I have seen at least one scientist opin he may get a “real” nobel, re: physics, for his work. ‘course, the AGW crowd has tried to destroy him in the past.
60. Jim Baker:
#22 one of my own,
Have you ever tried those light bulbs? They produce such poor lighting that you have to replace an old 60W bulb with a new 75-100W in order to get the same light. They don’t last longer either. So soon we will all be paying 4 times as much for a bulb that isn’t even as good. I thank the mindless left-wing-crisis-mongers in the government for just another fine mess.
~~~~~~~~~~~
Have you ever read about what is required to properly clean one up if it breaks? you need a HAZMAT unit.
57. Jim Baker:
I tell you environmentalism is a religion. And, no matter what they say, religions are all about the collection plate. So, hold on to your wallets folks. Just my opinion, of course.
~~~~~~
Many religions are also about trying to give people meaning in their lives. How many of the AGW’ers are atheist and desperate for some significance to their life, bigger than themselves? oooh, they’re so significant, they can affect global temperature.
Beware to all “climate change” (global warming) deniers and skeptics, you could all be diagnosed as having mental disorder if the conference in England going underway.
http://deathby1000papercuts.com/2009/03/global-warming-skeptics-under-attack-labeled-as-having-mental-disorder/
“This weekend, the University of West England is hosting a major conference on climate change denial. Strikingly, it’s being organised by the university’s Centre for Psycho-Social Studies. It will be a gathering of those from the top of society – ‘psychotherapists, social researchers, climate change activists, eco-psychologists’ – who will analyse those at the bottom of society, as if we were so many flitting, irrational amoeba under an eco-microscope. The organisers say the conference will explore how ‘denial’ is a product of both ‘addiction and consumption’ and is the ‘consequence of living in a perverse culture which encourages collusion, complacency and irresponsibility’ (1). It is a testament to the dumbed-down, debate-phobic nature of the modern academy that a conference is being held not to explore ideas – to interrogate, analyse and fight over them – but to tag them as perverse.”
Climate denial is now a mental disorder!
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/4953981/Climate-denial-is-know-a-mental-disorder.html
#69 one of my own: My 31,478 (real) scientists beat your measly 6000 hands down. http://www.petitionproject.org/
Okay, one of my own. But I am a geophysicist, which I guess qualifies me as a scientist, and I say you are following a religion, not a science. And I say it is a government sponsored religion and that this is what our founders had in mind when they decided that there should be no official State religion. Prove to me that what 6000 people say constitutes any truth and you will have my scientific attention. A million scientists could say it is true but that would never be a valid proof of any theory. So, believe what you want. I just don’t want you to steal my money to pay your preachers.
Global Warming is just another example of how the mainstream media can mislead the majority of the people. How long has the GW hoax been going on? Ten years? How much money has been wasted? How many policies detrimental to growth and properity enacted? And it’s still going on. President Teleprompter, Pelosi and Reid will use GW to destroy our energy infrastructure: shut down the coal-burning plants, continue the moritorium on nuclear power plants and off-shore drilling.
Hansen testified to the Senate that the sky was falling in 1988. The issue was brewing for around a decade before that. But in the early years it was a scientific issue. In 1988, it became a political issue. Now, it’s a hidden tax.
NOOOOOOO!!!!..bummer..Now they tell me! I just bought a gazillion acres of soon-to-be-fertile Greenland soil – and now its not warming after all? I was going to plant a hybrid red grape called the Gorelot and I figured by 2020 or so, I’d be makin’ millions sending cases of the stuff all over the world. Hrrmmm.
79 Jim Baker . . . Doesn’t matter what you are. You could be the world’s leading GW debunker and I could still point to 100 equally or more qualified folks to refute you. So, we all believe what we want to believe. Simple, isn’t it?
PS. I have these really unique Tulip Bulbs, and I will be putting them on Ebay starting bid 1,000 dollars. Any takers?
#83
Exactly my point. Being a scientist does not qualify me or you or 6000 other people to be right simply because we are scientists.
I seriously doubt that, if I was the worlds leading GW debunker, I would feel compelled to disprove an unproven theory. I think the proponent of the theory should have the burdon of proof, don’t you?
one of my own,
Gosh, you’re right. I found 100 people who think you’re an idiot! No scientific proof, mind you, just belief that you are.
one of my own,
Love the “fingers in the ear screaming la!la!la!la!” line of debate. Quite engaging. It is a nice heritage of “belief” that you defend:
fire bad….wheels dangerous…earth is flat…train goes too fast…man shouldn’t fly…Communism is OK…silent spring..global ice age…acid rain…Y2K…global warming…climate change…
One thing the skeptics know is that nothing man does can even come close to changing the climate in the ways the hoaxters believe. We’re just not that powerful. Sorry Algore and sorry Mr. Hanson but you are both nuttier than a snickers bar.
Ray T. Mahorney
WA4WGA
87 dtom . . . you forgot compassionate conservatism . . . permanent Republican majority . . . rubbers are evil . . . Elvis is the devil . . . marijuana is a narcotic . . . we should throw embryonic stem cells in the garbage, they’re too sacred to use in research, and the latest from your Nazi in the Funny Vatican Hat – condoms make AIDS worse. Trying to say that the Right understands and supports science is like saying Jeffrey Dahmer was a gourmand. I suggest you stick to artificially inseminating turkeys. Leave the real science to the people who believe in it, fund it, and do it.
one of my own,
clown, are you seriously drawing an equivalence between the multi-billion dollar extortionist AGW “evangelical” movement and the multi-hundred dollar Elvis souvenir shop movement? Or the goofy-ads-in-magazines condom advocacy movement? HMMM..
Someone, somewhere, suggested the term “realist” rather than “skeptic” or “denier”. I like it and might use it up in further blogs and forums.
I think back on my twenties, and how much I hated the fact that I knew everything, but yet nobody understood my great genius. Plus I was making zero money.
It was clear that The Man was responsible. But as all of us remember, you can’t fight The Man.
But along comes AGW, the secret weapon. A pre-packaged bill of goods with all the right preset socialist agendae built in. Sit down in the seat and put The Man out of business. Marvel at the power and control it automatically gives those who before could only kick at the shins of capitalism.
AGW doesn’t just provide you with Earth as your formidable ally, it even does your hating for you. Safely enclosed in the holy veil of Gaia you cannot be pierced by the arrows of doubt, for to do so is an act against the Earth Mother herself.
Swivel the turret and bring your sights on all the capitalist targets you have thirsted after. There’s a weapon for each one. Statist regulation of transportation, manufacturing and utilities? Check. Massive funding for academia? Check. Elimination of heavy industry? Check. Cap and Trade your parent’s business? Check. Recumbent bikes and Rickshaws for the masses? Check.
The power… of the flower!
Air2air,
Bravo. Well, well said.
#89 I am sorry that I overestimated your cognitive ability, and probably uour age. You make yourself out to be just another ranting fool. Don’t call me, I’ll call you.
1) Go to the frontline website, watch “HEAT” to learn where the term “climate change” came from
2) Are any of you skeptics scientists?
3) Can you name any fact about GW whatsoever? Just to test your factual knowledge and to make sure your not ignorant?
4) Is there anything the IPCC can do that would lend evidence in your eyes? Or are you that ideologically driven that you can’t see your self-proclaimed skepticism is just delusion adhering to a belief.
5) You see you are not basing your reasoning on rationality. In evaluating a scientific claim you read papers, look for consensus, but somehow you can’t believe that this would be the case with GW, there has to be come conspiracy. When people say things like “man could never change the climate”, “a million people could agree but that wouldn’t prove a theory”, “it’s been colder since 1998!”, “CO2 has been higher in the past for lower temperatures”, shows a fundamental adherence to an irrational idea and very little understanding of how modern science progresses.
6) It’s amazing how many people think they just sunk GW because they saw some plot or some pundit speak. Don’t you think that these scientists would have taken all these complex variables–yes all your little “flaws” that you find–and run a statistical analysis to prove beyond a 1 sigma or 2 sigma result (do you know what that is?) of whether these “flaws” really outweigh the evidence? It’s amazing how one person can think they know the science better than 50 experts in the field, and they found a fundamental flaw.
7) IPCC got many brilliant scientists together and they argued for months trying to be as rigorous as possible. There were internal debates, they scaled back on predictions, qualified statements, applied complicated statistical analyses, and came to a consensus. This was then reviewed by many other scientists who submitted comments. The report was published. Many groups had there time to evaluate their work. The deniers even put in their input. One particular fact–the hockey stick graph–was called into question, and even after 5 independent panels evaluated it, the author redid the work to fix the flaws make it more rigorous and published the same GW-supporting conclusion. A rational person would say, “I don’t know either way, maybe my “flaws” in this theory really was understood by the scientists, I don’t know much about how complex climate science proceeds, but I will side with the scientific consensus”. Now the emotional response to this is to (a) deny there is a consensus or (b) call into question the motivation of the scientists. The one way to eliminate this problem is by more consensus. As more agree with the GW hypothesis the less of a chance there is collusion and the stronger the evidence for “appeal to the experts”. Please be rational, and give a set of *reasonable* criteria that have to occur for you to accept the man-made GW hypotheis. If you can’t do that, then its clear that your adhering to an inculcated idea or are just being irrational.
8) I admit that I could be wrong on this. My criteria is when enough GW denial papers come out or a significant number of groups show that man-made GW isn’t real, then I’ll shift my opinion–I appeal to the scientists not the congressmen, lobbyists, or pundits. Maybe I have been drinking the GW coolaid. It’s possible, I have to keep an open mind. But can you say the same? Isn’t it possible that you have been inculcated, influenced by external factors so much that you cannot look at this issue rationally any more? Isn’t it possible that you have been deluded? Isn’t it at least POSSIBLE?