The Uncivil War of Climate Change Heats Up
Unfortunately for them, their dudgeon could have been permissively above the level of Death Valley had they not noted at the time of the atrocity that the Norwegian terrorist Anders Breivik was a “global warming denier.”
Professor Judith Curry at Georgia Tech, who has often raised the ire of her colleagues in the climate community by being a rare moderating voice in the debate, expressed her disappointment:
After the Gleick episode, it seemed that Heartland had temporarily seized the moral high ground in the climate “wars”. The billboards and the blog post are on an intellectual and moral par with ThinkProgress’ article Norway Terrorist is a Global Warming Denier, although Romm didn’t post his on a billboard. Heartland has unambigously seized the moral low ground with this stunt.
For better or worse, such episodes arguably have little impact on the larger scientific and policy debates. It will be interesting to see how the list of speakers at the forthcoming Heartland Conference reacts to this.
And in fact, many potential conference attendees did contact Heartland and demand that they take down the billboard. Here’s an example from Professor Ross McKitrick:
I am absolutely dismayed. This kind of fallacious, juvenile and inflammatory rhetoric does nothing to enhance your reputation, hands your opponents a huge stick to beat you with, and sullies the reputation of the speakers you had recruited. Any public sympathy you had built up as a result of the Gleick fiasco will be lost — and more besides — as a result of such a campaign. I urge you to withdraw it at once.
Strike the tone in your advertisements that you want people to use when talking about you. The fact that you need a lengthy webpage to explain the thinking behind the billboards proves that your messaging failed. Nobody is going to read your explanation anyway. All they will take away is the message on the signs themselves, and it’s a truly objectionable message.
You cannot simultaneously say that you want to promote a debate while equating the other side to terrorists and mass murderers. Once you have done such a thing you have lost the moral high ground and you can never again object if someone uses that kind of rhetoric on you.
Fellow Canadian Donna Laframboise actually did cancel.
So almost as quickly as the billboard went up, it came down, and Heartland issued an explanation, though not exactly an apology.
Now, clearly it was a terrible own goal by Heartland, but sometimes the truth itself is offensive. The fact is, there are many in the environmental movement who agree almost entirely with Ted Kaczynski, including Al Gore himself; their disagreement is only with his methods. Many people in the environmental movement are of the anti-human mindset documented in Bob Zubrin’s new book, and for many of them, there are no limits to the totalitarian measures they would take to impose their views on humanity — remember this video that they’d like you to now forget?
But there are also many who sincerely believe that “the science is settled,” even if they wish it weren’t so, and are amenable to reasoned debate. Lumping everyone into the same anti-human cohort does not contribute to that debate, and insulting those with whom we must have it by equating them with Charles Manson and Osama bin Laden only makes it more difficult to achieve any sort of sanity in policy, particularly as we are on the verge of exposing much of the chicanery. We cannot stoop to their level. Heartland has to go beyond merely removing the billboard and “explaining” it, but apologize for it to those it needlessly slandered, and to its allies for its horrible lapse in judgment.
This is too precious by half.
I notice you didn’t actually link to a picture of the billboard, just let the implication stand that it equated warmists with the una-bomber, which is not what it did. Plenty of people have pointed out that Hitler was an enthusiastic greenie/vegetarian/naturist. Should they be damned, too?
Here’s a tip: No matter how obsequious and inoffensive we try to be, the media will always find a way to stir up an angle to make us look bad to the average – not really paying attention – punter.
Accepting their standards is a loser’s game, because they are applied only to one side. Get it? The game is rigged. Don’t play it.
Once you accept the terms of the debate to include slanderous and sophomoric name calling (even if by implication), how do you decide where to draw the line? At what point is your effort to convince and move critical thought put on hold and at one point is it active and serious? Where is the line?
The idea that you must succumb to their tactics is not reasoned and shows immaturity on the part of any one who participates. Would you also recommend that teachers engage in occasional spitball fights with students in order to not give the students any upper hand on getting attention in a classroom? Although a deliberately silly example, it still demonstrates the problem. The teacher who engaged in the spitball fight has a tough battle ahead to return the level of authority. The students would surely remember the episode for a long time, and perhaps not give the teacher the full authority they so want and need.
JohnInMA, these people are trying to use AGW as justification for the enslavement via Communist government of me and my family. Harsh words are the least of what they are courting in response.
Of course we must go where good science leads us, which reminds me: The other day a new study showed that Dinosaur emissions (aka farts) caused global warming eons ago. Thus, we can expect any day now to hear that EPA is banning red beans from grocery shelves and that scientists even now are down-sizing catalytic converters so one might fit in your butt. Have a nice day.
I agree with Brett. Don’t stoop to low brow tactics like those with differing, emotionally-led and hypocritical minds.
Allow the scientific method, unedited data and lucid minds prevail.
There is no “science” anymore. People PAY for scientific results and the scientific community provides the results that are being paid for.
Indeed. If you want to get rid of global warming stop paying for the research.
In the ‘conversation’ about ‘global warming’, lucid minds are scarce
Heartland clearly lost the high ground with this stunt, but the AGW alarmists have been wallowing in a moral and intellectual Marianas Trench for years, most luridly demonstrated by their infamous “No Pressure” infomercial:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PDXQsnkuBCM
Hard not to argue that Kaczynski would have approved.
This is why our country is in the mess it’s in, the attempt to censor language. There is a difference between rude, or vulgar, and satire. It reminds me of the film Gardens of Stone where the hippie Don Brubaker is pushing James Caan’s character and calling him a baby killer and daring him to fight. Then Caan takes his head off and the viewer hears second hand that Don was going to sue, but gets talked out of it.
It’s parental wisdom that probably goes back thousands of years; don’t dish it out if you can’t take it. If they wanted civil discourse they’d drop this holocaust denier BS. They won’t though, because if the science was settled you wouldn’t have to invoke holocaust deniers in an attempt to marginalize their opponents. What the AGW advocates are worried about, and why the engage in such histrionics and hyperbole, is that the mountains of evidence will eventually show them to be the actual deniers, i.e. their positions are fundamentally contrary to actual evidence, but they are ideologically driven to maintain their biased point of view. This is actually what I believe about them anyway, but the populist opinion is still out I guess.
No, Heartland should not apologize. There should be no apologies to the Global Warming Hoax. Some of the malefactors and racketeers of the Globaloney fraud should be in a cell next to the Unabomber.
How can you be so sure that it is a hoax, that you’re willing to risk the future?
@m – The same question applies to you. How can you be so certain that AGW is so well proven that you are willing to risk the future? Unless your base motive is to redistribute wealth and foster a specific version of “social justice”, why would you be willing to so fundamentally revamp the entire economic structure of the free world?
I think you are dramatically over stating the cost and economic changes required to dramatically reduce ghg emissions. I look at it as very similar to the cold war (but much cheaper): we weren’t 100% sure that the USSR would enact harm on us if we didn’t have a strong defense, but it was wise to develop one anyway.
@m – No. I am not. You may be pragmatic about your views, but many who comprise the “intellectual” energy behind the AGW “beliefs” are not. I have been an audience member at a number of presentations in New England, many at Ivy League institutions, among others. The consistent theme, without exception, of remedies to a carbon based economy include class and poverty. While the academy might not use the rhetorical language of many of the activist groups, their intentions are outwardly very similar. Beyond even the concept of Gaia, the “consensus” scientists are also convinced the solutions require as much human engineering as carbon reduction. It’s too easy to assign all of the power and political traps to their motives. Rest assured, however, their aim goes very far beyond putting a price on carbon to force its “value” and therefore its usage and emission. You only have to listen to a few PhD level engineers using language about benefits to the poor to recognize it has much less to do with carbon. To be sarcastic, I wasn’t aware that being a “peer-reviewed” Chemical Engineering expert gave one license to opine as an expert in social issues, too. That they have long since given up on the purely academic practices to progress their agenda says a lot as well.
Well, I can’t speak to those presentations, but I might speculate that they were focusing on poverty reduction as a way to sell their proposed solutions. However, I really have no idea; in fact it makes no sense. In exceptionally cold terms, elevating the income of people who are up against a hard constraint on their energy spending would make the GW problem worse rather than better. (Whether or not to do so is a value proposition, not the subject of this discussion.)
But back on topic, the last estimate I saw was that 2% of world GDP (or the equivalent of a year in recession) would do the trick. I’m not waving this off as nothing, but it’s not a radical reshaping of the economy/economic system.
We already know that AGW enthusiasts have dramatically overstated the consequences of global warming. By many accounts, we should already be in the throes of horrific climate change.
@Kermudjin
Actually, the models from a decade ago are proving far too conservative. Remember, individual weather events (or even) seasons are not the same as climate change (something which we agree on I presume), but I’m sitting here on May 12th playing on the computer because all the New England and Colorado ski resorts closed exceptionally early this year. For me it is already a disaster!
“…the last estimate I saw was that 2% of world GDP … would do the trick.”
Laughable. A complete non-starter.
“…all the New England and Colorado ski resorts closed exceptionally early this year.”
It’s not the first time. And, you are being parochial – anecdote is the opposite of data. Europe has had an exceptionally good ski season this year.
@Bart,
The ski thing was meant to inject some humor. I even prefaced it with weather != climate. I’m sorry that it didn’t come across this way. As a side note, you are correct about the season in the Alps (also the PNW). Unfortunately, I hit up the Pyrenees instead of the Alps this year. Poor luck.
If we can’t believe this stuff about warming, how can we blithely accept the “stats” that state where it comes from? If America is so polluted, how come one blow’s one’s nose in New Delhi and it comes out black? Where does that happen in the U.S.?
Where in the U.S. do we have intersections that are so fouled like in Beijing that the lack of visibility causes accidents at midday? Try breathing around a black smoke belching bus in Guatemala City.
How can you be sure you’re not going to slip in the shower and break your idiotic neck this morning? Cowardly thinking such as your and its dominance in the American res publica is the reason we can’t confront our enemies, can’t even call them by their names, that we are governed by an avowed communist, and have lost the ability to make even the most fundamental decision regarding our future wellbeing and control our spending. Are we willing to risk the blacks rioting if we cut social welfare spending? Are we willing to risk the watermelons going nuts if we drill for our own oil? Are we willing to confront sorry third world islamist dictatorships and end jihad or end the people who carry it out? Because the communists have so thoroughly feminized American society and turned the vast majority of men educated in the last thirty years into castrati, we’re afraid to get out of be in the morning. Just in the few thousand years of human history that we know much about, the temperatures on Earth have swung wildly; we’ve adapted and not only survived but prospered but you ilk is afraid and arrogant and foolish enough to believe it is something that something should be done about. Fools!
Bravo!! Lovely satire.
I’m all for alternative energy that makes sense. right now it doesn’t, at least not to the extent we need output. making up facts and massaging data to fit your models to achieve what amounts to a social agenda is transparent to anyone with a broad science and technology background.
take the a out of agw and you may get a little consideration. most of the a is more likely due to unrestrained development without consideration of the consequences (eg dust bowl of the early 20th century), rather than carbon output. the correlation is weak and the forcing model is unproven. even the lowly beaver has an impact on its environment.
When 20th century premises are under examination in most fields, why do we cling to the idea that carbon has a greater impact than we know it does? And why we make a big deal out of a pipeline potentially bursting in Nebraska, tainting an acquifer that we are draining significantly faster than it replenishes, doesn’t make sense. Focus on the real issues please, not the liberal crusade issues.
It isn’t satire, lefty idiot.
Ah – an anti-human humanist.
You know your buddies want to cut the world’s population down to a few hundred thousand, right?
I don’t know how you people live with yourselves. You stifle technology (natural gas)that could cut down on your precious C02 when what you actually want is those tens of thousands of deaths that occured in Europe over the last decade because they refused to heat or cool their homes.
Everything in nature is cyclical. For those of you in Rio Linda, that means it has ups and downs. The ice records from the poles indicate that mother Gaia has warmed and cooled over a long period of time. Legitimate scientists have speculated, with fair amounts of strong evidence to back it up, that the earth was much warmer millions of years ago. In fact, NOVA has repeatedly shown the episode of “Arctic Dinosaurs” http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/nature/arctic-dinosaurs.html Where paleontologists discovered dinosaur fossils near the arctic circle, and due to continental drift, the creatures they came from most likely lived and died well north of where their fossils were found.
So, the question comes, “Why was earth so warm?”. There were no humans producing CO2, or driving SUV’s and, so far as I know, dinosaurs were not able to refine petroleum and fire up any coal-fired powerplants. And yet, the earth was MUCH warmer then that it is now.
Lacking the opposable thumb, dinosaurs also did not keep very good written records of this while it was going on. So we will never know the cause of the high temps that lasted quite a long time.
People have amazingly short life-spans and since humans have been on the earth in their current form for a very short period of time, we have only certain evidence to look upon and infer as to cause.
Could it possibly be that the star that’s closest to us also has cycles? Well, periods of sunspot activity are known to be cyclical, as are periods of solar seismic activity and flares. Why not total energy output? On a total scale, a minor variation from the sun wouldn’t mean all that much except how it would affect our climate. No one knows why the earth has heated and cooled for millions of years. NO ONE KNOWS. It’s all theory.
Science is still in its infancy, having been a recognized discipline for a very short period of time even on the human scale of time.
The sole reason that certain people think it’s time to panic over global warming is to garner extra income and then force that money to the have-less’s while using it as an excuse to get more for themselves. And besides, if the earth is getting warmer, won’t that allow for more food production? Longer growing seasons? Being able to farm father north? Longer baseball seasons?
And thinking it’s caused by humans? Well that IS arrogant. Typical lefty thinking that “man is responsible for EVERYTHING”. Nope…man isn’t. Much of the earth simply does what it does in spite of humans.
AGW is all hype. Sure, the planet may be getting warmer over time but to think humans cause it…phagh!
And it was just 15 years ago that magazines were publishing panic articles about the next coming ice-age.
Think about this. Crude oil is a liquefied form of past aniimal and plant life. Alaska has cubic buttloads of crude oil. This suggests that Alaska was once capable of supporting lots of plant and animal life.
It’s the proposed remedy that tips the game. It amounts to a vast system of redistribution from weathy western countries to the third world.
Read Lomborg. He shows pretty convincingly that the impact of global warming is not likely to be severe, and that coping with that impact will be far easier and cheaper than shutting down the fossil fuel based western economies to try to head it off. He has attacked the scheme at its weakest point and demonstrates that drastic measures to curtail carbon emissions is not called for even if the AGW proponents are correct in their principle thesis.
And just for kicks, read Crichton’s “State of Fear”.
I am sure global warming is a hoax because it is based on the senseless idea that increased CO2 in the atmosphere causes a warming of the temperatures. The fact is that warming temperatures cause increases of CO2 in the atmosphere. In any event, the affects on the atmosphere have been negligible. You don’t have to fear anything in the future except the pseudo scientific community picking your pocket to solve a crisis that never existed. Sleep easy, son. The heat will not get you before you have a chance to get your Coppertone applied.
The ultimate, uncorrectable mistake in this sort of combat is allowing the opponent to set the rules. Heartland, and everyone else on the Right side of this subject, should counterattack as ferociously as possible, and without concern for “gentlemanliness” or “civility.” It should be plain by now that our opponents use those things strictly as bludgeons against us.
The Left is a one-trick fighter. The trick is the accusation of low motives. The danger of that trick is allowing oneself to be hypnotized into a defensive cringe. Don’t! Get on the offensive and stay there — and remember that nothing any rational man can say or do will argue someone out of a position he is determined against all odds not to change.
The “anthropogenic global warming” issue has never been about the climate, or what might be in the offing in the foreseeable future. It’s about destroying all remnants of freedom and free enterprise, and mounting a totalitarian regime over the entire world. That’s the secret — and until we start to conduct ourselves as if we realize it, we’ll continue to lose ground to the slanders of the warmistas and their hangers-on.
Correct. The fight is on & apologetic pussycats need not apply. If you cannot stand the heat, do not come in the kitchen.
Rand, I expect better than this PC drivel out of you. Jeez, seems standards at PJM are slipping all around. Pretty soon, you won’t know this web site from the newsroom at ABC.
Could you ever?
One of Obama’s trolling comrades. ABO2012
I’m not an Obama supporter (nor Mitt). I disagree with him on health care, taxes, certain uses of drones, civil liberties, and a whole host of other issues.
You ARE an Obama troll, even if you haven’t discovered it yet. I am for Mitt, because I will be for a yellow dog if that is what it will take to get the Communist out of our White House. ABO2012
Lying liars with stupid idiots in support, who are the most vile people who say the most vile things all the time. And we APOLOGIZE?
Eff ‘em!
When you are stopped in the street by a thief and ordered to give it all up, and then he’s gonna kill you, you certainly don’t lie down and take it. But the right does. That moral high ground won’t count for much when they outlaw oxygen for humans because it’s bad for Mother Earth!
Stop this crap. They are a bunch of lying swindlers who are stealing from YOU every single day, and plan to outlaw everything you hold dear. For what? For an absolutely unprovable hypothesis (which incidentally makes them very rich and gives them power over you, to boot). Every single global warming scientist should have his credentials revoked, as he must have been sleeping for his entire 20 years of school! This does not resemble science in any way. It more accurately resembles a suicide cult. Include me out. But they refuse to.
Again EFF ‘EM!!! The harder, the better!
At least “modellers” are expanding their horizons, so to speak, industrial aerosols and cloud cover are the new culprits. Many still labor on behalf of the next IPCC report (papers due July 31 2012), egregious flaws and downright perfidy in earlier IPCC reports don’t seem to faze them.
In recent months, climate scientists have started rolling out initial results from the newest generation of models, which represent atmospheric chemistry and microphysics in much more sophisticated ways than previous incarnations. These models allow clouds and aerosols to evolve as they interact with each other and respond to factors such as temperature, relative humidity and air currents. And early results suggest that such processes have a much greater impact on regional climate than scientists had realized.
Climate forecasting: A break in the clouds
unrelated comment: when are you going to do away with this annoying pop-up ad for email notifications? And also the ‘two-page’ article format? These are annoying encumbrances that detract from the quality of your site. (tip: once your e-mail has been bombarded with emails from a site, whether it be the Economist, PJMedia, Wall Street Journal, . . . whatever, they quickly lose relevance and are more of a nuisance rather than a feature)(another tip: putting articles in multi-page formats, especially when they are brief, everybody knows is just a cheesy way of generating more ‘page hits’. PJ Media doesn’t need to stoop to this . . . you’ve got a slew of quality writers here and the issues that you address are timely & needed).
What he said.
this.
Firefox browser engine, and also download “NoScripts”. It will stop all that.
I don’t see the ads.
There’s no reason all these articles should be more than one page long. If an article seems to be only marginally interesting, I don’t bother going to the second page. I may be missing the best part of the article, but I’m to busy to be constantly clicking the mouse to get through an article.
Kate MacMillan’s masthead motto at Small Dead Animals is “Not showing up to riot is a failed conservative policy”. This is analogous. The only function of “the moral high ground” in the climate debate is to provide the leftoids and warm-mongers with easy targets to aim at from their cover in the mud and weeds.
The leading lights in the “climate change” movement are, to a man and woman, lasciviously slavering at the concept of mass murder by proxy — kill off enough people (not, of course, including their precious selves) to reduce the “burden on Gaia”, and bury the bodies in ditches so as to sequester the carbon. They get a lot of unthinking support from people who can’t do arithmetic (want to run an aluminum smelter? just put up a windmill). The movers and shakers need to be called on their totalitarian, murderous tendencies, in order to reduce that irrational good-feelings support. They want you dead, and mean to take away your food, transportation, and warmth in winter so that you’re trapped freezing in the dark. Failing to point that out, in loud voices, is a failed conservative policy.
Amen to that.
Not to mention that they have no intention of giving up their heat, air conditioning, electricity, planes, cars, and Kobe beef. I might think about taking them seriously if they practiced what they preached; but their hypocrisy is so loud I have to cover my ears.
I recall an old high school cheer: Rah, Rah, Ree, kick ‘em in the knee; Rah, Rah, Ras, kick ‘em in the ‘other’ knee!
The AGW boys and girls want one thing: Power. That will bring money. There is no other goal. They give a rat’s hindmost about “truth” or any other concept remotely approaching honest discussion or discourse. If Heartland struck too close to the bone for some, Bravo!! Keep up the good work.
Cloward-Piven; Alinsky; Marx; Lenin; Stalin; Hitler. All trend setters for the AGW crowd.
We’d like a reasoned, civil debate about climate, but look what those terrible terrible warmists are making us do!
Thank goodness for the rational principled minority like Judy Curry and Ross McKitrick. Maybe their good sense will prevail.
Is there any issue facing America on which adults are in charge?
Yeah, yeah, I know: Whose side am I on, anyway?
The problem is, the adults are us: “Add in the fiery passion of the more evangelical [baby boom] last-wavers, sharpen everyone’s moral conviction, reduce everyone’s level of tolerance, subtract the active presence of any adult Adaptives [Silent Generation, born 1925-42], and *that* is the leadership awaiting America, circa 2020.” — Strauss & Howe, GENERATIONS
Having read Kaczynski’s “manifesto”, I’d say that if anything, comparing the average AGW believer to him is at least fairly accurate. He called for the abolition of most of our technological civilization, citing the damage it did to the Earth as the justification. He also considered the resulting “die-off” of most of humanity as a good thing, as he was also obsessed with overpopulation. Something he, in his own way, tried to “correct”- which is why he’s in a federal prison today.
As for how responsibly the progressive ecology advocates and their enablers can be expected to behave when in power, I can only quote this document;
“Al is a radical environmentalist who wants to change the very fabric of America.”
“He criticizes America for being America- a place where people enjoy the benefits of an advanced standard of living.”
“He has no sense of proportion: He equates the failure to recycle aluminum cans with the Holocaust.” (Note Bene.)
“He believes that our civilization, itself, is evil (because it is, in his words, ‘addicted to the consumption of the Earth’).”
– Jonathan Sallet, from a 1992 Democratic National Committee memo during the vetting process by which Al Gore became Bill Clinton’s running mate- and then Vice President of the United States for eight years.
In short, not only the “deep-eco” types, but the progressive leadership as well, knew that by any normal standards, Gore was (and is) an environmental extremist “loose cannon”. But they were willing to put him one heartbeat away from the Presidency for eight years, and went to the mat to try to put him in the center seat in 2000.
With that in mind, along with everything else (such as the odious “10:10″ campaign), and I’d have to say that the Heartland Institute was probably being too kind to this lot.
clear ether
eon
I love that information on Al Gore. I read a burrowed copy of Earth in the Balance, and I was dismayed at the time with the alarmism. Of course this was coming out of 80s when predictions of the Brazilian rain forest was supposed to be deforested by 75% by today. I look at Google Earth all the time to see if Brazil looks like those predictions shoved in my face by my High School teachers via PBS.
I knew Gore was a phony in 1992 but when he bought 6500 sq foot mansion on the California coast I figured everybody could see the ruse. I guess I underestimated liberal dogma.
Just in case anyone is interested, someone compared the Unabomber’s manifesto to Earth in the Balance and came up with an excellent quiz. Take it here.
On that basis alone, IMO flogging the watermelons (green on the outside, red on the inside) with the Unabomber is perfectly legitimate, because it is accurate.
Jeez. Not only should Heartland not have taken the billboard down, they should have put more just like it up. If I had the money, I’d contribute enough to fund at least one more. This is not a debate, this is war; the Left’s goals are not climate control and environmental safety, they’re human control and tyranny. Mr. Porretto is absolutely correct in stating that Heartland’s mistake is in allowing the opponent to set the rules–which they, themselves, then incidentally refuse to obey. We see it all the time, in the dust-ups over civility and all the rest. I’m very disappointed in this Simberg post. VERY. DISAPPOINTED. If we insist that we cannot “stoop to their level” and actually fight them, we will not only lose, we will fail to even engage them. We will be talking to ourselves until they actually manage to shut us up–which they will do. Because THAT’S their goal.
Your attitude appears to be what Heartland was trying to achieve. I believe that Breitbart is there (also).
Gleick and fellow slavering, lying, abusive AGW supporters should put up a billboard apology for the mendacious smear he, with their support after the fact, tried to promulgate against Heartland.
And in every city, I mean urban heat sink.
Many apologies for emitting CO2 while I wrote this. I’ll cut a check to Al Gore for my dispensation.
Thanks Mr. Simberg for making me take pause and think. I often read your articles and enjoy them.
It is very difficult not to react these days. In that reaction it is easy to throw standards away to win the conflict at any cost–because the ends justify the means. I am not nieve at all; I know there is a contingent who are at war with everything I hold dear. But I do not believe trashing my own standards is a winning hand in this topic or the other real issues of our time. I don’t desire polite and gentlemanly defeat, neither being a boor to attain victory.
I’m trying to say, I think your right to point out that being characterized that way on a billboard is not the right way to fight the fight. It is a fight and it’s right to fight it, but not stooping to the standards of the opposition. If we become like them in how we think and act, how are we different?
It’s tough to avoid the conclusion that the real point of this movement masquerading as science is orchestrating your life, not “saving the planet”.
Typical of the liberal mind (cf Obama regime), revelations of behind the scenes machinations and manipulation, East Anglia, Michael Mann, the whole ball of wax, don’t seem to have any permanent or lasting effect on the agenda.
Liars & dissemblers go underground until the storm passes & the public’s brief attention span expires, and then they’re back at it, in full force.
I am not a scientist and I have no idea what’s going on with global warming. Minnesota did have 80 degree days this past March which has not happened one time in my lifetime if I recall correctly. But that is anecdote.
What is not anecdotal are the incredible gorillas in the room these scientist’s cannot see because of their political correctness. One doesn’t have to be a scientist to understand that the population of the world stands at some 7 billion, double that of only 40 years ago – think about that.
The gorillas in the room are population explosion and the manner in which we deal with it. Rather than look to the most obvious source for solutions to the problems, namely that of Third World birth rates, we enable those birth rates by blithely propping up areas that cannot feed themselves and let the excess populations come to the West, which are only replaced in the Third World – problem not solved. Nigeria, with some 160 million people, is a slow motion disaster in the making. With not a hint of self-awareness or greater good, they will simply devolve into a Dystopian nightmare.
So, both in the West and the Third World, national energies and financial resources that might be better put to research for some oil and coal alternatives, are wasted on symposium’s about politics, demonization, welfare programs and immigration battles.
Worse, once in the West, do these immigrants from the back end of nowhere care about the greater good – are they Jeffersonians worried about the planet’s future. No. They organize themselves into ethnic groups and advocate and agitate, voting and complaining by last names, religions and ethnicity.
Even more time and energy and money is spent wrangling this new Tower of Babel, who want money spent of them, and not curiosity for curiosity’s sake. In an analogy of what might have happened in WW II had there not been a free and easy America to protect this part of the world, what would have happened?
How likely is it that an America fallen in on itself, and with a population too large to govern effectively no matter the source of the numbers, but particularly with people who can’t feed or organize themselves in their own polities, will simply become distracted and fall in on itself?
Let’s be honest: despite all the nonsense about American “imperialism,” which has needed the word to be redefined, and about the defense budget, it is America’s conspicuous military presence and international criminal courts behind that, which has stopped empire building gone wild.
A distracted America will be one that cannot influence would-be empire builders, nor be a source of tech once stripped of the monies needed to yet again save a world from itself. Whites will be minority by 2050, and with 14 billion now in the world. One can see the handwriting and racial infighting on wall. We will simply become the Third World 2.0. Southern Calif. has already half fallen in on itself. Shanty towns enabled by OWS-type tactics, thinking and political race correctness, are probably only a few years away there.
We need to stop all immigration, and start thinking of ourselves as an enclave that is a source of tech, and stop with the political nonsense that hand-holds Muslims into near-Earth orbit, takes oil out of the ground polities can neither take out or refine for themselves, and finds water underneath the unwitting feet of people dying of thirst.
Let the Third World be as equal as these politically correct scientists say they are and either manage their own problems of perish. If not, we may all perish together. Let private charity and compassion do what it must, and not institutionalize the West as a de facto charity.
Imagine the Earth with 14 billion only 40 years from now and then start shuddering, and realize our great grandchildren will be spitting on our graves for our short-sightedness. We don’t need to have a national dialogue about race, but about our population. It should be capped at 300 million, and laws put in place to ensure it. It’s either that or suicide – we are already committing political suicide, why not the physical act 600 million Americans and then one billion will bring? We need pragmatic and maybe even harsh visionaries unencumbered by political and racial correctness who see success and failure where they actually are rather than where their mommy told them it should, would, or could be. President Obama is the exact opposite of a visionary. He is a race-centric nobody, obsessed with extorting Fed. monies to explain away failure and using mad theories and myths about race to back it up. Men like Obama will destroy this world, as sure as I’m sitting here.
We have just a few more coals on the fire than obsessing about 12 percent of the population’s “feelings,” racial self-obsessions, and determination to whittle down the goose that laid and will, in the end, protect the golden eggs, by employing law-suits against American states to ensure that is exactly what will happen by diversity – by any other name, ethnic cleansing. We are being sold out for votes by men and women who can’t see beyond next week, unless that week has their specific priorities written on it.
Ted, is that you?
Is that an argument? If so, it’s weird how what is self-evident and obvious is so hard to express in words.
Heartland should apologize to the one who’s done far less damage – the Unabomber.
I’m with that. The bulk of domestic terrorism in the U.S. is done in the name of the environment. Look at the FBI Uniform Crime Reports to get an idea.
“This kind of fallacious, juvenile and inflammatory rhetoric does nothing to enhance your reputation, hands your opponents a huge stick to beat you with, and sullies the reputation of the speakers you had recruited. Any public sympathy you had built up as a result of the Gleick fiasco will be lost — and more besides — as a result of such a campaign.”
I disagree, big time. You are now dealing with a bunch of Eco-Nazis who will stop at nothing in forcing their beliefs onto the public at large. So people were offended by a little billboard. Well boo hoo. That is not nearly as bad as what the global warming fanatics have done to other people over the years. And let’s not even talk about the names the global warming people have called individuals who have dared to disagree with them. So they should man up when confronted by people who are willing to stand up to them and their bogus science.
Remember, the global warming people are willing to destroy every major industrialized nation in the world just because they think it will “save the planet.” They never seem to think about what an economic disaster that would cause for everybody in the very world they are trying to save. So I have no problems using whatever verbal and visual methods we have to stand up to these deranged thugs.
It’s always nice to try and be civilized when dealing with fanatics and people who would think nothing of destroying you for the sake of their cause. So when thinking about being civilized while protesting against fanatics, I always like to say, “How successful do you think Gandhi would have been in Auschwitz?”
Remember, the global warming people are willing to destroy every major industrialized nation in the world just because they think it will “save the planet.”
Don’t forget, all the while exempting themselves from the consequences of their cause. That’s important to note.
I think it is pretty clear that the death toll from the Unabomber is far, far less than what the warmists would like to see. Their policies will lead to privation and suffering of the sort that is usually only seen under communism. This is not a coincidence.
We can’t afford to believe that these are serious people who are capable of rational dialog any longer. They are not. They are an economically and scientifically illiterate cult of Luddites. The sooner we stop pretending otherwise the better off we will be. We have already bankrupted ourselves playing nice with leftists when we knew their economic policies were the product of adolescent control fantasies that had no basis in reality.
If they were interested in having a debate they wouldn’t be using the power of government to force people to act in certain ways. They initiated the use of force against their neighbors through the laws they have had passed so they get no pass on being compared to people who use violence to get what they want. Just because the violence and forced privation is government backed makes it no more legitimate in any way. This point must be driven home again and again because these people are extraordinarily thick in the head. If it takes a few Unabomber billboards for them to get the picture then that is a small price to pay indeed.
Frankly, it is about damn time that those on the “non-left-wing” begin using the same tactics as the radical leftists. For way way too long the radical left has hijacked the english language, redefining ordinary words in order to advance their cynical, hypocritical and yes, ENSLAVING agenda.
The world would have been far better off if Hitler, Stalin , Lenin, etc were stopped – BY ANY MEANS POSSIBLE – way before they took power. And make no mistake about it, if the radical leftists (the AGW charlatans) have their way, we WILL have gulags and death camps here in the USA (recall the 1960s Huron meeting of radical leftists – all US born, Ivy League ” students” where they were willing to “sacrifice” up to 25 MILLION AMERICAN CITIZENS to achieve their goals).
Soon the AGW hoax will be definitively shown to be a hoax. At that time, the key individuals who created and aided and abetted that hoax should be prosecuted and either jailed (for fraud) or better yet, simply executed – yes hanged.
A crazy notion you say?
Well, look at what the citizens of the former USSR, eastern europe, present day Cuba and N.Korea had(have) to endure. Very few of those murderous-thug leaders paid the price, though ALL should have for destroying the lives of millions and millions of ordinary folks.
The AGW crowd is absolutely no different than the Stalinist/Hitlerian ideology. And they DESERVE what is due them.
“For example, James Hansen, head of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, has proposed that the CEOs of coal companies be tried as criminals against humanity.”
It is instead all the Warmists that should be prosecuted for crimes against humanity. They have been defrauding taxpayers all over the world with bogus science, lying documentaries, and blocked energy development, that has cost humanity not Billions of dollars but Trillions of dollars in scientific grants, increased environmental regulations, and massive energy costs to consumers for everything they purchase.
@Ric Locke – Sorry, but “showing up to riot..” but simply participating in the “mudslinging” is a fool’s errand. Whenever you want serious credibility, you need to overcome the stigma of being a street fighter just because your opponent prefers the street to a managed ring. After all, when did you stop beating your wife? When are you serious and when are you not?
Winning at all costs by engaging at all levels is a fool’s errand.
Exactly. . . why so many of us wish we had a candidate who isn’t from MA. The moral high ground isn’t worth a d*** if your society is buried there, only a fool would think otherwise. Ersatz “conservatives” of the NE, are as big a problem as the socialists.
In a word: bulls*t.
People who stand up tall and proud when dealing with an insurgency are easy targets for snipers and worse. If you’re unwilling to admit that and deal with it, you lose by definition.
The correct answer/challenge to any warmenist is to define them as mass murderers (which they are) who are too fastidious to slash throats with their own hands. That doesn’t make it better, it makes it worse, because it’s an effort to deflect responsibility. From their point of view, another advantage is that if everybody dies of starvation in the freezing rain, the mass grave can be a shallower ditch than is needed for fat people.
Compromise, pfui. When they propose killing all the Jews (pardon me, the “investment banksters”) the proper compromise is to only kill half of them. F* that for a game of soldiers.
Exactly. Thank you. God I’m tired of apologists on the Right.
You can’t spell environmentalist without EVIL.
Aggressor sets the rules. You want to have a civil discourse, then start with one. If you want to call me a fanatic who wants to destroy the planet and try and make some equivalency with holocaust deniers, then expect the full brunt of my sarcasm to be aimed at you.
This who notion, fostered by our parents most likely, that you shouldn’t stoop to their level; can only take you so far. That tired old cliché has been leveled against me time and time again when defending war on Islam (insomuch as it is). I say, “of course you have to stoop to their level, if they understood logic and reason, there would be no need for conflict.” It’s like trying to reason with a dog. I love dogs, but dogs are instinctual creatures. They aren’t going to respond to reasoned arguments.
The struggle between orthodoxy and dissent is eternal. A few years ago, I visited the Netherlands. While looking at some old, formerly, Catholic churches, I was struck by how plain their interiors were. A guide explained to me that in the sixteenth century religious wars of Reformation ravaged the Netherlands. The ornate Catholic churches were stripped of the excessive decoration by Protestant forces which felt that spare and simple houses of worship were more pure in the sight of God.
True believers have a certain unassuaged unhappiness within them. The only way they can quell that unhappiness is to force absolute conformity on all the others in their world. With mass media and massive governments, global warming true believers have tried their best to stamp out the sin of heresy and dissent throughout the world. Straight to hell must go all users of carbon, which, of course, means Western civilization is completely damned. Look around you and ask yourself, “What products and services in my life do not include petroleum as an ingredient, or as part of their manufacture?” Cannot think of any? Neither can I.
The same issue arises in the West’s struggle with Islam, which struggle has, by the way, existed for a thousand years. The jihadists will never be content until we all believe in Allah and his supposed final prophet and Islam’s abhorrent practices such as female genital mutilation, forcing young girls into marrying men many years their senior, and necrophilia with deceased wives within a certain number of hours after death. (This last one is truly amazing! See http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2012/04/necrophilia_is_not_a_joke.html)
I am tired of worrying about orthodoxy. It is a nice sunny Saturday. I think I will go outside, sit in my front yard, and admire my bountiful crop of dandelions, as my neighbors struggle with petro-chemically based herbicides to keep their lawns pure and green as the putting green on a nearby golf course.
So, if I understand correctly, when a leftie calls you “Hitler”, that’s free speech and when a conservative calls you “Unabomber” that’s unacceptable and beyond the pale.
My advice to Heartland: compile a list of all the egregious things AGW hysterics have said, followed by a .jpg of the billboard, and conclude with “free speech is free speech.”
Actually, having read the billboard, the only word left out was apocalyptic, as in: Do you still believe in apocalyptic global warming? Common, get a grip. What goes around comes around. The global warming fanatics have been caught doing “bad science.” Heartland gave them a taste of their medicine, and no one directly died because of it–unlike some of the policy consequences flowing from the bad science, as in food riots that apparently led to the misnamed Arab Spring. But let’s talk about doing good science. You know, the Manhattan Project, the project that led to nuclear bombs and thousands of deaths, men, women, children, babies, admittedly in the effort to prevent more deaths and end the war. In light of those deaths, it seems to me the moral outrage directed at Heartland for practicing political free speech is rather misplaced and sanctimonious in the name of some postulated scientific moral high ground. Science is a tool, like anything else, and can be used for good or evil. I find it interesting that some of the Canadian scientists moaning about Heartland already live in a country with compromised freedom of speech. Apparently under Canadian law the bill board would be illegal, because of fomenting hate speech against the Unabomber and people of his ilk.
@m – Sure, there is a postulated cost to reduce the “threat” by some degree. In the last few years, there has been a slowly evolving admission that certain proscribed actions (changes in energy generation being the most key, with transportation emissions not far behind)yield a smaller impact of the “predicted” climate changes. So it may be that the “consensus” has elected to utilize another lever in the argument, namely social justice. The reality is their positions do evolve as do their methods of influencing the remainder of the planet’s population. We cretins? You decide for yourself.
AGW remedies have evolved to incorporate many non-carbon reducing but all-inclusive social actions. At the same time, their methods have “evolved” and depart more and more from good academic practice. There are more politicians masquerading as scientists as time goes by. They aren’t necessarily representative of all who believe in warming, but they are becoming the most influential “academic” voices.
@JohnInMA
If that’s the case than it is sad, but I don’t see how it impacts whether or not we should do something to attempt to mitigate global warming.
(1) Because we can’t, and (2) because we aren’t causing it anyway.
WE don’t NEED to do anything.
You want to talk to people who pollute and burn their environment then I suggest you go talk to China, Russia, India and the ENTIRE continent south of our border.
But get OFF our backs. Industrialized nations are the CLEANEST on the planet.
LOL! Just when you need someone to prove your point. Intelligent conversation and an understanding of basic science only go so far in preventing the leftists from devastating the western world in the name of “environmentalism”.
Despite the fact that the data (even the technology to gather the data) does not exist to form any statistically significant trend analysis in our 4.5B year old, highly dynamic world, despite the fact that even the warmests’ own inadequte data shows zero warming for fifteen years, you will still get voices like “m” crying in the wilderness, but, but, shouldnt’ we do SOMETHING (just in case).
When the stakes are this high, there comes a point, when logic and intelligent argument fail that ridicule must be used, and we are at that point with the global warming scam.
I’m not sure how I’ve proved your point when trying to have a discussion about risks and whatnot, nor am I sure what would satisfy your definition of “Intelligent conversation.” But since you seem comfortable with the data, I’ll just remind you of a few basic things.
Autocorrelation of temperature increases is significant at the 0.05 confidence level. Fitted ARIMA models just using carbon (none of the other GHG levels) find very strong positive correlation which is significant 0.05 confidence level. Nearly any robust treatment of the global temperature time series puts lie to your claim that there hasn’t been any warming for the past 15 years.
Statistical results are only relevant if the data is. Temperature measuring devices capable of less than half a degree have only been widely available for a little over a century and a half, compared to 4.5B years. Yours is a numbers game with typical garbage in, garbage out results. Nothing, not one single variable has been held constant by the global warming promoters. The number and location of stations, the heat island effect, the type and calibration of instrumentation, nothing.
Your point is as valid as a statistically average number from a phone book.
By their own admission:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1250872/Climategate-U-turn-Astonishment-scientist-centre-global-warming-email-row-admits-data-organised.html
Even that article points out that it likely is happening (we can’t be 100% sure of course). Anyway, I don’t think that we will convince each other today, so enjoy the rest of your weekend.
Unbelievably lame groupthink
“Heartland should apologize for its billboard comparing warming advocates with the Unabomber.”
The warmists should be compared to Bernie Madoff and Chicken Little and the Mad Hatter and the very worst used car salesman on the planet and the high priests of the inquisition of the dark ages.
Global warming is regarded by the sheeple as true, by those who can think for themselves as false and by the power mad and money grubbers as … … useful.
What would be the effect of this Global Warming fraud and coercion, if successful? To make part of the world fools and part hypocrites; to support roguery and error all over the earth. Al Gore and the Global Warming fraudsters and fanatics have converted simple changes in the weather into an engine with which to try to enslave mankind to filch wealth and power to themselves. They, in fact, constitute the real Anti-Scientists.
The Church of Global Warming says the earth is dangerously heating up, but I know that it is not, for I have seen the snow and ice and have felt their bitter cold, and I have more faith in snow and ice than in the Church of Global Warming, and it’s High Priests.
Able to guzzle more energy than dozens of normal men! Producing more hot air than a locomotive!! Able to pile up carbon credits higher than a tall building in a single bound!!! Look UP in the sky! It’s ChickenLittle! It’s FlyingSnakeOilSalesman! It’s the Sultan of Hanging Chads! It’s the Ayatollah of Heat! It’s the High Priest of the Inquisition! It’s the Doctor of Doom! No, it’s CarbonMan in a private jet painted green! And now following in the tradition of other great men such as Jimmy Carter and Yasir Arafat, he is the proud recipient of a Nobel Prize!!! CarbonMan, strange visitor from an alternate reality who came to Earth with claims and scary predictions far beyond those of any sane and honest man, disguised as Fat Albert, and now joined by other members of the Royal GreenLeague such as BioFuelHummerMan and EcoCleaningWoman, they all fight a never ending battle for science-fiction, hypocrisy, power grabbing, money grubbing and the Hollywood way!
EcoCleaningWoman no longer serves the League of Green after Carbon Man tried to grope her.
Oh, to all those who made comments as to the absurdity of this drivel article, I agree.
I just saw a copy of the billboard. Ryan, you’re way off base here. My feelings on this is: since the shoe fits, lets help them get shod. Playing nice with these thugs gets nowhere.
“For example, James Hansen, head of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, has proposed that the CEOs of coal companies be tried as criminals against humanity.”
That’s because James Hansen is a certifired fanatic loon…kinda like Ted Kaczynski.
Not exactly. Kaczynski was a certified fanatic loon living in a hut in the woods, making homemade bombs, and writing manifestos about the “need” to erase civilization from the Earth.
Hansen is a certified fanatic loon living the high life on the taxpayer’s dime, writing manifestos about erasing big chunks of humanity from the Earth, and most importantly having enough political power and influence to get his delusions codified into law.
Of the two, Kaczynski was significantly less dangerous to this country, and humanity as a whole.
Personally, if Hansen could be convinced to give up his position and go live in a hut in the woods, and write his manifestos on his own nickel, I’d be happy to help build the hut for him. (I’d even throw in a safely-designed latrine at no extra charge.)
cheers
eon
Hanson should stand trail for treason for his endless diddling with the temperature readings and being allowed to do so. If you can’t count, you shouldn’t be allowed to determine the price. Of course, if don’t teach anyone how to count, how will they ever know?
So, they basically agree with the Unabomber, but we can’t compare them to the Unabomber because that’s just like them comparing us to Hitler even though we don’t agree with Hitler on anything? How about this: leave the billboard up and explain why it is appropriate, as opposed to the slander coming from the other side.
Saul Alinsky
Rules for Radicals
What a shame that Simberg does not want to win the war against the Lib-tards.
Rand, if you don’t have the stomach for the fight, find a recliner so the rest of us can get on with it.
What a shame that Simberg does not want to win the war against the Lib-tards.
What a shame that your reading comprehension isn’t up to the task of being able to discern what I “want” from what I write.
If so many of your readers “misunderstand” what you wrote, you have the problem.
Indeed, if many scientists agree that the world is “warming” we must certainly have the warming problem. Consensus and stuff.
Well played FeralCat.
There is no indication in this post that “Simberg does not want to win the war against the Lib-tards.” Of course, I must confess that I had no idea there was a war being waged against retarded liberals (maybe Mr. Simberg is not aware as well)! I am not entirely sure, but perhaps war is not the best way to deal with retarded people? Would they even understand the Kaczynski reference?
Defending the stupidity expressed by A’Barge is pathetic.
I think the appropriate analogy would be if so many tried to say cooler but it sounded more like warmer.
Anthropogenic climate change is the Lysenkoism of our age.
Remember what happened to geneticists and agricultural experts in the Soviet Union who did not agree with the accepted dogma of Lysenko’s theories. All “reputable scientists” in the Soviet Union agreed with Lysenkoism because all those who did not agree were no longer reputable.
There were two reasons for Lysenko’s downfall. The ultimate reason was that Soviet crops kept failing when agriculture was controlled according to Lysenko’s theories. But there was also the fact that western scientists never agreed with his now discredited theories.
Unfortunately there is, so far, no way to empirically disprove anthropogenic climate change. And there is no “Free World” of scientists in opposition, since almost all governments have fallen to the anthropogenic climate change hysteria.
“Anthropogenic climate change is the Lysenkoism of our age.”
It also closely parallels the Weltislehre, or “Eternal Ice” theory of Hans Horbiger, which became the house cosmology of Nazi Germany. Including the way scientists and others who didn’t sign on to the delusion were vilified, marginalized, and threatened with being “cleansed” if they continued to resist.
After the war, “Eternal Ice” resurfaced (pun unintentional) in the works of Immanuel Velikovsky, notably “World in Collision”. That time around, the scandal (?) was apparently that a large number of astrophysicists told Velikovsky (a theologian), to his face, to stick to theology and avoid astrophysics, which he had proven he knew exactly jack-s**t about.
Well, Carl Sagan thought it was scandalous, anyway.
The moral is that science requires an open mind. It also requires honest inquiry, and the willingness to admit your theory doesn’t work when the facts don’t support it.
Lysenkoism, Weltislehre/Velikovskyism, and AGW all fail the test. Badly.
clear ether
eon
“Heartland should apologize for its billboard comparing warming advocates with the Unabomber.”
I couldn’t agree with you less. The only thing wrong with the analogy is that the unabomber was a retail murderer, while the global warmists want to be wholesale killers like Stalin and Mao. As Stalin said: “One death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic.” Global warmism is not a science any more than Marxism is a science. It is a new bottle for the same old red wine.
The problem with the billboard was that it presented a really dumb argument.
So the unabomber believes in AGW (does he, actually? Has anyone checked lately?). What’s that got to do with him being the unabomber? Reading his manifesto, his beef was with liberals and the over-socialisation of society. Not a mention of climate change or global warming anywhere. Heck – he lists environmentalists alongside tax increases as modern threats to humanity. Trying to distill the guy’s insanity down to a belief in climate change is as ridiculous as suggesting that people with equally bad hair are a threat, or that anyone with a mustache is just like hitler.
My response would be to deface the billboard with messages like “guess who supports your right to bear arms” and “guess who doesn’t like liberals either”.
It’s just a dumb argument, and easily countered. Pointing out “but it’s true!” is just disingenuous. Is that’s REALLY the best argument that heartland has?
I take no position on bill boards. But I have engineered a score of nukes and two score of fossil fueled power plants and assessed advanced technologies in energy and materials for decades.
I have read the link in the article,”…. the verge of exposing much of the chicanery.” At the very minimum, the scientific findings of climate change are thin, or perhaps lies.
I have read m’s replies.
To me, the issue is simple. If carbon combustion is a clear and present danger to mankind, then billions of humans are doomed to die. There is no low cost substitute to carbon and uranium energies, for base loaded supply. You can look at it from a mass balance, energy balance, or economic studies of the allocation of scarce resources. You get the same answer.
Any nation which pursues green energies will see their economy collapse.
“To me, the issue is simple. If carbon combustion is a clear and present danger to mankind, then billions of humans are doomed to die”
Yep. You’re spot on. And even if carbon combustion ISN’T a clear and present danger, our sources of fuel are finite (until that fusion thing happens, at which point of all this becomes moot). So those billions are going to die regardless. It’s just a question of how many hundreds of years that’s going to take. Notice I didn’t say “thousands of years”. I’m no expert, but I do believe the estimates of fuel reserves really does amount to hundreds of years. It’s a pretty sobering thought, if you think civilisation is something worth maintaining. It’s not a problem for our lifetimes, of course. But, then, neither is climate change (assuming you believe that stuff).
Eventually, renewables are going to be the only game in town. Unless, that is, you believe that fossil fuels aren’t really fossils at all, and are the result of some abundant geological process.
You raise an important point, the time scale of man’s use of energy. My comments project from one to eight decades out. Centers of technical excellence, e.g MIT, state that fossil fuels will be the bedrock of our energy use through this century, with prudent caveats that no one knows, with certainty. Consider the state of energy knowledge one century ago, or two centuries ago. Man has grown from Faraday’s law, and Bernoulli’s law to quantum computing, superconductivity, Density Functional Theory, and fMRI. Both the accumulation of knowledge and the rate of accumulation is increasing. (The Arab spring was made possible due to cells and Facebook, e.g. run from the tanks.) But hard barriers still exist, both technically and economically, and politicians blur these limits for their gain and our almost certain risk of disastrous collapse. IMHO, if mankind eschews carbon combustion in this century, as promoted by Al Gore, our technology guru, those billions who will die in pain are already born.
Prudence demands that we use certainty in life sustaining activities, e.g. coal combustion, as new technologies mature over time. America did not do this; we stopped, generations ago, due to “isms”. The hiatus has existed for so long that we are now in a danger zone. Our infrastructure is ancient and wobbly, while our Asian competitors are roaring past us. Various estimates put them as technical peers within the next one – two decades. They have their problems but we must not rely on luck.
America holds several aces; we are the richness nation on earth in primary fuels, carbon and uranium, centuries of known reserves. But it is ironic that we suffer massive unemployment while these resources are deemed “too dangerous”, as politicians talk about non existent solutions, e.g carbon sequestration, as if it exists. At this time, it is hot air. Baring an unexpected breakthrough fusion is useless for the next decades.
We must have more engineers, fewer lawyers, fewer regulators, more hard truth from our leaders, more frugal living habits, and less greed if our kids will have a future. After the history of our last two generations, I recommend that kids learn Mandarin. There is no bright green future, just suffering.
I believe fossil fuels really aren’t fossil fuels because they are HYDROCARBONS, not fossil fuels. How do you get fuel from a fossil? Sheesh.
If Climate Change were “man-made”, then the adaption to it could be either.
So I’m awaiting the Warmists’ proposal of how to deal with the allegedly “warmer” climate in 50 or 100 years WITHOUT changing our way of life, WITHOUT questioning freedom and Capitalism and WITHOUT government elites running our lives or telling us how many children we are allowed to have. Because people would rather “suffer “the alleged consequences of “man-made” Global Warming than bow down to an Ecofascist dictatorship in order to “prevent Global Warming”.
If you are ready to accept this and change your attitude in order to reconsider your strategy, I will think about your suggestions without prejudice. If not, I will still have the impression of Warmists being anti-human bigots searching or a way to enslave people and take away their freedom.
Why’s it up to warmists to figure that out? If the climate is going to be warmer, then it’s going to warmer and that’s that. If it happens, then it’s going to be up to everyone to figure it out. If the climate really does change, then whether you think warmists are anti-human is hardly relevant.
What is the supposed major problem if man-made global warming is real? Oh, yeah, the polar ice caps will melt and flood the coastal regions of the world.
Now, I just barely stayed awake in my 8th-grade science classes, and I still managed to learn that if temperatures get warm enough to melt ice, they’re warm enough to make water evaporate. That sounds like a good way to keep the rising ocean levels in check.
The melting of the Antarctic ice caps would contribute nothing to the volume of the oceans. They are on water, so it’s just water to water. Just like the ice-cubes in your drink. The Greenland glaciers, on land, would be a different matter. If they melt, it does affect sea level.
If one does believe that global warming will be an ongoing trend for the immediate geologic future, it would behoove one to buy property in North or South Dakota. Your descendents would bless you.
“I burn my candle at both ends/It will not last the night
But Ah my Soul and Ah my friends/It gives a lovely light
Poets are useless and you are a very bad poet, I says.
Yeah, comparing some of the AGW proponents to the unabomber is an insult to the unabomber.
I have read the link in the article,”…. the verge of exposing much of the chicanery.”So nice!Thank you for this reality post.